February 11, 2010

Quote of the Day

Jonathan Chait on two books animating conservative thought these days: "Atlas Shrugged" and Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism":

What do those works have in common? They're written by people who don't understand liberalism and the left at all, and are thus unable to present liberal ideas in terms remotely recognizable to liberals themselves. The specific lack of understanding lies in an inability to grasp the enormous differences between American liberalism and socialism or communism, seeing them as variants on the same basic theme. The historical reality is that the architects of American liberalism saw it as a bulwark against communism, and communists and socialists in turn viewed the liberals as in implacable enemy. (Yes, you can cherry pick a few data points of commonality, but these are the exceptions rather than the rule.) The result is a tendency to see even modest efforts to sand off the roughest edges of capitalism in order to make free markets work for all Americans as the opening salvo of a vast and endless assault upon the market system.
No one who's honest- or knows what words mean- could possibly think that Obama is a socialist.

Posted by Stephen Silver at February 11, 2010 05:27 PM
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