The Poor Man Institute

Here is a typical example of the kind of ridiculous hate-speech that has filled my inbox since Liberal Fascism was published:

DEar Moron,

You are a joke. How someone who thinks the government should be allowed to imprison and torture people without any accountability, who supports a President who makes people pledge loyalty oaths to him, parades his militarism around in phony military outfits, subverts the free press, and believes that he has essentially supreme and unchecked power to do anything he wants and answer to no one – and, oh, yeah, started a war under false pretenses – how someone like this gets off calling the people who are against all this “fascists” is completely beyond me. If you want to talk about ‘totalitarian tendencies’, why don’t you try looking in the mirror?

Some Hippy

This is typical of the mindless “Bush = Hitler!” temper tantrums which serious conservative intellectuals have been forced to endure for seven-plus years now. Trying to explain why this is nonsense makes about as much sense as trying to explain quantum physics to two-year-old, so I’m not going to waste my time. However, I would like to use this opportunity to dispel the myth that my book somehow equates liberals with fascists. This is a rank distortion and simplification of my very serious and thoughtful argument, which has, I will admit, been made before, albeit never in such detail, never with such care. This is my argument, in a nutshell:

• Liberals are fascists.
• I never said that liberals are fascists! In fact, if we were to face a real fascist threat, it is conceivable that liberals would oppose it, or at least possibly not actively aid it.
• … However, it must be noted that liberalism is really an awful lot like fascism.
• I never compared liberalism and fascism! Why are you distorting my argument?
• … But it is interesting that Nazis and liberals both like whole grains and vegetables. Hmm… what does it mean when two supposedly distinct groups in fact have so much in common? I wonder …
• … Also, the Nazis wore brown shirts, and Al Gore liked earth tones …
• Wait! I have to stop you there. That’s completely outrageous! All I’m doing is saying how unfair it is that conservatives – ‘classical liberals,’ really, the kind the fascists really hated – are constantly compared to fascists. Such comparisons are childish and insulting, and cheapen our discourse. That’s my whole point! Now, go ahead and say what you were saying.
• Oh, dear, I feel a cough coming on …
• *coughcoughgcoughFASCISTcoughcoughcough*
• What?!?! What?!?! That’s ridiculous! Look, you obviously have no interest in engaging my very serious and thoughtful argument in any intellectually honest way, so I’ll let you get back to saying “Heil Hillary” or whatever it is you people do when you’re not distorting people’s careful and detailed points.
• Nazi.

How hard is it to understand? And you know, if I was really such a joke, why would people spend so much time laughing at me and making fun of everything I say? No, the simple truth is that my book is brilliant, and people fear the terrible truths contained within. They mock me because they fear me. You mock what you fear.