Late to the party, as always

Every few months, some inspired lackwit writes a letter that The Dallas Morning News runs. The letter maintains that conservatives should not be tarred with the tiny brush of Hitler's moustache, that the Nazis were never conservatives. After all, the party's official name was the National Socialists. Get it? They were liberals.

If the inspired lackwit knows a smidgen of economic history, he or she will support this claim further by pointing out that the Nazis and the Italian fascists operated state-controlled economies, which is what liberal socialists want. Ergo, liberals are the real Nazis.

This "undistributed middle" seems to be the basis of Jonah Goldberg's new book, Liberal Fascism, which comes with a truly marvelous sub-title, The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, marvelous in that dozens of people must have read it at Doubleday before it saw print (in fact, Goldberg re-worked the title while writing the book, clearly he took some care with it). Yet the liberal media conspiracy (for once!) proved to be so disciplined at Doubleday (everyone gets medals and welfare checks tomorrow!) that no one broke out laughing. Everyone kept working, kept a straight face when saying "Yes, Mr. Goldberg, that sub-title will sell!" while stifling giggles, knowing that Goldberg's attempt to win some big-think, pundit street cred would crater when book buyers would hold the book in their hands and wonder, "When the hell did Mussolini become American?"

Over the holidays, while