No Runny Eggs

The paperback edition of Jonah Goldberg’s excellent Liberal Fascism won’t be released until tomorrow, but it’s already number 34 on Amazon’s best-seller list. Maybe people are catching on….

Meanwhile, National Review Online has published a Q&A with Goldberg to coincide with the paperback’s release. The new version contains an afterword about President Obama, and here’s what Goldberg said in response to a question about it:

If you look at how most liberals think about economics, they want big corporations and big government working in tandem with labor, universities (think industrial policy), and progressive organizations to come up with “inclusive” policies set at the national or international level. That’s not necessarily socialism — it’s corporatism. When you listen to how Obama is making economic policy with “everyone at the table,” he’s describing corporatism, the economic philosophy of fascism. Government is the senior partner, but all of the other institutions are on board — so long as they agree with the government’s agenda. The people left out of this coordinated effort — the Nazis called it the Gleichschaltung — are the small businessmen, the entrepreneurs, the ideological, social, or economic mavericks who don’t want to play along. When you listen to Obama demonize Chrysler’s bondholders simply because they want their contracts enforced and the rule of law sustained, you get a sense of what I’m talking about.

Read the whole interview and then buy the book; 2010 is closer than you think.

(Cross-posted at Public Secrets)