Jonah Goldberg Likes My Blog. Please Shoot Me Now.

     Goldberg shown here (right) "gangbanging"
    with a guy who enjoys making fun of the dead.I must have done something very, very wrong. Jonah Goldberg, that noxious, infected man-tit of a human being, has just praised my work at the National Review. Referring to my series on Deconstructing Social Darwinism Goldberg writes:

This is a very comprehensive assault on the prevailing understanding of "social Darwinism." Eric Michael Johnson's essay is a bit too rambling at times, but it is very welcome and good reading nonetheless.

Readers of my book might remember that I have nothing but contempt for the term and the way it is used. The basic point is this: Social Darwinism -- as advocated by its supposed creator Herbert Spencer -- was essentially libertarian. Classical liberals like Spencer never embraced the term, it was used by progressive enemies of laissez-faire to denounce a hands-off approach to economics generally and the eugenic question in particular. The progressives -- whom Eric Goldman called "reform Darwinists" -- were the real eugenicists. But the reform Darwinists get airbrushed from history, while Spencer has been blamed for everything from American sterlization laws to Nazi horrors. It's welcome news that this intellectual slander is finally unravelling.

Probably the only thing he got right is that I have a tendency to ramble.

For those of you who don't know who Goldberg is, here's his latest book Liberal Fascism (which even conservatives find odious).

You may notice that the cover art is suspiciously reminiscent of the attire from the white supremacist pop duo Prussian Blue.

As he went out to invent liberal fascism, he apparently got his inspiration from plain old fascists.

But that's not the only way Goldberg is confused. He has now managed to misunderstand that finding fault with the intellectual construction of social Darwinism as a political theory does not excuse those who have been labeled by it. Herbert Spencer gets no pass for advocating that the poor should be left to die for the betterment of society. All it means is that some of his more repugnant ideas weren't formed out of a political theory based on Darwin's ideas. However, Goldberg can't really be taken seriously in his comments considering that he's never even read Spencer's work. While preparing his chapter on Herbert Spencer and social Darwinism in his recent book, he called out to his readers at National Review Online to give him the analysis he needed so he didn't have to do the work himself:

I'm working on a chapter of the book which requires me to read a lot about and by Herbert Spencer. There's simply no way I can read all of it, nor do I really need to. But if there are any real experts on Spencer out there -- regardless of ideological affiliation -- I'd love to ask you a few questions in case I'm missing something.

This is the one thing that comforts me. If I thought Goldberg was an informed reader I would seriously reconsider my approach. However, he most likely just skimmed through (is that what he means by rambling?) and read only what he thought confirmed his preexisting biases.

I have nothing but contempt for Goldberg's faux-populist agitprop and white male victimization complex. His brand of lazy thinking is one where he lumps together anyone he doesn't like into a category and labels them "fascist" while, without a hint of irony, complains that people he does like have been so categorized. Perhaps the only sign that Goldberg's spinal cord touches his brain is when he axed Ann Coulter from National Review after she wrote, on September 13, 2001, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

There's a great collection of Goldbergian idiocy on display over at Wikiquotes. However, there's one in particular that tickled me:

Dissent is morally neutral. You can correctly call yourself a dissident because you like to kick puppies, but at the end of the day, you're just a jerk who likes to kick puppies.

Somebody please call animal control and have this nitwit cited.