"A Religion of the State"

Jonah Goldberg alleges in his book Liberal Fascism that "American liberalism is a totalitarian political religion." There is no realm of our lives that is beyond "political significance" to liberals. Goldberg coins the term "totalitarian temptation," by which liberals believe that with "just the right amount of tinkering we can realize the utopian dream of "creating a better world."

Because in America "hostility to big government is central to our national character, our fascism must be nice and for your own good." There has been "an explosion of leftist crusades" in recent years from the war on smoking, obsession with animal rights, to the sanctification of organic foods. "What is fascist is that the individual has no right not to be healthy, and that the state therefore has the obligation to force us to be healthy for our own good."

And, what about environmentalism? "Environmentalism gives license to moral bullying and intrusion." Free speech, too, is under "relentless assault where it matters most - around elections - and it it's being sanctified where it matters least, around strippers' poles and on terrorist web sites. As often is the case with liberal fascism, the effort is very careful to be humane and decent, but it will still result in a kind of benign tyranny where some people get to impose their ideas of goodness and happiness on those who may not share them." The essence of liberal fascism, in Goldberg's thesis, is that it is "a religion of the state."