squandering my potential

Law Professor Michael Froomkin joins the two-minute hate concerning Jonah Goldberg's new book - "Liberal Fascism"

Someone please explain how I can get a job as a columnist for a major newspaper.

I guarantee that no matter how badly I do I will never write the sort of ghastly risible utter tripe that appears to be in the new book by the LA Times’s latest addition to its pundit stable. See Sadly, No! for a sneek peek at Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism”.

"[G]hastly risible utter tripe"..... Wow! The Professor certainly goes on quite a little tirade in order to disparage a book he's never even read. Defensive much?

The hysteria from lefty blogs over this book certainly raises some eyebrows. It seems like over the past few months, “progressives” have gone out of their way to summarily dismiss the arguments Goldberg raises – without having read a single page of his book. Its almost as if Goldberg has struck some sort of nerve.

And as much as I’m sure it pains liberals to hear, comparisons between the darling of modern-day liberalism – FDR - and fascism cannot be dismissed out-of-hand. Putting aside his internment of tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans, it was FDR who established the Orwellian “Office of Censorship” and it was FDR who flirted with usurping an unfriendly judiciary with his “Judiciary Reorganization Bill.” The list goes on, and on, and on.

FDR, like Hitler and Mussolini, were collectivists in the worst sense of the word. To be fair, FDR never took things as far as his German and Italian counterparts, but there are striking similarities in their ideologies. All three were vehemently opposed to individualism, free markets, and decentralized power. FDR himself called Mussolini “admirable.” Thankfully for the U.S., FDR never enjoyed the luxury of a one-party state.

UPDATE: More hysteria here.