Confessions of a Liberal Fascist

 If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
-William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Perhaps the most startling assertion by the teabaggers and the conservative media is their equation of liberalism with fascism. I don't read their propaganda books because I won't give them my money, so I didn't know that the source of all this is a two-year publication by right-wing provocateur Jonah Goldberg called Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. Recently, the History News Network sponsored an on-line symposium on the book, in which academic specialists in fascism eviscerated Goldberg's fundamental grasp of the term, his selective misreading of history, and his flawed scholarship. Goldberg's blustery response attacked straw men and defended his right to define fascism as he chose, never mind that the academic definition of the term has coalesced around a meaning that has nothing to do with contemporary liberalism.

The allegations in Goldberg's book are apparently gospel among the right, and explain why I am an America-hating force of evil in the eyes of Goldberg, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox News, and the teabaggers.

Who am I? What makes me a threat to truth, justice, and the American Way?

I was born in 1955, the first of five sons, to a librarian father and a stay-at-home mother who practiced speech therapy on the side to bring in extra money.  We went to church on Sunday and most of us attended parochial school at one time or another, despite the financial burden that must have been. In both parochial school and public school, my brothers and I not only said the Pledge of Allegiance and sang the Star-Spangled Banner, we meant every word. Our family lived in such exotic locales as Washington, D. C.; South Bend, IN; Concord, NH; Baltimore, MD; Columbus, OH; and Kingsville, TX. (Back then, the country had a shortage of librarians, who ascended the career ladder by moving.)

My father was, and is, a Stevenson Democrat who annually paid out a dime to any of his boys who knew that February 5 was "Adlai's" birthday. He also never let my mother forget that she voted for Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. From them, all of five of us came to value reading, humor, education, history, art, politics, movies, music, travel, and the Democratic Party. And, I'll come right out and say it, my veteran father raised us to have a deep skepticism of the military, especially generals. Dad -- a Bostonian -- also bequeathed us his lifelong devotion to the Boston Red Sox, an inheritance which may or may not be a blessing. He'll answer for that one on Judgment Day.

Six weeks shy of her 45th anniversary, my mother passed away. What kind of person was she? The kind whose passing had five daughters-in-law in tears at her memorial service. The kind who did the everyday work of raising five boys while returning to graduate school so that she could resume her career, the point of which was to save money to send us to college. From her, we learned patience and forbearance. From both, we learned as a matter of daily instruction that "violence never solved anything." (My father, now 81, also had a two-word apothegm that I will lobby to have etched into his grave marker: "Cheer up!")

My parents also raised us to respect others regardless of race or religion. I can't remember a time when I assumed anything other than, as Sly Stone put it, "we are the same whatever we do." Like any white person, I've had to keep a watchful eye on my assumptions about race, but that's not because of anything my parents taught me. I once told my father that if I ever hit it big, I didn't want to make the mistake of believing that it had been 100% by dint of my own hard work. He told me to never lose my compassion. (He has also been known to say that one should never resist a generous impulse.)

They were so open-minded that two of their closest friends were Republicans, although this was back in the days when conservatives didn't automatically dismiss anyone who disagreed with them as being fascist-Nazi-socialist-communists. I recall my mother laughingly telling my father that a neighbor boy had asked his mother -- who told her the story -- if his family and ours were still friends because we were Democrats. Those were the days.

Above all, my parents taught us to value family. We moved a lot, and so learned to stick together. Vacations were spent visiting relatives in Pittsburgh and Boston. Oft-told stories were typically of family lore. My father adopted Pittsburgh sports teams as readily as if he had grown up there and made sure that my brothers and I pulled for the Pirates and Steelers (who genuinely sucked back then) almost as hard as we rooted for the Red Sox and Notre Dame.

After graduating from college in San Antonio, I met and married the woman who would be my wife for twenty years until her death. During the course of our marriage, we also lived in Austin, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Seattle. She stayed at home and took care of our two sons while my career -- in the private sector, I might add -- developed and flourished.

Our boys grew up, stayed in school, and learned from me many of the same things my parents taught. They are hard workers, well-liked, and don't have many bad words for anybody. It's also their curse to be fourth-generation Red Sox fans.

My wife took care of me when we thought that I had Multiple Sclerosis and when we knew that I had cancer. We were, for want of another phrase, best friends. Five years after her death, I was fortunate enough to meet Premium T., now my wife and best friend.

In short, I was raised in a church-going nuclear family that lived family values and believed in liberty, justice for all, and the national pastime. I married, had a career, and raised children. I've suffered sickness and loss. I've grieved. I've loved and been loved twice.

And that's how I became a fascist...

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