Your Daily Syllogism
Via Spencer Ackerman's continuing brave foray into Liberal Fascism:
There was much about McCarthy that was fascistic, including his conspiratorialism, his paranoid rhetoric, his bullying, and his opportunism; but those tendencies did not come from the conservative or classical liberal traditions. Rather, McCarthy and McCarthyism came out of the progressive and populist traditions.
Broken down logically, this would read:
A: conspiratorialism, paranoid rhetoric, bullying and opportunism (McCarthyism) is fascistic
B: conspiratorialism, paranoid rhetoric, bullying and opportunism (McCarthyism) do not come from the classical liberal or conservative traditions
C: Therefore, McCarthyism came out of the progressive and populist traditions, which are fascistic
Airtight! And not to belabor the point, but this is what happens when you make up your own definitions of terms in a way designed solely to support your conclusions. And Goldberg's conclusion? The negative--that is, fascistic--elements of McCarthyism come from the progressive and populist traditions. In other words, the devil made him do it. If only there hadn't been populists in America, McCarthy would have been so much more effective at lying about the abundance of commies in America!
What's really strange here is that I don't consider McCarthy or McCarthyism to be in the least bit "fascistic." He was a demagogue, and his conservatism was frankly immaterial to his anticommunism. That's not a defense of McCarthyism, it's a clarification, which comes when one uses coherent terms to make arguments.