This is a great book; long, detailed, meticulously researched, extensively footnoted, hard-hitting and perhaps best of all TIMELY! Over the past 20+ years I've studied a lot on the subject and have read some of Samuels' source material (A. J. Gregor, F. A. Hayek, L. von Mises, M. Rothbard and J. Goldberg) and he does an excellent job of presenting the history and the controversy surrounding the whole Left/Right political spectrum. Like Gregor, he seems to favor placing the authoritarian/statist left (socialists, Marxist, communists, fascists) on the far Right (as originally seated in the French National Assembly), and the classical liberals (libertarians) and "free left" on the far Left (as they did in France), but acknowledges that the left has been taken over by anti-liberal imposters in the past 230 years and so now in effect everything is backwards (true liberty loving individualists on the right and authoritarian collectivists on the left).
"Today most nations have some modified variant of this "Third Way" state capitalism, which combines fascist-inspired syndicalism and corporatism under an umbrella of interventionism, socialism, and statism. Economist Murray Rothbard defined this type of economic system as "state-monopoly capitalism," a condition where the partnership of government and big business provides the state with authority to intervene on behalf of crony capitalists to the detriment of the consumers. This is exactly what Italian Fascism and German National Socialism had forged, and what most current governments now emulate - a sort of mixed-economic dirigisme of nationalism and collective populism that opposes individualism, free markets, and classical liberalism. Today, it is clear that this "Third Way" politics foreshadows the economics of socialistic nationalism that increasingly burdens modern America.
"Nationalism, whether infused with socialism or statism, is a primitive tribalism projected on a massive scale. Matt Kibbe, an economist by training, contends that "Nationalism is another form of collectivism, putting the abstract idea of country ahead of the needs of individual citizens. 'America first' puts Americans last." (p. 120-121)
"...Those who see themselves as broad-minded liberals have finally realized how dangerous it is to permit unfettered speech for everyone. They are now eager to snap shackles over the hands of universal free speech. They have weaponized into legions of intolerant bigots who feel the urge to control everything in life. That is not the true nature of liberalism.
"Usually, control-maniacs have a messianic passion to shove everyone through the regulatory thickets, believing that uncontrollable chaos would ensue without the disciplinary fist of government. To ask for no government control or oversight over speech and press is the equivalent of believing that anarchy should reign supreme forever. How could the denizens of the collective deep support the lawlessness of anarchy in any form, especially the marketplace of information? They cannot. Historical figures from Lenin to Mussolini publicly embraced free speech until they seized power. Most politicians give lip-service to the concept of liberty while secretly attempting to conspire against it." (p. 153)
"Since a political spectrum is a continuum, it must have two extreme opposite ends in an effort to establish categorical variations and patterns. One extreme would be total government; the other would be no government (anarchy). Since the communists were totalitarian and authoritarian and boast of their extreme left-wing orientation, naturally Hitler would follow in the same totalitarian-authoritarian footsteps. This means that Hitler and his minions were extreme left-wing socialists determined to socialize, nationalize, welfarize, and militarize society, just as Lenin and Stalin had attempted in the Soviet Union." (p. 310)
"...In fact, Heiden asserted that as the German Worker's Party morphed into the Nazi Party, its members considered themselves as belonging to the Left, arguing that this "youthful party still felt itself to be a party of the Left." But somehow many historians still want to refer to these hardcore socialists and labor activists as "right-wing." (p. 314)
My only complaint is that sometimes (esp. at the beginning) Samuels lapses into hyperbolic description of the new (statist) left which could easily be seen as unnecessarily invective to those less sympathetic to his point of view (which due to poor education and excellent propaganda includes most Americans), but to the less indoctrinated comes across as a refreshing reality check to the glut of PC BS we're increasingly being inundated by. This might explain the knee jerk reaction his book is causing on the Left - there must be some call to censor him in the MSM as all the 1 star reviews here don't appear to be knowledgeable about the actual book or subject nor show a verified purchase. It's a shame to see this kind of uncivil reaction (especially from those who pride themselves on freedom of choice, speech and association), and yet it's exactly what this book goes into great detail to explain - the long history of socialist thought and practice filled with an almost infinite array of divisions and subtle revisions, almost infinite, ironically, due to the role of the individual in real life (actual real people) vs the pie-in-the-sky idealism of a group consciousness.
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