Jacob Christensen

The Dutch – or to be more precise: Andre Krouwel of the Free University, Amsterstam – have tried their hand at making an electoral compass for the US presidential elections.

According to the compass, I have a substantive agreement with Barack Obama of 78% against 76% for John Edwards, 71% for Hillary Clinton and 68% for Bill Richardson. I’m not really surprised.

My favourite Republican candidate would be Ron Paul (49% agreement – wery much due to Iraq, anti-terrorism and privacy policies), Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson tie as my least favourite candidates with only 28% policy agreement.

Hat tip: Ingrid Robeyns at Crooked Timber.

• Centre for Policy Development: The risk society (John Quiggin)
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• Finansministeriet: Reviderede l�nforuds�tninger for den offentlige sektor i 2008
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• Jonah Goldberg’s Bizarro History | The American Prospect
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• Andrew Gelman: What was going on with the New Hampshire polls?
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If you haven’t heard about Jonah Goldberg’s new book Liberal Fascism (Amazon UK, and no, I have other things to spend my precious Swedish Pesetas on), then … well … it seems that just as you thought it couldn’t get any lower, American conservatism has sunk to new and truly incredible lows.

For your entertainment, here is David Neiwert giving Jonah Goldberg the works in the American Prospect.

The title alone is enough to indicate its thoroughgoing incoherence: Of all the things we know about fascism and the traits that comprise it, one of the few things that historians will readily agree upon is its overwhelming anti-liberalism. One might as well write about anti-Semitic neoconservatism, or Ptolemaic quantum theory, or strength in ignorance. Goldberg isn’t content to simply create an oxymoron; this entire enterprise, in fact, is classic Newspeak.

The Edge of the American West has what I would call the Captain Haddock Summary of the essay.

The only positive aspect to all this: If you are of a certain age and attended university, you will remember that the neo-marxists branded just about everything and everybody “fascist” during the 1970s and early 1980s, and look what happened to neo-marxism.

PS: If you’re Danish, you know who Bent Bl�dnikow is. If you don’t, never mind.