Reading the Sixth Chapter of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism then posting our thoughts about it is our 6th week’s assignment in Red State’s Book Notes project.

Chapter 6: From Kennedy’s Myth to Johnson’s Dream: Liberal Fascism and the Cult of the State

Between this chapter’s introductory and concluding pages, Goldberg divides the main body of his material into the following named sections:

• He Died For Liberalism,
• The Birth of the Liberal God-State,
• Purging the Demons Within, and
• The Great Society: LBJ’s Fascist Utopia.

A paragraph I found most interesting (being the long-time comic book collector that I am) comes from the early pages:

Indeed, Kennedy was almost literally a superhero. It is a little-known but significant fact that no president has appeared more times in Superman comic books than JFK. He was even entrusted with Superman’s secret identity and once pretended to be Clark Kent so as to prevent it from being exposed. When Supergirl debuted as a character, she was formally presented to the Kennedys. (Not surprisingly, the president took an immediate liking to her.) In a special issue dedicated to getting American youth to become physically fit – just like the astronaut “Colonel Glenn” – Kennedy enlists Superman on a mission to close the “muscle gap.”

A similar tactic is being employed today not only to enhance the images of our current POTUS and FLOTUS, casting them as heroes in a number of comic books, but to besmirch those who oppose their policies. Characters clearly based on Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin are portrayed as villains in comic books that feature Obama as a triumphant superhero. These particular comic books disgust me, by the way, and are not to be found in my collection.

However, I am following one mini-series, the 6th volume of Bomb Queen books, that feature Obama. But this is because I’m a fan of Jim Robinson’s Bomb Queen character, not because the POTUS is in the story.