Jonah Goldberg’s first book was called “Liberal Fascism.” It was a screed, of course, but a clever one. He argued that liberals who routinely denounce extreme conservatives as fascists should take a look in their own backyard, and he wasn’t fooling around: “It is my argument that American liberalism is a totalitarian political religion.” Goldberg has read around a bit, and he was able to lace his thesis with embarrassing quotations from progressives past who expressed admiration for Italian Fascism, eugenics and other assorted statist atrocities. But his essential point was a simple one: fascists believe in state control of...