Reviewing Marc Schifanelli’s new book

And on the Cox campaign having more fun

If Dan Cox and Gordana Schifanelli do end up beating Kelly Schulz and Jeff Woolford in Maryland’s Republican primary in a couple weeks, it might just be because the people in their campaign are having more fun and doing more laughing than their comparatively prickly opposition. 

Just look at the videos from Schulz’s press conference last Thursday in Annapolis and compare that to the mood at Cox and Schifanelli’s recent rally in Carroll County.   

One looks fun and the other looks phony. 

And it is that very idea of having fun as a means of achieving socio-political victory that is revealed to animate Marc Schifanelli’s new book, Freedom, Emotion, and Fascism, A Psycho-Sociological Analysis of the American Progressive Movement. 

With an academic level of depth but a prose that moves, Schifanelli instructs readers on the nature of freedom and collectivism and cleanly maps those lowest of human emotions, like fear and envy, onto the mindset of the collectivist.

He shows how collectivism often takes root for good reason, as was the case here in America when industry mechanized and poor rural workers and immigrants flocked to factory rich urban centers for work only to be treated like nothing more than a replaceable cog in the machine.

But confirms nonetheless that the inevitable outcome of collectivism is death and destruction at the hands of totalitarian governments – all of which is germinated by that same fear and envy.   

The spirit of rebel philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand is felt throughout the book, as Schifanelli shares her view that the struggle between the individual and the collective is the real motor of history, where Marx would say it is class, and a woke American progressive would say it is race and gender.   

In an email exchange with Marc, he shared with me how both he and Gordana have read Rand’s popular Atlas Shrugged, where a brilliant young inventor named John Galt becomes the hero by finally saying – No! – to those who would stifle his individuality and oppress him into servitude.   

One might even interpret Gordana’s decision to enter politics to stop a crusading school superintendent, and Marc’s decision to put pen to paper for this book, as – No! – moments all their own.

The book is at its most functional for those in the political fray and those who just want to live their lives freely, by reminding that the oppressive opposition we resist is energized by those low-character emotions, the kinds you would never want your kids to exhibit.

And once those low-character emotions are revealed, suddenly the big bad bully isn’t so bad after all – invoking more pity than fear.        

Or as Marc put it quoting a favorite critic of his named Helen Pluckrose, “if you’re laughing, they’re losing”.

Nationwide, it is the freedom loving conservatives doing the laughing and the creating while the woke collapse under the weight of their own worries.

And judging by the recent looks of it, the same could be said of Maryland’s Republican primary race.  

Maryland Muckraker is a completely independent and fearlessly conservative blog covering local issues by me, Ethan Reese. After spending nearly a decade in corporate Baltimore in marketing technology, figured I’d have a go at writing. Since then I’ve contributed articles to FOX’s OutKick, PJ Media, and Rare Politics, as well as being named a Writing Fellow with the America’s Future Foundation.