Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism has both angered the Left and illuminated the history of ideas that animate the modern “progressive” movement.

But the book is more than just enlightening and funny. It offers a tool for those fighting the false notion that conservative or classical liberal principles are somehow tainted by a racist and/or fascist past.

Goldberg makes the point himself in the latest print version of National Review. He recounts the criticism Ronald Reagan faced for saying during a 1980 presidential campaign speech that he favored “states’ rights,” which Goldberg calls an “abracadabra phrase” that “magically reveals that the speaker wants to make black folk drink from separate water fountains.”

Why, Goldberg wonders, does Barack Obama raise no eyebrows 28 years later when one of his campaign speeches praises Wisconsin as the site of the progressive movement’s birth?

Reagan was no racist for supporting states’ rights; he was a lover of freedom. And Obama is no villain for proclaiming his indebtedness to the progressives at the University of Wisconsin. But the question remains: Why am I a racist because Ronald Reagan believed in federalism, while Barack Obama is an idealist for invoking a bunch of jingoists, racists, and eugenicists who could not have fathomed that anyone with Barack Obama’s skin color might be qualified for the White House?