One of the sillier parts of McCain’s speech on foreign policy last week was his warbling about a “League of Democracies”–the last thing the U.S. needs is to be part of yet another globalist institution. But it turns out that McCain didn’t think up the “League of Democracies” in between denouncing immigration opponents as “racist” and singing about attacking Iran on the campaign trail. An originator of this idea–perhaps the originator of this idea–appears to have been Jonah Goldberg.

Which is very interesting, since Goldberg just spent four years writing a book that calls Woodrow Wilson the “first fascist dictator,” and Wilson’s most cherished idea was the League of Nations (which a U.S. Senate composed of far worthier statesmen than McCain, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry wisely rejected). And some readers may recall that Goldberg first made a splash on the national scene with his sophomoric attacks on an entire nation, the French, at the same time Goldberg’s ideological confreres were echoing dreadful Wilsonian precedent and renaming disfavored dishes to obscure any connection to a disfavored ethnic group.

Of course, I don’t think this makes Goldberg a Wilsonian “fascist,” because I think fascism is a defunct ideology. But it is amusing to think what conclusion might be drawn by someone who takes to heart Goldberg’s stab at intellectual history.