Marching in Step

(more thoughts inspired by Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism

Like our current administration, the Wilson administration believed that "experts could mold society like clay." Bismarck, whose thinking greatly influenced Hitler, taught "top-down socialism," and his ideas were praised by Woodrow Wilson. Wilson had great faith that "society could be bent to the will of social planners." Like our current administration, science - or what they believed to be science - was the new scripture, and one could only perform science by "experimenting," just as is happening now in the Obama administration. Like our current administration, progressives from American universities dominated the high-level jobs in the Wilson administration.

Unlike Wilson, Obama does not claim to be "the right hand of God." In fact, he denies that we are even a Christian nation. "We are a nation of citizens," he orates. He could have said something like, "Despite the fact that a huge majority of Americans are Christians,it is not a state religion. All faiths, or lack thereof, are tolerated, and individual beliefs are respected, because in our country individual liberty is prized above all else." No, he didn't say that, because he was talking to people who do not value individual liberty. Remember, Obama gauges his message to his audience. When speaking to San Francisco liberals, he bemoans middle Americans' clinging to their religion and guns and prejudices; when talking to the masses, he talks of hope and change. All things to all people.

Goldberg writes, "John Dewey was giddy that World War I might force Americans "to give up much of our economic freedom." "We shall have to lay by our good-natured individualism and march in step." Woodrow Wilson brought American industry "into the loving embrace of the state long before Mussolini or Hitler contemplated their corporatist doctrines." Wilson wrote, "More important than socializing industry was nationalizing the people for the war effort. Woe be to the man or group of men that seeks to stand in our way." For the first time since the Civil War, a military draft was put in place.

Walter Lippman wrote a letter to Wilson urging him to begin a massive proaganda effort, reminding Wilson that most citizens were "mentally children or barbarians," and therefore needed to be directed by experts such as himself. The Committee on Public Information (CPI) was the west's first modern ministry of propaganda. It printed millions of posters, buttons, and pamphlets. In 1917-18 alone, 7,555,190 speeches were delivered in 5200 American communities by nearly a hundred thousand "Four Minute Men." I wonder what Obama has in mind for his civilian army that he plans to endow with as much funding as our military.

Another Wilson appointee was the socialist muckracker Arthur Bullard, who said, "The force of an idea lies in its inspirational value. It matters very little if it's true or false."

Another famous person who stumped for CPI and defended the government's censorship attempts was Clarence Darrow, who ironically today is a hero to the left for his defense of evolution in the Scopes "Monkey Trial."

Herbert Hoovwer, who was the head of the national Food Administration, dispatched over 500,000 door knockers to urge Americans to abstain from various extravagances. Children were asked to sign a pledge card, "A Little American's Promise:"

At table I'll not leave a scrap
of food upon my plate.
And I'll not eat between meals but
for supper time I'll wait.
I make that promise that I'll do
my honest, earnest part
in helping my America
with all my loyal heart."

Children were also given a nursery rhyme to recite:

"Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn!
The cook's using wheat where she ought to use corn.
And terrible famine our country will sweep,
If the cooks and the housewives remain fast asleep!
Go wake them! Go wake them! It's now up to you!
Be a loyal American, Little Boy Blue!"