"Fascism lives!"

In the Claremont Review of Books, Angelo Codevilla writes in part,

Although Benito Mussolini, fascism’s artificer and personifier, died discredited in 1945, fascism’s socio-political paradigm, the administrative state, is well-nigh universal in our time. And as the European and American ruling class adopted Communism’s intellectual categories and political language, the adjective “fascist” became a weapon in its arsenal.

...Hegel, as well as the positivist and Progressive movements, had argued for the sovereignty of expert administrators. Fascist Italy was the first country in which the elected legislature gave up its essential powers to the executive, thus abandoning the principle, first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, by which people are rightly governed only through laws made by elected representatives. By the outbreak of World War II, most Western countries’ legislatures—the U.S. Congress included—had granted the executive something like “full powers,” each by its own path, thus establishing the modern administrative state.

...Rather than force, Mussolini’s primary means of government was the management of interests. That, plus exhortation. Force was reserved for outright opponents in the act of opposition. The kidnapping and murder of socialist member of parliament Giacomo Matteotti at the hand of fascists is so often mentioned precisely because it was such a rarity. The socialists and Communists who wished to continue in politics had to leave the country—the Communists to Russia, where Palmiro Togliatti headed Stalin’s Comintern, and the socialists mainly to France. Of the ones who stayed the most outstanding, like the Communist Antonio Gramsci (who had been socialism’s other intellectual star), got prison sentences during which they were free to write. The lesser ones were forced to keep their activism to family and friends lest they be beaten and forced to swallow laxatives. Murderous legal force was reserved for the mafia. A wave of extra-judicial killings, tortures, as well as the practice of using families as hostages and for reprisals largely extirpated the “black hand,” or forced its members to seek refuge in America.

...Mussolini’s 1929 concordat with the Roman Catholic Church, by far the country’s most influential element, was the culmination of his dealings with established interests. Under that arrangement, the pope recognized Italy’s sovereignty and Rome as its capital. Though the pope continued to appoint and remove bishops, these would swear allegiance to the state. The state recognized the pope’s independence and sovereignty over the Vatican, and Catholicism as the state religion. The state paid the priests. The Church administered religious instruction in public schools. This was a pact between alien forces whose best alternative was non-aggression. More than anything else, their mutual blessing defined daily life under fascism for most Italians.

Because commentary, as often willful as ignorant, confuses fascism and Nazism, we must observe that the concordat’s other party, Pope Pius XI (1922–1939), knew Germany as well as Italy intimately, and was Nazism’s first, most consistent, and arguably most feared enemy. In 1937 Pius XI wrote a fiery anti-Nazi encyclical, in German, Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Anxiety), and ordered that it be read in every parish church. He organized opposition to Hitler. This most fervent of anti-Nazis died before Mussolini fully changed the regime for the sake of the German alliance. The pope condemned fascism’s racial laws of 1938 in the strongest possible terms: “I am ashamed of being Italian.” “For Christians, taking any part in antisemitism is forbidden. We are spiritually semitic.” He and his successor, Pius XII, did all in their power to subvert these laws. But he never compared them with Germany’s, or fascism with Nazism, because, while the former aimed at separation, the latter aimed at extinction.

The United States of America was the nation of which Mussolini spoke with the highest regard and with which he most assiduously cultivated relations, perhaps because, in the minds of the millions of Italians whose friends and relatives had emigrated there, the very word “America” was synonymous with all good things. Did he really mean that “the American government is more like the fascist state than any of Europe’s liberal democratic governments because the popular will is constitutionally circumscribed”? “Both nations,” he declared, “are young, full of faith in themselves and committed to becoming prosperous and strong. The American people must sympathize with our need for cultural and economic expansion because they are spreading their own economic empire over the whole world.”

...Ironically, while the media acknowledged that fascism was a new “experiment,” papers like the New York Times commonly credited it with returning turbulent Italy to what it called “normalcy.” In 1933, when Hitler came to power, the press and public opinion gave him a pass for about a half decade by treating him as “the German Mussolini.” Not so.

Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, and Britain’s reaction to it, started the chain of events that led to World War II in Europe and, incidentally, to Mussolini’s own deservedly grotesque end.

Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, another member of the League of Nations, exposed the League’s nonsense. Britain could have stopped the invasion by closing the Suez Canal to Italian shipping. This would not have avoided the consequences of alienating Italy, but it would have saved Ethiopia. Or, Britain could have sacrificed Ethiopia and the League for the sake of appeasing Mussolini in order to stop Hitler’s Anschluss of Austria. Instead, Britain and France doomed Ethiopia by keeping the canal open, and alienated Italy by instituting energy sanctions. The Italo-British interactions of 1935 might qualify as the 20th century’s dumbest, most tragic diplomatic démarche. Hitler was the only winner.

Seeing his chance, the Führer sent trainloads of coal to alleviate Italy’s energy shortage. A year earlier, as the two dictators had approached each other for their first meeting, Mussolini had said to his foreign minister, “non mi piace”: I don’t like the looks of him. For him, Hitler was semi-literate, and Nazi ideology, especially their racialism, was “boring and pretentious.” Moreover, the Germans had been “illiterate when Rome had Caesar, Virgil, and Augustus.” Now, Mussolini, stupidly grateful, guaranteed the Anschluss by throwing away the Stresa pact. Thus did he commit one of Machiavelli’s most prominent no-nos: putting his future in the hands of a power greater than his own.

Within five years, Charles de Gaulle aptly described Mussolini as riding a donkey behind Hitler’s war horse. Mussolini had secured the Catholic Church’s support. He had the finest relations with America. But, subsequent to his turn to Hitler, the Church de-legitimized and subverted him, and the Italian people found themselves at war against the country they admired most on behalf of the one they liked least. He ended up alienating even the Fascist Party.

...But Soviet influence in the Allied councils dragged out Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower’s acceptance until September 3, by which time the Germans were ready to arrest Italian troops (some 815,000 became German prisoners of war). Germany also invaded northern Italy, rescued Mussolini from the king, transferred him to their occupied zone, and used him as a puppet until the end of the war. Mussolini ruled northern Italy for a year and a half as Hitler’s bloody agent.

In April 1945, when Communist partisans executed Mussolini and hung his body upside-down from a meat hook in a Milan gas station, there was some pity, but no regrets.

The U.S. occupation, eager to return responsibility to Italians for their own affairs, and confronted with multiple political parties clamoring for power, turned matters over to a consortium of parties that, rather than dismantling the fascist state, parceled its contents out amongst themselves. All subsequent political struggles into our time, regardless of the personalities and ideologies involved, have been quarrels about pieces of this patronage. In our time, Italy’s government appoints some 700 persons per year to very high-paying, powerful positions in “private” companies strictly on the basis of the relative weight of the parties in the governing coalition. That is in addition to the clearly public posts and sinecures it fills. Fascism lives!

In short, fascism was a reality limited to Italy. But fascist Italy was first to enact the disempowerment of legislatures and the empowerment of the administrative state that is now the Western world’s standard of government.

Read more here.

"For Democrats the coronavirus crisis is an opportunity to destroy the economy, defeat Trump, and get Americans used to following orders – no matter how absurd."

Don Feder reports in part in FrontPage Magazine,

Initially, fascists operate through the framework of a democracy. Hitler came to power democratically.

But, little by little, citizens become subjects – surrendering hard-won freedoms to meet “the crisis” at hand – economic collapse, power said to be concentrated in the wrong hands (the 1%, or the Jews), climate change or a pandemic. Liberty is leached away. If people meekly obey, the fascists are encouraged to go further and further.

Propaganda is an important part of any fascist movement. The Democrats’ propaganda machine – AKA: the mainstream media -- is finely tuned and can turn on a dime.

Currently, anyone who suggests that restrictions should be lifted is irresponsible and a danger to society. In February, suggesting that changes may be needed to counter the outbreak was said to promote panic. In both cases, Democrats said Trump was to blame.

...Former Obama advisor and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said never let a crisis go to waste. For Democrats the coronavirus crisis is an opportunity to destroy the economy, defeat Trump, and get Americans used to following orders – no matter how absurd.

As they move toward their nominating convention, perhaps the Democrats should have armbands to complement their face masks.

Read more here.

Another good one from Prager U.

Opposites

Bookworm is trying to make it easy to understand.

Trump’s promises and actions are the opposite of Mussolini’s promise of a world that would see “all within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” That world, of course, was Obama’s (and Hillary’s) vision. I’m sure that both Obama and Hillary imagined that they would inaugurate a a sweet and loving statism, unlike the violent repression that characterized fascism in the 1930s. However, as the insanity the Left has unleashed since the inauguration reveals, statists really don’t do sweet and loving. They may throw sweetness and love about as rhetorical concepts when they leech freedom and money away from citizens, but at bottom they’re always about brute force.

And here’s the deal: If a small, weak government engages in brute force, especially against a constitutionally armed citizenry, that small, weak government is history. However, if a huge, overarching, comprehensive, far-reaching government engages in brute force against an unarmed citizenry that has had its freedoms drained away . . . there’s your fascism. And that’s not Trump.

Is Trump a populist? Definitely, insofar as he is responsive to ordinary people’s needs rather than trying to create a utopia predicated upon the visions of a global elite. But a fascist? Most definitely not.

Read more here.

"Deconstructionist sleight of hand"

Bookworm continues to educate us about fascism, with a post at American Interest. She even provides a nifty graph:

Given that conservative Republicans, including the majority of Trump supporters, are on the liberty side of the spectrum, far from the world’s most brutal tyrants, what gave rise to the glaringly false syllogism that “Republicans are right-wing fascists and Hitler was a right-win fascist, so all Republicans are Hitler”? You can blame it on a nasty little historic and linguistic trick American communists pulled, which was to make “fascism” synonymous with the political “right.” Once having done that, they could claim that American conservatives, being “right wing,” are therefore fascist. This is pure disinformation.

...Savvy readers will have noticed that fascism sounds remarkably like communism: It’s all about concentrating all power in the state, leaving the individual entirely subordinate to the state. The primary difference between the two ideologies is that in communism the government nationalizes private property, whereas in fascism the government does not nationalize it but nevertheless completely controls — as is the case, for example, with Obamacare, which saw the government establish the rules for the private insurance market and mandate that Americans buy the product.

Without exception, two bad things happen in totalitarian governments: (1) the government ceases to see it citizens as individuals and views them only as widgets who exist to aggrandize the state; and (2) the people who control statist governments fall prey to grandiose delusions and paranoia. Hitler and Stalin went after their own people. Hitler got the negative headlines only because he explosively sought control over Europe, without anticipating Churchill’s refusal to surrender or America’s ferocity when roused. Had Hitler been more discreet, as Stalin was in the Ukraine or in the gulags (or as Mao was in China), Hitler’s fascist, genocidal state could have lasted for decades more.

After the war, Hitler’s grandiosity ensured that “fascism” was a dirty word. American communists needed to move fast to erase Russia’s pact with Hitler and to disguise that “fascism” and “communism” are variations on a theme. Using America’s media and higher education systems, America’s communists associated the word “fascist” with “right wing.” This allowed them to affix the “fascist” label to those who cherish individual liberty, tying them to Hitler, the ultimate madman. It didn’t matter that the new label was deconstructionist sleight of hand. The only thing that mattered was that it stick, along with all the ugly associations surrounding it.

...One more thing: Obama said that the biggest disappointment of his presidency was his failure to grab more guns from American hands. Statists always grab guns because their regimes are fundamentally hostile to the citizens they control, making it impossible for those citizens to defend themselves against tyrannical government. Trump’s promise to protect the Second Amendment is the antithesis of a statist, especially a “fascist,” regime.

Read more here.

Who are you going to boycott?

Bookworm writes,

...There’s only one thing you need to remember about political systems, which is that there are only two kinds: Those that vest more power in the state (statists) and those that vest less power in the state (individualists). Every political system, no matter the name given, falls along that continuum:

...On the far left side, you’ll find Caesar, Henry VIII, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-Un, Castro, Mao, etc. Slight to the left of center, you’ll find Western Europe and, just a teeny bit to the right of Europe, you’ll find Obama’s America. Every one of the people, continents, or nations I’ve named lives somewhere on the totalitarian side of the political continuum.

On the further right side of the continuum, you’ll find America’s Founding Fathers and the Constitution. Trump supporters revere the men and the document. They dream of a nation that stops short of anarchy but that allows individuals maximum liberty. They want a smaller government that, simply by virtue of its limited size, has limited control over each individual’s ability to make his own choices and live his life as he sees fit. In other words, Trump supporters are on the opposite side of the continuum from totalitarianism.

...the terms “right wing” and “left wing” are meaningless and should be obsolete. They refer to France, back in 1789, when Louis XVI’s supporters in the National Assembly sat on the president’s right and the revolutionaries to his left. We are not in France in 1789. Moreover, that archaic division ignores the fact that both the left and the right in France were totalitarian in nature. Both wanted complete control; they just had different visions about the nature of that control.

At this point, savvy readers will have noticed that fascism sounds remarkably like communism: It’s all about the state, not about the individual. The difference between the two ideologies is that in communism the government nationalizes private property, whereas in fascism the government does not nationalize it, but nevertheless completely controls it.

For ordinary citizens, the difference between communism and fascism is like the difference between wearing ugly stainless steel handcuffs and stainless steel handcuffs with some sparkly rhinestones. The citizens are still wearing handcuffs because the state is still calling the shots. It’s just that in the fascist state, at least before the state really gets the bit in its teeth, there’s an illusion that things are nicer. A cartoon about the difference between communism and Bernie’s beloved “democratic socialism” (i.e., non-nationalist fascism) makes the point:



Communists and fascists hated each other in the 1920s through 1940s not because they were diametrically opposed ideologies, but because they were similar ideologies fighting for the same slice of pie. Both are statist belief systems that reject individual liberties. When they’re not fighting each other for power, they’re inclined to support each other, as was the case with Hitler and Stalin, right up until Hitler decided he wanted Stalin’s territory too. Likewise, in Spain, there was a bloody civil war not because communism and fascism are natural enemies, but because they were jealous rivals both seeking the throne.

History has shown that, on the hardcore statist side (whether communist, fascist, social democrat, theocratic, etc.) two bad things invariably merge: (1) the all-powerful governments are unable to view their citizens as individuals with hopes, dreams, loves, hates, and souls and (2) the individuals controlling these totalitarian governments are prey to grandiose delusions and paranoia. Hitler and Stalin both went after their own people vigorously. The only reason Hitler got the headlines is that he tried to bring all of Europe under his control. Had he been more discreet, as Stalin was in the Ukraine or in the gulags (or as Mao was in his closed kingdom), Hitler’s fascist, genocidal state could have still been going well into the 1980s.

After World War II, American communists needed to distinguish statist communism, which they supported, from statist fascism, which they never liked and which Hitler’s megalomania and race hatred had turned into a dirty word to everyone. What better way to do that than to attach to conservatives, those who cherish individual liberty, the “fascist” label, a label closely associated with Hitler, the ultimate madman? It didn’t matter that the label was completely inapposite. The only thing that mattered was that it stick, along with all the ugly associations surrounding it.

...Shrinking government power is the antithesis of fascism.

If you managed to arrive at any other answer, a lump of coal to you: You are a statist (certainly a Progressive and possibly a neo-fascist), and you are profoundly ignorant. At a guess, you probably graduated from an American college or university within the last 25-30 years.

That college degree may also mean that you occupy a decision-making role in one of the 159 companies listed below. As of today, these companies have stepped forward to boycott liberty-loving Americans on the ignorant, spurious ground that those same Americans who voted for the small-government candidate are fascists who need to be driven out of the American marketplace (click on image to enlarge):



Don’t just glance at that list and forget about it. To preserve American liberty, we need to teach a lesson to ignorant companies that believe they’re fighting for freedom by aligning with totalitarian statists who want to destroy those Americans who revere the Constitution (the most liberty-oriented document ever written) and who desire small government and individual liberty.

For me, no more Kellogg’s cereal, no more Cost Plus runs, no more jaunts up to Napa or Sonoma County generally, no more Bob’s Red Mill grains, no more Grammarly (my grammar’s better anyway), no cheap New Egg electronics (my computer still has some life in it), the San Diego Zoo is closed (I’ve seen it enough anyway), and no skiing in Squaw or Alpine (not even to watch the kids). I’m done with that part of corporate America that has insulted me and insisted it no longer needs me. Well, let’s just see who needs whom.

Who is more likely to be a fascist, Hillary or Trump?

Bookworm leads a discussion on how the essence of fascism and communism is statism.

...So now that you’ve gotten a handle on the only two types of government that actually exist — more state control or less state control — let’s zero in on “fascism.” It started in Italy, so a good beginning is Mussolini’s classic description of fascism: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” Boom! Statism writ large.

Except that, if it’s statism writ large, why did the communists, who are obviously statists, hate it? Progressive/Democrat academia and politicians say that this hatred arose because communism is a warm, cuddly, sharing kind of statism, while fascism is a mean, nasty, right-wing Republican kind of statism. Not even close and definitely no cigar.

Both communism and fascism are statist belief systems that reject individual liberties. American conservatives (many of whom identify with the Republican party), being all about the Bill of Rights, small government, and individual liberty, aren’t playing in the communist and fascist sandbox. Heck, they’re not even in the same playground.

Communism, the “purest” form of socialism, says that there should be no private ownership. Everything should be owned by the people for the benefit of the people.

...If you dig just a little way down into the Trump agenda, you find out that when he talks about “making America great again” he’s mostly talking about enforcing laws and policies already on the books. Was Clinton a fascist when he signed into effect some of those laws? Is the history of America right up until Obama fascist because we actually had laws, most of which Obama ignores? The answers, naturally, are no. There’s nothing fascist about enforcing our immigration laws, our national security laws, and our criminal laws, or about elevating the constitution as the primary document from which American law flows. We’re not charting new territory here. We’re returning America to its natural mostly-free state.

Doesn’t that sound all nice and equal? It’s not. The only way to achieve “everything owned by the people for the benefit of the people” is to place ownership in the government as the people’s representatives. However, once you’ve placed everything in government hands, you’ve created a government class.

Government classes with total power are scary. Everything that is bad in individuals — greed, carelessness, stupidity, corruption, nepotism, bullying — is magnified beyond all imagination when it’s concentrated in a single all-powerful government.

...concentrating power in government, contrary to people’s expectations, never leads to a golden age of wealth, morals, and generosity. Instead, it invariably leads to economic and moral collapse, as we’ve seen in Europe, and too often leads to despotism (e.g., Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba, and on and on).

Okay, that’s communism. But what about fascism? It’s communism’s opposite, right? Wrong. Very, very wrong.

Just as with communism, fascism is predicated on complete state control. To repeat Mussolini, “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” The difference is that the state does not nationalize industry. Instead, it leaves ownership in private hands, while vesting control in the state. Fascism gives the illusion of capitalism because individuals still “own” and “run” the companies, but in fact, the government and these individuals are in cahoots for both control and profit. What’s missing entirely is a free market. It’s all in the state and for the state.

For ordinary citizens, the difference between communism and fascism is like the difference between wearing ugly stainless steel handcuffs and stainless steel handcuffs with some sparkly rhinestones. The citizens are still wearing handcuffs because the state is still calling the shots. It’s just that in the fascist state, at least before the state really gets the bit in its teeth, there’s an illusion that things are nicer.

In other words, communism and fascism are just different flavors of statism. Moreover, when they’re not fighting for power, they’re inclined to support each other, as was the case with Hitler and Stalin, right up until Hitler decided he wanted Stalin’s territory too. Likewise, in Spain, there was a civil war not because communism and fascism are natural enemies, but because they were jealous rivals both seeking the throne.

Given all this, how did American conservatives, the people who oppose statism and believe in individual liberty, end up being tarred constantly as fascists? Well, look to the Leftist takeover of Hollywood, academia, and media.

After World War II, the American Left needed to elevate communism’s s status and, Leftists hoped, give the Soviet Union the upper hand in the Cold War. What better way to do that than to attach to conservatives, those who cherish individual liberty, the “fascist” label, a label closely associated with Hitler, the ultimate madman? It didn’t matter that the label was completely inapposite. The only thing that mattered was that it stick, along with all the ugly associations surrounding it.

Trump is also promising to get the government out of American businesses, another policy that is the opposite of fascism. Remember, fascism is all about a government/industry partnership to further state control. It’s communism with cash. So Trump’s promise to decrease regulations and lower taxes to weaken government’s ability to interfere with private citizens is a step towards freedom, rather than its opposite.

Another Trump promise is to respect the Second Amendment, keeping guns in the hands of private citizens. Remember: The single biggest barrier to total state control is an armed citizenry.

...Even if Trump isn’t a despot in the making, are his supporters fanatics who would like him to be a despot? Doubtful. I think what most Trump supporters hope Trump means when he talks about “fixing things,” is that he’ll take our sclerotic government and say “You’re fired” to corrupt, redundant, useless, or lazy bureaucrats who suck at the government teat but provide no benefit for America’s citizens. What we imagine him doing is taking broken institutions and either destroying them (bye-bye, abusive EPA), cleaning house (IRS, you’re next), or returning them to their original mission (the military is not a social justice experiment). GOP politicians, despite their invariable promises to “clean up” government, seem incapable of making the tough calls necessary to purge or fix what’s broken in the existing system. Trump’s history and rhetoric make it seem possible that he’s finally the one with the courage to make those hard choices and tame the federal beast.

Go here to read why Bookworm believes it is Hillary, rather than Trump, who is the likely fascist.

Selling our birthright of freedom

Thomas Sowell writes at Town Hall,

It bothers me a little when conservatives call Barack Obama a "socialist." He certainly is an enemy of the free market, and wants politicians and bureaucrats to make the fundamental decisions about the economy. But that does not mean that he wants government ownership of the means of production, which has long been a standard definition of socialism.

What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector.

Politically, it is heads-I-win when things go right, and tails-you-lose when things go wrong. This is far preferable, from Obama's point of view, since it gives him a variety of scapegoats for all his failed policies, without having to use President Bush as a scapegoat all the time.

Government ownership of the means of production means that politicians also own the consequences of their policies, and have to face responsibility when those consequences are disastrous -- something that Barack Obama avoids like the plague.

Thus the Obama administration can arbitrarily force insurance companies to cover the children of their customers until the children are 26 years old. Obviously, this creates favorable publicity for President Obama. But if this and other government edicts cause insurance premiums to rise, then that is something that can be blamed on the "greed" of the insurance companies.

...The left's vision is not only a vision of the world, but also a vision of themselves, as superior beings pursuing superior ends. In the United States, however, this vision conflicts with a Constitution that begins, "We the People..."

That is why the left has for more than a century been trying to get the Constitution's limitations on government loosened or evaded by judges' new interpretations, based on notions of "a living Constitution" that will take decisions out of the hands of "We the People," and transfer those decisions to our betters.

Only our own awareness of the huge stakes involved can save us from the rampaging presumptions of our betters, whether they are called socialists or fascists. So long as we buy their heady rhetoric, we are selling our birthright of freedom.

Read more here.

Differences and similarities between socialism and fascism

Thomas Sowell writes at Town Hall,

It bothers me a little when conservatives call Barack Obama a "socialist." He certainly is an enemy of the free market, and wants politicians and bureaucrats to make the fundamental decisions about the economy. But that does not mean that he wants government ownership of the means of production, which has long been a standard definition of socialism.

What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector.

Politically, it is heads-I-win when things go right, and tails-you-lose when things go wrong. This is far preferable, from Obama's point of view, since it gives him a variety of scapegoats for all his failed policies, without having to use President Bush as a scapegoat all the time.

...the Obama administration can arbitrarily force insurance companies to cover the children of their customers until the children are 26 years old. Obviously, this creates favorable publicity for President Obama. But if this and other government edicts cause insurance premiums to rise, then that is something that can be blamed on the "greed" of the insurance companies.

...One of the reasons why both pro-Obama and anti-Obama observers may be reluctant to see him as fascist is that both tend to accept the prevailing notion that fascism is on the political right, while it is obvious that Obama is on the political left.

Back in the 1920s, however, when fascism was a new political development, it was widely -- and correctly -- regarded as being on the political left. Jonah Goldberg's great book "Liberal Fascism" cites overwhelming evidence of the fascists' consistent pursuit of the goals of the left, and of the left's embrace of the fascists as one of their own during the 1920s.

Mussolini, the originator of fascism, was lionized by the left, both in Europe and in America, during the 1920s. Even Hitler, who adopted fascist ideas in the 1920s, was seen by some, including W.E.B. Du Bois, as a man of the left.

What socialism, fascism and other ideologies of the left have in common is an assumption that some very wise people -- like themselves -- need to take decisions out of the hands of lesser people, like the rest of us, and impose those decisions by government fiat.

The left's vision is not only a vision of the world, but also a vision of themselves, as superior beings pursuing superior ends. In the United States, however, this vision conflicts with a Constitution that begins, "We the People..."

That is why the left has for more than a century been trying to get the Constitution's limitations on government loosened or evaded by judges' new interpretations, based on notions of "a living Constitution" that will take decisions out of the hands of "We the People," and transfer those decisions to our betters.

...Only our own awareness of the huge stakes involved can save us from the rampaging presumptions of our betters, whether they are called socialists or fascists. So long as we buy their heady rhetoric, we are selling our birthright of freedom.

Read more here.

No longer afraid to be voices of dissent

The student newspaper at Claremount McKenna College in California speaks out editorially against student fascists and their cowardly supporters:

Lastly, we are disappointed in students like ourselves, who were scared into silence. We are not racist for having different opinions. We are not immoral because we don’t buy the flawed rhetoric of a spiteful movement. We are not evil because we don’t want this movement to tear across our campuses completely unchecked.

We are no longer afraid to be voices of dissent.

Read much more here.

Lobotomized by political correctness

Roger L. Simon predicts at PJ Media that conflagration on our college campuses has only just begun. He reminds us of what happened in China under Mao. Read the whole thing here.

The logic of fascism

Andrew Klavan at PJ Media helps us identify fascist behavior.

The logic of fascism is this: “Your X constitute[s] an act of violence, so I’m justified in using violence against you.” For X, you can fill in just about anything except actual violence. Some of the more popular choices are: “Words; Opinions; Positions; Race; Presence; Borders; Jewishness.” Once you equate any of these things — anything — with violence, once you feel justified in committing violence in response, your actual positions no longer matter. You’re a thug. You’re a fascist. You’re a tyrant, petty or otherwise. You no longer have a place at the discussion table.

Violence is not in the same category as any other human interchange. Our right to life and safety is our first right and the one on which all others depend. Free speech, religious freedom, freedom of the press — none of these means anything if people are allowed to hurt or kill you for them. That’s why every civilized system of law recognizes: Violence is justified only as a response to actual or threatened violence. You can say the most awful things to me, but if I can’t show that real physical violence was a reasonable threat, I can’t legally respond with force.

Even the logic of fascism understands this — and seeks to disguise it by labeling as violence what is not violence at all: your words, your opinions, your race, the fact that you’re a Jew.

On a recent episode of Headline News’s Dr. Drew on Call, transexual Inside Edition reporter Zoey Tur put his hand on commentator Ben Shapiro’s neck and threatened to send Ben home in an ambulance. This was in response to the fact that Ben called Tur “sir,” and thus refused to accept him as a woman. Rather than make his case in response, Tur bought into the logic of fascism. After that, as far as I’m concerned, his opinion doesn’t matter. His gender doesn’t matter. His feelings don’t matter. When you go to violence in response to words, by my lights, you become a fascist; you become a thug. Your moral legitimacy is gone, baby, gone.

What Tur did bothers me and I think he should be charged with assault and battery (the touch makes it both). It hardly needs saying that if the positions had been reversed, Ben would have been arrested. The media would have demanded it, and they’d have been right. But what bothers me much more than Tur are the apparently sane and civilized people who swallowed the fascist pill right with him. Dr. Drew Pinsky, who did nothing to stop the incident and hasn’t condemned it. Panelist Segun Oduolowu who, speaking like a true fascist, said, “What [Shapiro] did was deliberately disrespectful. You call a transgender woman sir on national television you know what you are doing.” Robin Abcarian of the Los Angeles Times, who mischaracterized the incident in an article and then called Ben the bully. Scott Eric Kaufman, who tried to make Tur’s violence seem heroic at Salon. Because, you know, words are like violence so…

Congratulations, gang. You bought in. Whether your political positions are right or wrong, you’re now fully in the wrong. Come up on stage and pick up your swastika.

And to all those on Twitter and the like who call Ben “whiny” or a coward because he openly protests against being manhandled and threatened, let me explain something to you just so you know: You’re moral idiots. When, like Ben, you’ve looked a thug in the face and held to your position despite his threats, then come to me and explain what courage is. Because then maybe you’ll know.

For crying out loud, has the left really forgotten this? This is so basic. Yell at each other. Call each other names. Say whatever you want. But try to act like grown men and women — like free men and women. Try to act like Americans. Keep your damned hands to yourself.

read more here.

"If fascism ever comes to America, it will come under the name of liberalism"

"We are sliding very fast toward fascism"

(credit: Noel Vasquez/Getty Images)

Comedian Rob Schneider speaks out:

“Democracies don’t end well. We are sliding very fast towards fascism.

“There’s a polarization that’s happening…I do think you look can look at government and go, ‘Wow, it is out of control now,’ and if you do criticize or tend to be not directly along a liberal stand, you can get murdered,” Schneider commented.

“There’s not one segment of business under the Obama administration that hasn’t been hurt…he attacks for-profit schools, which is totally an elitist thing from a guy that went to Harvard. I think for free, by the way,” Schneider said.

He was also critical of the media for being overly influenced by the government and not standing up for the American people.

“We don’t really have freedom of the press. It’s owned by about eight different companies, and it doesn’t really express or help the average American,” Schneider stated.

Freedom of speech

Camille Paglia says that

If people are basing their views against gays on the Bible, again they have a right to religious freedom there … to express yourself in a magazine in an interview -– this is the level of punitive PC, utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist, OK, that my liberal colleagues in the Democratic Party and on college campuses have supported and promoted over the last several decades.

Ann Althouse writes,

Like Paglia, I remember the broad 1960s era commitment to free speech. There was a special zeal to protect those who said outrageous things. Today, we're back to the kind of repression that in the 60s seemed to belong to the 1950s. What the hell happened?

Enemies of freedom

Ace of Spades:

It is well-conceded that an employer has the right to fire you for some heterodox belief or some oddball sexual habit, but an employer similarly has the right to foster an environment of self-expression and freedom, and yet no one seems to talk about a company's capacity to be a Good Actor in the realm of free expression.

There should be pushback against this idea that of course the people with direct authority over us -- our employers -- can and should fire us or otherwise inflict serious economic consequences of it for daring to live as Free Americans.

This is obvious, but apparently it's not obvious enough: We do not need a freedom to express popular or polite thought. Thoughts which are popular and polite (and approved by the state and its supporting institutions) have never been in jeopardy.

Not even in Nazi Germany. The popular, state-approved thought -- that Hitler would bring "Greater Germany" (i.e., Nazi-dominated Europe) back to greatness -- was never forbidden by the Nazis.

Unpopular thoughts were threatened-- such as anti-Naziism.

So what does Ace think about those who rejoiced in the suspension of Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson?

They are enemies of freedom -- of freedom of conscience, of freedom of thought, of freedom of expression; of freedom, generally -- and should be hectored, harassed, and humiliated as such.

Fascism in health care

Charles Krauthammer writes,

Three years ago I predicted that Obamacare would turn insurers into the lapdog equivalent of utility companies. I undershot. They are being treated as wholly owned subsidiaries. Take the phrase “strongly encouraging.” Sweet persuasion? In reality, these are offers insurers can’t refuse. Disappoint your federal master and he has the power to kick you off the federal exchanges, where the health insurance business of the future is supposed to be conducted.

I don’t care a whit for the insurance companies. They deserve what they get. They collaborated with the White House in concocting this scheme and are now being swallowed by it. But I do care about the citizenry and its access to a functioning, flourishing, choice-driven medical system.

The federal government now runs the insurance market, dictating deadlines, procedures, rates, risk assessments and coverage requirements.

Read the whole thing here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-story-of-the-year/2013/12/19/1d862c98-68f9-11e3-ae56-22de072140a2_story.html

This one will make you think

I don't usually watch You Tube Videos that are as long as this one, but I found the speaker to be riveting, and well worth the time. She tells in detail what it was like to live in Austria when Austrians chose to be part of Hitler's domain.

Total indoctrination of the youth. Turn them against their parents. Nationalize healthcare, industry, agriculture, and the police force. Forced abortions of those not in the master race. Euthanasia of the disabled. People disappeared all the time. Inform on your neighbors. Gun registration, then gun confiscation.

Thanks to gopthedailydose.com.

What is the cost of being Christian?

David Warren, as it happens, is also thinking about Christians who deny Christ. He points out that 11 of the 12 disciples of Christ made themselves scarce during Christ's crucifixion. Only John and Christ's mother, Mary, remained at the foot of the cross. Yet, something happened to cause all of the rest of the apostles to die as martyrs in the name of Christ. The only one, in fact, to die of old age, was John!

What was the reason for their change of heart? The resurrection of Christ.

Warren made a journey to the Holy Land. He writes about it.

In Jerusalem, on the Dome of the Rock — sited very conspicuously right on top of what is almost certainly the Holy of Holies, within the ancient Temple precincts — is an inscription, in their earliest angular Kufic script, on what was also the earliest monument the Arabs caused to be erected in a conquered land, by impressed Byzantine labour. This inscription reads in its most significant part: “Praise to Allah who begets no son and has no associate in power and who has no surrogate for humiliations.” The point is sustained by repetition, together with the contrary assertion that Muhammad is God’s envoy and can alone provide intercession on the day when the Muslim community is resurrected; and the Muslim Jesus comes to throw all us stubborn Christians into Hell.

That is on the outside of the Dome. On the inside there is a further long inscription, which mentions Jesus and Mary by name; states that Jesus, too, was an envoy, and therefore no Son of God; declares that the religion of God is Islam, and that God will reckon with those who dissent. Nearly fourteen centuries have passed, since this direct challenge was laid down to the existence of Christianity; and indeed, we are living in the fallout of it today.

Yet we have today, at least in the more progressive and nominal Christians of North America and Europe, the curious notion that Christianity is compatible with Islam. That it is likewise compatible with all other religions. That it is compatible with a Darwinian cosmology, and therefore with atheist materialism. And that the Church becomes ever more “relevant,” the more we admit she is defunct. Defunct — and yet still outwardly turning over, and available at a discount, in the post-modern spiritual flea market. For she still has a certain decorative and nostalgic value.

The Church makes, for such people, a nice venue for a wedding; it may offer a bit of formal “closure” for a funeral. The building may be worth including on the architectural preservation list, since no one is ever going to build another like it. And that is all very nice, and it goes with sentimental thoughts on the teachings of that religion.

The whole thing may now apparently be reduced to a “bottom line.” It comes down to being nice to people, and trying not to notice if anyone is mean. It is about being open-minded, and accepting people as they are, unless of course they happen to be religious. Indeed, whatever else Christ may have done, according to this view, he reduced all the Ten Commandments to just One Commandment: that “you mustn’t judge people.”

It is true that moral relativism is a threat, that multiculturalism is a threat, along with feminism, homosexualism, environmentalism, repackaged socialism, and various other isms of the past and future. Each constitutes an attack upon, and implied alternative to, the Christian civilization that tickles under its exponents’ feet. But the reassuring thing about all of these quasi-religious belief systems, is that they are asinine. They can be used to attack, and to destroy; to express anger, and demand redress; but they cannot be used to build anything. They offer no credible inspiration; no excuse for being good or brave or honest; and finally, no truly convincing reason to get up in the morning.

To be shockingly brief, Islam suffered a major defeat some centuries ago, when it lost its superior military power. The religion has not been without real merits, and is still competitive against the atheist ideologies I have listed. Against an entirely de-Christianized West, it might well prevail, for it presents an account of the world, and a moral order, that is at least more plausible than anything the atheists have thought up. It has, for the moment, the demographic advantage of higher birthrates, and until recently fairly open immigration to a Europe which, for its part, has been intent on committing demographic suicide.

And it is quite reasonable to argue, that in the longer view of things, the very existence of anarchically violent forces within Islam, such as the death cults of Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and revolutionary Iran, are a symptom of steep decline. When little is left to hold your religion together except the threat of death for apostasy, you are not, after all, in such a good position. There are diminishing returns as you hike up the threats; but if you withdraw them you may lose everything. Bad as things may seem for Christianity, when we look at the contemporary world from the least attractive angles, things look worse for the Muslims.

Our understanding of God is such, that we expect to find causation and order and sense, wherever we look in nature. And having looked for it, we have always found it.

Christ himself goes where he is wanted, and moves on from where he is unwanted.

The purpose of politics should be entirely negative — to provide remedies against specific evils that afflict all men. We may need police, we may need courts, we may need defences against potential invaders, we may need a few by-laws, especially in towns, and some readiness to cope with natural disasters. We need laws to prevent men from enslaving each other. We most certainly do not need laws to tyrannize and goad us towards some crackerjack plan for an earthly utopia.

The politics in Christian societies of the past were minimal. They will be minimal again if a Christian society is restored. The basic scheme is to keep the government out of people’s faces, and let them get on with their lives; while similarly preserving the independence of the Church, and the sanctuary she offers. These are the politics of “live and let live.” In the well-ordered commonwealth, the State is reduced to something almost decorative, and the ancient Catholic principle of subsidiarity — that problems are to be resolved by the smallest, lowest, and least centralized competent authority — becomes a way of life.

It is to an otherworldly Kingship we owe our deepest loyalty; not to a nation, nor to a race, nor to an ethnicity, let alone some jackboot punk, “dressed in a little authority.” The Church in her nature can represent no particular worldly interest. She serves no Caesar, and answers to no Parliament — only to Christ the King.

Through history the common people have often been vexed by tyrants; and in our time the ever-growing and ever-more-intrusive powers appropriated by the Nanny State have stripped us of many ancient freedoms. Each in turn is replaced with some novel, intrinsically dubious, and invariably non-Christian so-called “right” or special privilege: ranging from a mother’s right to kill her unborn child, to the pornographer’s right to corrupt public morals, to the fanatic’s right not to have his delicate feelings hurt. Indeed, all these new rights have required Orwellian inversions of language, to make an unambiguous evil smell like a plausible good. And, each is a “group right” — the essence of true fascism — designed to obviate hard-won individual rights, often going back beyond that very medieval Magna Carta.

Will our adversaries prevail?

I am fairly optimistic, however, that they lack both the opportunities and the skills to prevail in this. Ratcheting requires the virtue of patience, and confidence in uninterrupted power. It requires that you never push too far or too fast: for the most complacent frog will begin to react, if the temperature of his water rises too quickly. Our tormentors today are too impatient. Their tactics are unsound.

Under which circumstances, all that is required of us, is to stand our own ground, with greater patience, and greater courage, than our tormentors. A Catholic Christian civilization can be restored, over time, by the same methods that were used to create one in the first place — not by violence, and not by usurpation, but by consistently refusing to deny Christ. That is the trick the disciples used, at a time when Christians numbered only in the thousands. They recognized Christ as their King, and served like soldiers.

We must stop denying Christ in our lives; stop ignoring his Resurrection; stop recognizing any spiritual authority that is not Christ’s. Stop refusing to act at His command. Stop encumbering His way.