Newsweek magazine, which has given us many of the most damaging deceptions about America in recent years (remember the “Koran-Down-the-Toilet” hoax?), now weighs in with a pretentious and embarrassingly ignorant cover story, “We Are All Socialists Now.” To be sure, the basic theme–that the huge “stimulus” and the big big big TARP is leading once-capitalist America down the dangerous road to socialism–is not limited to the skinny weekly. You hear it all over the place, from Right to Left, from talk radio to the evening news (or so I am told; personally, I haven’t watched an evening news broadcast since 1987).
There’s a element of truth to the basic theme (although not to the headline): the state is getting more and more deeply involved in business, even taking controlling interests in some private companies. And the state is even trying to “make policy” for private companies they do not control, but merely “help” with “infusions of capital,” as in the recent call for salary caps for certain CEOs. So state power is growing at the expense of corporations.
But that’s not socialism. Socialism rests on a firm theoretical bedrock: the abolition of private property. I haven’t heard anyone this side of Barney Frank calling for any such thing. What is happening now–and Newsweek is honest enough to say so down in the body of the article–is an expansion of the state’s role, an increase in public/private joint ventures and partnerships, and much more state regulation of business. Yes, it’s very “European,” and some of the Europeans even call it “social democracy,” but it isn’t.
It’s fascism. Nobody calls it by its proper name, for two basic reasons: first, because “fascism” has long since lost its actual, historical, content; it’s been a pure epithet for many decades. Lots of the people writing about current events like what Obama et. al. are doing, and wouldn’t want to stigmatize it with that “f” epithet.
Second, not one person in a thousand knows what fascist political economy was. Yet during the great economic crisis of the 1930s, fascism was widely regarded as a possible solution, indeed as the only acceptable solution to a spasm that had shaken the entire First World, and beyond. It was hailed as a “third way” between two failed systems (communism and capitalism), retaining the best of each. Private property was preserved, as the role of the state was expanded. This was necessary because the Great Depression was defined as a crisis “of the system,” not just a glitch “in the system.” And so Mussolini created the “Corporate State,” in which, in theory at least, the big national enterprises were entrusted to state ownership (or substantial state ownership) and of course state management. Some of the big “Corporations” lasted a very long time; indeed some have only very recently been privatized, and the state still holds important chunks–so-called “golden shares”–in some of them.
“And so Mussolini created the “Corporate State,” in which, in theory at least, the big national enterprises were entrusted to state ownership (or substantial state ownership) and of course state management.”
A fascist political economy is inherently hostile towards entrepreneurs and small business owners. It is deemed preferable to interact with large corporations that are set in their ways and disinclined to introduce new disruptive technologies and management techniques. In other words, a Bill Gates is not to their liking. This will, at the very best, result in anemic economic activity. Mussolini’s Italy was something of a basket case. Roughly 400,000 Italian men had to find work in Germany’s industrial centers during WWII. Hitler’s Third Reich was also not all that much better. Its economy primarily survived because of widespread theft of Jewish and non-German wealth.
Greetings:
I seem to remember “socialism” being defined as when the state controlled the major means of production and “communism” being when “private property” was abolished.
I think the real problem is “statism” which I understand to mean as when the state convinces itself it knows best how you should live your life and uses its powers to enforce that.
Thanks Michael. The points you raise are frightening.
To this business that Fascists supported the retention of private property… Perhaps the illusion of it? [This is more of a question than a "point" because I'm a near total ignoramus on matters Fascist.]
It’s my impression that fascists tolerated limited private management of property, but not substantive ownership. Fascists were infamous for their confiscations. Such was possible because of wholesale public disarmament and heavy investments in sate policing. In short, under Fascism one did not actually own what one could not defend and which the State could take at any time. It was serfdom… perhaps a step up from Communism’s full blown slavery, but it was not a retention of Capitalism’s core right.
If this is so, then the brilliance of the Fascist model was that the State harnessed the creative powers of some more efficiently with the illusion. For those who did too well – and whose growing power made the State feel like Ramses – they learned just how illusory “private property” became.
Your point is frightening because that predicament seems familiar – that one must pay taxes on one’s property… until the State pulls Eminent Domain. Or decides a rare spiny-backed minnow lives in the adjoining pond. Or decides just how much rent one may charge.
One might raise your main point differently by asking modern “progressives” just exactly what it is that they found so abhorrent in mid-20th century Fascism? Was it limited individual freedoms? Racial or nationalistic determinants for opportunity? Hostility to Faith? Fauning, obsequious media devotion to one Party? Was it, say, gun confiscation and monopoly on defense? Massive government interference in trade unions, markets and big-business? When today’s “progressives” toss-off the “F” word at modern Conservatives, just what the Hell is it they reject, beyond short mustaches?
One point you raised in Freedom Betrayed was that expanded Freedom – individual responsibility – gained by peoples in the 19th and 20th Centuries, especially after wars, but often by bloodless revolutions, was the surest road to peace and prosperity. It was an extension – if I’m reading it properly – of Tocqueville’s observation that the human condition had tended towards ‘Democracy’ in the Tocquevillian sense. What bothers me is that America and Europe both appear headed the wrong way in too many respects. We’ve fought wars to take down Fascists and dictators of all sorts only now to go cap-in-hand for cap-and-trade?
It will be one Hell of a fight, all right. The Revolution echoes…
“By what do we mean the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington. The records of thirteen legislatures, the pamphleteers, newspapers in all the colonies, ought to be consulted during that period to ascertain the steps by which the public opinion was enlightened and informed concerning the authority of Parliament over the colonies.” – John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 1815
… pamphleteers in Pajamas, no less.
“Hitler’s Third Reich was also not all that much better. Its economy primarily survived because of widespread theft of Jewish and non-German wealth.” Funny how the tables are turned?
A timely essay; I’ve just started reading Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism,” and he makes many similar points.
I don’t really find fault with this analysis, but I think in this day and age we tend to look blindly at labels rather than underlying functional dynamics. If someone from a distant galaxy who had no understanding of any human language was to have come down in 1940 and examined Nazi Germany and the USSR I doubt that the being would have been able to perceive any functional difference in their behaviors. They had different rationales for what they did, but what they DID was essentially the same. In the final analysis it is the act that is important, and not its purported justification.
And so it is with government control of the economy. As Ran notes above, formal ownership (bare legal title) may indeed be just a formality rather than the actual state of affairs. I am reminded of an incident where one of the Nazis asked Hitler why he didn’t nationalize certain industries. He responded that it was not necessary at all, because he had nationalized their owners instead.
The subordinate focused upon the symbol. The leader focused upon the reality. Far too many of us focus on the shiny symbols and labels, and fail to see the dark realities that often lurk beneath them.
“Hope and Change” anyone?
Facism,Socialism,Marxism,Communism,National Sociam, Liberalism,and now Obama-zombism. They are all the same. They all have one common foul smelling root: CONTROL.
They all equal the loss of liberty and private property.
We owe it to the past and future generations to preserve America as the gatekeeper of freedom. The crossraods are here and now. Sit by quietly,watch and do nothing,……………and it will vanish like a once warm, confortable ,bright burning fire.
Call it what you want. Government has become our equal partner, at least, in everything we earn and everything we think we own. So they don’t formally take ownership and responsbility for managing the day to day affairs of the means of production (at least so far). Instead they usurp to themselves the right to tax and regulate the means of production and property as much as they please, leaving the “owners” just enough to keep them working and prevent them from revolting. Alexis De Tocqueville was keenly aware that democracy in its simplest form, i.e., simple majority rule, is a form of tyranny, the tyrrany of the majority. That is why we need checks against it that protect the minority from abuses. We have some of these checks on paper but they have proven insufficient. So now a disfavored minority (those who work hard and smart and earn a nice living, i.e., the “rich”) toil to maintain the lifestyle of an idol ruling class (the majority who vote themselves benefits from the treasury, and yes Hollywood elite that includes you who are getting billions in the spendulus bill). Too bad the Constitution doesn’t prohibit involuntary servitude. Oh yeah, it does.
I am surprised that you could stand network news propaganda until 1987. I said goodbye to all of their programming in 1974 and would not own a TV if it weren’t for sports and a few cable channels. I am sure the network news propaganda and programming rot has been a major factor in the debasemsent of our society.
Yes, so many so-called intellectual talking heads today just assume that since fascists were completely opposed to the Communists, that they were then hard core capitalists and thus “far right.” But Hitler and Goebbels wrote and spoke extensively about their hatred of free markets, and their strong support of a more collectivist, and certainly socialist, “solution.”
One clear difference between the fascists and communists was that the fascists saw one of their roles as strong collusion with private corporate owners. The Nazis may not have owned all of the means of production, but they certainly exerted a huge amount of influence (usually with a number of Nazi party members on the boards of corporations). Sound familiar folks?
And while people did own property privately in Nazi Germany, the state could demand that people used that “private” property in ways that benefitted the super state.
Nice article Michael. I’ve been thinking about this for quite a while. It just took someone like you to write them out clearly.
One clever bloke (me) defines fascism as using government coercion to control: business, behavior and beliefs.
You don’t need to be too observant to see clear signs of this type of fascism everywhere you look.
Buckle up
I think Newsweek is both Fascist and Socialist
Gee, ya think so?
When I said this was coming in April 2008, Republicans tried to hush me.
“Don’t say things like that. Hear him out. It’s not like he’s a communist. He goes to church!”
John McCain, the liberal media pick, was our party’s pick. He wouldn’t let us speak the truth, either.
I’d cast him in the role of Hindenburg, the doddering military hero in a fog, oblivious to the danger.
Emanuel is Reinhard Heydrich.
Reich is Hess.
Hillary is Bormann.
Panetta is Goering.
Michelle would be Himmler.
Fascism is actually a form of socialism. Property rights are destroyed by means of regulations instead of government ownership.
Fascism and socialism are one in the same… its a common mistake to not understand that fascist= socialist. However not all socialists are indeed fascists. Their are really only 2 primary forms of market. Your either a shade of capitalist or a shade of socialist. Fascism is the transition form between capitalism and socialism. Take in the case of china its hard to consider china a communist country because it loosened its market “alot” over the pass years. It has moved more into a fascist form of government with limited private ownership of things. While on the other case look at europe which has steadily moved toward socialism and is starting to boarder on fascism.
Another common mistake is the idea that “corporate fascism” is somehow a private take over of the government through “evil corporate”. Corporate fascism is really only different then a standard totalitarianism fascism expect that instead of the government directly appointing ppl to run the business for the government the business has some say in the matter.
As lenin once said “the only goal of socialism is communism” and he was very correct in that.
While I don’t believe we are quite into a fascist government yet we are very close.
The simple fact is any form of socialism no matter how minor in natural is be abused by the government and will lead to totalitarianism. No socialist government in any form can last long without falling into a totalitarian government period. Socialism and totalitarianism may as well be interchangeable for all intends and purposes.
Also you really need to remove this.
“Socialism rests on a firm theoretical bedrock: the abolition of private property.”
Thats communism… period. Not all forms of socialism require the abolition of private property only the most hardcore forms ie things like communism, stalinism, and numerous other vains of the leadership of communist rulers.
Thank you for this post! The history lesson is most valuable.
A reader above brought up Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism,” and I was wondering what other books you’d recommend, esp. regarding the term “totalitarianism” you brought up.
#9 
 robotech master – Very nice posts. However, I always understood Fascism as the government using force to control the people. Communism always uses Fascism to enforce its system. Communism and Socialism are economic systems, whereas Fascism is a governmental process.
Socialism leads to Communism, because the system can’t work. Over time, it fails, and people begin to object. Then the State resorts to more drastic efforts to shore up the system, resulting in Communism. Fascism is then the means of change.
Writer – “…was not a great success, either in America, or in Italy.” That should be neither/nor. NOT a great success… neither…nor…. I do expect writers to get that right. Otherwise, interesting article.
This cover has the potential for one good effect: it may scare people into realizing what they’ve done, if not exactly what to call it.
Thank you, author and posters, for the education here, re both history and labels. I find it very helpful.
12.njcommuter–nice concluding thought (that being the last post at the moment)
Scary stuff, but at least it can’t happen in a complete conspiracy of silence and under cover of darkness today. Not that that will automatically do us any good: over the last several weeks, it has frightened and frustrated me that there is such an incredible amount of information available to all of us and realizing how little good “knowing stuff” does when you are dealing with shameless, power hungry liars.
As a friend of mine has often said, “you can’t negotiate with liars”.
M Ledeen resorts to history to come up with name-calling (fascism). He needs to inflict negative images to a government he doesn’t like. You had your chance in the past to enjoy your capitalistic theories and reject society’s welfare. The problems are extensive now and require different solutions. Look forwards not backwards.
And with apologies to Ovid, ‘None dare call it ‘fascism” in the vain hope of profit and at the expense of the Republc. Excellent points, Michael………
I can’t get hung up on this debate: socialism or fascism or fasco-socialism. President Reagan put it simply: “And I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
Whatever the label, more government equals less freedom, and there’s no question that, regardless of its name, the first feature of our new Obama nation is lots more government, with promises of plenty more (think TARP 2.0) to come.
If vivo doesn’t like what you say, you’ve obviously hit a (Democrat) nerve.
Excellent piece, Doctor. Nice to hear from someone who knows what he’s talking about.
Open borders, unaccountable billions to fund ACORN and the like to register illegals and the dead, plus Whitehouse control of the Census, means the Republicans (or any other party) will never again gain a majority. We taxpayers are funding this? Sheeple.
We are heading for facism all right. And by facism I mean one party rule. The Dems are pursuing one party rule by all means possible. First they will silence descent by shutting down conservative talk radio. They already control all other news outlets. Then they will grant amnesty to the twelve million illegal democrats already in the country. Next they will open up the borders and import as many new democrats as possible and grant them the right to vote. In the mean time they will have hijacked/corrupted the sensus so badly that no republican will be able to get elected anywhere. The Dems are going to control all three branches of the federal government for the next forty years after which this country will be “Third World” or worse. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this country is going the way of Mexico and California.
The Obama visit to Caterpillar Equipment Co was a flash backward and forward in time . Years from now a government commissar will be telling Caterpillar what kind and how many tractors to make. Does that sound familiar to all of you over 60 years of age ?
Thanks. I’ve been thinking these exact same things for quite a while now. Words do have meanings. But when most are blissfully ignorant of those meanings, the chances of rational decision making are slim.
Worse yet – the folks who know full well what they are working towards. I suspect for them the historical precedents are more like road maps than warning signs.
Isn’t that a cheerful thought?
We had a fascist dictatorship under Bush. That’s probably why the return to Democracy under Obama feels like socialism to so many PJMers.
Don’t worry. You’ll get used to being free again. Just give it some time.
robotech master says that not all forms of socialism require the abolition of private property ….
Which sounds fine enough.
But is as far removed from reality as is the Newsweak claim that we’re all “socialists,” now.
The only difference between what its perpetrators call “socialism” and communism is time. “Socialism” descends from the same Big Lie as communism and will, human nature being all that it is– and sooner rather than later — as inevitably eventually descend into absolute tyranny.
And Newsweak is as mistaken.
What we have in America — and have suffered under since the traitor, Roosevelt and his richly Soviet-agent larded “administration” first foisted it on us, is fascism.
Fabian fascism, perhaps.
But fascism nonetheless.
By any other name.
Brian Richard Allen
Los Angeles – CalifMUSSOLINIcated 90028 and the Far Abroad
Vivo
yes, comrade.
well, I would add that there are 2 forms of fashism : left-fashism and right-fashism.
URSS, China up to the nineties were left-fashist countries, where no private properties were allowed
Italy, Germany, until 1945, Spain until the earlier eighties, were considered right-fashist countries, where private properties were allowed.
The big enterprises supported it ; in Spain and Italy the richest industrialists and lands owners were at the origin of it, insidiously helped by catholic religion priests who were fighting the progression of the communism ideas.
While in Germany, national socialists were of popular extraction, though not communists, who were interned in concentration camps like the jews, tziganes, homosexuals… The richest families and the career militaries dispised the “villan” nazis until they had no other alternative to be part of the whole system too, which they finally managed to take benefit of. The priests were muzzled, or obliging complacent.
What seems odd for Americans to understand is that the persons who resisted and fought these fashist regimes were the “lefties” and the anonym laborious population.
Now, our EU countries are social democraties, where there are official socialist and communist parties. Though these parties can’t be compared to what URSS or China were, they wouldn’t think to renounce to their own private properties, though the far lefties would, but they only represent less than 5% of the electorat.
Also these “smooth” lefties are the ones that are the weak link in humanitarian organisations, human rights, UN… they are not the ones that promote a “strong” response to any conflict, but vain talks !
Well, someone called our centralised state system : “State Capitalism”, that I find more accurate, he also put the nowadays China in that category, though, I would say that China is more than that, she still is a “fashist” country !!! like she was before, when she was a “conquering” country !!! difficult for her to be otherwise, as a big country, there are so many differences in her provinces and languages.
And yes, America could become a fashist country because of the wideness of the country, the different communities and aspirations… and that “state fashism” would be more of Germany’s popular aspiration !!! so, this is not rejoicing for the western world, cuz the money and unemployment problems will have to be solved like in the national socialist Germany, wars !!!!
Present-day U.S. governments will retain quasi private ownership of real property, as significant funding is extracted from property “owners” through taxation. Governments, however, will continue to compromise such “ownership” by means of oppressive land use regulations and by imposition of punative fees for property improvements and business usage. Interesting how government grants tax incentives to those who invest in business ventures, then hamstrings them with over-regulation and fees. It is no wonder America is overpopulated with lawyers and tax accountants.
ashok: the classic work is by Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” and Carl Friedrich and somebody named Zbigniew Brzezinski did some good work on totalitarianism as well.
Tocqueville foresaw the danger of a uniquely egalitarian, or “democratic” form of tyranny, precisely the sort of super-nanny state that some of our contemporary statists advocate. A “gentle” tyranny imposed via endless small restraints, not a violent seizure of power. More later.
Maybe not surprisingly, here in Canada, I got a lot of heat for my not swallowing the Obama kool-aid prior to the election (and after). Bringing up unpleasant facts and suggesting to people that this might turn out badly, brought outright hostility even from many Canadians. Now, it seems most people have retreated to a predictable, “You have to give him a chance.” default. I inform them, “He’s got his chance, he’s the president of the USA.”
We’re not fascists! We’re socialists!
Vivo,
In looking forward, to which anti capitalist state would you point us to that we may emulate its superior care of society?
The historical foundation of capitalism IS society’s welfare! It is my OBLIGATION as a CAPITALIST to meet the needs of society if I want it to buy my goods or services.
Social injustice ONLY occurs when I VIOLATE this founding principle.
#34 Rotwang: “We had a fascist dictatorship under Bush.”
The fact that you were able to express this sentiment shows just how wrong (and stupid) you are.
“Socialism rests on a firm theoretical bedrock: the abolition of private property.”
That’s communism. Socialism has always looked very similar to fascism, with the whole public/private partnership thing. Which is why people have been able to write books describing the close connection between socialism (which Americans call liberalism for some reason) and fascism.
Sweden is a socialist country but it has not abolished private property.
The Big Idea behind socialism is rule by a technocratic elite and the end of self-government. That’s an idea which is very appealing to the people who run corporations, who think the top-down model they use at work should be applied to all aspects of society.
Fascism is just a form of Socialism.
There are just some subtle differences from the “standard” International Socialist state models that we have seen from Communist States and their epigones in the West and the third world. These differences are for the most part cosmetic and merely the result of the necessities brought on by historical conditions.
Go read the platform of the Nazi party. They did not call themselves National Socialists for nothing. I think we should take them at their word.
Here is a link to their stated gaols (I think that this list is from an early phase in their political assent).
http://people.westminstercollege.edu/faculty/mmarkowski/H113/AH/platform.html
It is one of the “Big Lies” of the Left that the Nazis were of the “Right” and thus somehow different in some essential way from Socialism. This lie was hatched by Stalin’s propagandists in the 19030′s and 1940′s. It was picked up by Westerns Leftist then and they have been running with it ever since.
Here are the key differences:
1) It is Socialism be race, ethnicity, or nationality rather than by “economic class”. Facism has often been referred to as a “Cult of Blood and Soil”, and this reflects this subtle difference. This is a core difference between Fascism and the historical “International Socialist” model of socialism. It is an ideological difference, not a tactical difference. It is perhaps the only ideological difference.
This is what pitted Fascists and International Socialists against each other. This conflict did not arise out of fundamental differences about Capitalism and the Western Tradition. It was a territorial dispute between competitors. The Nazi did not recoil against the Russian’s socialism, but rather their race and history.
2) It does have an internationalist component to it, but is it one of outright conquest and occupation as is congruent with its emphasis on ethnicity and the national state. They do not coyly misrepresent themselves as “class liberators” as do the International Socialists.
3) Fascism tends to develop in older annd established social orders and mature national states, and ones with established middle classes. These states are successful, modern, technological, and have a strong “Liberal” component (Liberal in the 19th century sense of the terms, not our modern American perversion of it which the Left foists on us. When the Democrats say “Liberal” they really mean “Socialist”).
This society Fascism hijacks tends to have a real or imagined “High Cultural” point in its past–a Golden Age, if you will. Generally, this age has passed, if it has ever existed at all. One of the chief points of its propaganda is to restore this “lost age” by characterizing the current social order as decadent, and offer itself as a solution to this problem,, and it is worth noting that this “decadence” it decries is generally the notion and fact of democracy and capitalism. It promises a redemption from humiliation and a renascence of the nation so it might return to past glories. The term “Fascism” itself is an eponymous articulation of this. Herein lies the main irony–and chief hypocrisy–of Fascism: It actually purports itself to be a restoration of and older order but in modern form. It is no such thing.
Whether or not this propaganda is actually believed by its adhereance or not is a matter of debate, but it is nonetheless a shrewd political tactic, and perhaps the only one available in the established, success states dependent on many successful social levels. This appears to be obviously the case in the interwar period in Europe. Germany and Italy are the signal examples of this, but fascist movements gathered force in all of Europe during this time.
By way of contrasts, such a tactic would have been almost impossible to use in feudal, technologically backward societies such as Czarist Russia or the late Mandarin period of China. These latter nations required different means in order to subjugate them. Here they do not promise restoration, but, famously, revolution.
4) Outwardly, Fascism has a less pronounced break with the past. It seeks to manipulate, mutate and prevert established institutions, social orders, traditions, culture, principles and symbols of the existing towards it totalitarian ends. This tendency grows out of #3 above, and is a necessarily congruent and complementary aspect of Fascism as a historical and ideological political movement. It is however, completely cosmetic: The outrage to Liberty and the human spirit is exactly the same as the “traditional” notions of socialism.
5) Fascism tends toward stratification of many social layers.
“Traditional” socialism tends toward splitting society in to just two classes, the political, oligarchic class on one hand, and the boad, impoverished and enslaved masses on the other. This is congruent with, and necessitated by #3 and #4 above. The state, however, rigidly controls this stratification and entry or exit to and from its layers. The top layer of a political oligarchic class is still all powerful and controls and loots all other classes and thus keeps them in line. Given the the Fascist State’s overarching power and its contempt for property rights or person, the de jure existence of property and capitalism is de facto a complete illusion.
6) Fascism tends to be a mostly European movement. This is is congruent with #3, #4, and #5 above. This may well just be an historical artifact of the conditions of the interwar period.
The Japan of the Hirohito reign, post the Meji Restoration, is often considered Fascist. This is perhaps unfortunate, for those it shares many of the aspects of Fascism, it was really not a ideological movement. It was, like many Japanese creations, a uniquely Japanese phenomena. Here is is more the case of Japan emerging as an Asian counterpart to the Great Powers model of the European Colonial era. In a political sense it is a look backward to the immediate past, but through peculiarity Japanese lenses.
Similarly, the Kuomintang of Chiang Kai-shek was a modern form of traditional Chinese warlordism and not a Chinese Fascism. The Kuomintang as created by Sun Yat-sen was originally a Chinese version of 19th century Liberalism. (BTW, it is a great tragedy of history that Sun Yat-sen did not prevail in China.)
So other than this, Fascism and “traditional” International Socialism are basically the same. For the most part, the diffences are distinctions without differences.
It is worth noting that we have no idea how Fascism would have developed as it was defeated and wiped form this earth. It well could have evolved into the standard socialist state model.
In summary, Socialism, in all its forms, is one of the greatest outrages against the human race i hostory and the villain behind some of the greatest suffering mankind has ever had to endure .
It must be fought to the death if liberty and the human spirit is to prevail.
No vivo, that is what you are doing. That is what the left does when someone disagrees with them. This is because the Left is Facist.
The author of this is actually attempting to rationally discuss political ideologies and theri consequences as they are made manifest in history. You should try it sometime.
You are indulging in your usual ignorance and rhetorical dodges.
One again, you are showing just what a fool you are and are publically humiliating yourself.
I ask again, are you ever right about anything? Do you know what you are talking about for just one second in a day?
Socialism be race=Socialism BY Race^
31. WR Jonas:
I’m 51, served in Berlin 85-89, and am very familiar with the phrase. We didn’t do very well over the last 20 years, quickly forgetting the lessons being taught. So now it’s exam time and it’s a practical…oh the “joy”
…ouch
If one defines “an expansion of the state’s role, an increase in public/private joint ventures and partnerships, and much more state regulation of business” as fascism, then virtually all of modern Europe can be defined as fascist.
The debate about how much state involvement there should be in the economy is an important one, especially in these times, but misusing terms such as “fascism” to score political points and especially to get attention is ultimately counterproductive. It eclipses the genuine arguments of the free-market side and portrays its exponents as hardline ideologues rather than sensible pragmatists. In a post-ideological era, that’s not a sensible approach.
Saltherring @38; you are just describing the difference between de facto Socialism and de jure Socialism. it is a distinction without a real difference as far as practical matters and effects are concerned.
Moreover, Obama’s stealth socialism will surely move to de jure socialism over time.
It is a complete repudiation if our history, traditions, scoiety, culture and beliefs.
It is a Communist Coup, and a great evil. It is the great chakenge in our history. It must be overturned if we are to survive.
34. Rotwang:
You have no idea what facism is like…take a trip down south, speak to the college students in El Salvador
Rotwang / Vivo – “Arbeit macht frei!”
Of course, of course, you are correct. How can these capitalist fools not understand?
#42 – correction Venezuala
We are in a soft tyranny and are in danger of going much worse. When Putin asks us what are we doing to our country in the wrong direction you know we are going on the wrong direction.
12. Pope Linus wrote:
But Hitler and Goebbels wrote and spoke extensively about their hatred of free markets, and their strong support of a more collectivist, and certainly socialist, “solution.”
Peter writes: Please don’t forget what Nazi was short for. National Socialism. The Nazi Party was the Nationalist Socialist Worker’s Party.
34. Rotwang wrote:
We had a fascist dictatorship under Bush. That’s probably why the return to Democracy under Obama feels like socialism to so many PJMers.
Don’t worry. You’ll get used to being free again. Just give it some time.
Peter writes: My prediction is that people like Rotwang will be the ones crying the loudest over the loss of the freedoms they enjoyed under Bush and prior in another year or so.
Remember, RottenWang, it is usually the enablers who are the first up against the wall when the time comes.
“Corporate America runs like a monarchy
Have you ever noticed how undemocratic US businesses are run? Most are ruled by some arrogant, condescending, Machiavelian control freak. I guess someone forgot to tell them that business leadership shouldn’t be totally contrary to our Constitutional tenets. There are a few companies out there that are not afflicted with this Wizard of Oz management style. Cisco is one of them. They are progressive, modern and egalitarian. Another related problem with US business is in the area of hiring. It seems that talent is hardly a consideration while shmoozing, sucking up, gladhanding, politicing and knowing the right people are the prerequisites. What a sad country this has become.”
That bit of information was from 1998. How true it is, even today.
Someone recommended this book at the site, “When Corporations Rule the World” by David Korten.
“By what do we mean the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it.”
Excellent point. The extremes are already talking armed Revolution but they fail to see this point. I doubt an armed revolution is possible in our country anymore but that really is more because it isn’t needed, not because some lack the will. The modern Revolution can take place in a thousand small ways that can’t be stopped. I have wondered how say a Zimbabwe can survive at all with an inflation rate in the thousands of percent. The answer appears to me to be that no one participates in that economy. The real economy is underground – the black market. As the State moves to take over the official economy people simply move elsewhere. If you look at the rates of tax compliance in countries like Zimbabwe or Russia the system has completely broken down. That is Revolution. That is power to the people and it will become more and more common here as people become alienated from a government turned more and more Fascist. The problem for the people is that the Fascist Beast will take by force what it can’t get by compliance. It looks pretty gloomy out there and I do appreciate the Ledeens’ of the world who have the guts to tackle this head on.
Don’t forget the anti-semitism of the left, as represented by Comment No. 4, above.
Jews are stealing all our wealth, don’t you know. Which will make it easier to pull the rug out from under the Jewish state, as Samantha Power, et al., have planned for years.
Get ready, people. The current uproar over the faux-stimulus bill is nothing compared to what’s coming. They already control our schools, our housing, our bank accounts and our public airwaves (with the exception of AM radio). Soon we will have the “Fairness Doctrine” and the confiscation of our guns. Then the truth will be driven underground and severely punished. Wait and see.
Relax, everyone. It’s a bedtime story. And it’s comical, the arguing over labels being akin to arguing over quantities of dancing angels and heads of pins. You’re all arguing about statism, the label of which is immaterial until it reaches its final form.
Statism isn’t going to work. Even F. Fukayama saw this in his “end of history.” Statism can’t work in general because it relies on stasis. A commentor above said something to the effect that “some 60 years hence when the state is telling caterpillar how many oand what kind of tractors to produce” and this is the problem. Statism assumes by definition that 60 years hence we’ll be using the same technologies, nothing will have changed. This is why the far left statists always seem both behind the curve and shrill — technology is changing too fast for their regulatory mindset to comprehend.
The far left statists have finally reached the intellectual threshold of understanding how to best regulate the handheld dial phone. Problem is that technology is 30 years past this. All statists are into regulation. It’s what they get. But things move too fast for them to fully grasp what they can regulate.
Marx and the other statist “thinkers” didn’t get technology and their idiot theories were doomed to fail because of this. IF and only IF the technology of the day is unchanging can it be regulated and can one make a case for the worker and the state. If on the other hand technology is a moving target (and it is) then statism will always fail.
Banks and such are statist targets. Relax. Overall the state has such a stranglehold on money that this in and of itself is no real difference. Statism isn’t going to work with creating products. Can’t. The only areas in which statism has any effect are those that don’t really change. Medical paperwork is an example. Whether done by hand or by computer, it’s still paperwork. Doesn’t change. Ripe for state interference. But re medical procedures, no. They’ll try, but no cigar. Medical technology changes. By the time the statists figure out how to get the regulations down for procedure A, procedure B is already invented and obviates any benefit A ever had. And procedure C is 4 years out.
The bottom line? Statists (and political pundits) are technology challenged “special” people who never get it right and never will. Freedom and technology are partners. And as long as Americans are inventing things and creating and improving technologies, statists and pundits can only gaze uncomprehendingly from the outside. So… relax.
#43 Pajewmas: “Have you ever noticed how undemocratic US businesses are run? Most are ruled by some arrogant, condescending, Machiavelian control freak. I guess someone forgot to tell them that business leadership shouldn’t be totally contrary to our Constitutional tenets.”
I have the right not to work for these arrogant control freaks. I have the right not to purchase any good or service provided by these arrogant control freaks.
However, if power is transferred to arrogant control freaks in the government, I lose those rights.
The more things change the more they remain the same. Barack Obama was a necessary evil, in order to prove to America once and for all that Big Government can only manage problems, and not very well, and certainly has only a limited role in actually ever solving problems. As they say, this too shall pass.
Michael, as long as selective vision is used to cast a blind eye towards this assessment by Gary Lamphier, in the November 29, 2008 edition of the Edmonton Journal, we will see what you are describing:
When people in future ponder what led up to the great U.S. economic collapse of 2008, I suspect most of the murky financial details will be long forgotten. But two small human tales may well endure in the realm of popular mythology.
Both neatly encapsulate the crazy excesses of U.S. consumer culture.
One stems from the tragic death Friday of a Wal-Mart worker at a store in Long Island, N.Y., who was stampeded by a throng of shoppers after they broke down the front doors, Bloomberg reports.
At least four shoppers were hurt in the mayhem, including a pregnant woman. The dead man was a 34-year-old temp. As he expired on the floor, shoppers continued to stream in, drawn by deals on DVD players and digital cameras.
A few months ago, in suburban Atlanta, a tragedy of a different sort briefly made headlines. A splashy new $450,000 home featured on the ABC TV show Extreme Makeover had to be auctioned off.
Seems its free-spending new owners, who were given the house on the show three years earlier after it was built by an army of volunteers, had used the home as collateral for a loan to start a new business.
When the business went bust, the family had to turn over the keys. They had also received $250,000 in cash, but they managed to blow that, too, on such indulgences as a six-day family trip to Disneyland.
As Forrest Gump would say: “Stupid is as stupid does.”
One social scientist who is a scholar of fascism states: “Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.” (Robert Paxton, Anatomy of Fascism, 2004, p. 218).
The same scholar points out that “fascist economic policy responded to political priorities, and not to economic rationale” (p. 145).
Clearly the “stimulus” bill just passed fits the criterion of using political priorities in response to economic concerns, rather than employing rational economic thinking to economic problems.
Obama’s preoccupation with “hope” shows his preoccupation with the supposed decline of the USA under Bush. Obama’s and the Democratic party’s constant references to homelessness, joblessness and long-ago slavery shows their obsession with victims and victim groups.
In his first press conference, when responding to questions about the economy, Obama never once articulated any coherent set of economic principles, but always twisted his replies so that he ended up discussing some specific victim or victimized group. He had no principled way of dealing with the economic woes of the people in Elkhart, Indiana, but simply switched from talking about economics to talking about the status of the people as victims. This lack of specific economic principles again shows that Obama, like Hitler or Mussolini, subordinates economics to politics.
I think Ledeen is correct in pointing out that what we have to fear now is not socialism, but fascism in America.
Socialism IS fascism. Mussolini was greeted by American socialists the way Obamanoids greet him now. And let’s not forget that the Nazis were the National Socialist Party.
Johah Goldberg understands this. So should we all.
When the left told us that America was on the road to fascism we should have heeded their warning of what they intended to do to us. I have always laughed at Hollywood movies that caricatured conservatives as the people taking over our government because I knew the people with a history of doing this in the real world where always the collectivists. Life has again proven me right.
Marie Claude, right leaning fascism is a myth. Fascism per se is a socialist movement. When some businesses collude with a government to hold power, they do so because they know that in the end said government can remove them when they become an inconvenience. In the end the real power is held by government, and that government is always looking at controlling all aspects of life, under the guise of providing an equal playing ground or some such nonsense. That’s collectivism. Just because some of those governments decide they do not really like the idea of straight communism or socialism because those economic models do not work worth a damn, like China did, does not make them right leaning.
Ok, where to begin. First, fascism absolutely is a rightist ideology. It embraces the central tenets of the right–lifting a mythological, nonexistent past way of life to a pedestal to be emulated. Militaristic propaganda, and stirring up of passions towards an “enemy” of some sort. Appeals to emotion, tradition, and nationalistic pride. Repression of dissent, strict social controls, and the destruction of civil liberties.
Even assuming you are correct about the “crony capitalism” of corpocracy being a leftist economy (and I disagree as it more closely resembles the military-industrial complex of neoconservative wet dreams), the utter loathing for individual liberty, peace, dissent, restrictions on the police power of the state, and the hatred of the “other” are the meat and potatoes of the right.
There are many people, such as myself, who represent true liberalism–economic moderation plus social liberalism. This is where conservatives have really dropped the ball. If we’re talking about the size of government, lets remember the dramatic expansion of police and surveillance powers that conservatives tripped over themselves to enact. Lets think about conservative attempts to limit individual liberty in the name of morality, and to attempt to enforce their fringe Christian beliefs on others. Yeah….. I’m worried about a stimulus package (for the record I am not very supportive of it), not militaristic nationalism , expanded governmental powers, and the enforcement of moral codes…
Thanks for all these thoughtful comments. Please keep in mind that almost the entire blog dealt with the “economic system.” Only at the very end did I raise the political question. I will return to this shortly, in my next blog, which will focus on Tocqueville’s nightmare vision of what an American (or, more generally, a “democratic” or “egalitarian”) tyranny would likely be like.
Marie Claire: yes, China is most certainly a fascist system, politically and economically. I have written this several times, most recently last summer in the Far East Economic Review. The Chinese Government seized every copy of that magazine! It’s probably the highest intellectual compliment I could have received. I argued that China was in fact the first example we have had of a mature fascist state, with the ideology burned out, the only remaining element being a hypernationalism that verges on racism (the Chinese Government often acts as if it were entitled to dictate behavior to all “Chinese,” wherever they are).
Libertyman: I agree with every word in your first paragraph, fascist politics emerged from the Great War, incorporated mythological themes of ‘greatness’ from an imagined past as well as from that generation’s war experiences, created a single-party dictatorship, and so forth.
I don’t agree with your description of “neoconservative wet dreams;” I am routinely classified as a neocon but I abhor the rise of a military-industrial complex that dictates policy.
You are also quite right that a series of American governments, some calling themselves “conservatives,” some calling themselves “liberals,” have expanded the power of the state, limiting individual liberty. (I testified against the first version of the Patriot Act, during the Clinton years, by the way, before Henry Hyde’s Committee). I think it’s misleading, extremely misleading, to label this phenomenon “right” or “left.” It’s odious, it’s dangerous, and we need to fight it.
More in the next blog. Thanks again for all the stimulating comments, I’ll try to keep up.
Fascism has long since lost its historical context and has been noting but an epithet for decades.
Now listen up as I make it the centerpiece of this rant.
Libertyman13: “First, fascism absolutely is a rightist ideology.”
Sigh. You appear to be level headed and have your heart in the right place–but I’m going to take issue with that assertion. It seems that for some reason, the “right” is a very vague, confusing ideology. I’m going to present my own version of “right” and “left”:
RIGHT = FREEDOM
LEFT = EQUALITY
There it is in a nutshell. Both are very noble ideals. However, they can’t exist by themselves. Both come with prerequisites:
RIGHT = FREEDOM (and thus RESPONSIBILITY)
LEFT = EQUALITY (and thus RESTRICTIONS)
Now which one is fascist?
#61 GAlston:
“Statism assumes by definition that 60 years hence we’ll be using the same technologies, nothing will have changed. This is why the far left statists always seem both behind the curve and shrill — technology is changing too fast for their regulatory mindset to comprehend.”
Recognixed and agreed, until at least 1995, the Federal Government still maintained a stockpile of helium down in Texas.
This was, of course, insurance against the threat of German Zeppelin airship raids on the homeland.
All the hoo-hah about which -ism it is we’re sliding towards can really be boiled down to what degree we respect private property rights.
And which mechanism will be used to confiscate it when we don’t.
Because once you’re the lead dog pulling the sleigh, you WANT things to remain as they are, and it doesn’t really matter whether you’re from the Right or the Left.
If you’re not the lead dog, the view is pretty much the same…
Socialism is a group of people in power who want more power pretending the care about the masses. Fasism is a group of people who want more power and pretend that they care about their country. Capitalism is a group of people who want more power and pretend they follow the rule of law and don’t need the rule of law.
Put them all together and what to you get? Groups of people wanting more power pretending that’s not what they want.
That is why a total power is not good. I think that we have right now a socialist party in the White House but it could morph into something else if they gain total power.
“the abolition of private property. I haven’t heard anyone this side of Barney Frank calling for any such thing.”
Uh, what do you think Obama was talking about in NPR interviews in 2001 and on the campaign trail when he said he wanted to “Spread the wealth around”? Obama has as one of his major goals the intrusion of the public sector in individual private property. Ignore that at your peril.
Fascism and statism absolutely are not right wing. This is particularly the case in the USA where conservatism absolutely has no relationship with Europe’s socialists of any stripe, whether they are fascists or communists.
Present-day U.S. governments will retain quasi private ownership of real property, as significant funding is extracted from property “owners” through taxation.
Anyone who has held title to rural property over the last 40 years will have experienced the rapid and radical erosion of their former rights of ownership. Statism, behind the twin weapons of environmental politics and cabals of unelected land use planners, has removed much of the discretionary uses for which the land may have first been bought.
And the usurpation continues. Consenting adults may no longer buy and sell bits of property to one another – they must console themselves with plain and fancy sex maneuvers, which are carefully protected civil rights now. Clear and plant a field? Not without an EIS and a ruinous permit process, even if it was cultivated just a few years ago.
In essence, the government has seized much of that ownership, regardless that ownership rights are no less civil rights than those prohibiting suppression of free speech. And there’s a new cancer rapidly metastasizing in the form of NGOs who ‘join’ landowners in removing land from economic production by giving them modest payoffs in order to ‘protect’ the land. In English, that means they are ceded veto power over most activities beyond taking a walk or a picture on a ‘protected’ property. There are literally thousands of these organizations all eagerly taking control of acres all over the country, leaving the titular owners with mere scenery in place of economic opportunity.
And should the new administration indeed channel itself into a fascist course, who’s to prevent it from enacting itself as the successor to those control-wielding NGOs? You say they hold contracts? Consider how little this administration values contracts – it is already forcing itself between the parties to real estate contracts, to grant wealth to purchasers at the expense of sellers.
Guard your valuables, this will be a rough one.
@David Thomson: I’d suggest a slight refinement and call it “state capitalism” … like Stalinism. (We out-source torture to Egypt and work-camp/gulags to the interior of China.)
One point is that our economy is now on a perpetual war footing … so a new war won’t produce the bump we saw with WWII.
But a more important point: it’s the Bush Republicans who set the stage for this.
I won’t hold my breath waiting for GOP to take responsibility for anything … that’s not in the Rove play-book … but those are the existential facts.
If you dare, folk, look at the national debt after Reagan … if you can get your nose out of his butt.
p.s. core to socialism is a) command economy and b) preclude expropriation of value.
Yuppies kidz getting $30K, $40K, even $70K a month selling debt collateralized derivatives (i.e. junk) while folk who actually produce get played like suckers and left homeless, out of work, and in debt.
*Waits for someone to sing the praises of un-constrained market forces.*
Core to fascism is something like “I’m in / you’re out” … nationalism or religion or something like that … is the etymological root of the movement: what binds the group together.
Gloria, that sounds like alot of BS out of some leftist, multicult “scholar”–it confounds the a propaganda technique with core principles.
The left always tries to characterize the Fascism’ this is because it is a form of Socialism.
Some very muddled political history in both the article and the thread.
Fascism, from the Latin faces is a belief on centralised power. The faces of Rome was a depiction of an axe with a bundle of sticks bound round its shaft symbolising the unbreakable power of the central state. Fascism is neither of the right nor left but of authoritarianism. Hitler’s political party was The National Socialist Party and beleved in welfare, social justice and redistribution of wealth. Spain under Franco was deeply conservative socially though there were economic changes as the old ruling Aristocracy had kept the nation in a close to feudal state for hundreds of years.
Socialism is now virtually meaningless but no ideology that believes in the abolition of private property can seriously be called socialist. That is communism. Similarly the state control of the means of production is Marxism. A government with marxist economic policies and a fascist approach to social policy and law and order is Stalinist or Maoist.
A liberal is someone who believes in individual freedom along with welfare provisions or the poor, vulnerable and sick (it’s just a question of acknowledging that a free market society does not mean anyone who works hard will inevitable get rich)
Simple isn’t it. Learn those definitions well because until you know the name of the demon you cannot defeat it.
reading the young left wing trolls on this blog is amazing. Not one world of truth. None one bit of knowledge of history. No understanding at all of our society or how the world really works. None. Just received left wing cant and propaganda.
No wounder the country is slipping though our hands. No wonder a clown like Obama can get elected president.
You have all been completely brain washed by your teachers and the MSM. You have literally been cheated out of reality, out of your past and out of your future.
They are taking you country away form you and you do not even know it.
This mess was caused by government. It was not caused by Capitalism. Government cannot fix it, it cannot fix it.
The Democrats want to enslave, not help you.
Oh and I like the bit about how the size of a CEO’s ego is against the constitution.
Not yet it ain’t.The ignorance in this utterance is just beyond belief. Someone as a big ego, and it is not a ceo.
How are you people ever going to make a living?
Socialism is now virtually meaningless but no ideology that believes in the abolition of private property can seriously be called socialist
What idiocy. What do you think the two SS in USSR stand for.
You are hair spittling academic definitions with the actually hitorical relaity of socialism.
here, read the first sentance of the entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
Ledeen – Yet during the great economic crisis of the 1930s, fascism was widely regarded as a possible solution, indeed as the only acceptable solution to a spasm that had shaken the entire First World, and beyond. It was hailed as a “third way” between two failed systems (communism and capitalism), retaining the best of each. Private property was preserved, as the role of the state was expanded. This was necessary because the Great Depression was defined as a crisis “of the system,” not just a glitch “in the system.” And so Mussolini created the “Corporate State,” in which, in theory at least, the big national enterprises were entrusted to state ownership (or substantial state ownership) and of course state management.
Well expressed, Dr. Ledeen, but lets not forget the Bush Administration employed many aspects of Fascism that Obama can build on, or go in his and his Party’s own direction.
It was Bush and his radical Corporatist Republican cronies that set America on a path where the Corporations were invited to set housing, energy, prescription drug policy. Bush grew the Federal Government bigger and faster than LBJ, Hitler, Moussolini, or Franco did in peacetime. He trailed only FDR and certain communist regimes in the rate of peacetime Central Government growth and job creation.
What worried me just as much as the Corporatist and hyper government growth policies of Bush were the cultural aspects of fascism he introduced.
To question Bush on Iraq or the fascistically named Patriot Act or to have a new sacred holiday marking 9/11 as Patriotic Day (as stupid) was deemed – of course – unpatriotic. I initially supported both, but I respected those who argued against Iraq as a mistake before the Afghanistan war was finished or had civil liberties beefs with the Patriot Act or thought arbitrarily decided on “restrictions” on toenail clippers or “menacing hoop earrings” that could be made into a weapon by an “Evildoer”, were excessive –were just Americans with differing opinions that should be addressed rather than ALL of them (not just the disloyal some) having their motives smeared.
I also had a real bad feeling about the narrative Bush created shortly after 9/11 that mirrored the same language as Fascist Regimes in describing agents of Central Government, especially armed agents or those in positions of authority to compell citizens to do as they wished (TSA) – as “The Heroes” simply by job description.
And like Fascists and also Democrats well-stewed in heroism as a function of victimology ot fighting “oppression” – Bush began describing people he wanted to help with his government power as heroes – as in “the hero victim families of 9/11″ he sought moral authority from by appearing at his speeches and rallies…and “The hero freedom lovers of Iraq/Darfur/Lebanon/Afghan Warlordism” awaiting the “American heroes” who would not invade, but go in to liberate them from oppression. (Much as Hitler announced the Heroes Of the Reich were invading Poland simply to liberate the noble freedom-loving Volk in Danzig and border areas from oppression..)
Moussolini and Franco also extolled their government agents. Right down to hero teachers and sanitation workers and safety inspectors. (Bush stopped at hero firefighters and hero FBI agents and hero EMTs).
All employed language, as did the Communists, that lumped very different people fighting very different struggles against those in power as “counter-revolutionaries, radical elements, or Terrahist Evildoers”.
Bush bought into the idea that any who opposed America, his neocon visions, or his idea of “fellow noble democracies” must be a “Terrahist”. Right down to Palestinian farmers fighting armed Israeli Settlers over land the US itself agreed was illegally seized. Insisting there must be good guys and bad guys (the terrahist evildoers) even when the moral imperative to favor one side as the “good guys” was hardly clear to anyone. He confused matters considerably, where the Muslim jihadis became the “hero good guys” if they fought with us or against people we opposed like the Serbs or Saddam or Han Chinese occupiers, but when directed against us – voila! – instant “Terrahist Evildoer!”.
I have no doubt Obama will reach back and find some aspects of past communist or fascist regimes worth copying as Bush did.
Lets just hope the Democrats are more vigilant than the Republican, Neocon, and Right Wing cheerleaders were when we picked up fascist ideas and fascist rhetoric from 2001-2008.
@Kevin in OK:
“I have the right not to work for these arrogant control freaks. I have the right not to purchase any good or service provided by these arrogant control freaks.”
The desire is to work for them, because they’re the only game in town. And because the alternative will cause hardship, but….
It seems that talent is hardly a consideration while shmoozing, sucking up, gladhanding, politicing and knowing the right people are the prerequisites.
Is unfair employment practices something that comes along with capitalism?
Also, do you think those at the top have a monopoly, and are operating under the guise of equal opportunity?
I don’t agree with your analysis at all. Fascism has as one of it’s center principles the submission of the individual to the state. To borrow from another site:
Mussolini thought it was unnatural for a government to protect individual rights: “The maxim that society exists only for the well-being and freedom of the individuals composing it does not seem to be in conformity with nature’s plans.” “If classical liberalism spells individualism,” Mussolini continued, “Fascism spells government.”
———
That doesn’t match the facts. I would suggest that Obama and his cronies are much closer to the Looters in Atlas Shrugged than they are to the fascists.
To Ian Thorpe(comment #83): You say a liberal believes in individual freedom. Well, the govt. currently extracts over 60% of the fruits of my labor through taxes, fees and other means.
Liberals wish to increase that percentage to the point of my enslavement.
Liberals would like to further control my behavior in a thousand ways (i.e. my lightbulb usage).
It turns out that the freedoms advocated by modern liberals are those that allow them to be free to engage in as much perverse or consequence-free sex as possible.
The freedom sought by modern liberals is thus freedom from the consequences that naturally follow from their God-free behavior.
To Pajewmas tuba teakettle of fish:
“They are the only game in town”
I started my own company and so has every friend and relative that I have.
If bitterness towards former employees prevents you from working as you wish I recommend that you start your own business now.
It turns out that the Obama style or European style of economics makes it much more difficult to become a successful startup.
So NO, they are not the only game in town.
I argued that China was in fact the first example we have had of a mature fascist state, with the ideology burned out, the only remaining element being a hypernationalism that verges on racism (the Chinese Government often acts as if it were entitled to dictate behavior to all “Chinese,” wherever they are).
couldn’t be more true in the light of the last protestations pro Dalai-Lama on the world wide scale, especially very accurate after the events in France, following that, China opened her “net” borders so that her new fashist youth could launch calls for boycott our products ; also the chinese government asked the chinese community to make a strike ala “française” in Paris. Not only satisfied with these demonstrations she lectured Sarkozy not to receive Dalai Lama, while it was admitted for Frau Merkel and Mr Bush. Umm, Sarko hasn’t got the spirit to comply to any external power and replied that China hasn’t the right to dictate France which personalities she has to write down in her memento booklet.
Well, this was more directed to the country that created the “human rights” as an official moral motto in its constitution, which still is the referrence for any country that wants to get rid of an oppressive government, than to a “small” country like ours.
back to “fashism”, I’d like to precise my perception, and of most of the people on the european continent, like “liberalism” here has a different “meaning” wether we are sitting on one side or the other side of the pond, “fashism” also is perceived differently, and essentially viewed as a pervertion of a far-right power ; the fact that corroborates this reading is that the partisans of the kind of extremism are still labelled as far-right’s, even in Germany.
I agree though that the very roots of “fashism” as an absolute idea are in “socialism” ideal, with a nuance for the communist countries, where “fashism” is a class “doctrine”, where in Germany it is finalised by racial purity, in Italy and Spain with political an revenge opportunism
political and revenge opportunism, sorry for the typo
I doubt that his conversation is very useful, as I have seen little evidence that those who are taking us down the road of change subscribe to and are limited by any coherent theory. So lets add narcissism woth its determination to do whatever one wants. Yes, they are statists using the state to achieve their amitions. In defiance of the American creed they seem determined to establish a new and powerful aristocracy dedicated to the return of the 19th century.
I think people need to consult their dictionaries on this subject. Fascism is the use of force to control the populace.
What does this mean in practice? Bush was not Fascist. His measures were not enacted to control the populace. The restrictions were directed outward. He did grow the government and police. We are at war. The government and police naturally grow in those times. Border police. Think border guards. These are troops. Airport and port security. These are also border guards. Warrantless wiretapping. Electronic border guards. It’s all outwards directed.
Fascism is always directed inwards, to reinforce the power of the State over its citizens. It is a political tool, not a political philosphy. Its purpose is to silence dissent. The Fairness Doctrine, in this age, would be Fascist. Card-check, with its intent of coercion and intimidation, is Fascist. Gun-control is Fascist. The environmental movement, with its abrogation of private property rights, is Fascist. Any use of force for political control over the individual is Fascist.
Pajewmas: “Is unfair employment practices something that comes along with capitalism?”
Well, sure, I guess it can be. Employees can be treated very unfairly in a capitalist system. But it doesn’t last. Why? Because employees can vote with their feet. (There’s that “freedom” thing again.) Is your boss a jerk? Then leave.
Here’s the tough part. Employees are part of the supply and demand equation just like the finished goods they produce and the inputs required to make them. It’s been my experience that when employees are in demand (ie. a shortage), employers become very pleasant, generous and accommodating. However, when employees are in supply (ie. a surplus–like right now), employers can be very indignant, or just plain mean. Those are the ones you leave, as soon as things get better. In the meantime, things pretty much suck. Despair not though. In the long run, Karma always comes around and burns the companies of the kind you seem to despise. Companies like Citibank, Lehman Bros., Morgan Stanley and other purveyors of bogus AAA-rated mortgage backed securities crap would normally be killed off by now thanks to that Karma. Sadly, they aren’t because capitalism was halted by the TARP nonsense.
I remember software companies in Silicon Valley offering unprecedented perks to employees such as free carwashes, idyllic campus-like workplaces, on site 24-hr. gyms. Why? Because they were practicing free market competition to get the most talented workers they could lay their hands on. Suck-ups and well connected applicants were not needed. The successful companies understood the value of meritocracy.
As long as Standard Oil type monopolies are prevented, the free market can be a beautiful thing–for everyone involved: employers, employees and owners.
So what do you say, Pajewmas, why not give the free market a try. (Sorry for not being succinct.)
To all, including Mr. Ledeen, who argue that an increase in military/policeis another example of our dangerous tilt towards Fascism and its coercive nature:
This is only true if the increase is done with evil intention.
9/11 necessitated rational measures that secured our survival as a nation.
It is not correct to lump that in with a fascist coercion that is instituted to push for a particular agenda – as does the “stimulus”.
Since the left presumes the evil intention of the right, naturally, any military/policeexpansion will be considered to be fascist – even if the expansion is simply to the end of securing the survival and peace of the nation
42. Chris:
“In looking forward, to which anti capitalist state would you point us to that we may emulate its superior care of society?”
No one. The USA has unique needs and solutions. WE have to define what we want and go forward. Look forwards not backwards.
46. Mongoose:
“Do you know what you are talking about for just one second in a day?”
No, Master of Enlightenment. Only YOU know what you’re talking about. We, miserable serfs have no idea. Sorry for my idiocy. I’m crawling back to my cave of despair.
52. mshatto:
“How can these capitalist fools not understand?”
Luckily they were not entirely wrong.
“Arbeit macht frei!” (your quote, Work will set you free!)
Who needs the Fairness Doctrine? Just patch in National Public Radio to every station. “We the People” are paying for this crapola anyway!
I have a friend who has direct contact with congressmen and senators in DC. the ‘messiah’ is considered LEFT of Lenin in those circles.
We are a nation ruled by a fascist oligarchy. The figurehead is our noble leader, Benito Obama. There is a wonderful poster of Benito, but I don’t know how to attach it here. It has been frequently displayed on Michelle Malkin’s website. The caption of his jut-jawed pose is “Obey”.
CORPORATISM DID NOT MEAN CORPORATION AS WE USE THE WORD IN ENGLISH; IT MEANT STATE CONTROLLED.
LEFTISTS LIKE TO ARGUE IT WAS FOR THE RICH.
WRONG.
MUSSOLINI WAS A SOCIALIST.
BENITO (NAMED FOR SOCIALIST JUAREZ) MUSSOLINI.
Mr. Ledeen; Thanks for your consummate journalism. And responding to the comments is beyond the call of duty. Since you do your best to keep your hand on the pulse of the readers, I can only wish you do get the maximum publication.
It’s a never ending task to educate the left. They seem to be steadfast in their journey to maturity.
I have 10 questions for Obama
http://thenma.org/blogs//index.php/libertyforusa/2009/02/14/ten-yes-or-no-questions
Why is everyone so surprised of the events of today? The Bible is very clear how things will be in the end times. That said, if you are saved then you should be telling the non-saved their fate. Help them stay away from the tribulation that is coming. If you are not saved, please read what Jesus teaches and repent. Jesus awaits your plea.
Socialism does, definitionaly, call for the abolition of private property. The difference between the democratic socialists and the revolutionary Marxists/communists is entirely one of method; the former think democracy could establish socialism, the latter see violent revolution as the only hope.
Some socialists, both democratic and Marxist, have abandoned the goal of abolition of private property over the years, but refuse to switch support to free-market capitalism, either. They chose to pursue a “Third Way”, first called corporatism, which involves a government-business-labor collaboration. When the corporatists were illiberal like the communists, the resulting ideology was known as fascism. However, despite the claims of both this article and Mussolini, corporatism is not equal to fascism. When corporatists are democratic, the ideology is (because of historical roots) known as social democracy, and this sort of democratic corporatism can be seen today in, for example, Sweden.
Social democratic parties tend to have originally been genuinely socialist parties, but socialism is such an obvious failure that they’ve been driven to corporatism. In the process, they continue to pretend they are socialists, which has confused the meaning of the word “socialism”, but the difference is discerned easily enough if you pay attention. Newsweek, obviously, didn’t.
Newsweak (sic) proves its usefullness again. Can’t imagine why they keep asking why their pubs are going out of business so quickly when the answer is staring at them from their mirrors every morning.
Well I am thankful for the admission of your ignorance, I only wish it was sincere.
Again, not ability to respond in any rational manner whatsoever.
The whining voice of a child. The irrational cant of a leftist.
One day you are going to have to face it.
And it is not just me, practically everyone here that is not a 20 something leftist troll thinks the same way, at least those that bother to respond. I see no one here whose opinions are worth reading that has ever agreed with you.
You should be thankful that someone tries to correct you. One day that may cease to happen.
To my mind Fascism, Socialism, Communism, and all their ‘crypto’ variants must be treated as more or less related means to an age old common end. The common end being, centralization of decision making power over free individuals who are propagandized to be less than able to manage their own interactions with society at large. That is whatever society the self-appointed elite decides is best for the greater collective good. It just so happens that irregardless of the best intentions of the useful idiots, the definition of good always aligns with the desire of the elite.
States of corrupt tyranny have so far inevitably arisen as said elites encounter the natural resistance of the very same little people (essentially serfs) it once claimed to be looking out for; often enough – as our Founding Fathers observed – with the full consent of a democratic majority. The thus challenged Leviathan finds it necessary to become increasingly heavy-handed in its vain attempts to shore up the ramparts of whatever ideological fortress the benighted elites have ensconced themselves within in order to protect the ideological heart of their revolutionary movement.
Unfortunately the socialisms dejour have historically proven more than willing to liquidate any [statistical] number of problem “individuals” on their particular road to their particular vision of collective utopia.
If not stopped by [counter]revolutionary force of arms and/or sheer gore-speckled exhaustion, the starved Leviathan always resorts to eating its own. The restoration of individual liberty returns, but more often then not, only after the little guys have paid a terrible price in human blood, sweat, tears and abolished treasure.
Socialism rests on a firm theoretical bedrock: the abolition of private property. I haven’t heard anyone this side of Barney Frank calling for any such thing.
Barney Frank hasn’t either, so you can just calm down, OK?
Roosevelt’s New Deal didn’t cure America’s economic ills any more than Mussolini’s Third Way did.
The New Deal was a tremendous success.
http://radamisto.blogspot.com/2009/01/fdr-and-total-private-investment.html
http://radamisto.blogspot.com/2009/01/fdr-great-depression-and-gdp.html
http://radamisto.blogspot.com/2009/01/yes-dear-new-deal-did-work.html
“It was Bush and his radical Corporatist Republican cronies that set America on a path where the Corporations were invited to set housing, energy, prescription drug policy. Bush grew the Federal Government bigger and faster than LBJ, Hitler, Moussolini, or Franco did in peacetime. He trailed only FDR and certain communist regimes in the rate of peacetime Central Government growth and job creation.”
Wipe your chin. YOU will get elctrocuted if he dribble hits he keyboard.
“I have a friend who has direct contact with congressmen and senators in DC. the ‘messiah’ is considered LEFT of Lenin in those circles.”
This was all known before he election. The media kept it from he masses.
I have a friend who has direct contact with congressmen and senators in DC. the ‘messiah’ is considered LEFT of Lenin in those circles.
LOL! Obama is a preagmatic liberal and people who accuse him of being an extremist
aren’t fit to vote.
The notion that in the 1930′s that fascism was a “third way” was actually a cynical propaganda ploy from the Fascists rather than a serious intellectual discussion in society. That some useful idiots outside of fascist circles gave voice to it does not change this.
Socialism itself was put forward as a “third way” between Capitalism and Communism in the same period. Propagandists merely downplayed the international aspects in the Western European “democracies” This actually got more traction in society from the usual suspects for the usual reason. This may just be that traditional, international socialism as an ideology had been around longer than Fascism.
That both could be put forward thus reflects the fact that they are really just forms of the same thing. Their own articulations of their goals and intents are almost identical.
As I posted earlier, “traditional” socialism is more difficult to implement In established nations with a history of liberal democracy and established professional Middle classes. Thus it is not surprising that it was fascism that took root in Germany or Italy.
The inner circles of both movements of were collectivist totalitarians primarily concerned wth their personal power. They manipulated the masses to this end.
The results were the same; only the props of the set pieces were different.
vivo – “Arbeit macht frei.” is a propoganda quote. The quoter was using it sarcastically. Jeez, but you’re ignorant. You get the words, but you miss their underlying significance. It’s the difference between a Lib and a Con: Depth of understanding.
nothing in the past 20 years has provided a wake up call like 3 weeks of dear leader.
I never understood why people think Fascism and Nazism were “right wing” philosophies. People who call them right wing never actually define what they mean by right wing. The people who call “fascism” and “nazism” right wing are the same people who call Neocons right wing. They never define their terms and just group random individuals together (usually based on things that are wholly outside of the realm of “right wing” or “left wing”, such as religion).
The way I define it, is Extreme Left = 100% Statism, and Extreme Right = 100% Anarchy. Any sort of big government system, from fascism and communism to democracy, are varying forms of STATISM (democracy is too; it is merely the tyranny of the majority; i.e a lynching is pure democracy, and in fact I am convinced that “democratic socialism” is merely the proletariat of the people being advanced by insidious Fabianists within Western governments; small steps, baby), while limited government, such as republicanism (actual republicanism, not the political party) and libertarianism are on the right. When pundits refer to America as center right, they are correct because America is a Republic, even though they never actually define what it means to be “center right” or “center left” (because they neither know nor care)
Ahem. *warms up vocal chords*
We’re all Fascists now…in the Dem Show
We’re all Fascists now…in the Dem Show
-And, all the duplicitous, capricious ones
wish to control your mind
-And, all the numbing propagandist twits
Will leave you broke, deaf, dumb and blind.
Yes, we’re all Fascists now…in the Dem Show
EVVVVVVVVVVVVVerybody MARCH now!
If Ledeen thinks ‘we’ are all fascists, then ‘he’ is a fascist.
I don’t agree with Ledeen, that ‘we’ are all fascists. I don’t agree with Newsweek saying ‘we’ are all socialists. I know what I am: neither.
Hitler’s fascists were as far left as it gets. They were the National Socialists & their policies were socialism, under fascist control.
But to me, fascism is something significantly darker than any of us really understand or expect to live under.
Another here called it. Its “control.” And that control extends far beyond what many imagine. For the lazy, its no big deal. For the enterprising, its an abomination.
Government today says a woman’s body is private & if she wants an abortion, its OK. But now they want a national health panel to review & decide what treatments we get for our ills. Why is my body less private than a woman’s? Why is my health less private than a woman’s pregnancy? And why does it take another government program to collect data on all of us? Like they will be able to keep that info private! Yea, right! Sure they will!
The Democrats are over-reaching & I pray it comes back to haunt them big time!
But now they want a national health panel to review & decide what treatments we get for our ills.
This is another wingnut lie. That’s not IN the bill and not even
hinted at.
58. Pajewmas tuba teakettle of fish wrote:
Have you ever noticed how undemocratic US businesses are run?
Peter writes: Please show me where it is written that privately owned businesses must be run like a democracy?
Michael, when you have had to swallow a quart of castor oil, I’ll buy that we’re having fascism. Till then, you’re just hyperventilating.
So THIS is what it looks like when Republicans go over the deep end!
Pssst…you guys lost.
Picky. Picky. Picky. What difference does it make that the government lets us keep legal title to our businesses and property, if it tells us we must do with them? We’ve been living with encroaching fascism since the New Deal. The same people who admired Stalin also thought that Mussolini and Hitler were wonderful, until Stalin branded the other two “rightists.”
Look, let’s face the facts, socialism and fascism are simply two sides to the same coin. Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and to a large degree FDR were all socialists.
C’mon, quit with the differences without a difference. NAZI stood for National Socialist German Worker’s Party. Nazi party members believed they were the purer form of socialists, hence their undying hatred of Soviet communists whom they believed were giving socialism a bad name. No love lost between socialists of different persuasions, hence their tendency to involve themselves in fratricide. The hate between the Sov-Coms and the Chi-Coms is exhibit #1.
Marxists, communists, socialists, statists they’re all the same since they are all collectivists who want to exercise ever greater power over industry, political institutions, the economy,and the people.
Fascist or Socialist, the problem is the same. The more that government interferes in what would otherwise be voluntary mutual exchange, the more it injects noise into the price signal by which every transaction informs the other participants in the market about the current price of the things that interest them.
Not only does this distort everyone’s decionsmaking about how to allocate their own finite resources, it also screws up the government decisionmakers who are busy trying to make the economy do their bidding. The net effect is to degrade the ability of the economy to function. It destroys efficiency and wealth. If the interfernce is significant enough, the various players cannot make a real profit and thus start to fail, first to service the debt that was borrowed to “stimulate” the economy and next to pay their own cash flow needs.
The Left loves to lecture the rest of us about “sustainability” when it comes to things they can game and spin. Stragely, they don’t seem to care about sustainable economic policies. You cannot go on foreever printing money or borrowing it from China. That is not sustainable, as much as the fans of big government wish it were.
BTW, what passes for “liberalism” or “progressivism” today is little more than warmed over fascist collectivism. The liberalism of the Founding Fathers was thus:
The belief that governmental power should be limited and clearly defined by a mutual covenant with the People vis a vis a Constitution was liberal.
The belief that our rights were a “gift of God” (Thomas Jefferson, et al) and not bequeath to the common man vis a vis government was liberal. A Constitution merely enumerates the rights of free men, it doesn’t create them out of thin air. Alexander Hamilton noted, “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased (by political usurpations).”
The belief that we were responsible for our actions and had the God-given right to personally defend ourselves through arms against those governments or individuals who showed no such responsible restraint was liberal.
The belief that the family, and not a ruling elite, was the bedrock of civil society was liberal.
The belief that we had a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of property (which was the ultimate happiness of most of the American Founders) with as little impediments from a national government was liberal.
… which in that light means that traditional conservatives and little “l” libertarians are the true liberals today. Rather ironic, right?
yes erik, the republicans did lose,deservadly so. but even the most ardent admirer has to be a bit concerned right now. his inexperience is showing, and anyone who took a high school economics course knows more about the economy then the ‘messiah’. there will come a time that people will hold him accountable, not right now, but soon, and his preaching like a minister won’t work anymore. he’s a tool, not very bright, just smart enough to give a good speech. i hope he succeeds, but i doubt it. he already started to blame bush, but he promised he had the answers, well, it turns out he doesn’t have them. just a pretty boy with fancy talk. so far, more like carter then clinton.
“All Republicans are not Facists, but all Facists are Republicans.”
Sufficiently broaden your definition of a term, say fascism, and you can fit anyone or anything in. Be sufficiently selective in accepting evidence in those you are judging and you can exclude anyone or anything, say political friends or enemies.
Shorter most commenters above, it’s fascism when you do it but not when we do it.
Face it there are no fascists in mainstream American politics, not Bush and not Obama. Political discourse will take a major step forward when people on both sides of the aisle recognize this and engage with substance over name calling.
“Peter writes: Please show me where it is written that privately owned businesses must be run like a democracy?”
I never said privately owned business must be ran democratically. It was merely stated that US businesses shouldn’t be ran totally contrary to a democracy. I took it to mean, some aspects of business should conduct as a democracy and not behave so much like a dictatorship.
By the way it was a topic from a site posted back in 1998. I gave my opinion that it still held true today.
I looked at the comment as sending the message of workplace bias. I’ve experienced it as did people I know.
An example would be:
You dedicate yourself to a company, work hard, maintain a good rapport with co-workers, and are productive. But when an opening for a promotion comes along you’re passed up for someone who is undoubtedly lacking in one or more of the work ethics I stated. It almost seems like if you work to hard at your job, you’re doomed to keep that position. Your fruits of labor never materialize, and the opportunity to climb up the ladder is stalled again.
I just wonder how many people feel as though they are never rewarded their just reward, and before you know it, time has passed you by. You’re alot older and switching jobs is an option, but at this point not enough time make the climb up the ladder.
Oh well, such is life, in big city capitalism.
@Kevin in OK & SteveRX8:
Thanks for the advice. Kevin’s approach was more along the lines of what I would be more apt to try. Seen a lot of people go belly up with businesses. I’d rather avoid the headache, but good luck in your endeavor.
The “work your way to the top” mentality isn’t what it used to be.
To change the subject (as if I haven’t already), I am curious as to what some of you think about the future, in respect to ingenuity and competitive edge in corporate America.
Are we just transferring our wealth to other countries, and in a sense giving them the power to take the lead, by affording them skilled labor through outsourcing manufacturing jobs?
What I mean is, are we taking a big risk on the idea that we will maintain our edge, indefinitely?
I reread what I typed on #127, and other than some missing or misplaced commas, and minor syntax mistakes, I misspelled “too” as “to”.
I guess a guy commits himself to perfection, when he tries to correct himself. Add a “to” and correct “alot” to “a lot”.
120. Marc Malone:
““Arbeit macht frei.” is a propoganda quote. The quoter was using it sarcastically. Jeez, but you’re ignorant. You get the words, but you miss their underlying significance. It’s the difference between a Lib and a Con: Depth of understanding.”
I knew it was posted in nazi concentration camps. Your sarcasm was very faint. Yeah, a Con using Nazi slogans, what a coincidence . . .
#139- “all Republicans are not Facists, but all Facists are Republicans” What is a facist? Is that someone who uses Facebook? Why is it in quotes? Was it spoken by the guy you were smoking crack with? Leave political discussion to your betters; those who made it through middle school.
Frank
“The way I define it, is Extreme Left = 100% Statism, and Extreme Right = 100% Anarchy.”
Well I bet that differs on our side of the pond :
extreme Left = anarchy, ie terrorist attacks, “Action Directe” in the earlier eighties, the “Bader/Maierhoff gang” in Germany, “red briguades” in Italy…
lately some stoopid bombs were ment to explode on TGV rails, and in a big parisian Store, I reassure you, this was proven to be from young idiot leftists !!!
extreme right = a militarised and stated dictature , ie greek colonels in 1967~, Turkey in the eighties, Chile in the eighties, Argentina… to a certain extend, Spain during Franco’s regime, at least in the beginnings !!! Portugal before the “clove revolution”… to be sure of that, you just have to visit these countries, and their former castel-jails… and how their army behaved a few decades ago !!!
“The march is a revival of German far-right megalomania and extreme nationalism,” said Funke. “The far-right’s strength isn’t in parliament but rather in a rightist and neo-Nazi sub- culture that’s been unbroken since the 1990s.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aGstsMp983DI&refer=worldwide
Now, it is obvious that lot of people in the US don’t understand “fashism” like we do, WE did experienced such regimes, while you read them through your school-books with the prism of your “capitalist” eye, though, if we analyse your country infrastructures, you are no more nor less than a “social” democraty too, just that it hurts you to acknoledge it !!!
“extreme right = a militarised and stated dictature ”
By that definition the Soviet Union and Communist China, along with their satellites, were all examples of extreme right politics. Even in Europe I doubt that many people believe this to be the case.
This name calling hides the true nature of politics. It assumes that the political world can be described by a line segment where there is a left and a right and that’s it. Instead, politics is an N-dimensional space where one political movement might evolve and adapt from another, but the issues of any time are too complicated to be resolved on a simple, one-dimensional line.
To call Obama and Pelosi fascists is to oversimplify the problem to the point where it makes no sense at all, much like the people who wanted to impeach Bush and Cheney.
The word fascist should be retired from all political discussion. Whatever its original meaning, these days it’s just another variant on that other f word. I’ve seen people call Winston Churchll a fascist! It’s a way of swearing at people, nothing more.
Please get real,nobody owns property in the US.We just rent from the gov. .Don’t belive it?Try not paying your taxes.
The difference between a fascist and a
communist is that the fascist believes
that an elite will always rule. The
various “Peoples and Democratic Republics”
are just facades. Remember the socialism
in National Socialism and Union of Soviet
Socialist Republic. Also remember the
Nazis were only one flavor of fascist.
The “communists” are too dishonest to
admit their system will not work. Human
nature precludes it. However both fascists
and communists are predatory. They engage
in massive spending that would bankrupt
the state. Therefore they need enemies.
Enemy classes, enemy peoples etc that they
exploit to pay for their enterprises.
Also both are hostile to vibrant democracies
as these democracies undermine the need for
their existence. Both so called socialists
and fascists are control freaks. They need
to dictate and control all aspects of life
according to their opinions no matter if
their opinion is true or not or makes sense
or not.
This is such damned nonsense. To a greater or lesser extent every state in the democratic west essentially functions as a social democracy. The US is perhaps least along the track, most conspicuously in the area of healthcare which btw is not exactly a testament to free market philosophy, but nevertheless in most essentials it’s true. All this echo chamber stuff to convince us conservatives are for small govt is ludicrous. We’ve just come to the end of eight years of almost total Republican rule during which the cost fo govt as a % of GDP increased and the national debt doubled. Not only that but in the last year of the Republican administration they embarked on a series of bailout actions that made the efforts in most of Europe look very small. And yet we bloviate on about it. In fact I honestly believe the GOP has become the captive of doctrines which in many cases are flawed and are certainly out of tune with the times. Mr Ledeen who predictions haven’t been notably accurate over the past eight years thinks they are a good thing. Personally I believe they are the route to political marginization.
chere Steve M, your right, though from our westernie perspective we suffered more from what is labelled “extreme right” powers, the commies states were/are a “far nightmare”, except for the eastern republics, but Poland, Romania, Hongary, Tchecoslovackia, Yougoslavia… that forgot how it was hard to survive under Nazi pressions, which were operated by persons traditionally labelled in the “right” party (with catholic religion endorsment), in their own countries and their occupation armies
Boyd (#59) wrote: “I have wondered how say a Zimbabwe can survive at all with an inflation rate in the thousands of percent. The answer appears to me to be that no one participates in that economy. The real economy is underground – the black market.”
Here in Los Angeles, the city government has passed a law that makes restaurants tell the customers how many calories each plate has in it–ostensibly to combat our obesity “crisis.” After all, the State knows what a restaurant should be feeding its customers.
Here’s the underground economy part: we were eating in a restaurant that shall go nameless. I ordered the sole, looking forward to the usual delicious meal that restaurant was known for.
The dish arrived. It was dry and very pedestrian. The waitress then slipped behind me and whispered in my ear, “Would you like some lemon butter sauce to put on that?”
Say “lemon butter” to me and I’m yours. “Of course!” was my reply. A healthy serving appeared in a side bowl, obviously “off menu.”
That sauce absolutely MADE the meal. It was delicious.
The restaurant had figured out how to maneuver around the government regulation to keep its customers happy.
That is a beginning of an underground economy.
#16…If the BHO crew are the equivalent of the Nazi elite, who is going to make the whole thing work…
Who is Albert Speer?
#146…We in America might have never suffered under Fascism as those in Europe did,
We just ended it!
You might go read the names on the headstones at Normandy, and at other locations.
A very thought provoking article, my hats off to Mr. Ledeen, as well as comments that are passionate in their thinking and delivery. Some show the writers depth and lack of depth more rhetoric that substance, (and the same tired old arguments and accusations). I would respectfully submit that whether one wants to call it socialism, fascism or just a power grab from DC, my humble opinion is we are so screwed, and we did it to our selfs through apathy and allowing ourselves to abdicate our responsibilities to those who have no right to assume them.
151. Oran wrote:
Please get real,nobody owns property in the US.We just rent from the gov. .Don’t belive it? Try not paying your taxes.
Peter writes: You become one of two things. Either a convict or a Democratic Cabinet nominee.
The fact is Mike,We’re headed towards socialism fast. Unless we the people do something to stop the current administration and congress,we’ll be there in less than ten years!!!
At last, PJM and KOS are using the same content-free pejorative to describe our country.
“Are we just transferring our wealth to other countries, and in a sense giving them the power to take the lead, by affording them skilled labor through outsourcing manufacturing jobs?”
I guess I was vague on this statement. What I meant to say is, are we making other nations such as China smarter and richer at own expense?
When you compare imports and exports of China to us, in the USA, the numbers are defintely not in our favor.
USA
Exports $1.149 trillion f.o.b. (2007 est.)
Imports $1.968 trillion c.i.f. (2007 est.)
China
Exports (2007) $1.22 trillion f.o.b.
Imports (2007) $904.6 billion f.o.b.
And we’re the ones who are paying the bill, for both countries.
The average Joe isn’t making any money off of investments in China.
If this trend continues, we will lose our edge. Not unless the whole country goes high tech.
Obama is a Fabian Socialist, they gradually change a democracy through reform to socialism, and don’t do it through bloody revolution. He should be charged with not upholding the constitution, lying under oath. The constitution gives the right to take census to the congress, not the executive branch. Remember the protest of the 60′s well, I do, instead of all of us who are concerned, write pretty comments, we should be bombarding Obama’s oppostioin with mail, about our concerns. Maybe we should storm DC. Where is Patton when you need him.
can we ever ever want to ever read NEWSREEK i mean its just another one of those dirty lying left-wing news rags not worth subcribing to and a complete waste it should be boycotted into bankruptsy
The State is at war with its own Citizens. They believe their an Entitled class, with the rest of us as just property like serfs. To stupid to think for ourselves. If that is not happening, be sure they will encourage it. Platonic in thinking with eugenics, or as it was known before the Nazis, social Darwinism. In a delusional mindset they believe there superior philosopher Kings by blood or achievement. The betters from the common herd.
Your money in these psyche’s is actually owned by them . This group ranges from Academics, Union heads, Political dynasties, Bureaucrats, Planned parenthood. right up to CEO’s the world over.
Did people actually think the Aristocrats, Tyrants, or Totalitarians have just left planet Earth & have done nothing to regain absolute power since the American Revolution? Your an investment, not free men in the caverns of evil they call wits.
This will just accelerate the process.
I think the fact that there are more illiterate people in America or the Canada’s today than back at the turn of the 19nth Century says it all. Considering the pennies they paid for education versus the billions now. The conjoining of the leftists & Islamists. Fascism is correct.
An excellent piece well stated for the times. Obama was their horse. I am beginning to think McCain was as well. His shock was palatable when he started to win. He did everything possible but quite after that. Even eviscerate Palin himself. The intelligentsias reaction was proof positive of distain for ordinary people. Remember Joe the Plummer‘s social keel hauling by the latte crowd? The fix was in.
JMO
Such dictatorships are marked by the worship of a “glorious leader” (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Jong, Obama) AND the taking away of modern and effective firearms from the People—Along with newspeak which calls free speech suppression “Fairness Doctrine” and the taking away of the freedom to NOT participate in abortions “Freedom Of Choice”
Marie Claude: Please grow up and get off the constant “blame game” against the catholic church.
The majority of catholics in America are more progressive-minded and much less dogma-oriented than any of the Euro counterparts found in your world, so your argument against them doesn’t hold water.
Catholicism’s power emaninates from the bottom up, The Pope has no power without a clergy beneath.
Your constant “blame-game bashing” reveals you to be the “Humanist” you truly are, and my friend, humanism breeds totaltarianism;where man makes man a “God”.
Hence the state of affairs we face today, for if we adhered to a time-proven morality based upon absolutes, instead of humanistic relativisms the world would be a better place all around.
And one last note: IT’S FasCism..not FasHism unless you think it to be FASHIONable.
Apologies for the typo; it’s “emanates” I meant to communicate.
When do I have to join the Democratic party in order to keep my job?
I recommended Michael Ledeen to read a book by James Gregor, “The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the 20th Century”. Fascism had its origin in communism (Marxism), which had its origin in socialism.
Governments have been meddling, controlling, manipulating etc. their citizens since civilization began in the days of Egypt and Sumer. Pure anarcho-libertarians are few and far between. It will always be a push-pull between freedom and control as long as there are governments. The more complex and populous society gets, the more complex and ambiguous the struggle will be.
No matter what name you put on it, Obama and his army are on the attack to do as much damage to the structure of this country as quickly as they can. They are taking control of as many key industries and institutions as possible before anyone can stop them. The enemies of liberty and free markets have orchestrated the decline we are witnessing and they plan to make things much worse. Everything they propose flies in the face of prudence. It has been a long time coming for them and now they are ready to cut the heart out of this country. They are pulling out all of the stops too. They are using elements of all of the anti-personal freedom, anti-free market philosophies. They will lie in your face with a smile and call you a liar if you challenge them. These are ruthless men and women who are insane with their own self righteousness and will stop at nothing to prove it. So while you all are bickering over who is what, Barak and his posse are quickly preparing to make sure these subjects are never discussed in open free fashion again. It comes down to this; If you think that Barak Obama and his goons are going to do what is best for this country you are in for a very unpleasant surprise! Socialist, Communist,Fascist,Progressive,they all lead to the same end. What we have to do is get off of our asses and stop them before this country disappears completely.
I am trying to find a photo of FDR giving a fiery speech in front of a massive print of his own face (probably 10 feet tall by 5 feet wide) — Mussolini-style.
If you have seen the intro to the HBO show Carnivale, you know what I am talking about. Here it is on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMqLks7qnew (FDR is at the 1:17 mark)
Dennis,
Marie Claude: Please grow up and get off the constant “blame game” against the catholic church.
I don’t remember that I ranted against the catholic church on that board, besides, it is a fact that Catholic church ruled more or less for Fascims, evident in Spain, mitigated in Deutschland but rather silent, sure in Poland during the german occupation, http://kimel.net/poland.html
the pope never condamned the Nazis in Italy and the italian establishment was composed of good christians that assisted to Mussolini militia parades : http://kimel.net/pope.html
Bizarrely, in the occupied France Church dared to raise her voice (funny, it’s always France who does) :
http://kimel.net/france.html
The majority of catholics in America are more progressive-minded and much less dogma-oriented than any of the Euro counterparts found in your world, so your argument against them doesn’t hold water.
did I say anything but the facts ???
Catholicism’s power emaninates from the bottom up, The Pope has no power without a clergy beneath.
Your constant “blame-game bashing” reveals you to be the “Humanist” you truly are, and my friend, humanism breeds totaltarianism;where man makes man a “God”.
well, you’re extrapoling here I wasn’t in the blame-game-bashing part
humanism that isn’t well understood might breed totalitarism, but these who use ideas are not humanists, they are doctrinaires !
Montaigne was an humanist, I wouldn’t qualify him of moral relativist, he was quite a moderate christian
Voltaire also, a anti-religion jihadist, but a subtile deist though
Rousseau, the hippie, poor man, I don’t know how he feels in his grave !
Hence the state of affairs we face today, for if we adhered to a time-proven morality based upon absolutes, instead of humanistic relativisms the world would be a better place all around.
well your talking of the 68retarded generation
And one last note: IT’S FasCism..not FasHism unless you think it to be FASHIONable., thanks, very thoughtful !!!
in the hurry I sometime forget to correct myself, and write down according to the phonetic, though I am very good at writing in my language
Apologies for the typo; it’s “emanates” I meant to communicate. LMAO
totaltarianism; what does that mean ???
a pleasure cher Dennis
It’s over, let’s go to sleep.
So does this make Obama, Il Douche ?
No one, in either major party, has taken up the cry to downsize governmant.
America’s chief problem stems from neither too much taxes (they are too high) nor too little freedom (freedom is on the decline especially under Abortionist-in-Chief); rather, it stemss from too much government intrusion in our lives (on a geometrically-increasing rise under B Hussein and the Dumbocrat congress — we ain’t seen nothin’ yet) and unchecked government spending (when have you heard of a government program being cut back or reduced in scale and scope.)
Less government, less spending. Not a difficult idea to grasp. We are creating more dependency on governments, more entitlements that will haunt future generations, all for the sake of what? Wake up, people!
um, there is a “hope”, that my reply will be edited !!!
“incorporated mythological themes of ‘greatness’ from an imagined past”
Doesn’t a certain honour/shame culture use this today?
Marie Claude:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Dennis,
Marie Claude: Please grow up and get off the constant “blame game” against the catholic church.
I don’t remember that I ranted against the catholic church on that board, besides, it is a fact that Catholic church ruled more or less for Fascims, evident in Spain, mitigated in Deutschland but rather silent, sure in Poland during the german occupation, http://kimel.net/poland.html
the pope never condamned the Nazis in Italy and the italian establishment was composed of good christians that assisted to Mussolini militia parades : http://kimel.net/pope.html
Bizarrely, in the occupied France Church dared to raise her voice (funny, it’s always France who does) :
http://kimel.net/france.html
The majority of catholics in America are more progressive-minded and much less dogma-oriented than any of the Euro counterparts found in your world, so your argument against them doesn’t hold water.
did I say anything but the facts ???
Catholicism’s power emaninates from the bottom up, The Pope has no power without a clergy beneath.
Your constant “blame-game bashing” reveals you to be the “Humanist” you truly are, and my friend, humanism breeds totaltarianism;where man makes man a “God”.
well, you’re extrapoling here I wasn’t in the blame-game-bashing part
humanism that isn’t well understood might breed totalitarism, but these who use ideas are not humanists, they are doctrinaires !
Montaigne was an humanist, I wouldn’t qualify him of moral relativist, he was quite a moderate christian
Voltaire also, a anti-religion jihadist, but a subtile deist though
Rousseau, the hippie, poor man, I don’t know how he feels in his grave !
Hence the state of affairs we face today, for if we adhered to a time-proven morality based upon absolutes, instead of humanistic relativisms the world would be a better place all around.
well your talking of the 68retarded generation
And one last note: IT’S FasCism..not FasHism unless you think it to be FASHIONable., thanks, very thoughtful !!!
in the hurry I sometime forget to correct myself, and write down according to the phonetic, though I am very good at writing in my language
Apologies for the typo; it’s “emanates” I meant to communicate. LMAO
totaltarianism; what does that mean ???
it was a pleasure cher Dennis
Marie Claude:
Your comment is awaiting moderation. (a guess, cuz of the links ????)
Dennis,
Marie Claude: Please grow up and get off the constant “blame game” against the catholic church.
I don’t remember that I ranted against the catholic church on that board, besides, it is a fact that Catholic church ruled more or less for Fascims, evident in Spain, mitigated in Deutschland but rather silent, sure in Poland during the german occupation, http : // kimel.net/poland.html
the pope never condamned the Nazis in Italy and the italian establishment was composed of good christians that assisted to Mussolini militia parades : http : // kimel.net/pope.html
Bizarrely, in the occupied France Church dared to raise her voice (funny, it’s always France who does) :
http : // kimel.net/france.html
The majority of catholics in America are more progressive-minded and much less dogma-oriented than any of the Euro counterparts found in your world, so your argument against them doesn’t hold water.
did I say anything but the facts ???
Catholicism’s power emaninates from the bottom up, The Pope has no power without a clergy beneath.
Your constant “blame-game bashing” reveals you to be the “Humanist” you truly are, and my friend, humanism breeds totaltarianism;where man makes man a “God”.
well, you’re extrapoling here I wasn’t in the blame-game-bashing part
humanism that isn’t well understood might breed totalitarism, but these who use ideas are not humanists, they are doctrinaires !
Montaigne was an humanist, I wouldn’t qualify him of moral relativist, he was quite a moderate christian
Voltaire also, a anti-religion jihadist, but a subtile deist though
Rousseau, the hippie, poor man, I don’t know how he feels in his grave !
Hence the state of affairs we face today, for if we adhered to a time-proven morality based upon absolutes, instead of humanistic relativisms the world would be a better place all around.
well your talking of the 68retarded generation
And one last note: IT’S FasCism..not FasHism unless you think it to be FASHIONable., thanks, very thoughtful !!!
in the hurry I sometime forget to correct myself, and write down according to the phonetic, though I am very good at writing in my language
Apologies for the typo; it’s “emanates” I meant to communicate. LMAO
totaltarianism; what does that mean ???
a pleasure cher Dennis
You removed my comments just because you “interpreted” my statement as calling you a racist. What is the difference between your interpretation that allows you to remove my comments and what the “Great Leader” in Iran does, when he “interpret” some negative statement against himself?
I’m sure you’ll remove this comment as well.
can’t be edited a fascism rule over there, LMAO
there is no more “hope” ;sad:
I see people write about corporate facism where a few corporations own all the companies. This is just an out and out lie. There is facism, the government running the corporations. Corporations only have the power that the government gives them. The idea that the companies are to blame for for bad legislation is just silly. Corporations don’t write or pass legislation. The worst deeds ever committed in our country and the world required participation from a government. From the Pinkerton security forces shooting miners, to the World Trade Center bombings, a government somewhere had to participate. Our government looked the other way for Pinkerton, Afghanistan looked the other way for Bin Laden. You can’t perform these terrible acts without a government helping, either by material support or just not interferring in your actions. Corporations have never, in the history of our world, ever ruled a country anywhere. It is always the government. They can be paid to look the other way, they can be littered with board members of corporations, but in the end the government always has the control.
Actually, the Catholic Church is now and has always been a rigid top-down hierarchy. The idea that it is ruled from the bottom up is a delusion – comforting, perhaps, but not borne out in reality (just ask Gallileo). As Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits said:
“…we ought even to hold as a fixed principle that what I see white I believe to be black, if the superior authorities define it to be so.”
The day the Church renounces Papal Infallability and replaces it with the doctrine of Democratic Laic Infallability, I’ll concede your argument.
Mark Ross,
The use of labels like Communism, Fascism, Socialism, even Capitalism would have more meaning if you and most of the people in this country could actually define them correctly.
Here’s something to consider:
State Socialism (as opposed to Democratic Socialism) holds that if the State is free to strategize economically for what it perceives is the best interest of the entire society, somehow – magically – not only with the result be the best for the people as a whole, but for each individual as well.
Libertarian laissez-faire free-market Capitalism holds that if the individual is free to strategize economically for what he perceives in in his own best interest, somehow – magically – not only will the result be the best for the individual, but for the people as a whole.
The logic of both is manifestly insane and can only be accepted as valid if your Capitalist or Socialist ideology is so strong it supplants reality – trust the map even when it differs from the terrain.
Game Theory is often separated into two types of games, non-cooperative games (individuals acting alone) and cooperative games (groups acting in agreement – enforced from outside). Ever since the emergence in about 1949, non-cooperative games have virtually always resulted in poorer results for the individuals than cooperative games. Google the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the Tragedy of the Common, or, if you research deeply enough, you may find (libertarian/anarchist/economist) David Friedman’s example of the Pikemen versus the Cavalry charge, which is an effective refutation of much that orthodox libertarian or Randian individualism teaches.
When you look at all the commentary here, it’s clear that darn few people know the history of Socialism, or even understand fascism. LeDeen has it about right.
Two more elements of fascsim need more discussion – the control of the press and academia by the statist cabal. Academia, especially in the humantiies, was ceded to the socialist-fascist block back when Bloom wrote about it. Further armed with more viral forms of victimhood ideology, it has only gotten only more strident and suffocating. My son reported last week that in his graphics art class, he was accused of being a “racist, bigot, intolerant,” for having concocted a graphic of Obama as a Spiderman nemisis at his East coast private school. Even the normally dullard Obot students rallied to his cause. He wrote that he was going to make the drawing even more sinister and let the teacher have it. It remains to be seen how the school will react.
The first stranglehold on academia naturally leads to the second, – the Left’s almost total dominance of mainstream media, and the current threats to suffocate the only conservative media left – talk radio – through statist measures.
With the economy, academia, and the press under their almost total ideological dominance, with no accointability or opposition, it is no wonder that the word “bipartisan” has come more and more to mean “We won so jump on our statist bandwagon or else.”
Fascism has a stake in all major enterprises and controls the distribution of resources. If you have 20 million tons of steel and you want to build tanks then you take the steel that was going for consumer goods and send it to the tank factory. This can be done because it is the law and anyone who opposes it gets a vacation in a state run resort encircled by barbed wire. Unless an accident happens to them.
People get confused about left and right politics because it really isn’t linear. Politics is circular. If you go far enough right or left you become what you had once dispised.
By the way, game theory is crap. At least as applied to nations, orginisations and societies. It also is poor at reflecting individuals choises as it doesn’t take into account pride, prejudice, fear, loyalty and poor bloody mindedness. If it really reflected reality then Robert MacNamera would have been a genius and N. Vietnam would have surrendered in the mid 60s. Just because it seems to work in games has no validity in the real world. People are people and no matter how much you hate that it won’t make it any different.
Enforced cooperation is what dictator’s impose on subjects. While a large part of the US population is ready for this a significant number will not tolerate it. Be afraid of trying to impose this.
Socialism is the vesting of ownership and control in the community as a whole, ie, the state. Fascism is a governmental system with total control of the citizenry, ie, the means of production, but not neccesarily ownership. Fascists leave much property in the name of its owners, but they tell the owners exactly what they can and can’t do. On the scale of freedom (yes, it IS linear and don’t listen to that crap about it being circular)socialism is on the far left and INDIVIDUALISM is on the far right. Fascism comes up in between the two as a “mix” of the two systems, but only on the far left, just next to pure socialism, ie, communism. America has still been far right of center for the last 50 years, in spite of the New Deal etc., but is moving LEFTWARD. Yes, it’s fascism every time the government takes more power/control over the means of production for itself, but The government does not yet control enough of the economy to call us fascist. But we are MOVING in that direction. The worry is that we will soon be completely fascist, and that could happen. I don’t see us ever becoming completely socialist, but who knows?
@208. Frisco D’Anconia:
Hogwash. Authoritarianism is the far right extreme – despotism, if you will. Totalitarianism. On the far left is the polar opposite known as anarchy. Pure individualism, if you will. Democracy is to the left of center, vesting most power in the people. Our Constitutional Republic is slightly to the right of this, but in the same vein. On the far right, you find monarchs, popes and despots.
Peace.
DS
Hardly. The far right is about despotism. the far left is about despotism. The far right (if it bothers to justify itself) claims to be the best for the country and it’s people. The far left claims to be the best for the people.
Look at Hitler and Lenin. Different claims, same methods, same results. Left and right have met.
Center is as close as one gets to individual freedom and individual responsibility. The country today is left of center and has been since the 30s.
A minor correction: fascism and Marxism are both branches of socialism. In both cases the government claims complete control of the economy and all means of production. Marxism abolishes personal property and corporations are branches of the State. Fascism allows personal property and corporations separate from the State, but the State retains full control over the economy and the corporations, either by controlling ownership or by regulation.
Modern Fascism, Gene Edward Veith, Concordia Publishing House, 1993, pp 26-27
Sources: “Liberal Fascism” by Jonah Goldberg and “Modern Fascism” by Gene Edward Veith, Jr.
So far as I know, neither auther was aware of the other when they wrote their books, but they both came to identical conclusions: that the modern European/American “Liberal” tradition is directly derived from the fascist school of thought followed by Hitler and Mussolini.
Mongoose: your comments re the nature of fascism are correct and in accordance with what I’ve read in “Modern Fascism” and “Liberal Fascism” both. It’s always amazing to me how many people reduce these arguments to “he said, she said, I think” when there are perfectly good references out there which define precisely what fascism is and how it comes to be. The most important thing to learn from the reading is that the modern movement towards fascism didn’t begin with Obama nor with the modern Democrat party, but is a direct descendent from the philosophical roots and teachers that resulted in Hitler and Mussolini. This is an enemy with a considerable past and who is deeply entrenched, and we will not win our freedom back quickly.
Michael, David S.: putting aside for the moment the labels “right” and “left”, which – along with “Liberal” and “conservative” are deceiving, being derived from historical references and subject to change over time, the spectrum proceeds from Socialism (with its emphasis on the State over the individual) at one end to Libertarianism (with the emphasis on the individual over the state) on the other. In a way that is consistant with the Navajo concept of walking the balance way, a good government is one that balances the two extremes. Ideally (for lack of a better term) Socialism has no individual rights at all, and any person is simply a worker ant in the collective. Similarly, an ideal Libertarian society would have no government at all and every man would watch out for himself.
Both extremes are falicies, of course, given actual human nature. In any socialist state the most powerful people become the elite and run the State. Similarly (ironically) any Libertarian society would collapse in short order and become a socialist state because – again – the strongest people would capture control of society for their own wellbeing. The founders of the U.S. knew this and stated such in the Federalist Papers, commenting that the best possible governemnt was one that was minimal, with strict controls on the powers of the government and little trust of it.
It makes me weep to think about how different things might have been if Ron Paul had been elected.
“Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard–the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money–the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law–men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims–then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them.”
excerpt from Atlas Shrugged, © Copyright, 1957, by Ayn Rand.
Long, low whistle…
It’s time for Atlas to shrug – and then to pick up a gun.
And this, from a modern myth-maker:
Where is the horse and the rider?
Where is the horn that was blowing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like wind in the meadow.
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
How did it come to this?
How… did it come… to this?
Théoden King: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
i know bill gates is a new world order kook, why mess with mp3 . kus ya can
America hasn’t succumbed to socialism or fascism yet by virtue of the Kelo decision in New London, CT.
But because of that decision, it is toying with it in the sense that it justifies and condones a redistribution of property that leads to socialism and fascism.
Taking away someone’s property is socialism if it’s benefits become public property, and fascism if it becomes government property. If it becomes someone else’s property, it is, by definition, a theft by government/representers of government, to take from one to give to another. The act is done by the mentality and utility of fascism even though the outward appearances do not look like the occupation of fascism.
Decades before Goldberg wrote his book “Liberal Fascism” (sic), Professor Charlotte Twight published the book, “America’s Emerging Fascist Economy” in 1975. Oddly, it wasn’t mentioned by Goldberg, but then, it didn’t fit his “liberal is bad, conservative is good” thesis. Twight pointed out repeatedly that this system has been fostered and embraced by both political parties and is the dominant paradigm of the United States of America.
Dr. Twight referred to America’s version of economic fascism as “capitalistic collectivism” or “participatory fascism;” defining economic fascism as characterized by private ownership of the means of production coupled with the absolute power (whether exercised or not) of government to control every aspect of that private production, no matter how local.
The “participatory fascism” label referred to the insistence of those in power on demanding “participation” by the populace, –particularly by their opponents. Ayn Rand referred to this as demanding the “sanction of the victim.”
Economic fascism seeks to harness the productivity of the private market to the political objectives of the State. This is the model that most of the developed nations of the world have embraced. Of course ultimately such a system must, by the imperatives of its view of humanity and by its destructive effect on individuals, spill over into civil liberties.
Decades before Goldberg wrote his book “Liberal Fascism” (sic), Professor Charlotte Twight published “America’s Emerging Fascist Economy” in 1975. Oddly, it wasn’t mentioned by Goldberg, but then, it didn’t fit his “liberal is bad, conservative is good” thesis. Twight pointed out repeatedly that this system has been fostered and embraced by both political parties and is the dominant paradigm of the United States of America.
Dr. Twight referred to America’s version of economic fascism as “capitalistic collectivism” or “participatory fascism;” defining economic fascism as characterized by private ownership of the means of production coupled with the absolute power (whether exercised or not) of government to control every aspect of that private production, no matter how local.
The “participatory fascism” label referred to the insistence of those in power on demanding “participation” by the populace, –particularly by their opponents. Ayn Rand referred to this as demanding the “sanction of the victim.”
Economic fascism seeks to harness the productivity of the private market to the political objectives of the State. This is the model that most of the developed nations of the world have embraced. Of course ultimately such a system must, by the imperatives of its view of humanity and by its destructive effect on individuals, spill over into civil liberties.