The comments below are right insofar as I joined into Dr. Pat Deneen’s polemic against Fascism.
Nonetheless, it’s true that Brad Thompson does pretty much call Strauss and some Straussians at least something close to Fascists. The allegation amount to this: Anyone who promotes personal identification with the nation–or cultivates authentic citizenship–is a Fascist. I actually agree that some Straussians have been too much about national greatness and civic or political religion. But we wouldn’t call Churchill or Lincoln Fascists, would we? I wouldn’t call Plato a Fascist (although Brad certainly suggests that).
And I don’t deny the reality of progressivism having Fascist tendencies in past. You can see them in progressive eugenics, as I’ve said. But nobody is for eugenics for the benefit of the nation or the species or whatever now. Eugenics today has become personal. All of our trendy philosophy–Rawls, Rorty, etc.–is oriented around the perpetuation and flourishing of the person. Liberals globally are all about rights being the bottom line; the error of the past–the one that produced wars, oppression, religion, and such–was thinking of oneself as a part of something bigger or greater or more important than oneself. The individual or person has displaced the parent, the citizen, the creature etc. (see all the autonomy or emo personal self-definition stuff in LAWRENCE v. TEXAS, for example).
Obama is not a Fascist. McCain, in his most dramatic moments, is not a Fascist. National greatness Straussians aren’t Fascists. I’m sticking with those conclusions. The libertarians are winning folks.
March 24th, 2011 | 10:57 am
It is probably a stretch to call Plato a Fascist, after all, there were no such things in his day, but it is probably impossible to read his Laws and not see modern Fascism stamped all over them in practice.
March 24th, 2011 | 7:42 pm
Peter Lawler has done some pretty fancy and complicated back-pedaling here, worthy of a high-wire act. “Well, I didn’t mean that…hrummm….I mean, I admit that some of our folks are a little too much…You know…fascists….hrummm…..Thompson sort of hits the nail on the head…ahemmmm….But, I stick to my conclusions….Class dismissed…..”
March 24th, 2011 | 8:51 pm
I’d be interested to see what Thompson has to say about your characterization of his definition of Fascism, because I don’t think he’d agree. It seems too general to me.
For example, “personal identification with the nation” could apply equally to legtitimate patriotism and to racist, Aryan lunacy.
As for Plato, he advocated top-down rule by geniuses who know better than the general population. That pretty much rules out the populist collective ownership of Communism and Socialism. It seems closer to Fascism than not.
March 24th, 2011 | 8:59 pm
So Liberalism today is all about the individual? Is this why liberals intend to force people into government medicine, government schools, government student loans, government mortgages, government grants, etc.–need I go on?
March 24th, 2011 | 9:44 pm
Chuck got Thompson’s point. Why couldn’t have Lawler, and Pat Deneen?
March 24th, 2011 | 11:35 pm
The allegation amount to this: Anyone who promotes personal identification with the nation–or cultivates authentic citizenship–is a Fascist.
Cite? Or are you just going to keep making things up?
Fascism is not defined by something so shallow as “identification with the nation” or “cultivating authentic citizenship”. Fascism, like other species of collectivism, is defined by personal moral subjugation to the collective — in fascism’s particular case, the nation.
Other forms of collectivism substitute for that to which the individual is subordinated, but remain unified by the essence, which is that subordination.
Such is the true end-of-road of all whose motive originates in the premise of “something greater than themselves”.
The actual opposite — the premise that the individual is morally sovereign — is the concept that stops fascism dead in its tracks, but it scares the hell out of you for some reason you haven’t admitted to.
When you drop the straw men and deal with actual ideas rather than some fevered imagination or evasion thereof, we’ll take you seriously. Not before.
March 25th, 2011 | 12:09 am
I don’t necessarily read someone like Paul de Lagarde and see Plato in it at all, Chuck. Perhaps especially in his Laws.
March 25th, 2011 | 1:56 am
[...] prompted me to post about this, however, was this post and this one by Patrick Lawler, at one of the more intellectual-seeming conservatives sites, First Things. In [...]
March 25th, 2011 | 2:04 am
One need not be a fascist to make a distinction between living and living well–the bare life and the good life. Aristotle makes a distinction between living which involves a shared location, a general peaceableness, and having a market in common where each can economically meet the needs of the other in a way that each cannot solely provide for himself; and living well which involves a life of virtue and self sufficiency of both households and families choiceworthy and dignified for its own sake. To be sure, one must have the former necessity in order to have the latter life of virtue and beauty, but the good of life is more than the former. Excellence is not location, security and being able to meet economic necessity, as important as these things are. Modern societies–in a liberal and libertarian fashion–can provide for ample location, undreamed of peaceableness, and market prosperity in excess amounts where a day laborer is has air conditioning and a flat screen TV, but is this the sum and substance of what it means for living well (even in an individualistic or egoistic manner)? Virtue requires the knowledge of how to use such wealth and power well, and in terms of itself, the demand for endless acquisition does not provide the answer for the question of how wealth is well-used. I don’t think this question regarding wealth and power well used, as well as what kinds of virtue are required as preconditions for such economic growth and political liberty, is fascist in nature. Bradley Thompson does.
Bradley Thompson would argue for individual choice in terms of the Nozickian nightwatchman state. We need the minimal of requirements in order to live together, but it seems that his version of what a human life in its desires and frustrations entails is literally the bare minimum of living one amongst another. He assumes that first of all, as long as we have a nightwatchman state, we will each in our our individuality all sing “kumbayah.” This is naive at best if, for instance, one takes serious questions of religion seriously. He criticizes “neo-cons” for having a notion of the common good. However, I must ask what is the alternative? Each person being the judge of their own good with nothing in common? Even Locke, whom Thompson is so fond of, called this the state of nature–a situation of such great unease and inconvenience that it required government for those rational enough to see the poverty, the unease and inconvenience of their own situation.
In the present tense, perhaps Thompson is an advocate of federalism–an advocate of state, municipal or local government. I would agree with him in a general sense of letting people decide local issues on a local level, but insofar as there has been a U.S.A for 200 years or so, we need to have a sense of the general government too. The centralization of administration and regulation of life occurred long before the neocons came around. As Patrick Deneen points out, Thompson’s criticism of neoconservatism as not being somehow in the American grain is belied by the fact that so-called neocon ideas and rhetoric (albeit it is open for dispute and debate) go back at least to the American founding itself.
So Thompson seems to hate government (as it currently is). He hates the idea of the nation (as it is propogated by liberals and Brooksian conservative). He hates coercion (because apparently he is open to nothing but persuasion though speech). In sum he must hate politics, unless it is only on the realm of pure persuasion. The irony is that he criticizes the neocons for using Marvin Meyers’ term “persuasion” regarding Andrew Jackson because he thinks it masks the idea of force and coercion. It seems that Thompson’s point of view is indicative of a persuasion of what he calls the “enlightenment,” and one must wonder if in his case, he is not as persuasive as he thinks he is? Is he also willing to argue for the coercion necessary to make his nightwatchman statism real in the same way that he accuses the neocons of being? Does Thompson understand power as much as he says he does?
At the end of the day, I wonder if Thompson’s libertarianism which would have the effect of throwing everyone back on their own and their own liberty–what he calls Jeffersonian democracy– is not in itself the sum and substance of the origins of fascism? Both Tocqueville and Arendt agree that such individualism and anomie is more dangerous regarding fascism than so-called neocon statism–let alone some nefarious influence of Leo Strauss. Even Jefferson had a quite strict notion required for the education of the citizenry. And Leonard Levy has a nice book on Jefferson’s presidency called–Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side. How is this not fascism by Thompson’s standards?
Thompson is worried about public governmental regulation of the board room and the bed room. He neglects the insight that, insofar as a self is already not separated from all attachment in the first place, one’s character and belief is already formed by the most authoritative laws and customs of one’s society. “Nightwatchmanism,” insofar as it becomes the most authoritative good, forms character as much as family, church, school, union, party, local community and nation do. He forgets the ways in which his libertarianism can be just as fascistic as anything else.
No more than anyone else, my ideas don’t slip from my mouth by the hand of nature. I am bound by a tradition as much as anyone else, and contrary to Thompson’s point of view, that tradition may be worthy of defending as something larger than myself. It is true, I don’t do what I do with Spartan disregard for myself or my own–but in the United States nether does anyone else. It may be true that in the practical circumstances of geopolitics wars get started with no good reason, or at least get started outside of the processes of the legitimate constitutional deliberation of Congress. Perhaps we should seriously reconsider the role of the U.S in world affairs. However, blaming unfortunate foreign policy decisions on two groups which ultimately have little intellectually in common–i.e., neocons and Leo Strauss–for deliberately setting the conditions for some sort of friendly fascism (Bertram Gross) or liberal fascism (Jonah Goldberg) is borderline bizarro conspiracy theory. Besides, Jonah Goldberg’s account of fascism gives an entirely different genealogy of fascism in terms of the progressive era. It may be true that current necons are hawks, but Irving Kristol’s reading of Strauss interpreted by his son William and Robert Kagan is too far field to make some argument for a consistent metaphysics and epistemology–though I will applaud Thompson’s attempt to make sense of it all.
Perhaps, as Thompson would have it I’m just an unthinking fascist caught up in the “mythology” of the state. After all, Mussolini made the trains run on time, and I have to admit I like trains to run on time. So I must be a fascist.
Give me a break.
March 25th, 2011 | 9:29 am
So I appreciate all this libertarian/Randian threading. Rating have soared: I hope my evildoing becomes more widely known And of course I secretly enjoy being attacked as an evildoer. But I think the comments confirm my point–the individualism/collectivism distinction is mighty simpleminded. The word person is more nuanced insofar as it suggested that personal identity can be retained without lonely and disorienting, self-interested and unerotic moral sovereignty. But basically I agree with John.
I’m not even a neocon, really, and certainly not a porcher. But I do think I’m a friend, parent, son, citizen, and creature and can be those things without losing myself into altruistic collectivism. As I’ve explained, I doubt the word altruism makes any real sense.
March 25th, 2011 | 10:38 am
Four questions for Peter Lawler:
First, have you read C. Bradley Thompson’s book, Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea? If yes, can you please tell us exactly where in his book he makes, in your words, the “fantastic charge” that the neocons are “NATIONALISTIC FASCISTS” or that a “concern for virtue or the quality of citizens is FASCIST” (from your earlier post attacking Thompson)? If he did not say these things, can you please explain to us why you would say he did?
Second, have you read Thompson’s three essays at Cato Unbound in response to Patrick Deneen? If yes, can you please tell us if they apply to you in any way, particularly the one on Deneen’s intellectual method?
For Thompson’s responses to Deneen, see here:
1. “On Patrick Deneen’s Intellectual Method”: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/03/21/c-bradley-thompson/on-patrick-deneens-intellectual-method/
2. “On Deneen’s Argument, or the lack thereof”: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/03/21/c-bradley-thompson/on-deneen’s-argument-or-the-lack-thereof/
3. “On Americanism”: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/03/23/c-bradley-thompson/defining-americanism/
Third, if I were to say publicly “Peter Lawler reminds me of Ernst Rohm, but without even Ernst’s charm,” would it be fair to say that I had smeared you? If yes, do you stand by your similar smear of Thompson.
Finally, do you know Thompson personally (you give the impression that you do)? If yes, will you repeat the rather mean-spirited things that you’ve said about him to his face?
March 25th, 2011 | 12:29 pm
I have read the book. The book does buy into the Strauss is some kind of Fascist theory now prevalent these days and then connects the neocons–particularly the Kristolites–to Strauss in that way. I’m not sure I said anything mean, finally. There’s a certain integrity in that libertarian/Randian way of thinking, and Brad’s book is openly Randian. So I guess it’s actually the best Randian criticism of Strauss/neoconservatism around. Brad is a fine scholar, Rand isn’t, and the latter compromises the former. Americanism isn’t Randianism, thank God. I’ve only glanced at the articles you link, but I have read the book.
March 25th, 2011 | 12:30 pm
I have read the book. The book does buy into the Strauss is some kind of Fascist theory now prevalent these days and then connects the neocons–particularly the Kristolites–to Strauss in that way. I’m not sure I said anything mean, finally. There’s a certain integrity in that libertarian/Randian way of thinking, and Brad’s book is openly Randian. So I guess it’s actually the best Randian criticism of Strauss/neoconservatism around. Brad is a fine scholar, Rand isn’t, and the latter compromises the former. Americanism isn’t Randianism, thank God. While I don’t think the Straussians have a monopoly on Americanism either, they actually do take America much more seriously. I’ve only glanced at the articles you link, but I have read the book.
March 25th, 2011 | 11:00 pm
Taking some of John Presnall’s more egregious remarks about Bradley Thompson one by one:
He argues in his first paragraph for some kind of transcendental existence of the citizen, who knows the difference “living and living well” and sees no dichotomy between them, and denigrates the material conditions of successful living and argues, of course, for having a reason to live at all, for “something higher than oneself.” Living for one’s own selfish reasons is not good enough for neocons, and it takes the virtue of selflessness to “higher causes” to redeem one’s existence and to sanction all one’s material possessions. Without that “virtue,” he argues, one may be dismissed as a gross troglodyte who deserves to be lead around by the nose. Presnall argues for “wealth and power well used” – but by whose or what standards? Would he knight George Soros, self-made billionaire who spends his fortune funding collectivist and leftist – indeed, fascist – causes as an exemplar of a citizen who uses “well” his wealth and power? Or Warren Buffet or Bill Gates, who seek to serve “higher causes” by guiltily liquidating their wealth in a variety of collectivist and “humanitarian” causes (they call it “giving back” – but to whom? Or to what? Are they confessing that they were thieves of what they and no one else created?). Why should anyone make a distinction between their selflessness and that of a person Presnall approves of?
Presnall thus explicitly pays the usual neocon lip-service to individualism but stresses the “higher than oneself” reason for even tolerating individualism. Fundamentally, there is no difference – not to the individual – between the selflessness exhorted by neocons and that legislated by, say, Obama and Congress. Both require the employment of force. That “higher than oneself” element is there to override individualism and individual rights. That is its only purpose.
Presnall grows snide in his next paragraph, noting that Thompson claims that “as long as we have a night-watchman state, we will each in our own individuality all sing ‘kumbayah.’” He derides Thompson for criticizing neocons “for having a notion of the common good,” without naming what Thompson said was their notion of the common good – which was the state, or society. Then here and elsewhere Presnall brings in John Locke and Jefferson to buttress his argument – such as it is – falling back on the argument from authority, however, not stating how Locke and Jefferson help him in that regard. Locke and Jefferson were not infallible, and wrong on some key matters. Locke, for example, defended property rights because an individual “mixed his labor” into things; ergo, that made his property private; a poor metaphor and a tenuous premise on which to base a defense of private property. Jefferson, genius that he was, was wrong to advocate public, tax-supported education. I’ll go one further; Patrick Henry supported taxing citizens to fund religious education. And John Adams ended his presidency in a shameful endorsement of some very questionable legislation. But these men still were moral and intellectual giants compared to what passes for political savants today, including many employed by American universities.
Presnall’s next paragraph asks if Thompson is an advocate of federalism. I suspect he knows the answer. One will assume that he has read Thompson’s second rebuttal to Deneen on Cato Unbound on the subject of what should be defined as “the American grain.” If Thompson’s essay doesn’t disabuse him of what Thompson doesn’t mean, nothing will. Thompson doesn’t resort to obfuscation and digressions to make his points.
No, Thompson doesn’t hate government, as Presnall suggests in his next paragraph. Thompson advocates a limited government whose sole function is to preserve and protect individual rights. He would love a government that spared him the intrusive and extortionate burden of liberal and neocon “higher causes.” Here Presnall joins Deneen in attacking the Enlightenment and bringing up the “night-watchman” issue again, insinuating that a “libertarian” government that employed force wasn’t any different from a neocon one that employed force to advance a “higher cause” (shades of Herbert Croly’s and Woodrow Wilson’s “tonic of a moral adventure”).
Presnall then wonders “at the end of the day” if Thompson’s individualism cannot be equated with “fascism.” But individualism excludes the role of force – private or governmental –while fascism relies on force. Presnall wonders, but does not attempt to offer an explanation.
There’s more to Presnall’s commentary, but he ends it with another ad hominem and a dip into silliness, suggesting that Thompson probably would regard him as an “unthinking fascist caught up in the ‘mythology’ of the state.” I’ll make my own evaluation here and say that, yes, Presnall seems so caught up in the power of the state to guide and mold the citizenry in the best Platonic guardian tradition, and that he’s given the matter some thought, but not enough.
March 26th, 2011 | 2:44 pm
Since Mr. Thompson made the Declaration of Indepence central to his exposition of ‘Americanism’, perhaps a few comments on his reading are in order. 1) he entirely omitted the theological references in the text (4 in all); and 2) he omitted the passages in which government and politics are said to have ends beyond the protection of individual rights. These omissions indicate a certain bias in his reading. I also would contest the exhaustive defining value of the Declaration. Carey McWilliams (and in a lesser way, Barry Shain) have drawn our attention to other constitutive threads of the American fabric.
March 26th, 2011 | 2:50 pm
I appreciate the fact that you’ve responded to my questions, Professor Lawler, but I know you know that you’ve not really answered them.
I would still appreciate knowing where C. Bradley Thompson said, as you claim, that the neocons are “NATIONALISTIC FASCISTS.” I’ve just reread very closely the last chapter of his book and he does NOT say what you say he says. In fact, he goes out of his way to say that the neocons are not fascists. His argument seems to be much sophisticated, subtle and nuanced: he fears that their principles would lead the country down the road to fascism in the very same way that Leo Strauss said something very similar about Nietzsche.
As you must know from reading the book, Thompson is very sensitive to the nature and meaning of the conclusion that he draws about Strauss and the neocons. He clearly comes to it with great reluctance, but in the end he does so based on the evidence that he lays out over the course of an entire book. You begin with with his conclusion (which you don’t portray correctly), twist it, and then say nothing about Thompson’s evidence and argument.
Another question: Why do you say that Thompson’s book is openly Randian? What’s your evidence for that claim? That’s not how I read it.
March 26th, 2011 | 3:37 pm
@ Presnall:
Do you have reason to believe that your view of morality or virtue or excellence or citizenship is more rigorous than Thompson’s? If yes, how do you know? (Evidence rather than assertion would be most helpful. Otherwise, we we just have to accept your opinion on faith or authority.) What is Thompson’s moral theory that you seem to be rejecting? Are you suggesting that he has none or that it’s subjectivist in nature? Is your opinion based on things said in Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea, or are you suggesting to the readers here that you know him personally and regard your own personal moral virtues to be superior to his? Thanks.
March 27th, 2011 | 12:53 am
pp. 246-51 are about the many parallels between the Straussians, the neocons, and the fascists. The Straussians and the neocons are leading us down the road to fascism. p. 248: “It should be obvious by now that Goldberg’s definition of fascism bears a striking resemblance to neoconservative thought and practice.” (That would be news to the neocon fellow-traveler Goldberg!) p. 249: “The neoconservative synthesis that grows out of Strauss’s thought bears striking resemblances to fascism.” “Like the fascists, Strauss and the neocons are metaphysical collectivists. They take the nation as the primary unit of political value; they view the body politic as an organic whole.” etc etc THAT IS, THE STRAUSSIANS ARE NATIONALISTIC FASCISTS. And of course the book has its Plato is a fascist moments.
On the Randian thing–Brad wrote the book withYaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. And see for example p. 293, note 7–on the absolute, permanent, certain, and secular moral code that the authors want to establish. “Interested readers will find this demonstrative science of ethics presented in the novels and nonfiction writings of Ayn Rand.”
And there are a couple references to this OBJECTIVE MORALITY in the text.
I’m glad to have you Randians visit, but please come out of the closet.
March 27th, 2011 | 4:02 am
In my post, I never argued for some sort of selflessness. I agree with Peter about the limitations of altruism. I simply, if inartfully, made the case that I recognize that my family and country are inheritances for which I ought to be grateful, and to whom I owe a great degree of respect and loyalty. I never once denied tensions between my own ambition and my own principles on the one hand, and the reality of law and government as it currently exists on the other. This is a tension in life for which any thoughtful person attempts to develop a “persuasion” in order to live a decent and law abiding life, let alone truly excellent one.
In my post, I just simply made the case that for government and law is there for a reason–a reason which is in part to restrain one’s own enthusiasm for liberty self-understood in the first place. It is our great luck in the USA to have a system that protects our liberty to think and believe according to our own conscience, but this way of life requires virtues willing to perpetuate and defend it too.
My question of living and living well had no ontological Platonic concerns. Besides the distinction was taken from Aristotle not Plato. I made the distinction because I thought that ordinary judgment could and should make a distinction between virtue and vice. Acquisitiveness–not that there is anything wrong with it–is not a virtue. For all their charms, I do not celebrate various celebrities and reality show contestants insofar as they demonstrate mere acquisitiveness. Not celebrating them does not mean condemning them, it just means not celebrating them. I have no problem celebrating the virtues of ingenious and hard working entrepreneurs, but I suspect they are successful precisely in ways that show virtues greater than simple acquisitiveness.
That said, I don’t know why anyone is shocked that Soros, Gates, et al. give their money to silly, quasi-socialist projects. In Lockean terms–being fully free and equal selves, no better or worse than anyone else–they no longer find their own self-preservation in competition with others and hence they no longer have to work like everyone else does. There are no true aristocrats in a modern liberal democratic capitalistic society (is that enough qualification). Hence, no longer concerned for their own self-preservation, they are simply following the dictum of the Lockean natural law which says that they must work to preserve the rest of mankind. It is unfortunate that they choose to do this in a manner that could lead to some sort of despotism, but I doubt this despotism is actually the case anyway. I suspect that such philanthropy will only further the great concern for improving the physical and psychic health and prosperity of each free and equal human being. What that actually means is no doubt problematic–as Peter Lawler alludes to in his reference to the emo-autonomy found in a decision like Lawrence v. Texas..
Regarding remarks of my own view of morality as being more rigorous than Bradley Thompson’s, I must plead ignorant. His conception of morality–as far as I can read–is no more rigorous than mine. I suspect that he and I agree on the basic tenets of “morality.” I don’t claim to be a moral teacher. Instead, I remarked that that understanding of the moral life which becomes most politically authoritative helps to shape and form the character of a citizenry.
Whether that most authoritative understanding is the “nightwatchman state” (and I only use this term because Thompson used it) or something more substantive (like the Declaration of Independence as explained by Paul Seaton) is a matter of prudential choice regarding what I don’t think is in dispute–a free, flourishing and virtuous people.
To add to Mr. Seaton’s thoughtful “theological” gloss on the Declaration and early American political history, I would add that the Declaration’s admonitions regarding prudence and experience should also always be considered in taking political action.
March 29th, 2011 | 1:55 am
This is orthogonal to the Randian-neoCon business (so much the better, as far as I’m concerned), but I am astonished at how confidently you state that nobody is interested in eugenics for anything other than individual purposes. I would think that would be news to some of these people:
http://www.utdallas.edu/c4v/human-enhancement-symposium/
This might be a bit of a fringe conference, but biotech in general is decidedly not a fringe area. Moreover, while I wouldn’t call it fascism, standard garden-variety American liberalism is more than capable of performing its usual two-step on this issue: first individualism – “reproductive freedom,” “freedom of research,” etc. – then egalitarianism, whereby the non-interference rights get transformed into entitlement rights. You mention rights as the bottom line for liberals everywhere, but you didn’t say what kind of rights. That’s the rub.
March 31st, 2011 | 7:33 pm
“Fascism” seems like a vague and particularly unfortunate basis for this debate as its participants, arguing for the most part at cross-purposes, demonstrate repeatedly. As far as Strauss is concerned, one would do better to concentrate on Germany; Fascism is a bit too Italian to be relevant here. Some rather more relevant facts are that Strauss’s ongoing concern with “the theological-political problem” is deeply rooted in the cauldron of Weimar Germany and that the Athenian Stranger in Plato’s Laws was central to Strauss’s understanding of that problem and its solution. The intersection of Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Heidegger in Weimar is unfortunately where the relevant action is; I was also glad to see Paul de Lagarde mentioned by Tim.
April 1st, 2011 | 4:17 pm
Judging by the responses in this thread, Dr. Lawler’s last sentence should read, “The libertarians are WINNING! Duh!”
April 1st, 2011 | 4:36 pm
The term fasicism refers to a system of government underwhich one ostensibly has a right to property, but under which the property’s use is governed and dictated by the government.
Many say that the nation is going socialist. True. But fascism is by far the quickest moving form of government in the US. An that’s on a local, state and national level.
Every regulation that comes out of government is an instance of fascist rule.
It is not only happening here, it has been happening here for a very long time. Under both Democratic and Republican rule, it gets closer to entering the express lane to total dictatorship.
April 4th, 2011 | 11:55 am
Fascism is hard to define.
Fascism is not just statist, it is transstatist: Nazis claimed authority over German-speakers outside the German government’s authority, and held traditional institutions of state in contempt.
Fascism is not just collectivistic. Amish are “collectivistic”. They are not Fascists.
Fascism is not just Nationalist.
Fascism is marked by several things.
It is totalitarian; it demands total influence over all areas of life.
It demands not merely normal loyalty to state or country but absolute loyalty and demands the eradication of other loyalties, whether to family or religion or morality or anything of the kind.
It is militaristic but militarism is a vague term. More important it is predatory.
It is Neo-Bonopartist. Fascism depends on charismatic leaders. If charisma is non-existent it can be manufactured.
Above all Fascism is political RELIGION. It demands not merely normal human loyalty to country, or state, or head of state. It demands worship. That is it demands a degree of devotion that is comparable to what would be given to a deity or equivalent figure or concept.
No fascist state has ever actually succeeded in those goals; humanity just doesn’t work that way. Some however have come closer then others.
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