Today the American public seems deeply schizophrenic: It hates the government - Washington, Congress and public institutions are more unpopular than at any time since Watergate - but it wants more of it. Conservative arguments about limited government have little purchase among independents and swing voters. This is a keen problem for a candidate like Romney, because it forces him to vacillate between his credible competence message - "I can make government work" - and his strategic need to fill the "Reaganite" space left vacant by former senator George Allen's failure to seize it and Thompson's inability to get anyone to notice that he occupies it. Worse, the conservatives who want activist government want it to have a populist-Christian tinge, and that's a pitch that neither McCain nor Giuliani nor Thompson nor Romney can sell.
The most revealing development of the campaign so far has to be Huckabee's success at displacing Thompson as the candidate of the socially conservative South. Thompson's failure to translate the immense excitement about his pre-candidacy into anything better than also-ran status is largely attributable to a lackluster campaign effort. But there's at least something symbolic about the fact that Huckabee has become, in the words of Commentary's John Podhoretz, "the socially conservative Southern pro-life candidate with a silver tongue and a pleasingly low-key affect."
Thompson is a solid, traditional, mainstream conservative. He'd be equally comfortable at an American Enterprise Institute conference, a Federalist Society luncheon or a county fair. Taken at his word, Thompson is a card-carrying Reaganite, favoring low taxes, a strong defense and a shrunken role for the federal government.
Huckabee, meanwhile, is nearly the philosophical opposite. He would even use his power as president to push for a national ban on public smoking. "I'm one of the few Republicans," Huckabee insists, "who talk very clearly about the environment, health care, infrastructure, energy independence. I don't cede any of those to the Democrats."
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/13/2008 07:54 ||
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TYRANNY OF THE LEFTS INTENTIONS
By JOHN WILSON
The more someone uses the word fascist' in everyday conversation, the less likely it is that he knows what he's talking about." So writes Jonah Goldberg on the cottage industry of Bush-inspired dystopian paranoia that's sprung up on the left in recent years and warns of the dangerous fascist" aspirations of the neo-cons, big corporations, the Religious Right or some unholy combination of the three.
When someone starts expounding on the impending advent of fascism, it's always good to ask them their opinions on Gabriele D'Annunzio. Most "experts" on fascism have never heard of him.
Along with Alceste de Ambris, D'Annunzio wrote the Charter of Carnaro when he occupied Fiume after the First World War, refusing to allow it to be taken over by the new state of Croatia, holding it for a year. The Charter established the first corporate state, with nine corporations to represent the different sectors of the economy (workers, employers, professionals, etc.), and a tenth (d'Annunzio's invention) to represent the "superior" human beings (heroes, poets, prophets, supermen). D'Annunzio either invented or perfected the economics of the corporate state, blackshirts, the Roman salute -- that later became the Hitlergrüss, the incorporation of war veterans (the Arditi) as roving bands of fascisti which made possible the use of strongarm tactics to repress any inconvenient dissent.
The "expert" in fascism should know all that, and ideally should have read (in the original or in translation) at least some of D'Annunzio's poetry, one or two of his novels, and seen one or two of his plays. He actually was a very good writer, and he was, as are today's liberals, quite the idealist.
But Goldberg, a conservative columnist and National Review contributor, doesn't waste much time with the fringe left; Liberal Fascism" is instead a bold and witty attempt to introduce into American political discourse an adult understanding of a movement that's for too long served as little more than a leftist boogeyman. In the process, he makes a persuasive case (if, at times, an uneven one) that fascism was from the beginning a movement of the left - and one that's surprisingly tied up with the history of 20th century American liberalism.
Fascism tries to implement a non-Marxist socialism. For one thing, there's not a lot of money in proletarians. For another thing, actual working men and women have the distressing habit of having opinions different from those of the vanguard of the proletariat, which is why communists tend to reclassify large numbers of them as bourgeoisie on taking power so they can be comfortably massacred.
Fascism," Goldberg explains, is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people."
A delightful strength of Goldberg's work is the extent to which he lets his targets make the case for him. He details the rise of Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, an unabashed socialist revolutionary, and quotes prolifically from the A-list American Progressives who, throughout the 1920s, cheered him on - and longed to imitate his experiment." New Republic founder Herbert Croly, for instance, was particularly enamored, even to the point of excusing Mussolini's brutality by comparing it to the Civil War; both were instances of necessary violence to achieve a worthy goal, Croley argued.
One of the techniques Mussolini lifted from D'Annunzio in Fiume was the practice of forcibly dosing opponents with castor oil to humiliate and/or degrade them. This became a favorite of the blackshirts. Today's libs are fond of similar techniques, only leaving out the castor oil.
Excerpts from Mussolini's original Fascist Party platform, which calls for such things as a minimum wage, progressive taxation and rigidly secular" public schools, provide further fodder.
That fixation on secularism is actually a separate thread, tied to Italy's strain of reactionary anticlericalism. Prying the Papal States away from the Pope wasn't done without a bit of propagandizing. Other fascist states reached different accomodations with the churches. Fascist ideology sees the Church (singular) as one of the corporations making up the state.
Fascism," Goldberg explains, is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people."
The symbol of fascism is the Roman fasces, a bundle of reeds, each reed in itself weak, but bound together in a bundle unbendably strong. That was actually the same symbolism the Romans put on them, and it was a particularly attractive idea to the young Italian nation that had within living memory (Garibaldi died in 1882) been a conglomeration of weak states, each of them a pawn played by larger, more cohesive Europowers.
The Fearless Leader is the prime characteristic, along with the fasces, of fascism. Fearless Leader is a Nietzschean Superman, the Man on Horseback who has All the Answers. If somebody has All the Answers you can relax and let him do the thinking. All you have to do is show up for parades in a clean shirt of whichever color and know the words to the Inno dei Fascisti or the Horst Wessel Lied, depending.
Without the corporate state, by the way, the Man on Horseback is a mere garden variety dictator, such as are found in South America still, but also were fairly common in Europe up until the end of the Second World War.
My favorite Man on Horseback is the original, General Georges Boulanger. His followers were ready to overthrow the Republic -- I think it was the Second, but it may already have been the Third -- as soon as he appeared on the scene, on horseback, of course. He changed his mind at the last minute, leaving the supporters in the lurch, and ended up blowing his brains out at the grave of his mistress in Brussels.
Such uber-nationalism is repulsive to the modern mind because of its association with the unspeakable crimes of the Nazis, but it also accounts for much of fascism's original - and, as Goldberg would have it - lasting appeal...
It's repulsive to the modern mind only when it's explicitly, perhaps even forcibly, associated with Bergen Belsen. D'Annunzio's birthplace is still a museum, and his house is now the Vittoriale degli Italiani (The shrine of Italian victories), where are housed the plane he flew in WWI and the boat he used in taking over Fiume. His blackshirts were just as thuggish as Mussolini's, but the presentation of his ideas was couched in idealistic terms.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/13/2008 10:57 ||
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#1
interesting history lesson, Fred. I'm not sophisticated enuf to use "fascist" in everyday conversation, and the people I know who do are complete pompous lefty assholes and Paulbots
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/13/2008 11:27 Comments ||
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#2
...Fascism [is] the complete opposite of Marxian Socialism, the materialist conception of history of human civilization can be explained simply through the conflict of interests among the various social groups and by the change and development in the means and instruments of production.... Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say, in actions influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect. And if the economic conception of history be denied, according to which theory men are no more than puppets, carried to and fro by the waves of chance, while the real directing forces are quite out of their control, it follows that the existence of an unchangeable and unchanging class-war is also denied - the natural progeny of the economic conception of history. And above all Fascism denies that class-war can be the preponderant force in the transformation of society....
After Socialism, Fascism combats the whole complex system of democratic ideology, and repudiates it, whether in its theoretical premises or in its practical application. Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind, which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage....
...Fascism denies, in democracy, the absur[d] conventional untruth of political equality dressed out in the garb of collective irresponsibility, and the myth of "happiness" and indefinite progress....
...Given that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, and of Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy: political doctrines pass, but humanity remains, and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of authority...a century of Fascism. For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism and hence the century of the State....
The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality -- thus it may be called the "ethic" State....
...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone....
--Mussolini, "What is Fascism?" 1932
Posted by: Fred ||
01/13/2008 11:33 Comments ||
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#3
He changed his mind at the last minute, leaving the supporters in the lurch, and ended up blowing his brains out at the grave of his mistress in Brussels.
IIRC, he left his supporters that night just to dally with that mistress. C'est la vie. C'est l'amore.
#4
we need a new term. Facist is close but those on the left are more fecist (feces-ist) because they are (a) full of shit and (b) are willing to doom the world to wallowing in dung if it puts them in power.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/13/2008 13:37 Comments ||
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#10
Oh, and:
The Fearless Leader is the prime characteristic, along with the fasces, of fascism. Fearless Leader is a Nietzschean Superman, the Man on Horseback who has All the Answers. If somebody has All the Answers you can relax and let him do the thinking. All you have to do is show up for parades in a clean shirt of whichever color and know the words to the Inno dei Fascisti or the Horst Wessel Lied, depending.
For an interesting look at the overlap between fascism and communism, look at the "Bolivarian" version of the two currently implemented in Venezuela.
Chavez is a classic man-on-horseback, complete with an attempted military coup in his background.
(His coup, not the ones he keeps accusing everyone else of. Interesting projection, eh?)
And he claims to take Bolivar as his inspiration and role model. One of the original "men on horseback" who tried to hold together the Republic of Gran Columbia by declaring himself dictator...
People forget that Washington became known as the Father of His Country not because of his military victories, his strategies, or even his presidency, but because when push came to shove he DIDN'T DO THAT, and resisted attempts to cause him to do that. And guess what? We managed.
#11
I think Jim got him confused with George C. Scott, who played Patton. He could pass for G.C> Scott, but it's Mussolini.
And what's it called when you call someone else what you are, and what you claim to hate? Projection?
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/13/2008 14:40 Comments ||
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#12
If somebody has All the Answers you can relax and let him do the thinking.
St. Hillary made a remark the other day, couched in bizarre terms about guacamole and chips, about how all our problems are interrelated, and how we can solve them all at once, rather than dealing with them one at a time.
That comment strikes me as, essentially, the same as the Great Man with All The Answers -- "I can solve all your problems, if you'd just give me the keys to the kingdom".
There's a bit in the Mussolini quote that has a familiar sound to it:
The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone...
Back in college, I heard a doctrinaire leftist (raised by lefty parents and never diverged from their ideology while claiming that anyone who disagreed with him was "brainwashed" by their parents, bragged about how all his summer jobs were paid under the table while demanding higher taxes, etc.) decry "dangerous individualism". Since then, I've noticed that the "rights" the left fights for are largely the inconsequential ones, while they express hostility towards the truly critical ones.
Thus, free speech for the left is about unfettered access to sexually explicit material -- while political speech is to be limited in scope, source, and content. Freedom of religion is about ensuring the purity of dogma for minority faiths, while chasing expressions of the majority's faith from the public view. Economic freedom isn't about being secure in your property and being entitled to the fruits of your labor, but rather being allowed to perform no useful service to anyone and still survive (yes, I've heard people arguing for that; it's not a strawman).
Now, I have no problem with people being free to express their opinions, preferences, and desires on matter of sex, believe that minority faiths should be secure in their practice and should not be unduly burdened, and have no issue with a system of support for those truly unable to support themselves, but I also believe that political speech is the true core of Freedom of Speech, that the majority should be allowed to express their faith, and that confiscating wealth from producers to support the purely consuming is no different than slavery.
And, routinely, I get called "fascist" by people who argue from the same position staked out by Mussolini.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
01/13/2008 14:55 Comments ||
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#13
"The Mystery of Fascism" by David Ramsey Steele talks about this as well:
http://www.la-articles.org.uk/fascism.htm
Posted by: E Brown ||
01/13/2008 15:16 Comments ||
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#14
I was looking both at the White Horse, and american GI style helmet,(Can't see the pistols, long coat) I know the difference betwen George C. Scott and the real Patton, Picture is NOT Scott, that I was sure of.
Musolini Hummmm.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/13/2008 17:50 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
But Goldberg, a conservative columnist and National Review contributor, doesn't waste much time with the fringe left; Liberal Fascism" is instead a bold and witty attempt to introduce into American political discourse an adult understanding of a movement that's for too long served as little more than a leftist boogeyman. In the process, he makes a persuasive case (if, at times, an uneven one) that fascism was from the beginning a movement of the left - and one that's surprisingly tied up with the history of 20th century American liberalism. 
