“Liberal Fascism” – The end of freedom and prosperity

By Ted Belman—November 16, 2008

Jonah Goldberg recently wrote the book “Liberal Fascism”. He was interviewed by Glen Beck and the interviews can be seen on YouTube. There are six parts to watch.

Wikepedia defines “fascism”. It seeks to form a mass movement of militants who are willing to engage in violence against their political opponents and groups or individuals that the movement deems to be enemies. Fascists wish to solve existing economic, political, and social problems by achieving a millenarian national rebirth by exalting the nation or race as well as promoting cults of unity, strength and purity. Fascism opposes the political ideologies of communism, liberalism and conservatism as well as political concepts and systems such as democracy, individualism, materialism, pacifism, and pluralism.

Various scholars attribute different characteristics to fascism, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism (including collectivism and populism based on nationalist values);

In a Salon interview, Goldberg defined fascism. “I see fascism as a political religion. That doesn’t mean I think there’s some book, like a bible, that if you read it you will become a convert to this political religion. Rather I think it is a religious impulse that resides in all of us — left, right, black, white, tall, short — to seek unity in all things, to believe that we need to all work together to go past any of our disagreements and that the state needs to be, almost simply as a pragmatic matter, the pace-setter, the enforcer of this cult of unity. That is what I believe fascism is.”

Liberalism or progressivism seeks to create a nanny state in which the state mandates all kinds of things for the good of the people. And no person is entitled to opt out or to thwart the decisions of the state. Thus liberal fascism.

Goldberg has on his cover a happy face with a Hitler mustache on it. By this he suggests that liberal fascism is appealing. Many people want a nanny state and thus are drawn to Hugo Chavez, Che Guevera and Barack Obama. i.e., fascism with a happy face. But as we have seen with Nazism, Communism and Islam, it can have dire consequences.

In all cases it is accompanied by mind control which starts with controlling the message. Remember George Orwell’s 1984, or Mao’s farms for re-education or Arafat’s inculcation of Jew hatred

Barak Obama is a proponent of liberal fascism. Not only does he want to take care of everyone, he means to take your money as if he was entitled to it, in order to finance his, the state’s, plans. Gov. Palin pointed this out in her stump speeches. Joe Biden called giving your money to the state “patriotism”.

In order to accomplish his ends he has concentrated on reeducating the kids to reject conventional wisdom and embrace his and Bill Ayers, wisdom. He supported ACORN and trained them to be shock troops. He mobilized moveon.org and the MSM to assist in cudgeling the people. We have seen videos of kids in school in fatigues chanting pro-Obama messages. This is very suggestive of the Hitler Youth movement that all German children were required to join.

Many schools in the US are now educating the children to these socialist principles without the consent of the parents. Its called “social engineering”.

On September 4th Investor’s Business Daily (IBD), a mainstream paper of great repute, reported,

“Barack Obama was a founding member of the board of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife became executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies in 1993.
Big Brother had nothing on the Obamas. They plan to herd American youth into government-funded reeducation camps where they’ll be brainwashed into thinking America is a racist, oppressive place in need of ‘social change.

The pitch Public Allies makes on its Web site doesn’t seem all that radical. It promises to place young adults (18-30) in paid one-year “community leadership” positions with nonprofit or government agencies. They’ll also be required to attend weekly training workshops and three retreats.

In exchange, they’ll get a monthly stipend of up to $1,800, plus paid health and child care. They also get a post-service education award of $4,725 that can be used to pay off past student loans or fund future education.

But its real mission is to radicalize American youth and use them to bring about “social change” through threats, pressure, tension and confrontation — the tactics used by the father of community organizing, Saul “The Red” Alinsky.

By Lee Cary wrote about Obama’s Civilian National Security Force

Barack Obama’s recent words to promote his image as Community Organizer in Chief were not about forming a paramilitary force of volunteer brown shirts. They were about turning America into one, giant, community organizer’s sandbox at enormous cost to taxpayers.

Senator Obama was nearly 17 minutes into his July 2 speech (yet another one where naming Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was required) in Colorado Springs, Colorado when he deviated from his pre-released script and performed without the teleprompter net saying,

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” (emphasis added)

The immediate context for that amazing statement was a preview of parts of his plan to vastly expand community service opportunities for Americans of nearly all ages. He said,

“People of all ages, stations, and skills will be asked to serve.”

On his web site he said that people would be “required” to serve. After much criticism he changed it to read “asked” to serve.

And to make matters easier for his plans, he wants to disarm the people.

To be fair, both liberals and conservatives want to provide a security net for the people. They debate how big and strong that net should be. The real issue is at what cost to our freedom and independence. Conservatives are trying to protect such things and the liberals don’t value them in the same way or to he same extent. They value the collective over the individual.

Democrats are quick to charge Republicans with fascism because, for example, Republicans want to maintain Quantanimo Bay and want profiling or wire tapping in certain cases. In effect they say this is an infringement of personal rights. As I said just above, providing the security net or or this case security itself, certain rights are infringed. What separates us is when restrictions are warranted and when they are not. Everyone must decide for themselves what is the biggest threat to their freedom.

Taking care of the weak in society is an admirable objective. The liberals have claimed this as their brand. But will they deliver on their promise?

Larrey Anderson in Waltzing on the Titanic doesn’t think so.

[..] They (young people in Europe) have been taught, since their first day in school, that capitalism is evil — that the government can, and should, provide health care, employment, and eventually, guaranteed retirement benefits for everyone.

In their leisurely conversations when they have finished condemning capitalism, they go on to praise the idea of socialism. They do not praise their own countries. They are not stupid. The health care stinks. (Young people don’t care much about that.) There are no jobs. (But there are unemployment benefits.) And the retirement systems are bankrupt. (But old age is way, way, way in the future.)

So, they argue, in the next election they are going to replace the loser socialists who currently run their countries with some real socialists — politicians who will finally keep their promises. I heard this discussion in France thirty years ago. I heard it the last time I was in Italy. It is taking place in Greece right now.

The last time I was in Rome I listened as a very bright young man explained to his friends, over lunch at a sidewalk café, what was really going on: Most European countries have become, essentially, plutocracies. The socialist governments give lip service to wealth redistribution but they are tightly interwoven with the “old money” in the banking system and in big business.

[..] Listen up young Americans: What is coming to the United States is what has been happening in Europe for decades. The ships of state have smashed into an iceberg called socialism and they are sinking.

This is not a Republican versus Democrat thing. Republicans had ten years to clean up the mess. They made it worse. I don’t blame you for wanting to throw the bums out. I did too.

But putting in a new and improved and ever more aggressive socialist like Obama is not the answer. (Don’t argue about his socialism. Go to his website and show me some free market proposals.) They have been trying this in Europe for three generations. It has not worked.

That trillion-dollar “bi-partisan” bailout passed by our Congress did not go to the people who cannot make their house payments. It is being handed out to the big bankers and to big business.

That is how socialism works. Politicians, bankers, and big businessmen do an age-old dance in triple time. There is no trickle down economics in socialism. Almost all of the money stays at the top.

In fact once the government has you on the dole, they have you.

Bush to his credit made an impassioned speech this week in defense of free markets.

“Free-market capitalism is far more than an economic theory. It is the engine of social mobility, the highway to the American dream.”
“At its most basic level, capitalism offers people the freedom to choose where they work and what they do … the dignity that comes with profiting from their talent and hard work. … The free-market system also provides the incentives that lead to prosperity — the incentive to work, to innovate, to save and invest wisely, and to create jobs for others.”

The market soared 550 points.

The NYT was quick to disparage him.

But Europe is concerned with the election of Obama. James Lewis tells us why in Why Europe is secretly afraid of a socialist America

Suppose you’ve been living under the protective wings of a benevolent superpower for sixty years. And suppose you’ve used that big half century to take off on an endless vacation — spending all your tax money to buy votes for the socialist Ruling Class. It’s been one long, grand, drug-infested, sex-drenched, self-indulgent, tabloid party scene. Any time danger threatens you look to Washington for protection. The rest of the time you noisily abuse those Yankee imperialists, merely to boost your fragile ego. Corruption has become pervasive.

That’s Europe today.

What a sweet deal.

But now you see your guardian superpower electing a guy who wants to follow your example. Whooops! Time to sober up. Fast.

Yes, you went hoarse cheering Obama’s ego trip at the Berlin Victory Monument, because you love the idea that O will teach America to love Eurosocialism forever and ever. But shivers are running up and down your spine — because if he is what you think he is, America won’t be there any more to save you. It will just slide into vegetarian nihilism and leave Europe to the New Soviet Empire.

Europe would crumble like a soggy crouton without America’s commitment to its defense. We saw that happen three times in the 20th century, and the bad news is that it’s starting again. Real danger is at the gates; Europe’s Ruling Class is in denial; and half of it is preparing to surrender to the Russians or the Muslim fascists, whichever gets there first. [..]

Beware. Be very aware.

ADDENDUM

In Rabin Day, Naomi Ragen – points out how the left in Israel is fascist.

Today is the 13th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin according to the Jewish calendar. In Israel the week around the day has long been turned by the Israeli political establishment into an annual ritual of McCarthyist attacks on freedom of speech. In ceremony after ceremony and speech after speech, Israelis are reminded by their politicians and by the chattering class that Rabin was murdered because those who disagreed with his policies were allowed to exercise freedom of speech. The myth of a conspiracy by Rabbis and by the political Right to have Rabin killed is repeated with all the mechanical repetition of the Big Lies of two generations ago. This year, even Olmert repeated it, although he was a member of the Likud in 95 and is clearly one of those the McCarthyist Left asserts is collectively guilty of the murder.

Never mind that not a single Rabbi has been identified as having expressed approval of the idea of killing Rabin, nor approval after it happened, and not a single politician from the Israeli Right cheered or said hurrah when Rabin was killed. A handful of fringe Kahanists might have said hurrah, half of whom were probably police moles, but they are hardly representative of the half of Israelis who opposed Rabin’s policies.

I disliked Rabin and his policies. I think his policies were disasters and that they directly produced the 2000 or so Israeli deaths from the Oslo “peace process.” That does not make me a killer of Rabin. I am tired of being accused by the McCarthyists of having been part of the assassination. Like virtually everyone else who hated Rabin’s foolish policies, I wanted him evicted from power via an election and not murdered. I also want Kadima evicted via an election.

The anniversary of Rabin’s killing could have been turned into a day of education about democracy and freedom of speech. A day in which Israeli children are reminded that political assassination is an attack on democracy, and where they are also reminded that everyone has the right to freedom of speech even if they disagree with the leftist canon. Most importantly, a constructive Rabin Day would remind Israelis of the massive anti-democratic wave of McCarthyism launched by the Left right after the assassination, in which dissidents (including Rabbis) were arrested, indicted, harassed, demonized.

On a constructive Rabin Day, Israelis should also be warned of the efforts at deification of Rabin and the attempt to build around him a cult of personality, where his policies have been represented not as controversial and often foolish political proposals, but instead are raised to unchallengeable theological canon. A constructive Rabin Day might also address the dangers to democracy from a situation in which the entire media are self-recruited for one wing of the political spectrum. A constructive Rabin Day might point out the dangers to democracy of incidents such as Ehud Barak’s getting up and screaming that those who disagree with the Left are a cancerous tumor. In a week in which a communist candidate is running for mayor of Tel Aviv, a constructive Rabin Day might be spent discussing the dangers of totalitarian ideologies.

The McCarthyism around Rabin Day reasserts itself in the Israeli media every year. This year it is being fed by hysteria over an attempt to bomb far-leftist anti-democratic Prof. Zeev Sternhell, an attack attributed by the Israeli media with no evidence whatsoever to the political Right and to “settlers.” The media continue to demonize daily the Jews who live inside the West Bank as violent criminals.

One component of the Big Lie invented by Israel’s McCarthyist Left is that the political Right consists of people who are congenitally lawless and violent. No one denies that there have been a handful of violent criminals to emerge from the Right, people universally repudiated by the leaders and thinkers in the Right. Yigal Amir may be the worst.

But let us not forget the long long long history of crime and violence by the Left. Leftist hooligans clash violently with police and soldiers in the West Bank every day, trying to sabotage the security fence so that the terrorists can get in more easily. The Left produced the spies and the traitors, including Mordecai Vanunu, Azmi Bishara, Tali Fahima, Marcus Klingberg, and including the ring of espionage and terror operated by kibbutznik Udi Adiv (today a lecturer in political science at the Open University) in the 1970s. Those with long memories will remember the earlier campaigns of leftist violence against the Right in the 1940s, the “season,” the sinking of the Altalena, the betraying of members of the Edsel to the British by the Left, the gangs of street thugs operated by Ben Gurion to beat opponents, etc.

A constructive Rabin Day, devoted to stopping political violence and promoting open political debate, would mention not only Yigal Amir and the clown who threw a grenade at a Peace Now demonstration in 1983, killing protester Emil Grunzweig, but also Vanunu and Adiv and the others.