Fascism in America

[arisbe]

The Left has been denouncing American Fascism, indeed, denouncing America as Fascist, for so many years that we are deaf to the din of it. Lately, though, the warnings of an emerging Fascist mentality have been repeated from what some describe as the fringes of the Right, both the traditionalist (paleoconservative) and individualist (libertarian) wings. The American Conservative is seen as more moderate and mainstream, sceptical of big government, critical of the war, but willing to give both Republicans and Democrats the benefit of the doubt when they seem honest. It is therefore a milestone that even they are now insisting that we ought to take the threat very seriously indeed. Scott McConnell, a student of Fritz Stern, Columbia's great historian of the European Right, makes a sobering case, with the essential qualifications, in Hunger for Dictatorship: War to export democracy may wreck our own.

It is, I think, essential reading.

Comments

[otterboy.livejournal.com]

Excellent article. It really reinforces my thoughts on the power of ignorance. Not for the ignorant, of course, but those who benefit from widespread ignorance. Freedom, as used in the current administration, is a blatant Orwellian illustration. Yet, so many genuinely good people have accepted that freedom looks like what the Bush administration prescribes. I hear some of my dearest friends and family casually commenting that the "whole Middle East should be wiped out." The objectification/oversimplification of the situation is maddening and frustrating for me. I explain to some of these critics, some devout Christians, that the Middle East is filled with Christians and diverse ethnicities/cultures, and I get a shocked reaction. How should violence be labeled? One man's spreading of freedom is another man's terrorism. The scary thing, though, is that the people who blindly support our government and everything "America stands for" are acting in a way as if to ensure its untimely demise, as the article so strikingly demonstrates.

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

People who can't recognize Roman Catholics as fellow Christians can't be expected to care very much about Orthodox, Jacobites, Chaldeans, Maronites, Melkites, and so on.

Democracy isn't a good thing in itself. It depends on what majority you are empowering.

Freedom isn't a good thing either if the people being liberated want to do evil and have the means to do it.