DEMOCRATIC FASCISM

[This Monday’s Archive was originally published on November 3, 2005.  Now that it applies to what’s happened to our country more than ever since more than 18 years ago, please let us know what you think on the TTP Forum.]

Lying to a Grand Jury is a very serious crime. We know this because when Bill Clinton lied under oath to a Grand Jury, he was sentenced to 30 years in a federal penitentiary.

His fellow Democrats, putting patriotism before party, all agreed that perjury and obstruction of justice were inexcusable violations of law, and that no one, not even the President of the United States, was “above the law.”

What’s that? Bill Clinton willfully perjured himself and impeded the special prosecutor’s investigation but got off scot-free? And the Democrats celebrated, rather than condemned, his evasion of justice? Oh….

I guess, like Bogart in Casablanca, I was misinformed.

With the farce of a goody-two-shoes prosecutor named Patrick Fitzgerald spending $20 million to indict a ham sandwich named Scooter Libby for a crimeless crime, it’s time we all stopped misinforming ourselves about what form of government America has today.

That form is one of Democratic Fascism.

Just as there can be a Socialist Democracy, so there can be a Fascist Democracy, in which a people’s freedom is not taken away from them by dictatorial force, but is voluntarily surrendered.

Just as a socialist government can be an unelected dictatorship (like Cuba) or a freely elected democracy (like Sweden), so can a fascist government.

Democratic fascism, or a fascist democracy is no more of an oxymoron than democratic socialism or a socialist democracy. Instead, it is the most accurate description of what America’s political system has become.

This did not happen overnight. By a patient strategy of what I call Fabian Fascism taking many years, the American people have been persuaded, unwittingly and almost unconsciously, to voluntarily give up their Constitutional freedoms.

“Fabian Socialism” was in vogue in the early part of the 20th Century, particularly among British socialists, such as Sydney and Beatrice Webb and George Bernard Shaw. They argued that socialism could best be achieved by not frightening the horses, that is, not through immediate revolutionary action, but in small, incremental steps (1).

Yet the gargantuan growth of governmental power in the United States over the last sixty years has not been in a socialist direction, towards nationalization and governmental ownership of industry.

Clearly, it has been in the direction of ever more bureaucratic, regulatory control – that is, in a fascist direction. Since this growth has not been sudden, but slowly accumulative, we can accurately and aptly call the process Fabian Fascism.

As an ardent admirer of Marx, Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) called his version of Marxist socialism “Fascism” (2).

Instead of nationalization – government ownership – of private business, Mussolini advocated government control of business via complete bureaucratic regulation. Instead of individual rights subordinated to “the people” or the “proletariat,” Mussolini subordinated them directly to the State.

Thus the operating principle of Fascist morality: Might Makes Right, the exercise of raw, naked governmental police power in the interests of the State.

If you are a taxpayer harassed by the IRS, a rancher harassed by the EPA imposing the Endangered Species Act, a businessman harassed for OSHA violations, a corporate exec harassed with Sarbanes-Oxley liabilities, or anyone who has incurred the displeasure of power maniac local prosecutors much less the despotic likes of an Elliot Sptizer or Patrick Fitzgerald – then you are all too aware of how government agents dispense with your Constitutional rights when they’re out to get you.

And now for the bad news.

It’s not going to get any better.

It’s not going to get any better because too many voters are willing to trade their freedom for government handouts.

It’s not going to get better because the party that claims to stand for less government intrusion has held the House for 11 years, the White House for 5, the Senate for 3, and has been totally unable to slow the constant increase in intrusion, much less reduce it.

It’s not going to get better because with all the Limbaughs and Liddys and Fox Channels and blogospheres, the Hate America Left still dominates the news most folks watch, the magazines most folks read, the movies most folks see, and the schools most folks’ kids attend.

You may think this is depressing, but this is just getting started. Real freak-out depressing is the excellent chance Hillary Clinton may be elected president in 2008.

You know I think the only Republican who can defeat her is Condi Rice. This week we got a preview of how Hillary and the Democrats will campaign against her. Maryland Democrats have taken to throwing Oreo cookies at Lt. Gov. Michael Steele at his public appearances since he declared his candidacy for the US Senate.

Steele is black, and he is being ridiculed for being “black on the outside, white on the inside” like an Oreo, because he’s a Republican. The demonization of Condi is not far away.

In Hillary, we have a true will-to-power fascist. Bill was in it for the perks and prestige. Having no morals nor ideology, the presidency for him was an ego trip. Hillary is in it for the power.

Remember HillaryCare, her health care plan that almost succeeded until one single Senator, Phil Gramm, got in the way and refused to budge? HillaryCare was condemned as “socialist medicine,” but it was not – it was fascist medicine.

Intellectually, fascism is far more dishonest than socialism, which at least has the courage to assert legal ownership of the economy and thus assume legal responsibility for its functioning. Fascism places responsibility for the economy on business which is rendered Potemkinly private, a Hollywood set façade of private ownership.

Hillary did not want to nationalize hospitals and make doctors employees of the state. That would be socialism. She wanted seize control, not ownership, of America’s health care system, for her bureaucrats to be in charge, but not be responsible. See the difference, the fascist difference?

OK, so now I have you flat-on-your-back depressed and demoralized. Same as me. What do we do?

The first step is to, as the AA folks say, acknowledge the problem, form an “FA” – Fascists Anonymous. We’ve got to kick the habit, but you can’t kick a habit you won’t admit to having. The place to start by breaking the great taboo, by using the forbidden word – fascism – in every public forum at our disposal.

The Left has always known that control of language was the key to political success – just look at the Political Correctness movement as a clear example. We must get the term of Democratic Fascism out into public discourse, widely debated, and ultimate accepted as an apt description of our current political system.

Then we must specifically attach the term to Hillary and her party. Yes, we must attach it to Republicans when they wander off the reservation, such as their current flirtation with a “windfall” (i.e. fascist) tax on oil company profits. But the Democrats have become treasonous fascist to the core.

So gird your loins for the battle of our young century – for we have little chance of ever regaining our constitutional freedoms if Hillary Clinton again lives in the White House.

NOTES:

1. The Fabian Society was founded in 1884 in London, taking its name from the Roman General Fabius Maximus, who fought Hannibal’s army from 217-214 BC in small debilitating skirmishes, rather than attempting one decisive battle.
2. From the fasces, the bundle of birch rods around an axe and tied with a red ribbon that was the emblem of power and authority in ancient Rome.