Can you guess where I got this quote from?
"In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant and irrational emails from self-professed conservatives who literally worship George Bush. Even Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appears to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush." Again: "Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy."
In short, what we have alive in the US is an updated and Americanized fascism. Why fascist? Because it is not leftist in the sense of egalitarian or redistributionist. It has no real beef with business. It doesn't sympathize with the downtrodden, labor, or the poor. It is for all the core institutions of bourgeois life in America: family, faith, and flag. But it sees the state as the central organizing principle of society, views public institutions as the most essential means by which all these institutions are protected and advanced, and adores the head of state as a godlike figure who knows better than anyone else what the country and world's needs, and has a special connection to the Creator that permits him to discern the best means to bring it about.
The American right today has managed to be solidly anti-leftist while adopting an ideology even without knowing it or being entirely conscious of the change that is also frighteningly anti-liberty.
The answer is below the fold.
This is why I haven't lost hope for small 'l' libertarians. They can think. They really do believe in freedom. And the small 'l' types are capable of recognizing reality. I don't think Rockwell carries the small 'l,' which makes this article even more striking.
The Reality of Red-State Fascism
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.Year's end is the time for big thoughts, so here are mine. The most significant socio-political shift in our time has gone almost completely unremarked, and even unnoticed. It is the dramatic shift of the red-state bourgeoisie from leave-us-alone libertarianism, manifested in the Congressional elections of 1994, to almost totalitarian statist nationalism. Whereas the conservative middle class once cheered the circumscribing of the federal government, it now celebrates power and adores the central state, particularly its military wing.
This huge shift has not been noticed among mainstream punditry, and hence there have been few attempts to explain it much less have libertarians thought much about what it implies. My own take is this: the Republican takeover of the presidency combined with an unrelenting state of war, has supplied all the levers necessary to convert a burgeoning libertarian movement into a statist one.
The remaining ideological justification was left to, and accomplished by, Washington's kept think tanks, who have approved the turn at every crucial step. What this implies for libertarians is a crying need to draw a clear separation between what we believe and what conservatives believe. It also requires that we face the reality of the current threat forthrightly by extending more rhetorical tolerance leftward and less rightward.
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A good compliment to this art
A good compliment to this article is this one from one of the few bastions of real Conservatism, The American Conservative:
I'm working on a long blog post on this for Zero Sum and will put it up later.
Funny thing is, that article
Funny thing is, that article was sent to me, and I found the article I've linked here by searching for one referenced by McConnell. I'm seriously uncomfortable with The American Conservative...but I'm considering asking for permission to post that article in its entirety here.
I'll keep my eye out for your post, though.
I feel you about the American
I feel you about the American Conservative. Came across and article there today with all of the usual "evil socialistic liberals" stuff but often they have stuff that makes sense. Boy,If I had knowbn back in 1992 when the Repubs came to my hometown that someday I would find myslef agreeing with Buchanan on something, I owuld have said you were crazy! I mean, Buchanan was the epitome of evil to us back then.
Buchanan hasn't changed. He's
Buchanan hasn't changed. He's been exceeded.
There's no hard line between
There's no hard line between democracy and facism.
1. We really need a working definition of facism. What we usually use instead of a real definition is something like "totalitarian asshole". In other words, mostly slur, but partly something identifiable.
2. Once in a while it is necessary to give a bit of thought to the fact that we do NOT have a democracy in America, and to contrast what we have to a democracy. This is particularly relevant when we discuss "democracy in Iraq" or "democracy in Russia".
What we have is a "constitutional republic"; the republic part, the fact that we elect representatives rather than vote on everything directly is certainly a distinction, but it fits under an umbrella of "self determination", and isn't really the crucial distinction.
The crucial distinction is the constitution, and its protction of the rights of individuals against the state. It's the constitution which keeps us from democratically voting to reinstate slavery. It's the constitution which keeps us from voting to execute all x's. Observe that none of those horrible things are anti-democratic.
Neither, for that matter, is torture of foreign prisoners any more facist than it is democratic. If most people want it, and the government does their bidding, that's democratic, plain and simple, and to the extent that it has occurred, is not evidence of the demise of democracy in America.
Bottom line: what is good about America is our constitution, and our respect for it, not our democracy.
There's no hard line between
There's no hard line between any two things on a greater than quantum scale. I'm concerned about our position, vector and momentum. People think they're respecting the Constitution and it just doesn't feel that way to me.