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Fun With Fascism

By John Tabin on 3.20.08 @ 12:03AM

(Page 2 of 2)

During a 1912 campaign speech, Wilson declared that "there is one principle of Jefferson's which no longer can obtain in the practical politics of America" -- that being the principle that the government that governs least governs best.

Voters didn't have much of a Jeffersonian choice in that election. Theodore Roosevelt was running against Wilson on a platform of "New Nationalism" -- a nationalism heavily inflected with socialism. Writes Goldberg:

Since Wilson ended up governing largely as a New Nationalist, the subtler distinctions between his and Roosevelt's platforms do not matter very much for our purposes. America was going to get a progressive president no matter what in 1912. And while those of us with soft spots for Teddy might like to think things would have turned out very differently had he won, we are probably deluding ourselves.

This brings us to our current election cycle. The next president of the United States will be one of three people, all of whom are unmistakable exponents of what Goldberg calls liberal fascism.

JOHN McCAIN IS a huge admirer of TR. His career has been marked by an instinctive enthusiasm for regulation. He brags of a military career chosen "for patriotism, not for profit," clearly viewing civilian life as debased.

Goldberg's Afterword, "The Tempting of Conservatism," holds up McCain and the "National Greatness Conservatives" who backed him in 2000 as an example of how progressivism can enthrall conservatives. (Possible good news: McCain has praised free markets in the course of this campaign -- for the first time in his political career, according to McCain biographer Matt Welch.)

Hillary Clinton's calls in the '90s for a "new politics of meaning" and for the state to act as the "village" that raises our children has deeply totalitarian implications that Goldberg discusses at length. In 1996 she declared that "there isn't really any such thing as someone else's child." Assessing her worldview, Goldberg labels Clinton "The First Lady of Liberal Fascism."

Barack Obama's enormous rhetorical talents have already earned him an extremely creepy personality cult. His wife declares that her husband "will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism... And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

None of this is to say our next president will be another Hitler or even another Wilson. Their politics aren't evil. "The lethality of a poison depends on the dosage," writes Goldberg, "and a little fascism, like a little nationalism or a little paternalism, is something we can live with -- indeed, it may even be considered normal."

Still, it would be nice if one our potential leaders would give us some hint that there are parts of our lives that the government has no business interfering in.

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topics:
John McCain, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Business, Religion, Books, Constitution, Military, Socialism, Fascism, Conservatism