The American Spectator

The Spectacle Blog

My post yesterday, expressing revulsion at that "Yes We Can" video, seems to be raising some hackles. Maybe I wasn't clear. No, I don't mean that I smell liberal fascism in "everything inspiring" or "any show of enthusiasm by fifty or more liberals for anything or anyone whatsoever." I mean that a bunch of people beatifying a politician by reciting, in unison, a speech of his that climaxes with the words

We are one people, we are one nation, and together we will begin the next great chapther in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can

is a message devoid of any content beyond a call to unity of the collective as an end unto itself, complete with a very deliberate aesthetic embodiment of that message. If that doesn't strike you as even a little bit fascistic, I guess I can't help you.

By the way, reading Liberal Fascism in the context of this election season is really, really dispiriting. Jonah spends a lot of time discussing Hillary Clinton's old-school progressivism, and John McCain is held up as a prime example in the afterword, "The Tempting of Conservatism." And Mitt Romney probably can't win.

topics:
John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Fascism, Conservatism