Congressional Issues 2010
SOCIETY
Fascism

• repudiate the last 90 years of Congressional fascism

The United States is a fascist nation. Our politicians are fascists.

The word "fascist" is an "alarmist" word. It is often used on this website to describe not the most monstrous forms of fascism, but the embryonic stages of fascism. R.J. Rushdoony observes,

Mussolini lacked a radical commitment to anything other than himself. He recognized this same trait in other men. He knew that an either-or commitment is what men flatter themselves into believing they hold, but he knew that in truth he and other men wanted to eat their cake and to have it too. Men were practical atheists while practicing churchmen. They defended the free market while seeking socialistic subsidies. They championed freedom while asking for a benevolent slavery. They wanted socialism with freedom, religion without the responsibilities of faith, and private property with all the imagined benefits of socialism. The meaning of such a desire is fascism.

Having said that, however, we must say that the United States is a monstrously fascist nation. The vast majority of America's Founding Fathers -- Alexander Hamilton being an exception -- would agree with this claim. They took up arms against a far less developed and less monstrous form of fascism in 1776.

• The Fascist Threat - June 19, 2012 by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. - Mises Daily
• Fascism: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty
• Who Is "Fascist"? By Thomas Sowell
• Good Fascists and Bad Fascists - Mises Institute
• Jonah Goldberg: Liberal Fascism
• The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century
       To argue that Soviet communism, Italian fascism, and German Nazism were all branches from a common source in collectivism and socialism has been one of the great taboos of the 20th century.
       Among many intellectuals, and not only among those on the political left, the consensus has been that Soviet communism, no matter how disappointing in practice, was an amoral, idealistic, and “progressive” attempt to bring political harmony, social justice, and economic equality to all mankind. Fascism and Nazism, on the other hand, were manifestations of reactionary, capitalist forces attempting to maintain their system of social injustice and economic exploitation through dictatorship, violence, and war.
       Now A. James Gregor, one of the leading authorities on the history and ideas of Italian fascism, not only explains the socialist and Marxist roots of fascism in the years immediately following the First World War, he also shows the fascist influence on communist regimes from Lenin and Stalin in the Soviet Union to Mao Zedong in China.
• Three New Deals: Why the Nazis and Fascists Loved FDR - David Gordon - Mises Institute

Now here is the truly depressing news:

Fascism, socialism, and communism are U.S. exports.

Americans like to think that The United States is a good and great nation because we oppose communism, socialism, and fascism. While you and I might oppose fascism, liberal elites in New York and Washington D.C. think-tanks have long believed in and promoted big government: world government, fascist government, socialist government, and communist government.

American universities promote fascism and socialism, and have granted their prestigious academic degrees to many of the world's most notorious dictators. These U.S. academic and political elites, constantly moving in and out of government positions, are fascist and have had a world-wide influence. It is regrettable but necessary to admit that fascism is a U.S. export. Hitler and Mussolini both had the initial support of liberal elites in America, and were inspired by them. This article, "Servile Nation," gives important examples.

In addition to the ideological support from think-tanks and universities, fascism and communism have both received economic and military assistance from the U.S.

Of course there are parts of the U.S. government that either say they are against collectivist governments like fascism or communism, or might actually be working against fascism; and many individuals in government are genuinely opposed to fascist excesses. But this is a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. While one arm of the federal government is sending our boys to fight a dictator, another arm of the federal government is selling arms to the dictator to reward campaign contributors from the military-industrial complex. (Note: there are not just the "left" and the "right" arms of the government: the government is like an octopus with innumerable fascist tentacles.)

From John T. Flynn's As We Go Marching (Doubleday, 1944), p. 161-162) ht

America's Founding Fathers would consider today's federal government to be a "dictatorship." That's not a word they used; they used the word "tyranny." They used the word "tyranny" to describe a comparatively weak, benevolent, Christian libertarian government: The British Empire of 1776. If you lived under that "tyranny" in 1776, your life would be taxed and regulated at only a small fraction of the amount you're taxed and regulated today. The Federal Government of the United States is unquestionably one of the most atheistic, tyrannical governments in the history of the world. By every reasonable definition and standard, we live under a fascist dictatorship. Did the people of Germany think they were oppressed by a "fascist dictatorship?" Not the majority. They Thought They Were Free. More.

[Fascism] is, put briefly, a system of social organization in which the political state is a dictatorship supported by a political elite and in which the economic society is an autarchial capitalism, enclosed and planned, in which the government assumes responsibility for creating adequate purchasing power through the instrumentality of national debt and in which militarism is adopted as a great economic project for creating work as well as a great romantic project in the service of the imperialist state.

Broken down, it includes these devices:

1. A government whose powers are unrestrained.
2. A leader who is a dictator, absolute in power but responsible to the party which is a preferred elite.
3. An economic system in which production and distribution are carried on by private owners but in accordance with plans made by the state directly or under its immediate supervision.
4. These plans involve control of all the instruments of production and distribution through great government bureaus which have the power to make regulations or directives with the force of law.
5. They involve also the comprehensive integration of government and private finances, under which investment is directed and regimented by the government, so that while ownership is private and production is carried on by private owners there is a type of socialization of investment, of the financial aspects of production. By this means the state, which by law and by regulation can exercise a powerful control over industry, can enormously expand and complete that control by assuming the role of banker and partner.
6. They involve also the device of creating streams of purchasing power by federal government borrowing and spending as a permanent institution.
7. As a necessary consequence of all this, militarism becomes an inevitable part of the system since it provides the easiest means of draining great numbers annually from the labor market and of creating a tremendous industry for the production of arms for defense, which industry is supported wholly by government borrowing and spending.
8. Imperialism becomes an essential element of such a system where that is possible—particularly in the strong states, since the whole fascist system, despite its promises of abundance, necessitates great financial and personal sacrifices, which people cannot be induced to make in the interest of the ordinary objectives of civil life and which they will submit to only when they are presented with some national crusade or adventure on the heroic model touching deeply the springs of chauvinistic pride, interest, and feeling.

Where these elements are found, there is fascism, by whatever name the system is called. And it now becomes our task to look very briefly into our own society and to see to what extent the seeds of this system are present here and to what degree they are being cultivated and by whom.

In traditional Christian morality a good end never justifies an evil means, and even if it did, an evil means never procures a good end that lasts. A strikingly relevant case in point was the Fascist government in Italy. Mussolini’s state banned abortion, birth control, and homosexual activity. As a Catholic I hold these things as intrinsically evil and their curtailment good. However, supporters of Italian fascism, even those who supported it primarily for the advancement of these moral issues, are responsible for facilitating a cataclysmic evil. This evil culminated in Catholics sheepishly submitting to national conscription and participation in an unjust and horrifying war. In addition, it led to the subsequent weakening of Catholic culture, morals, and faith in Italy and to the final eradication of European Christendom. The result now being a de-Christianized Italy that fully accepts those very moral issues some sought to address by compromising with the fascist regime. If even a fraction of the effort and sacrifice that was squandered by Italian and other Catholics in World War II had instead been brought to missionary efforts the world would be looking at the rebirth of Christendom rather than its demise. ~ Christians and the Pro-Life Ploy | G.C. Dilsaver

next: Socialism