Our Mission Is to Reawaken the Genuine American Spirit . . .

Barry MacDonald - Editorial

Liberal Fascism, by Jonah Goldberg. Broadway Books, New York, copyright 2007, ISBN 978-0-7679-1718-6, pp. 503.

. . . since we must have a working definition of fascism, here is mine: Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the "problem" and therefore defined as the enemy. I will argue that contemporary American liberalism embodies all of these aspects of fascism. - Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism

Now men are free . . . but it is often the freedom of grains of sand that are whirled up in a cloud and then dropped in a heap, but neither cloud nor sand-heap have any coherence. -Walter Rauschenbusch, American progressive, Christian theologian, Baptist pastor, and leader of the Social Gospel movement in 1896. -from Liberal Fascism

The second quote discounts liberty. To my way of thinking it is ironic that a Christian theologian, one who studies the ways of God, thinks so little of a free person's capacity to chart a satisfying course through life. I am grateful for my freedom to choose wrongly: How otherwise would I have learned from my mistakes?

According to progressive Walter Rauschenbusch, personal worth and growth amounts to a grain of sand blowing in the wind; a person has no worth apart from the mass. Such are the ways of progressive intellectuals: They fall under the spell of a bundle of ideas, lose their common sense, and their capacity for empathy.

Barack Obama has fallen under a spell of a bundle of ideas centuries old. The ideas moving him have passed through continents and cultures - he may not be aware of their origin. In each time period and culture the bundle is applied somewhat differently, but in essence the ideas retain recognizable coherence.

Progressives in America were imperialistic 100 years ago; they believed that preparing for war fostered admirable martial virtues and put in motion national energies that could be brought to bear in no other way. War promoted national strength; aggression and the urge to conquer were virtues. Darwinian notions of survival of the fittest applied to their view of statecraft. Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin Roosevelt - all these U.S. presidents - had this view.

Today's American progressives have turned their backs on global leadership (they put their faith in the UN); their hearts are set on dominating Americans, and so they grasp for comprehensive power over a smaller circle of people.

Today's American progressives are using effective time-tested methods that we need to understand. If we want to preserve our cherished liberty must understand progressive thinking. We must recognize their motives and methods. When Barack Obama said that he wants to "fundamentally transform" America this is a rare instance when we must take him at his word.

In the space of a brief essay I cannot be comprehensive - much source material exists, and Liberal Fascism is a good book that is a wealth of information (most quotes in this essay come from Liberal Fascism). My method will be to quote and paraphrase briefly a few of the most influential men who created the bundle of ideas that opposes our God-seeking, liberty-loving beliefs. From the spirit embodied in these men's words I hope to foster an ability to recognize what we are up against.

A good place to start would be with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Genevan philosopher of the 18th century, who had a deep impact on Maximilien de Robespierre, the Frenchman at the center of the French Revolution. Rousseau invented the idea of the "General Will" - a collective spirit that embodied all mankind. The General Will encompassed the dreams, desires, goals, needs and wants of a people; the people were not bound by ethnicity, geography, or custom. Those who live in accordance with the General Will are "virtuous" and "free"; but those who don't are criminals, fools, and heretics (enemies) who must be forced to comply with the common good. Rousseau sanctified the General Will and thus he created a secular religion for the guidance of nations. Within the God-state those who defy the General Will live outside state protection and the state is compelled to do away with them.

Rousseau wrote in The Social Contract that because of Christianity's respect for both God and Caesar "men have never known whether they ought to obey the civil ruler or the priest." Rousseau proposed a society where religion and politics merge; where loyalty to the divine and the state is the same thing, except that there is no place for God.

Rousseau believed parliamentary democracy to be corrupt, inauthentic, and unnatural; the mechanisms of democracy to be profane - elections and representatives are "hardly ever necessary where the government is well-intentioned."

For the rulers well know that the general will is always on the side which is most favorable to the public interest, that is to say, the most equitable; so that it is needful only to act justly to be certain of following the general will.

The first totalitarian revolution was the French Revolution. It inspired the Italian Fascist, German Nazi, and Communist revolutions. Maximilien de Robespierre had closely studied the thinking of Rousseau and relied on his idea of the General Will. He imposed Rousseau's God-state upon France, twisting the "religious instinct" of the people into new objects of worship. He replaced sacred holidays with national celebrations, festivals honoring Reason, Nation, and Brotherhood. He renamed the Notre Dame Cathedral the "Temple of Reason." Surprisingly, he hated atheism; he believed in an eternal being (not Christian) who intervened in the affairs of nations.

Robespierre did not flinch from mass killing. He believed "deceitful" Christianity needed to be exterminated. He said:

There are only two parties in France: the people and its enemies. We must exterminate those miserable villains who are eternally conspiring against the Rights of Man . . . [We] must exterminate all our enemies.

Though Robespierre glorified "the people" he didn't value individuals (a characteristic he shared with Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao):

"The people" is always worth more than individuals. . . . "The people" is sublime, but individuals are weak.

Robespierre used violence to commit the masses to the revolution:

If the spring of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the springs of popular government in revolution are at once virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most urgent needs.

According to Johan Goldberg it is estimated that fifty thousand French people were killed during the revolution. The guillotine is the enduring symbol of the French Revolution.

Robespierre also pioneered the establishment of a revolutionary vanguard, an elite group who lead the masses; they were the "priests" of the God-state. Robespierre believed that God spoke through himself and the vanguard; only they could discern the General Will. It was their duty to reshape French citizens into "New Men." Robespierre said:

I am convinced . . . of the necessity of bringing about a complete regeneration, and, if I may express myself so, of creating a new people.

He passed a law to take children from their homes so that they could be indoctrinated in boarding schools - a motive shared by American educator John Dewey (he utilized kindergarten in the early 20th century to insinuate the state between children and parents), and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson who said:

Our problem is not merely to help the students to adjust themselves to world life . . . [but] to make them as unlike their fathers as we can.

The French philosopher Georges Sorel of the late 19th and early 20th centuries contributed to revolutionary causes. He wrote of the power of myth to capture and drive the masses of people. His definition of myth was "artificial combinations invented to give the appearance of reality to hopes that inspire men in their present activity." Sorel believed the Second Coming of Christ to be a myth moving people to Christian ideals.

Sorel admired Marxist theory and saw Marxism as a powerful myth. He thought the rationale of Das Kapital didn't make sense, didn't have merit, but its nonsensical nature didn't matter: People just needed to think it was true. He wrote:

. . . this apocalyptic text . . . as a product of the spirit, as an image created for the purpose of molding consciousness, it . . . is a good illustration of the principle on which Marx believed he should base the rules of the socialist action of the proletariat.

Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist dictator, agreed with Sorel:

It is faith that moves mountains, not reason. Reason is a tool, but it can never be the motive force of the crowd.

Sorel noted the ideas of the American philosopher William James. James thought that people rely on a "will to believe" - any religion can work because the seeker believes it is valid and true: thus the seeker creates a powerful faith through his own powerful will. Sorel applied this idea to revolutionary causes; revolutionary ideals could be inculcated on the masses - using violent means if necessary. It is the task of the revolutionary vanguard to inspire and manipulate the passions of the masses, and it doesn't matter what is true or false:

Truth and falsehood are arbitrary terms . . . there are lifeless truths and vital lies. . . . The force of an idea lies in its inspirational value. It matters very little if it's true or false.

Sorel noted the writings of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche believed that people are always attempting to impose their wills upon each other; the drive for domination is a most powerful instinct: He named this instinct the "Will to Power." The Will to Power was not a quality to be ashamed of; it was life affirming, necessary, and should be encouraged, especially in leaders. The last lines Nietzsche's The Will to Power are:

- do you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men? -This world is the will to power - and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power - and nothing besides!

Nietzsche thought Christian ethics a "slave" morality, a system for the suppression of the Will to Power.

Sorel believed the "Will to Power" justified the revolutionary elite in using "vital lies" to create a revolutionary movement with all the power of religious fervor. A cadre of professional intellectual radicals would inspire the "will to believe" in the masses using incendiary rhetoric. Mussolini and Lenin held nearly identical views; they sought to push aside incremental, parliamentary reform, and to shape "revolutionary consciousness" by undermining liberal institutions and fomenting violence. Mussolini wrote:

We must create a proletarian minority sufficiently numerous, sufficiently knowledgeable, sufficiently audacious to substitute itself, at the opportune moment, for the bourgeois minority. . . . The mass will simply follow and submit.

How did this bundle of ideas come to America? Johan Goldberg writes:

The answer resides in the fact that Fascism was born of a "fascist moment" in Western civilization, when a coalition of intellectuals going by various labels - progressive, Communist, socialist, and so forth - believed the era of liberal democracy was drawing to a close. It was time for man to lay aside the anachronisms of natural law, traditional religion, constitutional liberty, capitalism, and the like and rise to the responsibility of remaking the world in his own image. God was long dead, and it was long overdue for men to take His place. Mussolini, a lifelong socialist intellectual, was a warrior in this crusade, and his Fascism - a doctrine he created from the same intellectual material Lenin and Trotsky had built their movements with - was a grand leap into the era of "experimentation" that would sweep aside old dogmas and usher in a new age. . . . Mussolini declared often that the 19th century was the century of Liberalism and the 20th the century of Fascism.

Jonah Goldberg writes that Benito Mussolini coined the term "totalitarian" by which he meant

. . . a society where everybody belonged, where everyone was taken care of, where everything was inside the state and nothing was outside: where truly no child was left behind.

Today people are unaware of the spell that Benito Mussolini cast on everyone; ordinary people and world-famous figures worshipped him. In 1923 New York Times journalist Isaac F. Morcosson wrote admiringly: "Mussolini is a Latin [Teddy] Roosevelt who first acts and then inquires if it is legal." In 1926 humorist Will Rogers, dubbed by the National Press Club the "Ambassador-at-Large of the United States," told the New York Times Mussolini was "some Wop. . . . I'm pretty high on that bird." Will Rogers wrote in The Saturday Evening Post: "Dictator form of government is the greatest form of government: that is if you have the right Dictator." In 1927 The Literary Digest asked in a survey "Is there a dearth of great men?" The first two men cited to refute the question were first Mussolini and second Lenin. In 1928 The Saturday Evening Post "glorified" Mussolini by publishing his autobiography in eight-parts; the essays were gathered into a book which gained one of the biggest ever advances by an American publisher. Winston Churchill said Mussolini was the world's greatest living lawgiver. Sigmund Freud sent Mussolini a copy of a book he wrote wherein Freud wrote "To Benito Mussolini, from an old man who greets, in the Ruler, the Hero of Culture."

The spirit of the age is also reflected in the words of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. In his 1890 essay, "Leaders of Men," Woodrow Wilson wrote the "true leader" uses the people as "tools":

Only a very gross substance of concrete conception can make any impression on the minds of the masses. . . . They must get their ideas very absolutely put, and are much readier to receive a half truth which they can promptly understand than a whole truth which has too many sides to be seen all at once. The competent leader cares little for the internal niceties of other people's characters: he cares much - everything - for the external uses to which they may be put. . . . He supplies the power; others supply only the materials upon which that power operates. . . . It is the power which dictates, dominates; the materials yield. Men are as clay in the hands of the consummate leader.

Jonah Goldberg writes that Wilson "mocked" "Fourth of July sentiments," that he believed the Constitution's checks and balances had, in Wilson's words, "proven mischievous just to the extent to which they have succeed in establishing themselves as realities." On the campaign trail in 1912 he said:

. . . living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of Life. . . . it must develop. . . . All that progressives ask or desire is permission - in an era when "development," "evolution," is the scientific word - to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle.

The points of my essay are broad, and could be made again using different words from different historical figures. Where can we see progressive ideas in operation today in America?

Rousseau's God-state, and Robespierre's objects of worship - objects derived not from God or Natural Law, but from the revolutionary elite - pulled humanity's roots from the soil. Reason, Nation, and Brotherhood - these are arbitrary objects originating from the whim of Robespierre; they lack genuine, spiritual, personal sustenance. They have not stood the test of time as Christian values have. They came from the fervid imagination of one hateful man. How are each of us to find the guidance, nurturance, and strength beyond ourselves that comes from the penetrating beneficence of God? - This should be our true aim.

American progressives today worship Nature, a Woman's Right to Choose Abortion, and Gay Marriage. Are these values better than Christian kindness, humility, honor, honesty, and generosity? As Paul Kengor writes in the St. Croix Review, progressives always progress - who knows what they will worship next?

American Progressives are not mass murderers as Robespierre, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were. Each American's life is precious, as long as we survive birth without being aborted.

The progressive list of enemies is long and the prosecution of targets ferocious. They hunt for hidden racists, sexists, bigots, and homophobes as eagerly as the inquisitors hunted heretics during the Spanish Inquisition - yes, the Church went power mad at times too, showing that no human institution is immune from corruption.

Progressives are impatient with the measured process of justice under the law, as can be seen in the aftermaths of the shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin in Florida, and Michael Brown in Missouri. Remember the words of Jesse Jackson, inculcating a myth, manipulating the gullible:

Trayvon is a martyr, he's not coming back, he's a martyr, murdered and martyred. . . . Blacks are under attack . . . targeting, arresting, convicting blacks, and ultimately killing us is big business.

The deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown are used as leverage points against measured, impersonal, lawful justice in the same way that an aikido master bends back an arm to collapse an opponent.

Progressive politicians reflexively, thoughtlessly, charge racism or sexism. A national Democrat leader, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, recently accused Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker of having "given women the back of his hand" and "grabbing us [women] by the hair and pulling us back!" She had no factual basis for this incendiary and slanderous language. Such charges serve to demonize; progressives don't have to kill if they can destroy their opponent's reputations and careers, leaving targets as objects for pity and intimidation.

Naming progressive enemies could be a parlor game. Here's my list: corporations, bankers, the top one percent, Christopher Columbus, Dead White Males, Big Oil, Big Pharmacy, Big Tobacco, smokers and second-hand smoke, owners of SUVs, insurance companies, gun rights activists, creditors, crediting agencies, the Tea Party, the Duke Lacrosse Team, George Zimmerman, trans fats, the Washington "Redskins," breast implant makers - we all could play: Connect an issue with an incident for extra points!

I believe that human-caused, catastrophic, climate change is a major progressive myth. There are motives: profit (Al Gore has benefited financially); fame (scientists such as James Hanson become stars); steady funding for university researchers from progressive foundations; animus towards capitalism; redistribution of income; a big, new, revenue stream for government; the creation of enemies (Big Oil, owners of SUVs); the worship of Nature with the fervor of nature worshipers turned against progressive enemies; misanthropy by extreme environmentalists; and a lust to control energy use minutely.

Other progressive myths are: The Tea Party is racist; the Republican's "war on women"; America is a pervasively racist nation; the American military is a terrorist force; America became wealthy by stealing from other nations, etc. One could increase the list.

The progressive vanguard is vast in modern America: The Democratic Party; media figures; the entertainment industry; public intellectuals; writers of all types; educators at all levels; lawyers and judges; and the federal bureaucracies who are unaccountable, can't be fired, and write most of the rules we live by. All aspects of life are covered. I suspect most are true believers and don't know they are moved by myths.

The photograph of President Obama laughing cheerfully on the golf course moments after "consoling" the parents of James Wright Foley, the journalist who was beheaded by Islamic terrorists, is revealing. It shows he just doesn't care what happens to fellow Americans, just as Robespierre didn't care about individuals - no empathy. President Obama is persistently dishonest and deceitful. He adheres to progressive morality - the Will to Power - though he may not ever think about Friedrich Nietzsche. *