Liberal Fascism

Liberal Fascism is a must-read in this age of creeping statism--which one worries may advance with greater speed after November. ...

Goldberg debunks the widely held view that communism was the opposite of fascism. In fact, the only thing that separated the two main branches of 20th-century totalitarianism was that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was born of an international movement while the National Socialist German Workers Party was explicitly nationalist.

Both cancers were inspired by Karl Marx. Both asserted the need for a “new man” torn from religion. In his youth, writes Goldberg, “Hitler often stayed up nights writing plays about pagan Bavarians bravely fighting off Christian priests trying to impose foreign beliefs on Teutonic civilization.” Hitler also hated capitalism as much as Lenin, though Hitler was better at bending it for his own purposes.

In the U.S., "fascism lite" was embraced by Teddy Roosevelt, and much more so by the Woodrow Wilson Administration. Wilson himself wrote, in a graduate school thesis called "Congressional Government," “I cannot imagine power as a thing negative and not positive.” He wrote in another thesis, called "The State," “Government does now whatever experience permits or the times demand.”

Youthful hyperbole? Hardly. Campaigning for president in 1912, Wilson said, “While we are followers of Jefferson, there is one principle of Jefferson’s which no longer can obtain in the practical politics of America. You know that it is Jefferson who said that the best government is which does as little governing as possible … But that time is passed. America is not now and cannot in the future be a place for unrestricted individual enterprise.”

Such words, of course, cleared the ground for FDR’s expansive government policies in the 1930s and 1940s and later for Nixon's wage and price controls.

The Parable of the Workers in the Field found in Matthew 20 ends with a question by Jesus that succinctly summarizes the Torah with respect to private property and the income a person has earned by selling his labor:

“Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money?” Look it up yourself in Matthew 20:1-15.

The entire parable is overflowing with support of liberty and the free market. Some of the principles touched on include the right to own land, the right to hire laborers, the right to negotiate a wage for each worker, the right of a person to work for hire, the right to expect a contract would be honored.

But these rights were not given to mankind by someone, they are natural rights that all humans have. Indeed the Ten Commandments has two points that directly touch on property rights, the Command against coveting and the one against theft.

When Israel rejected the governmental system that God gave them, the system of prophets like Samuel, but instead wanted God to give them a king, God warned them that the king would tax them in various ways. Still, the king was not only bound by the law, but the king had to read the complete law every year.

The God who gave the command forbidding coveting and theft allowed the kings of Israel to take taxes. Yet, even so, He told those kings that if they took a piece of property for state use, they must compensate the owner. So, God knows the difference between a “taking” and a “tax”.

One king, Ahab, coveted a field and seized it without paying proper compensation. God judged him severely for that theft. This can be found in 1 Kings Chapter 21.

Retuning to the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, it ends with a curious question: “Or are you envious because I am generous?”

I think this is an oblique reference to Leviticus Chapter 19, which contains some very important directions from God on the issue of property and justice.

The left shouts “no justice, no peace”, yet they reject resolute and timeless justice in exchange for the ever-arbitary idea of “social justice”. Some important points in Leviticus 19 are:

verse 9-10 Farmers must leave a constant portion of a crop for gleaning by the poor. (The farmer never had to worry that the definition of ‘corner’ would change from year to year. Today, the government lets the farmer have the portion of the crop after all taxes are paid, an in time that portion has grown.)

verse 13: do not defraud your neighbor, fraud being associated with theft and delaying the payment of wages;

verse 15: do not pervert justice! Do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the powerful, judge fairly;

These are basic issues of justice that enable a society to function. I don't see anyone clamoring for “social justice” quoting them, but they have been there for over 2000 years.

With that as background, let us be clear that socialism is fundamentally based in sin.

It is based on coveting: even liberals know they must get their money from somewhere. The only source of wealth in a free country is from the citizen who holds assets or has income to tax. To say “from each according to his ability”, hardly hints that this can only be accomplished by the credible coercion by threat of violence and death.

It is based on lies: We are assured that a committee of smart people will always make better decisions than the free market. This is just silly foolishness if for the only reason that a committee of remote bureaucrats cannot possibly make a decision that is as fully informed as those active in the market itself. It is moving from a high amount of high quality information to a low amount of information that has been collected, filtered, summarized and tabulated.

It is based on theft: God states the difference between a “taking” and a “theft”, between taxing for legitimate government function and theft under the color (having the appearance by the not the real authority) of law. Our own Constitution makes that delineation, even if the Supreme Court can't find it (in the case of Kelo).

Socialism violates three of the Ten Commandments. Tell that to a liberal and watch them spin. I have seen them start to vibrate at the news. Now they have even more reasons to deny that God exists.

re: FDR, I’m just reading a book this evening that refers to a private letter written by Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (son of Teddy R.) who was traveling in Italy in 1933 and had a private audience with Mussolini (common then for such leading Americans to be invited in to meet with heads of state). Anyway, Ted, Jr. reports that Mussolini considered FDR to be his pupil.

Now in one sense that could seem to be simply be self-aggrandizement by Mussolini, wanting to inflate his own importance. But he would not speak of FDR in such terms if he did not recognize a strong affinity between FDR’s approach to politics and his own - why would he want to claim any ‘credit’ for a man-party-phenomenon that he did not regard as aligned with his own efforts?

Book is “The Roosevelts” by Peter Collier with David Horowitz (Collier is described as primary author so I gather that Horowitz did not collaborate as fully on this one as on their others, or perhaps did research but not the writing?). The Mussolini meeting and statement is referred to on p. 386 if anyone’s interested.....

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