Leftwing fascism

My friend, the wacko-extremist

 Free speech, Leftwing fascism  No Responses »
Jul 202009
 

After reading “So Three Cows Walk into Court…” in The Weekly Standard, I decided it was time for a blog article about the wacko-extremists in the Obama administration. First there is the guy who advocates censoring the Internet, now there is this one who thinks animals should have standings to sue in court. Could Obama have been elected if he had made known such people would grace his payroll?

Then I realized: These two guys are one and the same wacko. His name is Cass Sunstein. He’s described as a Harvard professor (nothing unusual there) and a close friend of the president.

Y’know, it’s not so bad that the president has pals in the terrorism business (Bill Ayers), or hate-mongering preacher-friends like Jeremiah Wright, or even an anti-liberal, leftwing fascist friend like this Cass Sunstein appears to be. There are other politicians who could benefit from knowing some of the more unbalanced, extreme elements in our society. It’s not even so bad that he put one of them on the payroll, though I am absolutely against my tax dollars being used for something like that.

The bad thing is that President Obama didn’t have any time left to learn any history, especially history about freedom vs security, about human aspirations, and about the uses and abuses of power. He seems to have the level of education of your stereotypical college sophomore — intoxicated with a few novel ideas that are popular among his clique, and completely lacking in perspective.

Helpful to public discourse

 Leftwing fascism, Limits on government power  No Responses »
Feb 032008
 

I suppose I should have had something to say about Jonah Goldberg’s book by now, given that “leftwing fascism” is a blog category here and I and have been using that term for a decade or two. But I haven’t yet read Liberal Fascism. I’ve heard of it, but haven’t read it.

I haven’t used that category much, either. I suppose it’s because there are times when I’d rather make fun of leftwingism than slap a label on it, though I have nothing against either.

However, I do have a comment about Richard Bernstein’s review at the International Herald Tribune titled, Are American liberals “nice fascists”? It’s actually a pretty good review, but it ends like this:

And it might even be the case, as Goldberg contends, that Clinton, in her willingness to “insert the state deep into family life” in order to assure the well-being of children is “in perfect accord with similar efforts by totalitarians of the past.” But that doesn’t make Hillary a fascist or a totalitarian, or, for that matter, wrong.

I’m afraid Bernstein is wrong here. Such a willingness on the part of Hillary very much suggests a totalitarian fascist tendency. If “deep into family life” is not getting the state involved in pretty close to total control, I’m not sure what is.

And who has ever heard Hillary express any concern about keeping government’s control within prescribed limits?

In the end, Goldberg’s point that the fascist label has been used by some liberals to defame almost anything they don’t like is a valid one. So is his contention that American conservatism has no connection or similarity to European fascism – even if some American conservatives were not especially alarmed by Hitlerian racism or, for that matter, American Jim Crow.

But he should have stopped there.

To go on to label American liberals “nice fascists” isn’t exactly a smear, but it’s not exactly helpful to public discourse either. Then again, if Goldberg had stopped short of doing that, the chances are a book called “Liberal Fascism” wouldn’t have made it onto the best-seller list.

On the contrary, that label IS helpful to public discourse, and Bernstein’s review proved it. It gets us talking again about the idea of there being proper limits to government power.

Dennis Kucinich and the Fairness Doctrine

 Leftwing fascism  No Responses »
Jan 222007
 

Back in the cold war days of the 1940s and 1950s, we had the House Committee on Un-American Activities to protect our tender minds from exposure to commie propaganda. Now Rep. Dennis Kucinich, animated by similar concerns over threats to America, wants to revive the Fairness Doctrine to protect us from hearing corporate propaganda.

From the UPI:

The panel also would consider Fairness Doctrine, eliminated in 1987, which had required broadcasters to present controversial topics in a fair and honest manner.

“We know the media has become the servant of a very narrow corporate agenda” Kucinich said during the Tennessee conference. “We are now in a position to move a progressive agenda to where it is visible.”

Never mind that the mainstream media are already steeped in leftwing ideology and give major exposure to any leftDemocrat agenda items that people like Kucinich care to bring up. That’s not good enough. Kucinich and his cadre are apparently so afraid that their ideas cannot withstand criticism that they feel the need to shut down dissenting views, which is what the Fairness Doctrine did back when it was in effect.