Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Goldwater-Reagan conservative concern for "brownshirt" fascism

Proudly lifted from our friends at BlondeSense, this article from the American Conservative clearly illustrates the fear of the Bush administration growing among real conservatives. These people are NOT liberals or progressives. Pat Buchanan, of all people, is one of the publishers of the magazine.

The article, entitled Hunger for Dictatorship and written by Scott McConnell, expresses his fear that the American "war to export democracy by wreck our own."

McConnell cites other statements from prominent, educated conservatives such as Paul Craig Roberts who compared the Democratic Party to the Nazis following the 2000 election, served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury as an economic advisor for the Reagan administration, served as an editor for the conservative Wall Street Journal, and continues to maintain the highest praise for Reagan (believe he "changed the world").

Paul Craig Roberts in these pages wrote of the “brownshirting” of American conservatism—a word that might not have surprised had it come from Michael Moore or Michael Lerner. But from a Hoover Institution senior fellow, former assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, and one-time Wall Street Journal editor, it was striking.

One of McConnell's colleagues, Justin Raimondo, explains clearly how American conservative bears strong resemblance to fascism.

Several weeks later, Justin Raimondo, editor of the popular Antiwar.com website, wrote a column headlined, “Today’s Conservatives are Fascists.” Pointing to the justification of torture by conservative legal theorists, widespread support for a militaristic foreign policy, and a retrospective backing of Japanese internment during World War II, Raimondo raised the prospect of “fascism with a democratic face.”

To put this into perspective, McConnell then points to a shift in conservative ideals, manifested by extremely popular conservative authors and personalities advocating the likes of forced conversions of Muslims surviving American military operations, labelling Arabs as "non-humans" and "bigots", and calling for the American military to target journalists among many other things.

McConnell then closes with the story of Fritz Stern, a German-born professor at Columbia who emigrated to the United States in 1938 and studied Germany's transition from the height of civilization into Nazi barbarism. McConnell describes Stern as follows:

He is not a man of the Left. He would have been on the Right side of the spectrum of the Ivy League professoriat—seriously anticommunist, and an open and courageous opponent of university concessions to the “revolutionary students” of 1968.

McConnell then summarizes a talk that Stern gave to an audience at the Leo Baeck Institute concerning the rise of Hitler to power.

To an audience at the Leo Baeck Institute, on the occasion of receiving a prize from Germany’s foreign minister, Stern noted that Hitler had seen himself as “the instrument of providence” and fused his “racial dogma with Germanic Christianity.” This “pseudo–religious transfiguration of politics … largely ensured his success.”

How much more screaming into the wind is it going to take for our country to wake up?