The Hill Street Blahg

In this sad era of Obamatopia, we often hear the term Fascism used by the talking heads, the critics, and from time to time right here on these pages. Back in the day, we related fascism to be evil, in the likeness of Benito Mussolini’s Italy and Germany’s Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Party. My father’s generation went to war to defeat these murderous evil-doers and free the world of fascism and all of the horror it stood for. Apparently they didn’t eliminate the fascist ideology completely because it’s alive and well right here in America.

Out of curiosity, I decided to educate myself and find out just what this thing called Fascism actually is and did some web research. Here’s a partial definition I found over at The Real Revo which just might describe what we’re currently experiencing here in America. Read it an weep.

Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of man as a historic entity.

It is opposed to classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts

The rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual. And if liberty is to he the attribute of living men and not of abstract dummies invented by individualistic liberalism, then Fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State. The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism, is totalitarian, and the Fascist State – a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values – interprets, develops, and potentates the whole life of a people.

Source: The Doctrine of Fascism, Benito Mussolini (1932) and The Real Revo.