AWARENESS OF HISTORY IS GROWING

The article below is by a religious journalist

Last year, I was speaking at a prestigious university in Washington, D.C., and brought up Margaret Sanger. Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a racist who believed in eugenics and felt that birth control was essential to controlling the "inferior races"-i.e., blacks. When I said this, the students looked incredulous. A couple even shook their heads; obviously I was disseminating bad conservative propaganda. Margaret Sanger, liberal icon, a racist? Please.

The historical record on Sanger is clear. Yet those who refuse to acknowledge her commitment to eugenics are impervious to evidence. They are the same ones who will be shakingtheir heads at Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, the devastating new book by Jonah Goldberg, an editor at National Review. The sad paradox is that the more the Left rend Goldberg apart, avoiding the book like anthrax because they assume we are in Ann Coulterville, the more they will make his point.

Goldberg has marshaled a staggering amount of evidence to conclude, as the first chapter has it, that "everything you know about fascism is wrong." Mussolini was weaned on anarcho-socialism (his father Alessandro was a socialist and anarchist). Mussolini and the Italian Fascist party were, in the early years, not anti-Semitic-in fact, the party included Jews. As a young man, Mussolini had carried in his pocket a medallion of Karl Marx, whose influence-combined with the bizarre syndicalist philosophy of George Sorel and a Nietzschean contempt for Christianity-resulted in Italian fascism, a mix of myth-making, prophecy about the rise of the working class, and a relentless determination to aggrandize more and more power for the state. German fascism was not far different, which is why Hitler himself, as Goldberg puts it, was "a man of the left."

In short, the very term "fascism" has been misused for decades now. Although on several occasions Goldberg openly invites criticism, admitting that he is not a professional historian, he has done the work of a historian; besides, he is a much better writer than most historians. And the case he makes is as persuasive as it is provocative. Consider Father Charles Coughlin, the "radio priest" of the 1930s, a touchstone of right-wing evil for liberals. It turns out that Coughlin actually advocated collectivist, anti-capitalist theories that were much closer to the left than to the right. Goldberg quotes leftists-among them the "New Deal Priest" Msgr. John Ryan-praising Coughlin. Coughlin became FDR's bitter foe because FDR's collectivist policies did not go far enough.

Fascists have often called for the overturning of religious tradition, to be replaced by the dictatorship of the people; have engaged in a "cult of action" that sought to smash the bourgeoisie; and have relegated certain people and races to the dustbin of "inferiority." Considered this way, the radicals of the 1960s fit quite snugly into Goldberg's thesis.

Goldberg does stumble with his shoulder-shrug at gay marriage, which he supports. For once in this mesmerizing book he falls to apply his model. Gay marriage activists, after all, have all the trademarks of fascism, and more. They want to control the courts and inflict their philosophy on the reluctant bourgeoisie. They are obsessed with "street action" and protest, and contemptuous of Christianity. They have turned homosexuality into an exalted state, often claiming that gay people are more sensitive and enlightened than others.

While the Left will claim that Goldberg thinks that everyone he disagrees with-from FDR to Hillary Clinton-is a fascist, this is not true. Progressives, he notes, are not building concentration camps. Hillary Clinton wanting universal health care is not Crystal Night. But by reexamining the history of fascism and its pathologies, Goldberg shows where the fascist impulse-to smash the past, accumulate power, and create utopia-is most likely to resurface.

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ELSEWHERE

You see occasional mentions saying that the war in Iraq has NOT increased the death-rate among American military personnel. It seems counter-intuitive but it is true. Getting into a car with a skinful of alcohol at home in the USA seems to be just about as dangerous as going around fighting terrorists in Iraq. The official figures are here. See particularly Tables 4 and 5 in the "active duty" column. The casualties actually seem more numerous in the earlier part of the series but that would be because the army was larger then. You would however need some pretty fancy statistical fiddling to argue that the war has increased U.S. military deaths.

About 150,000 Iraqi Muslims have been killed by Muslim terrorists "About 151,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in the three years following the US-led invasion of their country, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) research. The study, which said violent deaths could have ranged from 104,000 to 223,000 between March 2003 and June 2006, is the most comprehensive since the war started. The study drew on an Iraqi health ministry survey of nearly 10,000 households - five times the number of those interviewed in a disputed 2006 John Hopkins University study that said more than 600,000 Iraqis had died over the period. While well below that figure, the United Nations agency's estimate exceeds the widely cited 80,000 to 87,000 death toll by the human rights group Iraq Body Count, which uses media reports and hospital and morgue records to calculate its tally. "There are a lot of uncertainties in making such estimates," WHO statistician Mohamed Ali, who co-authored the study, said."

Dems Speak No Evil Of Islamic Jihad: "We scanned the transcripts of Saturday's debates hosted by ABC News and tallied up the references to Islamic terrorism. The rhetorical divide between Democrats and Republicans on that score alone - ignoring the yawning gaps in policy - is stunning. None of the four Democrat presidential candidates - despite running for an office that demands they lead the ongoing global war against Islamic extremists - could bring himself or herself to define the enemy we face as Islamic. Their combined references to "Islam" or "Islamic" totaled zero - even though moderator Charles Gibson prompted them with a question about "Islamic radicals" threatening the U.S. with nuclear terrorism. But Democrats refused to go there. Out of respect for their constituency, there was a complete blackout regarding Islamic jihad. Instead, Hillary Clinton defined the enemy generically as "stateless terrorists," while Barack Hussein Obama complained about the "politics of fear" that he thinks accurately defining the enemy has created... Republicans, on the other hand, called the enemy by its proper name."

Thank you, New Hampshire: "Mrs. Clinton remains the best hope for Republicans this fall. Face it, Barack Obama is too nice, too smooth and too blank a page to defeat easily at a time when voters are displeased with the Republican Party. We need Hill. She's beatable. His "defeat" on Tuesday - perception being 9/10ths of the law in politics - gives old Hill the audacity of hope."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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