The Fourteen Characteristics of Fascism: Is it Too Late for America?

This is pretty scary stuff. For weeks now, liberals have been trumpeting this research into the Fourteen Characteristics of Fascism, warning anyone who will listen that America is on the brink of a fascist takeover--if it hasn't happened already (just google "fourteen characteristics of fascism" and you'll see what I mean). At first, I just assumed that it was the typical hysteria and/or paranoia of the reality based community, but as I read each characteristic carefully, a cold chill wind blew across my spine.

Take a deep breath. Here we go, with my comments:
 
1. “Powerful and Continuing Nationalism; fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia.”

Oh my God! This is only the first category, but who hasn’t heard liberals mindlessly chanting about how dissent is “the highest form of patriotism” or seen the countless patriotic mottos and slogans such as “Proud of My Country, Ashamed of My President,” “Dissent: Patriotism in Action,” "You Don't Have to Like Bush to Love America,” “Patriot Act Too: Dissent," and “While You were Watching the War, Bush was Raping America.” Let's be honest--who is more prickly about his questionable patriotism being questioned than a liberal? And let's not even get into their many fervently patriotic songs, like this childish work of breathtaking numbskullery by that doddering old hippie, Neil Young, who hasn't taken a new cognitive imprint since 1968:

Let's impeach the president for lying
And leading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door

Let's impeach the president for spying
On citizens inside their own homes
Breaking every law in the country
By tapping our computers and telephones

Let's impeach the president
For hijacking our religion and using it to get elected
Dividing our country into colors
And still leaving black people neglected

2. "Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights; people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored. The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc."

Wow. I hadn’t thought about this before, but now I understand why liberals don't care one whit about Bush liberating 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq from two of the greatest human rights abusers in history. This also explains why feminists groups have “looked the other way” with respect to Bush’s liberation of Muslim women from the hideous conditions that prevailed in Iraq--the rape rooms, murdering children in front of their parents, Uday and Qsay kidnapping and raping brides on their wedding day, etc.
 
3. "Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause; the people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe."

Boy, does this one ring a bell! The constant frenzied drumbeat from the left that George Bush is the source of all the world's problems, and that if we can just eliminate him, we will live in some kind of leftist utopia. The fear also extends to “neocons," a code word for some sort of secret Jewish cabal that is supposedly pulling the strings behind world events.
 
4. "Supremacy of the Military; soldiers and military service are glamorized."

This is getting scary. As we all know, and are reminded of every day, nobody supports the troops more than liberals! Indeed, some of their deepest and most emotion-provoking slogans, mottos, and bumper stickers concern just this: “Support Our Troops: Impeach the President,” “I Support our Troops: That’s Why I Question Our Leaders,” “Want to Support Our Troops? Then Support the Truth.”
 
5. "Rampant Sexism."

Yikes. Sadly, it’s “Men Need Not Apply” in the Democratic party. The left has been almost entirely taken over by the ovary tower feminist gynocracy of man-hating women and girlie men. I don’t see how an actual man has a snowman's balls chance of getting anywhere in the Democratic party. If you show the slightest signs of testosterone, they kick you out, like Joe Lieberman. If you don't toe the phallophobic feminist line, you can forget about any political aspirations.

 6. "Controlled Mass Media; sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common."

Yes! This would explain the obsession with Fox. The left has a near monopoly on the mainstream distribution of disinformation, and can’t stand the idea that there is a single populist network that goes against liberal orthodoxy. Dissenting voices like Rush Limbaugh are hounded by rogue prosecutors, while demagogues and pathological liars like Joe Wilson are held out as great patriots. And just last week we saw the frightening specter of government officials trying to pressure a major television network not to air a program critical of their point of view.
 
7. "Obsession with National Security; fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses."

Let me count the ways! If you listen to fear-mongering liberals, you'd think it was the end of the world: “I Fear Bush More Than I Fear Terrorism,” “Bush Crime Family--Using Fear to Sell Protection,” “Got Fear?--Thank Bush,” “The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is Bush-Cheney," “Terror is Fear--Bush Delivers,” “Bush: Category 5 National Disaster,” “One Nation, Under Surveillance,” “I Love My Country--But I Fear My Government.” And let's not even talk about all the environmental fear-mongering--first global cooling, now global warming, China Syndrome, nuclear winter, overpopulation, running out of natural resources, etc.
 
8. "Religion and Government are Intertwined."

Wo. This explains the constant attack on religious freedom by big government, and the utter failure to protect the first amendment--you know, the important part: "congress shall make no law prohibiting the free expression of religion." But everywhere we look, we see this unhealthy mixture of church and state, as liberals try to impose their kooky secular religious values on the rest of us and interfere with the freedom to express our religiosity in the same unencumbered way Americans were allowed to in the past, without fear of the legal terrorists of the ACLU.
 
9. "Corporate Power is Protected; the industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite."

We all know that the Democratic party has many more wealthy donors than the Republican Party, and that the Republicans have many more small donors. Just a few wealthy elites like George Soros and Steven Bing are responsible for funding the nutrooots, Air America, and all those 527 groups that illegally skirt campaign finance reform. Not to mention the entrenched corporate interests of Hollywood, the trial lawyers, corrupt unions, and other powerful special interest groups that benefit by having Democrats in power.
 
10. "Labor Power is Suppressed."

Until I read this, I had never connected the dots, but now I see why the left is so in favor of unlimited immigration, as it constantly suppresses wages, hurting all working people. Why hire a union guy for $25 an hour on a construction site, when you can pay an illegal $5 an hour under the table? The left always says that illegals are only taking jobs Americans won’t do, but this is a ridiculous argument. Without the influx of cheap labor, wages would just rise until people did take the jobs.
 
11. "Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts; fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked."

Political correctness. Campus speech codes. The destruction of our primary school system by the liberal educational establishment and teacher's unions. Textbook guidelines that demand cultural and moral relativism. 90% of faculties in elite universities being radical leftists and tenured wackademics. Deconstructionists who are hostile to the idea that truth even exists. No intellectual diversity on college campuses. And of course, there is no subhuman garbage so vile that it cannot be promoted as “art” by postmodernists who have no appreciation of, or ability to, produce genuine art.
 
12. "Obsession with Crime and Punishment."

It's true! Liberals are obsessed with crime and punishment, aren't they? They just can't wrap their minds around the idea that bad people need to be punished, and that punishment deters criminal behavior. How often have we seen that perennially mystified (and mystifying) headline in the New York Times: “Crime Down Despite Increase in Prison Population”? Or how about the obsession with granting the full panoply of civil rights to terrorists, or abusing the Geneva Convention by insisting that it protects unlawful combatants? For that matter, how about the nutty obsession that President Bush is engaging in criminal activity by spying on terrorists, something he might as well be mandated to do in war time if you take the constitution seriously?
 
13. "Rampant Cronyism and Corruption."

Yes, I suppose cronyism and corruption did reach its zenith (or is it nadir?) in the Clinton administration. Think of all the dubious records set by that corrupt administration: the only president ever impeached on grounds of personal malfeasance, the most number of convictions and guilty pleas by friends and associates, the most number of cabinet officials to come under criminal investigation, the most number of witnesses to flee country or refuse to testify, the first president sued for sexual harassment and accused of rape, the first First Lady to come under criminal investigation, the largest criminal plea agreement in an illegal campaign contribution case, the first president to establish a legal defense fund, the first president to be held in contempt of court, the greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions, the first president disbarred from the US Supreme Court and a state court, not to mention the presidential pardoning of large campaign donors just before leaving office, such as Mark Rich.
 
14. "Fraudulent Elections; sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham."

Boy howdy! As John Fund wrote in Stealing Elections, when it comes to election fraud, Republicans are rank amateurs. The vast majority of election fraud and stolen elections has always come from the Democrats--illegal aliens registered to vote, corrupt urban political machines, dead voters swaying elections, etc.

As I said, I am scared. Real scared. This country is clearly in danger of becoming a left-wing fascist state--if it hasn’t already done so. As Sean Penn ominously warned us the other night on Larry King, "Fascism will come to America, but likely under another name... perhaps anti-fascism."

*****

All kidding aside, philosophically and spiritually, it actually does make much more sense that fascism would come from the left, because that is the source of its intellectual genealogy: Modern Fascism. It was communists who defined nazism--which was actually an alternative and competing form of socialism--as "right." But relative to classical American liberalism, both communism and fascism are left.