Goosestep goosebumps

Over the entire first term of the Bush administration, there have been those among us - some on the right and some on the left - who have noted the similarities between the new American Right and the rise to power of Hitler's Weimar. These arguments have been advanced with varying degrees of stridency, from the notorious advertisements submitted to MoveOn.org's grassroots advertising campaign on the left, to David Niewerts six-part essay on The Rise of Pseudo Fascism in America in the center left, all the way to Paul Craig Roberts, former Reagan official and Wall St. Journal editor who wrote of the The Brownshirting of America on the right.

I have argued many times that the most objectionable aspects of the Bush administration is not their policies - though they represent the road least likely to result in quality of life for me, my family and the world. The most objectionable aspects of the Bush Administration are the way it does business. Loyalty oathes, jingoism, mendacity, secrecy, truth-bending propaganda, and a frightening commitment to means - such as torture - that have thus far fallen outside the range of options our leaders have considered appropriate.

The response of the right, save for a few canaries in the coal mines, has been twofold. The first response, only natural in an argument I suppose, has been to fold the argument back on the left and blame them for the trend, such as Mitch Berg did last week in response to news that a third of high-school students want to curtail free speech. The second response has been, well, fascistic, such as the threatening comments we regularly receive on this blog. The former is a response by good people who aren't paying attention. The latter is action by the precipitators of the trend. Both are complicit in laying the groundwork for the end of true freedom in this country.

I am not alone in these thoughts. There is an absolute must read by Scott Mconnell, writing in American Conservative. It's called, Hunger for Dictatorship - War to export democracy may wreck our own. A taste:

But Rockwell (and Roberts and Raimondo) is correct in drawing attention to a mood among some conservatives that is at least latently fascist. Rockwell describes a populist Right website that originally rallied for the impeachment of Bill Clinton as “hate-filled ... advocating nuclear holocaust and mass bloodshed for more than a year now.” One of the biggest right-wing talk-radio hosts regularly calls for the mass destruction of Arab cities. Letters that come to this magazine from the pro-war Right leave no doubt that their writers would welcome the jailing of dissidents. And of course it’s not just us. When USA Today founder Al Neuharth wrote a column suggesting that American troops be brought home sooner rather than later, he was blown away by letters comparing him to Tokyo Rose and demanding that he be tried as a traitor. That mood, Rockwell notes, dwarfs anything that existed during the Cold War. “It celebrates the shedding of blood, and exhibits a maniacal love of the state. The new ideology of the red-state bourgeoisie seems to actually believe that the US is God marching on earth—not just godlike, but really serving as a proxy for God himself.”

And I like his balance:

Secondly, it is necessary to distinguish between a sudden proliferation of fascist tendencies and an imminent danger. There may be, among some neocons and some more populist right-wingers, unmistakable antidemocratic tendencies. But America hasn’t yet experienced organized street violence against dissenters or a state that is willing—in an unambiguous fashion—to jail its critics. The administration certainly has its far Right ideologues—the Washington Post’s recent profile of Alberto Gonzales, whose memos are literally written for him by Cheney aide David Addington, provides striking evidence. But the Bush administration still seems more embarrassed than proud of its most authoritarian aspects. Gonzales takes some pains to present himself as an opponent of torture; hypocrisy in this realm is perhaps preferable to open contempt for international law and the Bill of Rights.

I agree with the author that we aren't there yet. But the trend is unmistakeable. That should raise the hair on your neck - right, left, center.