For years I’ve been trying to reinforce the concept — the fact — that the hard “progressive” Left in North America are best described as a conflation of many of those nasty political doctrinal terms we used to refer to all the time when speaking of our real enemies: socialists, fascists, totalitarians, authoritarians, etc.
I’ve often been scolded even by my conservative brethren (or more likely, those who think they’re conservatives but aren’t really) for hyper-inflating the rhetoric and shouting extremist hyperbole from my various blogs’ rooftops. But I stick to my guns, because I’m right. I’m not the extremist. I’m the normal one.
This “extremist” branding reminds me of how I’m accused by the pro-abortion set of being “extremist,” simply because I’m ardently pro-life. Somehow, crushing a baby’s head with forceps while it’s in the womb, or sticking a long needle into it and killing it with chemicals, and then sucking the baby out with a vacuum and dumping it into the garbage — is seen by these people as the “moderate” position; while letting an innocent human life exist and grow to its natural birth is seen by them to be the “extreme” position. You tell me who the “extremist” is.
Sure, the Left’s ideological or intellectual grip on those doctrines may actually be looser — especially by some of the more useful idiots who really don’t have a full grasp on the bill of goods they’re being sold — than I sometimes breathlessly ascribe. But that the Left adheres to and advances fascist economic and socialist doctrine (both economically and socially) much like some of the infamous modern examples of them (see how I’m craftily avoiding those nefarious historic names?), are nonetheless real.
Here’s a little bit of the brilliant economist and political observer Thomas Sowell on it today:
Socialist or Fascist
It bothers me a little when conservatives call Barack Obama a “socialist.” He certainly is an enemy of the free market, and wants politicians and bureaucrats to make the fundamental decisions about the economy. But that does not mean that he wants government ownership of the means of production, which has long been a standard definition of socialism….
Socialist or FascistSowell then touches on the definition of fascism. Which is a left-wing concept, but which has been wrongly attributed to the Right.
What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector.
Politically, it is heads-I-win when things go right, and tails-you-lose when things go wrong. This is far preferable, from Obama’s point of view, since it gives him a variety of scapegoats for all his failed policies, without having to use President Bush as a scapegoat all the time.
Government ownership of the means of production means that politicians also own the consequences of their policies, and have to face responsibility when those consequences are disastrous — something that Barack Obama avoids like the plague.
Thus the Obama administration can arbitrarily force insurance companies to cover the children of their customers until the children are 26 years old. Obviously, this creates favorable publicity for President Obama. But if this and other government edicts cause insurance premiums to rise, then that is something that can be blamed on the “greed” of the insurance companies.
The conflation of socialism and fascism is complicated by the fact that rather than actually owning the means of production, today’s progressives in government choose instead to so heavily control and regulate and fund and bail them out (and buy controlling interest in them, as in GM), and then engineer so many companies’ output by way of consumer tax favors or consumer or “environmental” regulation, that they might just as well own them outright. But they don’t.
As Sowell explains, they’re politically smarter than that, and they hope (they don’t pray) that you’re so stupid you’ll fall for their claptrap. And around half of the people actually do, as polls indicate.
Sowell, himself a New York Times best-seller (see Economic Facts and Fallacies) [PAID LINK — As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.], refers to Jonah Goldberg’s brilliant New York Times best-selling book “Liberal Fascism” [PAID LINK — As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.] as I often have, to help bolster his case that socialism and fascism are brothers or sisters — or at least cousins or “life partners” — from the same mother. (OK I admit my family metaphor ran out of steam there, except possibly from the perspective of the progressive’s vision of the modern “family”.)
I’ve used the term Fabian Socialism for years also. It is a movement unknown or largely considered dead today by most people, but it isn’t really. 
I think it lives on, even if only because today’s progressives unwittingly cling to its socialist and fascist tenets. The progressives of today are a movement of people who, slowly, over time, drip by drip, one social program at a time, one law piled onto another law, and one more policy added to the last one, one tax increase after another, “progress” toward all-out totalitarian socialism and — or — fascism.
Oh they won’t call it that. It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing — again, read about Fabian Socialists, whose own proud imagery (see image) literally includes a socialist wolf in sheep’s clothing. They’ll call it “social democracy” or “democratic socialism” or “social justice” or “economic justice” or some such tarradiddle. As they now already do. But that’s what it really is.
But don’t take my word for it. Do your own reading and studying. For goodness sake, don’t trust the media to explain it to you, nor your teachers or professors. Most of them are members of the club.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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