ON "DIVERSITY": The Big Lie

Orwell had it right.... there would come a time when things would be turned upside down. War is Peace. In 2008-era America, "tolerance" is intolerance, and "diversity" is "my-versity". One who questions the party line runs the risk of being branded racist, sexist, fill-in-the-blank-ist, and/or fill-in-the-blank-o-phobic. Better to be a pedophile than run the risk of being made to wear the scarlet letter of political incorrectness.

America's first socialist dictator.... that's right, I said it... Woodrow Wilson, instituted to Committee on Public Information to control public opinion. The CPI printed millions of posters, buttons, pamphlets, that did just that. A typical poster for Liberty Bonds cautioned, "I am Public Opinion. All men fear me!... If you have the money to buy and do not buy, I will make this No Man's Land for you!"

To question the dogma is a sin. Diversity is now a God to be worshipped, "Environmentalism" is a religion, and Obama-ism a movement. Orwell had it right.... there would come a time when things would be turned upside down. P.T. Barnum knew it and said it... "a sucker born every minute". What CAN save us is that we DO NOT have to be suckers, we do not have to be victims.

Today in a box of old newspaper clippings I found a column written by a Baltimore Sun journalist named Philip Wagner in February of 1964. Its prescience astounded me... the facts, simply stated, over 40 years ago, of the conditions existing, their cause, and his thoughts on what would come are beyond refute.

It is beyond time that men and women of conscience stand up, speak up, and call things for what they are. It is 1775 once again, with rulers foreign and hostile to the spirit of our nation attempting to impose their will from afar. The game is afoot.

Phillip Cohen
July 27, 2008

When A Neighborhood Collapses

By Philip Wagner
Syndicated columnist on public affairs
Baltimore Sun - Week of February 10, 1964

Baltimore - Here in Baltimore Patrolman Profili was drilled through the brain last week by a bank robber's bullet. Three weeks earlier, Patrolman Zel­ler got a bul­let in the brain from a bandit in a supermarket.

These are trying times for Balti­more's police. The city had four bank robberies last month, double the 1963 aver­age of two a month; in turn, eight robberies' more than in 1962. One chain of filling stations used to count on two or three hold-ups a month. Now it must cope with two or three a week. This firm has set up a traveling patrol for its 22 stations. Its legalized vigilantes carry shotguns and a K-9 dog.

The short of it is that Baltimore has ceased to be a safe place in which to live.

Impromptu Crimes

An odd thing about most of these bank robberies is that they are impromptu, quite un­like the planned gang robberies of old. They are just purse snatchings and yokings on a grand scale, different only in degree from the wanton disturbances of the peace which Baltimore now takes to be normal.             .

Night after night there is the aimless vandalism of slashed tires and smashed school windows. The word rape is in every school child's vocabulary. Casual street assaults in daylight as well as dark have become commonplace assaults in which robbery is no more than an afterthought, assaults accomplishing nothing except to leave a middle-aged woman or an old man lying grievously injured at the curb.

Baltimore's problem is nothing special. It is not having a "crime wave." It is simply sharing in that progressive deterioration of social restraints which can be seen in Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland - all across the country. An emergency appropriation is providing for some enlargement of the police force. There is talk of bringing back retired policemen. There is talk of an auxiliary. But these steps can't accomplish much. A doubled police force couldn't, nor could a tripled one.

Any human community has to have rules - rules understood and respected by all but the mad and the half-witted, rules understood even by those who break them. Call these tribal rules if you want. They pretty much enforce themselves, as anyone knows who grew up in a small town.

Role of Police

A police force is helpless when the tribal authority weakens- when the rules are forgotten or cease to mean anything to any considerable minority. That is the case today in all of our metropolitan areas, and it spreads as these areas spread.

 Much of this has been unavoidable, I know. Rural and small-town people, moving to the city, find themselves suddenly anonymous, in a sense non-persons. They are releas­ed from familiar rules of behavior. There are none to replace them - except the feeble substitutes supplied by police arid ordinance book. What was misbehavior is now O.K., without much danger of punishment and without even a residual sense of guilt.

But much is avoidable, too.

Neighborhoods are the urban approximation of small towns. They are what give people both the protection and the discipline of a well-understood code of behavior. But the genuine neighborhood has become a rarity in our big cities. Most of the means by which a neighborhood formerly protected its personality are these days denounced as biased, bigoted and prejudiced- more apt than not to be prohibited by law. So the neighborhood collapses ­first as a community and then as a piece of real estate. Nobody wins except the city planners, given another derelict area to develop.

Traditional Devices

No doubt a neighborhood's means of self-protection are as narrow-minded as everyone says. Restrictive real estate covenants relating to race and religion are certainly biased.

Neighborhood boycotts of an unwanted new family- subtle in "nice" neighborhoods, crude in simpler neighborhoods ­are a form of bigotry. It is petty and mean-spirited of .the Italians, the Irish; the Jews and the Poles to draw together and produce neighborhoods or characteristic flavor, and even more so to battle for the special quality of their churches and schools.

But these devices are responses to a deep human need for a sense of community, and when given a chance they work. They gave to our cities the individuality, the livability, the security, the warmth and color and municipal pride which have now largely been taken a way in the name of an absolu­tist kind of tolerance.

Our cities are in bad shape because humanity's ancient ways of solving the problems of living together have been too much interfered with by the zealots of tolerance. Considering the way things' are going, they will be in worse shape before they become livable again.

A Frightening Analysis

Richard D. Lamm was a Democrat who served as governor of Colorado for twelve years from 1975 to 1987. Of the above-quoted third person account regarding his speech on the perils of multiculturalism, he told www.snopes.com in mid-June 2005:

"Yes, it is a speech I gave a year and a half ago in Washington D.C. It was a 5 minute speech, and I am amazed and gratified it has received so much coverage."

The following is a widely circulated account and word for word transcription of the speech given and the auduience reaction:

We all know Dick Lamm as the former Governor of Colorado. In that context his thoughts are particularly poignant. Last week there was an immigration-overpopulation conference in Washington, DC, filled to capacity by many of American's finest minds and leaders. A brilliant college professor named Victor Hansen Davis talked about his latest book, "Mexifornia," explaining how immigration — both legal and illegal — was destroying the entire state of California. He said it would march across the country until it destroyed all vestiges of The American Dream.

Moments later, former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm stood up and gave a stunning speech on how to destroy America. The audience sat spellbound as he described eight methods for the destruction of the United States. He said, "If you believe that America is too smug, too self-satisfied, too rich, then let's destroy America. It is not that hard to do. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall and that 'An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.'"

"Here is how they do it," Lamm said: First to destroy America, "Turn America into a bilingual or multi-lingual and bicultural country. History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict, and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual. The historical scholar Seymour Lipset put it this way: 'The histories of bilingual and bi-cultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension, and tragedy. Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with Basques, Bretons, and Corsicans."

Lamm went on: Second, to destroy America, "Invent 'multiculturalism' and encourage immigrants to maintain their culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal. That there are no cultural differences. I would make it an article of faith that the Black and Hispanic dropout rates are due to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out of bounds.

Third, "We could make the United States a 'Hispanic Quebec' without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity. As Benjamin Schwarz said in the Atlantic Monthly recently: 'The apparent success of our own multiethnic and multicultural experiment might have been achieved! Not by tolerance but by hegemony. Without the dominance that once dictated ethnocentrically and what it meant to be an American, we are left with only tolerance and pluralism to hold us together.'"

Lamm said, "I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with the salad bowl metaphor. It is important to ensure that we have various cultural subgroups living in America reinforcing their differences rather than as Americans, emphasizing their similarities."

"Fourth, I would make our fastest growing demographic group the least educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated, and antagonistic to our population. I would have this second underclass have a 50% dropout rate from high school."

"My fifth point for destroying America would be to get big foundations and business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of 'Victimology.' I would get all minorities to think their lack of success was the fault of the majority. I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population."

"My sixth plan for America's downfall would include dual citizenship and promote divided loyalties. I would celebrate diversity over unity. I would stress differences rather than similarities. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other - that is, when they are not killing each other. A diverse, peaceful, or stable society is against most historical precedent. People undervalue the unity! Unity is what it takes to keep a nation together. Look at the ancient Greeks. The Greeks believed that they belonged to the same race; they possessed a common language and literature; and they worshiped the same gods. All Greece took part in the Olympic Games.

A common enemy Persia threatened their liberty. Yet all these bonds were not strong enough to over come two factors: local patriotism and geographical conditions that nurtured political divisions. Greece fell.

"E. Pluribus Unum" — From many, one. In that historical reality, if we put the emphasis on the 'pluribus' instead of the 'Unum,' we can balkanize America as surely as Kosovo."

"Next to last, I would place all subjects off limits ~ make it taboo to talk about anything against the cult of 'diversity.' I would find a word similar to 'heretic' in the 16th century - that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words like 'racist' or 'x! xenophobes' halt discussion and debate."

"Having made America a bilingual/bicultural country, having established multi-culturism, having the large foundations fund the doctrine of 'Victimology,' I would next make it impossible to enforce our immigration laws. I would develop a mantra: That because immigration has been good for America, it must always be good. I would make every individual immigrant symmetric and ignore the cumulative impact of millions of them."

In the last minute of his speech, Governor Lamm wiped his brow. Profound silence followed. Finally he said, "Lastly, I would censor Victor Davis Hanson's book Mexifornia. His book is dangerous. It exposes the plan to destroy America. If you feel America deserves to be destroyed, don't read that book."

There was no applause.

A chilling fear quietly rose like an ominous cloud above every attendee at the conference. Every American in that room knew that everything Lamm enumerated was proceeding methodically, quietly, darkly, yet pervasively across the United States today. Every discussion is being suppressed. Over 100 languages are ripping the foundation of our educational system and national cohesiveness. Barbaric cultures that practice female genital mutilation are growing as we celebrate 'diversity.' American jobs are vanishing into the Third World as corporations create a Third World in America — take note of California and other states — to date, ten million illegal aliens and growing fast. It is reminiscent of George Orwell's book "1984." In that story, three slogans are engraved in the Ministry of Truth building: "War is peace," "Freedom is slavery," and "Ignorance is strength."

Governor Lamm walked back to his seat. It dawned on everyone at the conference that our nation and the future of this great democracy are deeply in trouble and worsening fast. If we don't get this immigration monster stopped within three years, it will rage like a California wildfire and destroy everything in its path, especially The American Dream.

Since that time Governor Lamm has issued a reised version of his speech, perhaps even more to the point than the original: "I HAVE A PLAN TO DESTROY AMERICA".

I HAVE A PLAN TO DESTROY AMERICA
RICHARD D. LAMM

I HAVE A SECRET PLAN TO DESTROY AMERICA. IF YOU BELIEVE, AS MANY DO, THAT AMERICA IS TOO SMUG, TOO WHITE BREAD, TOO SELF-SATISFIED, TOO RICH, LETS DESTROY AMERICA. IT IS NOT THAT HARD TO DO. HISTORY SHOWS THAT NATIONS ARE MORE FRAGILE THAN THEIR CITIZENS THINK. NO NATION IN HISTORY HAS SURVIVED THE RAVAGES OF TIME. ARNOLD TOYNBEE OBSERVED THAT ALL GREAT CIVILIZATIONS RISE AND THEY ALL FALL, AND THAT "AN AUTOPSY OF HISTORY WOULD SHOW THAT ALL GREAT NATIONS COMMIT SUICIDE." HERE IS MY PLAN:

I.     WE MUST FIRST MAKE AMERICA A BILINGUAL-BICULTURAL COUNTRY. HISTORY SHOWS, IN MY OPINION, THAT NO NATION CAN SURVIVE THE TENSION, CONFLICT, AND ANTAGONISM OF TWO COMPETING LANGUAGES AND CULTURES. IT IS A BLESSING FOR AN INDIVIDUAL TO BE BILINGUAL; IT IS A CURSE FOR A SOCIETY TO BE BILINGUAL. ONE SCHOLAR, SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET, PUT IT THIS WAY:

THE HISTORIES OF BILINGUAL AND BICULTURAL SOCIETIES THAT DO NOT ASSIMILATE ARE HISTORIES OF TURMOIL, TENSION, AND TRAGEDY. CANADA, BELGIUM, MALAYSIA, LEBANON-ALL FACE CRISES OF NATIONAL EXISTENCE IN WHICH MINORITIES PRESS FOR AUTONOMY, IF NOT INDEPENDENCE. PAKISTAN AND CYPRUS HAVE DIVIDED. NIGERIA SUPPRESSED AN ETHNIC REBELLION. FRANCE FACES DIFFICULTIES WITH ITS BASQUES, BRETONS, AND CORSICANS.

II.     I WOULD THEN INVENT "MULTICULTURALISM" AND ENCOURAGE IMMIGRANTS TO MAINTAIN THEIR OWN CULTURE. I WOULD MAKE IT AN ARTICLE OF BELIEF THAT ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL: THAT THERE ARE NO CULTURAL DIFFERENCES THAT ARE IMPORTANT. I WOULD DECLARE IT AN ARTICLE OF FAITH THAT THE BLACK AND HISPANIC DROPOUT RATE IS ONLY DUE TO PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION BY THE MAJORITY. EVERY OTHER EXPLANATION IS OUT-OF-BOUNDS.

III.     WE CAN MAKE THE UNITED STATES A "HISPANIC QUEBEC" WITHOUT MUCH EFFORT. THE KEY IS TO CELEBRATE DIVERSITY RATHER THAN UNITY. AS BENJAMIN SCHWARZ SAID IN THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY RECENTLY:

...THE APPARENT SUCCESS OF OUR OWN MULTIETHNIC AND MULTICULTURAL EXPERIMENT MIGHT HAVE BEEN ACHIEVED NOT BY TOLERANCE BUT BY HEGEMONY. WITHOUT THE DOMINANCE THAT ONCE DICTATED ETHNOCENTRICALLY, AND WHAT IT MEANT TO BE AN AMERICAN, WE ARE LEFT WITH ONLY TOLERANCE AND PLURALISM TO HOLD US TOGETHER.

I WOULD ENCOURAGE ALL IMMIGRANTS TO KEEP THEIR OWN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE. I WOULD REPLACE THE MELTING POT METAPHOR WITH A SALAD BOWL METAPHOR. IT IS IMPORTANT TO INSURE THAT WE HAVE VARIOUS CULTURAL SUB-GROUPS LIVING IN AMERICA REINFORCING THEIR DIFFERENCES RATHER THAN AMERICANS, EMPHASIZING THEIR SIMILARITIES.

IV.     HAVING DONE ALL THIS, I WOULD MAKE OUR FASTEST GROWING DEMOGRAPHIC GROUP THE LEAST EDUCATED - I WOULD ADD A SECOND UNDERCLASS, UNASSIMILATED, UNDEREDUCATED, AND ANTAGONISTIC TO OUR POPULATION. I WOULD HAVE THIS SECOND UNDERCLASS HAVE A 50% DROP OUT RATE FROM SCHOOL.

V.     I WOULD THEN GET THE BIG FOUNDATIONS AND BIG BUSINESS TO GIVE THESE EFFORTS LOTS OF MONEY. I WOULD INVEST IN ETHNIC IDENTITY, AND I WOULD ESTABLISH THE CULT OF VICTIMOLOGY. I WOULD GET ALL MINORITIES TO THINK THEIR LACK OF SUCCESS WAS ALL THE FAULT OF THE MAJORITY - I WOULD START A GRIEVANCE INDUSTRY BLAMING ALL MINORITY FAILURE ON THE MAJORITY POPULATION.

VI.     I WOULD ESTABLISH DUAL CITIZENSHIP AND PROMOTE DIVIDED LOYALTIES. I WOULD "CELEBRATE DIVERSITY." "DIVERSITY" IS A WONDERFULLY SEDUCTIVE WORD. IT STRESSES DIFFERENCES RATHER THAN COMMONALITIES. DIVERSE PEOPLE WORLDWIDE ARE MOSTLY ENGAGED IN HATING EACH OTHER-THAT IS, WHEN THEY ARE NOT KILLING EACH OTHER. A DIVERSE," PEACEFUL, OR STABLE SOCIETY IS AGAINST MOST HISTORICAL PRECEDENT. PEOPLE UNDERVALUE THE UNITY IT TAKES TO KEEP A NATION TOGETHER, AND WE CAN TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS MYOPIA. LOOK AT THE ANCIENT GREEKS. DORF'S WORLD HISTORY TELLS US:

THE GREEKS BELIEVED THAT THEY BELONGED TO THE SAME RACE; THEY POSSESSED A COMMON LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE; AND THEY WORSHIPED THE SAME GODS. ALL GREECE TOOK PART IN THE OLYMPIC GAMES IN HONOR OF ZEUS AND ALL GREEKS VENERATED THE SHRINE OF APOLLO AT DELPHI. A COMMON ENEMY PERSIA THREATENED THEIR LIBERTY. YET, ALL OF THESE BONDS TOGETHER WERE NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO OVERCOME TWO FACTORS . . . (LOCAL PATRIOTISM AND GEOGRAPHICAL CONDITIONS THAT NURTURED POLITICAL DIVISIONS . . .)

IF WE CAN PUT THE EMPHASIS ON THE "PLURIBUS," INSTEAD OF THE "UNUM," WE CAN BALKANIZE AMERICA AS SURELY AS KOSOVO.

VII.     THEN I WOULD PLACE ALL THESE SUBJECTS OFF LIMITS - MAKE IT TABOO TO TALK ABOUT. I WOULD FIND A WORD SIMILAR TO "HERETIC" IN THE 16TH CENTURY - THAT STOPPED DISCUSSION AND PARALYZED THINKING. WORDS LIKE "RACIST", "XENOPHOBE" THAT HALTS ARGUMENT AND CONVERSATION.

HAVING MADE AMERICA A BILINGUAL-BICULTURAL COUNTRY, HAVING ESTABLISHED MULTICULTURALISM, HAVING THE LARGE FOUNDATIONS FUND THE DOCTRINE OF "VICTIMOLOGY", I WOULD NEXT MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO ENFORCE OUR IMMIGRATION LAWS. I WOULD DEVELOP A MANTRA - "THAT BECAUSE IMMIGRATION HAS BEEN GOOD FOR AMERICA, IT MUST ALWAYS BE GOOD." I WOULD MAKE EVERY INDIVIDUAL IMMIGRANT SYMPATRIC AND IGNORE THE CUMULATIVE IMPACT.

VIII.     LASTLY, I WOULD CENSOR VICTOR DAVIS HANSON'S BOOK MEXIFORNIA — THIS BOOK IS DANGEROUS — IT EXPOSES MY PLAN TO DESTROY AMERICA. SO PLEASE, PLEASE — IF YOU FEEL THAT AMERICA DESERVES TO BE DESTROYED — PLEASE, PLEASE — DON'T BUY THIS BOOK! THIS GUY IS ON TO MY PLAN.

"THE SMART WAY TO KEEP PEOPLE PASSIVE AND OBEDIENT IS TO STRICTLY LIMIT THE SPECTRUM OF ACCEPTABLE OPINION, BUT ALLOW VERY LIVELY DEBATE WITHIN THAT SPECTRUM." — NOAM CHOMSKY, AMERICAN LINGUIST AND US MEDIA AND FOREIGN POLICY CRITIC.

Woodrow Wilson: America’s Worst and First Fascist President

Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the 28th US president, often makes the top ten in rankings of the best US presidents. In the well-known polls taken by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. in 1948 and 1962, Wilson was ranked #4 behind Lincoln, Washington, and FDR. By the end of this post, I hope you will agree with me that he belongs in the bottom rung and was one of our worst presidents ever, if not THE worst.

Wilson was the first president to criticize the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Wilson criticized the diffuseness of government power in the US in most famous book Congressional Government. In this work he confessed, “I cannot imagine power as a thing negative and not positive.” His love and worship of power was a prime characteristic of fascism. “If any trait bubbles up in all one reads about Wilson it is this: he loved, craved, and in a sense glorified power,” writes historian Walter McDougall. It should not surprise us that his idols were Abraham Lincoln and Otto von Bismarck.

“No doubt a lot of nonsense has been talked about the inalienable rights of the individual, and a great deal that was mere sentiment and pleasing speculation has been put forward as fundamental principle,” wrote Wilson, attacking the very individual rights that have made America great.

He rejected the principles of “separation of powers” and “checks and balances” that are the foundation of American government: “Government does now whatever experience permits or the times demand….” wrote Wilson in The State.

No fan of democracy or constitutional government, he wrote the following in Constitutional Government in the United States: “The President is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can. His capacity will set the limit….” Sounds like a devotee of the imperial presidency.

Indeed, in a disturbing 1890 essay entitled Leaders of Men, Wilson said that a “true leader” uses the masses of people like “tools.” He writes, “The competent leader of men cares little for the internal niceties of other people’s characters: he cares much–everything–for the external uses to which they may be put…. He supplies the power; others supply only the materials upon which that power operates…. It is the power which dictates, dominates; the materials yield. Men are as clay in the hands of the consummate leader.” So much for the dignity of each person!

“Woe be to the man or group of men that seeks to stand in our way,” said Wilson in June 1917 to counter protests to the fascist regime that he created upon entering WW I.

Wilson rejects the Jeffersonian individualism that has defined the Founding and American conservatism: “While we are followers of Jefferson, there is one principle of Jefferson’s which no longer can obtain in the practical politics of America. You know that it was Jefferson who said that the best government is that which does as little governing as possible…. But that time is passed. America is not now and cannot in the future be a place for unrestricted individual enterprise.” Follower of Jefferson? Yeah right!

Wilson sought war with Germany and purposefully drew the US into World War I.

“I am an advocate of peace, but there are some splendid things that come to a nation through the discipline of war,” said Wilson and he would seek after those progressive “splendid things” when the opportunity of WW I arose.

It is an often overlooked fact of WW I that Great Britain’s powerful navy blockaded Germany and in so doing starved the German population. And guess who led the British in this distant blockade (which was against international law at the time)? Our dear beloved Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty. This blockade drove the Germans to retaliate with submarine warfare (U-boats), and they warned that “neutral ships will be exposed to danger” and it would be “impossible to avoid attacks being made on neutral ships in mistake for those of the enemy.” This was especially true since British abused the rules of war by decorating their warships with neutral flags to lure German submarines to the surface and destroy them.

Wilson all the while claimed neutrality but was actually very pro-British. The British blockade and the German unrestricted submarine warfare both violated the rights of neutral nations under international law. But he refused to acknowledge that the former had led to the latter. German misdeeds against vessels carrying Americans received swift denunciation from Wilson, but the terrible British blockade that starved hundreds of thousands of Germans to death got a slap on the wrist. The Germans even proposed to end their unrestricted sub warfare if the British would end the blockade; the British refused. It was this double standard that would drive Wilson to bring the US into the war.

The cunning Churchill knew of Wilson’s irrational disposition and used it to his advantage: “It is most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores in the hope especially of embroiling the United States with Germany….” Britain aimed to lure America into the war. Indeed, by making it dangerous for the German submarines to surface, Churchill would increase his chances of success: “The submerged U-boat had to rely increasingly on underwater attack and thus ran the greater risk of mistaking neutral for British ships and of drowning neutral crews and thus embroiling Germany with other Great Powers.” By that time, the US was the only great power left that had remained neutral.

The most famous incident was the sinking of the Lusitania. But you will seldom read in school textbooks that the German government actually published warnings in major newspapers not to book passage on the great vessel. But most passengers ignored the warning. The German U-boat only fired one torpedo at the Lusitania and, to the surprise of the German captain Walter Schwieger, that was all it took. The liner went down so quickly that Swieger noted, “I could not have fired a second torpedo into this thing of humanity attempting to save themselves.” A total of 124 Americans died.

What was the American reaction to this tragedy? Hardly any of the newspapers advocated that declaring war was the proper response. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan certainly had no desire to go to war over it and challenged Wilson’s double standard head on: “Why be shocked by the drowning of a few people, if there is no objection to a starving nation?” It was of no use and Bryan resigned in protest. Senators Wesley Jones of Washington and Robert La Follette of Wisconsin urged the President to exercise restraint.

Bryan’s replacement, Robert Lansing, reveals that the Wilson administration was determined to go to war: “In dealing with the British government, there was always in my mind the conviction that we would ultimately become an ally of Great Britain and that it would not do, therefore, to let our controversies reach a point where diplomatic correspondence gave place to action.” American protests against Britain were carefully “submerged in verbiage. It was done with deliberate purpose. It insured the continuance of the controversies and left the questions unsettled, which was necessary in order to leave this country free to act and even act illegally when it entered the war.”

Germany then agreed to call off the sub warfare if Wilson would pressure Britain to stop the hunger blockade (Sussex Pledge). Wilson refused.

Then Wilson did the most irresponsible act that brought us into war: he ordered that merchant ships be armed with US Navy guns and staffed with US Navy crews and that they fire on any surfacing submarines they encountered. Under such circumstances, the ships sailed into the war zone. Wilson sent out ships with the purpose of sacrificing them in order to push America into war! Four of them had been sunk by the time Wilson requested a declaration of war from Congress. It was only after the war that Congress would realize what a dangerous fanatic Wilson was and actually stood up to him be rejecting the Treaty of Versailles, especially Article 10 the League of Nations. This article obligated each League member to preserve the territorial integrity of the other member states. Why should the US sacrifice blood and treasure for obscure border disputes in Europe? Congress was not advocating isolationism as many have asserted but rather defending its own constitutional authority to decide when America goes to war.

John Bassett Moore, a distinguished professor of international law at Columbia University who would serve on the International Court of Justice after the war, argued that “what most decisively contributed to the involvement of the United States in the war was the assertion of a right to protect belligerent ships on which Americans saw fit to travel and the treatment of armed belligerent merchantmen as peaceful vessels. Both assumptions were contrary to reason, and no other neutral advanced them.” Wilson apparently believed that every American, in time of war, had the right to travel aboard armed, belligerent merchant ships carrying munitions of war through a declared submarine zone. No other neutral power had ever proclaimed such a doctrine, let alone gone to war over it!

No American interest was at stake in WW I, and yet a total of 116,516 men died and 204,002 were wounded. In fact, Wilson bragged about fighting a war with no national interests at stake! “There is not a single selfish element, so far as I can see, in the cause we are fighting for,” he declared. It was a war to satisfy his own naive idealism that he could remake the world in his “progressive” ideology. War was an instrument for perverse social engineering that would remake the world: “[A]s head of a nation participating in the war, the president of the United States would have a seat at the peace table, but…if he remained the representative of a neutral country, he could at best only ‘call through a crack in the door.’” The whole war was so that HE could have a seat at a table?! The guy was insane, sick (even Freud, who wrote a whole book on Wilson, thought so).

Wilson created the first official propaganda department in the US.

A week after Congress declared war on Germany, Wilson created a government apparatus whose sole purpose was to lie to the American people, the first modern ministry for propaganda in the West. It was called the Committee on Public Information and was led by journalist George Creel.

Edward Bernays, an adviser to Wilson and participant in CPI operations, characterized the mission of CPI as the “engineering of consent” and “the conscious manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses.”

A typical poster for Liberty Bonds read: “I am Public Opinion. All men fear me!…If you have money to buy and do not buy, I will make this No Man’s Land for you!” Other posters were created to mobilize the public and silence dissent.

A trained group of nearly a hundred thousand men gave four minute speeches to any audience that would listen. They portrayed Wilson as a larger-than-life leader and the Germans as less-than-human Huns, emphasizing fabricated German war crimes and horrors.

CPI released propaganda films entitled The Claws of the Hun, The Prussian Cur, To Hell With The Kaiser, and The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin.

Wilson harshly suppressed dissent and resistance among citizens and the press.

At Wilson’s urging, a Sedition Act (not unlike the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 ) forbade Americans from criticizing their own government in a time of war. Citizens could not “utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the government or the military. The Postmaster General was given the authority to revoke the mailing privileges of those who disobeyed. About 75 periodicals were were shut down by the government in this way and many others were given warnings.

In the fashion of a police state, the Department of Justice arrested tens of thousands of individuals without just cause. One was not safe even within the walls of one’s own home to criticize the Wilson administration. A letter to federal attorneys and marshals said that citizens had nothing to fear as long as they “Obey the law; keep your mouth shut.” In fact, the Justice Department created the precursor to the Gestapo called the American Protective League. Its job was to spy on fellow citizens and turn in “seditious” persons or draft dodgers. In September of 1918 in NYC, the APL rounded up about 50,000 people. This doesn’t even include the infamous Palmer Raids (named after Wilson’s attorney general) that occurred after the war.

In 1915, in his address to Congress, Wilson declared, “The gravest threats against our national peace and safety have been uttered within our own borders. There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags…who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt, to destroy our industries wherever they thought it effective for their vindictive purposes….”

All in all it is estimated that about 175,000 Americans were arrested for failing to demonstrate their patriotism in one way or another.

Wilson took over the US economy completely.

He charged Bernard Baruch with running the War Industries Board, which would endeavor to control all industry in service to the state. It would serve as a precursor to the corporatist policies Mussolini and Hitler.

Grosvenor Clarkson, a member and later historian of the WIB, would characterize the WIB as follows: “It was an industrial dictatorship without parallel–a dictatorship by force of necessity and common consent which step by step at least encompassed the Nation and united it into a coordinated and mobile whole.” He would also later say that the war was “a story of the conversion of a hundred million combatively individualistic people into a vast cooperative effort in which the good of the unit was sacrificed to the good of the whole.” The government weakened the spirit of the people to resist government tyranny.

Rationing and price-fixing characterized the wartime command economy. (hmmm, sounds like communism and the Carter administration)

Wilson himself was a major cause of the outbreak of World War II.

It is a well-accepted fact that the extremely harsh and unfair terms of the Treaty of Versailles were the incipient cause of WW II. Wilson’s Fourteen Points were fair and persuaded the Germans to surrender before the allies devastated Germany. He had the opportunity to make sure Europe did not take revenge on Germany, but he let is slip away. He threw Germany to the dogs so he could have his worthless, utopian League of Nations. He deluded himself into thinking the League could make up for the other thirteen points. This stab in the back of Germany would give rise to Hitler and allow him to rouse the German people to war a mere two decades or so later. Therefore, in a very real sense, Wilson is responsible for all the horrors of WW II.

In sum, Wilson was the first fascist president of the US and first major fascist dictator of the 20th century.

Wilson took over the US economy, infringed on American civil liberties especially by suppressing dissent, oppressed the “unpatriotic,” and purposefully sought to drag the US into war. This Marxist, totalitarian, jingoistic, and militaristic Democrat president was a fascist. He worshiped the power of the state, and such statolatry is exactly what fascism is.

I don’t think President George W. Bush is a fascist, but his Wilsonian idealism for spreading democracy should disturb any conservative. America was attacked on 9/11; no such thing happened during Wilson’s presidency. The Patriot Act is no where near as harmful to civil liberties as Wilson’s Sedition Act was, if harmful at all.

Though the Democratic Party is largely dominated by anti-war people now (even though Soviet communism and radical Islam have been actual threats to national security unlike the Kaiser’s Germany), Wilson’s fascism still remains with the party, especially with regard to economics and expanding the power of the federal government in general whenever possible. This should not be surprising since fascism is a product of the Left, not the Right, side of the political spectrum.

(Reference The Politically Incorrect Guide to US History and Liberal Fascism)

Emulating FDR: A horrible idea
By Jonah Goldberg

"America has a dictator," Benito Mussolini proclaimed, watching FDR from abroad. He marveled at how the forces of "spiritual renewal" on display in the New Deal were destroying the outdated notion that democracy and liberalism were "immortal principles." "Roosevelt is moving, acting, giving orders independently of the decisions or wishes of the Senate or Congress. ... A sole will silences dissenting voices." That almost sounds like Harry Reid talking about Bush.

Mussolini reviewed FDR's book, Looking Forward proclaiming the author a kindred spirit. The way Roosevelt "calls his readers to battle," he wrote, "is reminiscent of the ways and means by which fascism awakened the Italian people." "Without question," he continued, the "sea change" in America "resembles that of fascism." Indeed, the comparisons were so commonplace, Mussolini's press office banned the practice. "It is not to be emphasized that Roosevelt's policy is fascist because these comments are immediately cabled to the United States and are used by his foes to attack him."

The German press adored FDR. In 1934, the Volkischer Beobachter, the Nazi Party's official newspaper, described Roosevelt as a man of "irreproachable, extremely responsible character and immovable will" and a "warm-hearted leader of the people with a profound understanding of social needs." Hitler sent FDR a letter celebrating his "heroic efforts" and "successful battle against economic distress." Hitler informed the U.S. ambassador, William Dodd, that New Dealism was also "the quintessence of the German state philosophy."

The New Dealers were not so much mimicking the Soviet Union, Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany. They were attempting to recreate what they had built-up under Woodrow Wilson's war socialism.

Today we have no historical memory of how brutal the Wilson Administration was, nor do we realize that many Progressives supported the war not so much because they championed its foreign policy aims, but because they yearned for the "social possibilities of war," in the words of John Dewey, the 20th century's premier political philosopher.

The war provided an opportunity to force Americans to, as journalist Frederick Lewis Allen put it, "lay by our good-natured individualism and march in step." Or as another progressive put it, "Laissez faire is dead. Long live social control."

It was this spirit which informed FDR's administration. By 1944 he made good on Wilson's conviction that the US constitution was outmoded and in need of replacing with a new "living constitution." FDR's proposed innovation was a new "economic bill of rights" which included:

>The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation.

>The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.

>The right of every family to a decent home.

>The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.

You read correctly, the right to 'recreation'.

With the intellectuals on their side, Wilson recruited journalist George Creel to become a propaganda minister as head of the newly formed Committee on Public Information (CPI).

Mr. Creel declared that it was his mission to inflame the American public into "one white-hot mass" under the banner of "100 percent Americanism." Fear was a vital tool, he argued, "an important element to be bred in the civilian population."

The CPI printed millions of posters, buttons, pamphlets, that did just that. A typical poster for Liberty Bonds cautioned, "I am Public Opinion. All men fear me!... If you have the money to buy and do not buy, I will make this No Man's Land for you!"

Meanwhile, the CPI released a string of propaganda films with such titles as "The Kaiser," "The Beast of Berlin," and "The Prussian Cur."

Remember when French fries became "freedom fries" in the run-up to the Iraq war? Thanks in part to the CPI, sauerkraut become "victory cabbage."

Under the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, Wilson's administration shut down newspapers and magazines at an astounding pace.

Indeed, any criticism of the government, even in your own home, could earn you a prison sentence. One man was brought to trial for explaining in his own home why he didn't want to buy Liberty Bonds.

The Wilson administration sanctioned what could be called an American fascist, the American Protective League. The APL - a quarter million strong at its height, with offices in 600 cities - carried government-issued badges while beating up dissidents and protesters and conducting warrantless searches and interrogations.

Even after the war, Wilson refused to release the last of America's political prisoners, leaving it to subsequent Republican administrations to free the anti-war Socialist Eugene V. Debs and others.

The left claims that president Bush seeks to do something like this with the war on terror. But look at the evidence. No newspapers closed down, a sum total of three detainees water-boarded, two hard core terrorists who happen to be American citizens have had their habeas corpus rights "infringed." After 9/11 President Bush asked the American people to go shopping, not to give up capitalism.

Meanwhile, on the left, self-styled progressives keep trying to recreate the New Deal and the progressive era.

New York Times columnist pines for a "new progressive era." Barack Obama gushed about how he was re-dedicating his campaign at the University of Wisconsin where the Progressive movement was born. Hillary says she's not a liberal but a "modern progressive."

Now, obviously, none of the current crop of self-described progressives are eager to replay the darkest chapters of the past.
But we make a mistake when we assume that we can cherry pick only the good parts of our past to re-create.

Jonah Goldberg is the author of the New York Times bestseller Liberal Fascism

GLENN BECK RADIO SHOW

Liberalism & Fascism

Aired February 22, 2008 - 19:00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GLENN BECK, HOST (voice-over): Tonight, the word "fascist" gets thrown around a lot, and it's usually at us conservatives. Well, that's about to change. A new book gives fresh perspective to the history of the political left. A book that says it's the liberals we should be worried about.

Its author has written for the "Los Angeles Times," "The Wall Street Journal," and he's a contributing editor for the "National Review." His name? Jonah Goldberg. And he'll face honest questions for a full hour.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BECK: Hello, America. I was having a conversation just before I went on the air with one of the producers of the program and I said, you know, I have been a conservative my whole life. But living here in New York City, I have met unbelievably bold liberals who don't have a problem calling you the "F" word, no matter where you are.

There are several different "F" words that I've been called here in Manhattan, one of which always seems to turn out to be wrong. That word is "fascist."

When you really look at the history of fascism, and I don't mean through prism of NPR or "The New York Times," I mean, when you really examine the past and the realities of the present, true fascism lies not with conservatives but in the foundation of the political left.

A new book lays it all out for you. And it is an absolute must-read. I've been begging my radio audience to buy this book and not because they're conservatives. Buy it for their liberal friends who have not been sucked into the dark side and actually care about history. Otherwise, we're doomed to repeat it. It is called "Liberal Fascism." Its author is Jonah Goldberg, and he joins me now.

Jonah, how are you?

JONAH GOLDBERG, AUTHOR, "LIBERAL FASCISM": Glenn, thanks for having me.

BECK: I have had one amazing journey in the last year, probably eight months, because I'm learning things in history that I have never learned before. And my journey started with a question that happened in one of the debates with Hillary Clinton. And I want to -- I want to play this question.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mrs. Clinton, how would you define the word "liberal"? And would you use this word to describe yourself?

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Unfortunately, in the last 30, 40 years, it has been turned up on its head. And it's been made to seem as though it is a word that describes big government.

I prefer the word progressive, which has a real American meaning, going back to the progressive era at the beginning of the 20th century.

I consider myself a proud modern American progressive, and I think that's the kind of philosophy and practice that we need to bring back to American politics.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: I heard that and I went immediately -- I had my laptop. I went immediately and I look up early American 20th century progressive. I couldn't believe she actually wanted to call herself that. These are the people that brought in Prohibition. They brought in the income tax.

Explain the significance of what she's just said.

GOLDBERG: It is -- it is amazing. Imagine if, for a moment, Mike Huckabee had said in the debate, "You know, I don't like this word `conservative.` It's been flipped on its head. I really consider myself a modern confederate." People would go ballistic.

You know, Paul Krugman would have his dress over his head: "Confederate? Don't they understand what the confederacy was? You know, the racism, the history?"

But to call yourself a progressive, "The New York Times" liberals call themselves progressives. Everyone calls themselves progressives. And Hillary Clinton does. And no one seems to care what the actual progressives did. And the actual progressives were state-ists run amok.

Hillary tries to get away by saying, "Well, liberal has come to mean big government." The progressives were the original big-government people.

BECK: But in a spooky sort of way.

GOLDBERG: Yes, they believed -- progressives come of age, what I call in the book, of this fascist moment. But they believed that the age of the individual was over, that we had to redefine ourselves only through the collective, through the group and through the state. And therefore, the individual had to be crushed. The concept of the individual had to be crushed. We all had to work towards the larger collective endeavors.

And that expressed itself in all sorts of ways. Through World War I was a great example. And it's important to remember that many of the progressives, the most important progressives, like John Dewey, the most important liberal philosopher of the 20th century. He liked World War I but not for the foreign policy reasons but because of what he called the social benefits of war.

The ability to use rallying for war to crush the concept of laissez- faire capitalism, free market capitalism, individualism, to crush those concepts and forge a new collective identity, a new American man.

BECK: But what's so amazing is this is exactly -- everything that liberals say about conservatives is actually based in progressive liberal thought. When you say fascist -- George Bush is a fascist. No, he's not. Not in comparison to the progressive movement of the early 20th century.

When you -- when you talk about what you were -- what you were just speaking -- shoot. I just -- I juts forgot what the point you brought up about Dewey. What was the...

GOLDBERG: He wanted to use war to crush the...

BECK: Yes. They say that George Bush is trying to use war just to terrorize people, just to bring people together so he can move forward. That's what they're doing with global warming and everything else.

GOLDBERG: George Bush, right after 9/11, what does he tell Americans to do? Tell them to go shopping. This is not a terror presidency.

BECK: Right.

GOLDBERG: Maybe it was a mistake to tell them to go shopping, but it doesn't fit the terror presidency part.

And if you believe -- look, if you believe that George Bush, if you believe he is a fascist, if you believe he's a dictator, and if you believe the arguments that the left uses to justify that, you know, the fact that there are two American citizens who have been denied habeas corpus because they're enemy combatants and all that kind of stuff.

By those standards, George Bush looks like the host of "Romper Room" compared to, say, Woodrow Wilson, who put thousands of political prisoners in jail, arrested people without warrants, beat people up in the street, used a propaganda ministry.

BECK: OK. We're going to get into the history of that...

GOLDBERG: Sure.

BECK: ... here in just a minute. And it is phenomenal that America doesn't know it. I mean, I remember FDR. I don't remember him this way. But if you don't know the history, you can't see people like Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or even Mike Huckabee, to name a conservative "fascist," if you will. You can't understand who they are.

So let's look at the current people.

GOLDBERG: OK.

BECK: Let's look at Hillary Clinton. I want to play something, another -- another piece of -- or no. Do I just have the clip here?

She said, April 24, 1996, "As adults we have to start thinking and believing that there isn't really any such thing as someone else's child."

She has also said, from "It Takes a Village," "Videos with scenes of commonsense baby care -- how to burp an infant, what to do when soap gets in his eyes, how to make a baby with an earache comfortable, could be running continuously in doctor's office clinics, hospitals, motor vehicles or any place where people gather and have to wait."

This smacks of "1984."

GOLDBERG: Right. And that's the relevance. You know, our image of "1984," the giant Jumbotron TVs in all public places saying, "Work makes you free" and all that kind of stuff.

Well, Hillary Clinton`s vision is to have the big Jumbotron TVs and still give the message of the state. But it's not this mean Orwellian thing. It's this nanny state, hug you, love you to death kind of vision.

BECK: Right.

GOLDBERG: But still to me, it's still a tyrannical vision. And you know, this notion that the quote from Hillary Clinton, where she says, you know, we have to move beyond the idea that there's any such thing as somebody else's child, this was central to the progressive vision.

The whole idea of progressivism was to crack the outer shell of the nuclear family, get rid of the sovereignty of the nuclear family, get rid of this concept of local communities. Everything had to be in relationship to the state. Mussolini defines fascism as, you know, everything in the state, nothing outside of the state.

And so Woodrow Wilson, when he's the president of Princeton University, says the chief job of the educator must be to make your children as unlike you as possible.

The early feminist progressives were all about liberating children from the tyranny of the family and reorienting them toward the state.

In the harsh totalitarianisms like Stalinism and Nazism, that kind of thing, children were encouraged to inform and to spy on their parents. They made heroes of the state out of children who turned their parents in to have them executed.

Now obviously nothing like that is going to happen here. At least, I hope not. But if you -- since your kid goes to a typical school in this country, your kid is encouraged to sort of rat out his parents about whether or not they're recycling at home.

BECK: Let's go -- let's go to the green movement. RFK Jr. has called me a corporate fascist because I say that I don't think that we can solve global warming through government.

GOLDBERG: Right.

BECK: We can solve it through capitalism.

GOLDBERG: Right.

BECK: But not through government. And yet I watch these TV commercials where, all of them, for these SUVs, these green SUVs, are all the children saying, "I don't know if I can ride in that car, mom. I don't want to be dropped off in that car." They're using the children almost to shame the parents into it. I mean, it's the same kind of thing, isn't it?

GOLDBERG: You should find some clips from the old cartoon "Captain Planet." It was just relentless propagandizing of children where the villains were all these cartoonish -- literally cartoonish -- corporate CEOs who wanted to destroy the environment. And all that -- the only thing that could save the world was if all the children from all over the world got together and formed this super hero to save the planet.

It was pure environmental propaganda. But you find that kind of thing all over the place.

BECK: OK. So real quick, because I only have a minute here before we go into the break. Let me just back up the statements that I said. You know, it's Hillary Clinton. It's Obama currently. But it's also people like Mike Huckabee.

GOLDBERG: I agree.

BECK: Why?

GOLDBERG: The central vision of the progressive era was basically the social gospel. The attempt to turn politics into a religion. And there was therefore no room for heresy of any kind.

And in my argument, compassionate conservatism isn't really conservatism. It's right-wing progressivism. It's using the state in sort of a totalitarian vision, one size fits all.

So when Mike Huckabee talks about, you know, banning smoking, a federal ban for smoking, he ground it in some right-wing rhetoric. But essentially, it's the same vision for the role of government, that the government is going to love you. The government is going to take care of you. It's government for your own good.

BECK: This is -- this is an hour that is not just for conservatives. I -- I am hoping that in the next hour, no matter how much blood shoots out of your eyes, that if you are a liberal, and you are open-minded enough to learn the history of progressive thought, that you will stick with us. We'll be right back. Jonah Goldberg.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECK: There is a great new book out that examines the history of fascism, and you may be surprised by the facts. I can't tell you. It's probably the first book that I have taken and went and looked for second sources myself because I was just jaw-dropped shocked that I didn't know these facts. I figured, they've got to be untrue.

Too often, the word "fascist" gets thrown at conservatives, but as it turns out, according to Jonah Goldberg, and -- oh, I don't know -- the facts, the real face of fascism is liberal. The book is called "Liberal Fascism." Its author is Jonah Goldberg.

Jonah, first of all, the thing that really hacks me off about the book is I want to throw it across the room so many times, because you keep trying to make the point that "I'm not calling liberals Nazis."

GOLDBERG: Right.

BECK: And, you know, about here, I'm like, I get it.

GOLDBERG: Right, right.

BECK: But still, I have asked liberals, would you read this book? Have you ever read this book? Just because of the cover, they say no.

GOLDBERG: Yes, yes, yes.

BECK: Why the smiley face with the Hitler mustache? What does it mean?

GOLDBERG: Well, I agree with you. Reviewers, critical viewers have said that I keep calling liberals Nazis, and I don't do that. I must say at least 50 times I don't. And apparently, they're impervious to it.

Anyway, the smiley face thing, it's explained on page 1 or maybe 2 of the book. And it's a reference to an exchange between Bill Maher and George Carlin on Bill Maher's television show, where George Carlin says that, "Look, if fascism ever comes to America, it's not going to be in jackboots and uniforms. It's going to be happy fascism, smiley fascism."

BECK: When he said this, because I read this. When he said this, did he know what he was saying? Did he know...

GOLDBERG: I don't think, really, but he gets at a core insight which I think he's right about...

BECK: Right.

GOLDBERG: ... which is simply this. Fascism is popular. We have trained ourselves in America, because the left has so controlled fascism, to define it as anything they don't like. I mean, you know this from talk radio. The best definition for fascist in America is a conservative who's winning an argument.

BECK: Right.

GOLDBERG: But the real lesson of history is that fascism is popular. That's why it's dangerous!

BECK: Right.

GOLDBERG: You know, if it was only evil mustache-twisting villains with, you know, British accents from World War II movies, who cares? But it turns out that, you know, the reason it appealed to people is that it's appealing.

And that's the -- that's the point of the cover, is to point out that the things that we like may be fascist. It's very easy to say we'll never be fascist if you only point to evil things and death camps.

BECK: Everybody has -- everybody has defined -- and it's actually a redefinition of the word "fascism" -- everyone has defined fascism as Adolf Hitler.

GOLDBERG: Right.

BECK: And one of the things that -- I mean, it's just been an amazing journey, looking at fascism and the history of it. Mussolini was extraordinarily popular here in the United States.

GOLDBERG: Oh, yes, yes.

BECK: And Hitler was actually a vegetarian. Wanted to take and spread the glories of vegetarianism and saying, you know, it's good for everybody, we should eat this. It's the same kind of things that we're dealing with now here in America in many ways. What's good for you is just forced upon you. You no longer have a choice of choosing anything else.

GOLDBERG: A famous Hitler youth slogan was "Nutrition's not a private matter." You know, it was the idea that what you wanted to eat, that wasn't up to you anymore, it was up to the government, and we're finding that in all sorts of -- there's a reason why we talk about food fascists.

BECK: Right.

GOLDBERG: These people who want to get rid of transfats, want to determine what you eat, because -- because the more socialized medicine we have, the more rationale they think they have to determine what you can eat, what you can put in your body.

And in terms of Mussolini's popularity in the United States, it is almost exactly like the popularity that we've seen Fidel Castro enjoy on the left for the last 35, 40 years and that we now see Hugo Chavez enjoy, and they were the exact same kinds of guys. They were nationalist socialists.

Mussolini was this guy who was a nationalist socialist, and he appealed to the same segments of society that today still get, you know, these full-blown crushes on people like Hugo Chavez.

BECK: There's two things that come to mind, and first one is -- and maybe you can comment on this -- when people try to shut you down by calling you a fascist, doesn't that make them more of a fascist, no matter what I'm saying?

GOLDBERG: There's a weird catch-22. It's this -- because the use of the word "fascist" in American political culture is essentially, it's a way to silence people. It's a cudgel. It's a way to shut someone up. "Oh, he's a fascist."

When Al Gore says his critics on the Web are digital Brownshirts, when he says people who disagree with him on global warming are like Holocaust deniers, it's his way of saying, "Oh, you don't have to listen to these people. They're crazy. They're illegitimate. They're evil. They're bad. They're fascists."

And so in that sense, if you want to call it fascism or not, it's undemocratic to simply demonize anyone who dissents from the popular, conventional view that people like Al Gore are putting out. You know, when you call them a fascist, basically what you're doing is you're saying we don't have to listen to them anymore.

BECK: And the other thing that shocks me is so many people on the left, they hate corporations.

GOLDBERG: Mm-hmm.

BECK: Hate them. And yet, they are fine with corporations, as long as they're doing good. And it goes back to this. You'll make all kinds of special exceptions. You won't notice things that corporations are doing, as long as it's happy, as long as it's for global warming, for example.

GOLDBERG: Correct.

BECK: Where does that split come? Can you explain how people don't see the connection?

GOLDBERG: Right. It's funny. I mean, the -- the reaction from the left whenever corporations do bad things, is they say, "OK, we need more regulation of corporations."

And then the reaction from corporations is, "OK, well, if you're going to regulate me, I'm going to get more involved in the crafting of the regulations that affect me." And so government and corporations get in bed together.

The right wing, i.e., free market response, is to keep government and business as far apart as possible. Let businesses fail in the free market when they need to, not use corporations as government by proxy for health care and that kind of thing.

BECK: OK. We're going to get back to this and the economy and everything else. Liberal fascism. More with Jonah Goldberg in just a second.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECK: We have talked over and over again on this program about the nanny state. I, for one, am tired of the government-knows-best attitude, and it's getting worse and worse every year.

There's a new book that is a revealing look at the nanny state and a whole lot more. It is called "Liberal Fascism." Joined once again by its author, Jonah Goldberg.

The nanny state. When I saw a story come out of California about Californians, many of them, actually willing for the government to control the thermostat in their house, I thought, oh, my gosh, what have we come to?

GOLDBERG: I know. I loved that, because it was a perfect metaphor. They literally wanted the state to control the air they breathe, you know? It was perfect!

And we're seeing more and more of that around the world. In Canada, you have people being denied surgeries. In Great Britain you have people being denied surgeries if they're fat, just simply saying you don't deserve these kind of surgeries.

BECK: Well, Mississippi, they were talking about a new law where restaurants would have to refuse service if you were obese. You couldn't have certain things. Did you read that?

GOLDBERG: Yes.

BECK: You didn't -- you wouldn't have to give them service if they were obese. What is that?

GOLDBERG: Yes, and it's important, because there are two things that are going on. One is there's a very serious snobbishness to the progressive mindset, this idea that we need to take care of the little people. The little people can't control their own lives, and therefore, we know what's best for them.

And then there's actually a sort of green-eye-shade public policy here, which is that the more the government is picking up the tab for your health care, the more the people running the government feel obligated or permitted to determine how you run your own life, because they're picking up the tab.

BECK: But you know what? That one actually makes sense. That one actually kind of works, because if we're paying for health care, and you're doing something stupid, well, then I shouldn't have to pay for you.

GOLDBERG: Right, but then we should stop paying for health care.

BECK: Exactly right. Exactly right.

GOLDBERG: And you look for issue after issue after issue. Wherever there is a problem -- you know, when Hillary Clinton says that she's not for big government, then why is it there's not almost a single social program that she doesn't have a government program for? Why is it that progressives, their answer to any social problem is an expanded role for government?

BECK: Well, just last week they were talking about -- what was it? -- the trailers for Katrina victims.

GOLDBERG: Right, right.

BECK: They have them all in -- and they're trying to get them out because the air has formaldehyde in it and, you know, people are getting sick, and they said the government is not telling us the truth. They're telling us it's no big deal. They've been -- they've been passing this off.

And I thought to myself, this is a government program. Here it is. This is the way it works. And yet, people still want that nanny state.

GOLDBERG: Right.

BECK: It's only going to get worse when they control everything.

GOLDBERG: Right, right. And it's -- you know, what is the old proverb about, you know, if you're digging -- the sign of insanity is you're digging a hole and you keep digging to get out of it, you know?

Whenever we run into one of these, you know unintended consequences of, you know -- and well-intentioned unintended consequences of one of these government programs, the response seems to be, oh, more government programs.

Barack Obama`s solution for our education problems in this country is to say, well, we haven't spent enough on education. We've been spending, you know -- we've been spending money on education...

BECK: Let me tell you something. We have spent enough money on education.

And you will get quite an education, and the truth on fascism and its history and the connection to the progressive movement in his new book, "Liberal Fascism." Jonah Goldberg.

Back in a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECK: The economy is on the front page of the newspaper almost every single day. We've been talking about it for a very long time. It's a mess. We need to do something to turn it around, and we have to do it fast.

That is one of the things that scares me so much about this upcoming election, because that's people's attitude. We've got to do something.

A modern progressive like Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama will shoulder this country with untold billions in spending, and you know what? It's already happening before anything has happened in an election.

Here with more on the fiscal sensibility of the left is Jonah Goldberg. He's the author of the new book, "Liberal Fascism."

Jonah, you know what scares me? Is as I'm watching what's happening with our banking system right now, you have one of the main guys over at AIG over in London last week said we should -- the United States government needs to start investing. They need to buy stocks, they need to buy assets.

It's the only thing they can do and it has to be New Deal size, otherwise we're going into another great depression. That's from him.

You have these banks starting to come in and say, we need to -- we need to have the government take these bad loans that we wrote...

GOLDBERG: Right.

BECK: This is -- this is New Deal era, gigantic government right around the corner.

GOLDBERG: I think that's right. And I think it highlights one of the most important points that I try to the make in the book, especially in the chapter on economics, which is part of -- you know, sort of tied to the myth of conservatives being fascists is this myth that corporations are inherently right wing.

You know, there's this idea that corporations are right wing. It comes out of this idea that -- it basically comes out of Marxism.

Corporations are useless on the culture war. Right? They have no use for the right. They're in favor of affirmative action, all this kind of stuff.

They like big regulations because they keep out competition. And so you have these corporations who are constantly trying to get the government to bail them out, to give them favorable legislation, to give them subsidies for this, trade benefits for that, to hurt their competitors, to keep certain technologies from coming up that might hurt their products.

They're for free markets when free markets are to their advantage. When free markets aren't to their advantage, they're against free markets.

And that was the story of the New Deal, that was the story of the progressive era, where big corporations and government worked hand in hand. And we're seeing it again today, where these big corporations are delighted to have government bail them out. And you see the progressive, you know, liberal Democrat saying that they would love to do it.

And it's a sign of where the real nexus is. It's between, you know, big corporations and regulators wanting to work in tandem and hand in hand. And that's not free market, and that's not right wing, if you define right wing as free market capitalism, belief in the idea that business should be on its own and sink or swim on its own.

BECK: You know, you have Chris Dodd coming out, and this -- I saw an article in "The Wall Street Journal" a couple of weeks ago. They said this kind of thinking would have been unheard of just a couple of months ago, just to kind of give you a feel of the pace that this is coming at us. It would have been unheard of.

Chris Dodd is actually proposing a resurrection of the homeowner's Preservation Corporation, which is a -- which was started in 1933.

GOLDBERG: Yes.

BECK: It was a New Deal program, basically will not allow you to fail in your mortgage.

GOLDBERG: Right.

BECK: How do you survive in that kind of situation? How do you -- how does somebody look at -- I had a caller ask me this. They said, "Glenn, I don't agree with the big government. I don't agree, but this program is important."

GOLDBERG: Right.

BECK: How do you separate on what's important or makes you feel good and feels like the right thing and fascism?

GOLDBERG: Well, that's sort of a big point. I mean, part of the smiley face on the cover of the book is that often the things that we want are fascistic.

I mean, we like fascistic economics. We like the idea of corporations and businesses -- corporations and government working together to help the little guy.

We want to -- you know, we're willing to take any, you know, corporate subsidy, farm subsidy, whatever it is, if it helps me. And that creates a constituency. And this comes out of FDR, who, you know, radically transformed, revolutionized American politics, by turning citizens into clients of the government.

They got checks. They became dependent on government in one way or the other. And that was the New Deal coalition.

BECK: We were never like this. We were never like this until Wilson and FDR.

GOLDBERG: Yes.

BECK: This is a totally new concept. And it really stemmed from seeing the great success in Italy. Seeing -- I mean, I've read things about the scholars that went over and looked at Stalin and said, look at what he's doing. Look at what he's doing for industry, look what he's doing for people.

This is the future. OK, he's killed a million people at the time, but he had to do it for the good.

GOLDBERG: You've got to break some eggs to make an omelet.

BECK: Yes.

GOLDBERG: No, Woodrow Wilson says it quite plainly. He says the essence of progressivism requires that the individual marry his interests to the state. Those are his words.

It's the idea that the individual has to define himself in relationship to the state, that he gets his livelihood, his meaning -- FDR comes out what he calls the second Bill of Rights in 1944, addresses the nation and says basically what he wants to do is basically overturn the Bill of Rights. Remember, the Bill of Rights is negative rights. It says the government has no right to take your gun away, has no right to go into your home, has no right to bridge your speech.

He wants to create the second Bill of Rights, which are all positive rights. You have a right to a home, you have a right to a job. It's things government can give you, and that you can demand from government, and if government isn't giving you these things, if it isn't giving you these trinkets, then the government has violated your rights.

It is a radical redefinition of our Constitution and our understanding of what makes a citizen in this country.

BECK: Isn't what is going on with our enemies in China and Russia, isn't that the future of America in many ways? These -- just a happier face.

You've got this gigantic, crushing, oppressive government in Russia -- look, I'm just taking the mob away. The Russian mob, it's horrible. I'm just being a strongman because I have to be a strongman.

GOLDBERG: Right.

BECK: And they couple with these giant corporations. There's no way to destroy that, because you've got -- democracy is too slow.

You can't rally the troops and say, hey, we've got to go to war. We've got to -- we've got to do all this, because you've got to convince people.

GOLDBERG: Right. Right.

BECK: And then you couple that -- so you've got the totalitarian dictator who says, let's go, we're going right now because it's right for the country, and you couple it with the engine of capitalism, the engine of these giant corporations, you can buy as many bullets as you want.

Isn't what we're seeing the seeds of here already in China and Russia?

GOLDBERG: In a lot of ways, yes. I mean, China and Russia fit the classic fascist model a lot better than the United States, by orders of magnitude.

BECK: But we have...

GOLDBERG: Those are authoritarian regimes and all that kind of stuff.

BECK: Right.

GOLDBERG: I agree with that. But, you know, in the United States, I mean, you know, you have some of the things -- you know, GE with its -- remember Green Week?

BECK: Yes.

GOLDBERG: Where they basically say -- you know, GE is looking to get all sorts of contracts with the government for alternative energy, for, you know, solar energy, all these kinds of things.

BECK: Yes.

GOLDBERG: And so it agrees to put on like 100 hours of green-friendly, essentially propaganda, incorporating it into its sitcoms, into its dramas, into its news, into its sports. And all because this is essentially what the government wants it to do, and so it can win a closer relationship with the government. It is propagandizing for a popular -- again, that's popular -- issue like global warming, so that it can curry favor with the government.

It's very much the fascist...

BECK: We talked about it during Green Week almost every night. I think we were the only show on television that was talking about it.

This would have been decried from the highest mountaintops. If I would have done it for some cause that I cared about, or if, you know, the FOX network -- and I don't mean FOX Channel -- I mean the FOX network decided to take on some conservative thing -- you know, waterboarding, it's waterboarding week.

GOLDBERG: Right. Right. No, exactly.

BECK: You know what I mean? And it's the same kind of thing.

GOLDBERG: Right.

BECK: There is -- there is -- there are people who believe in it, people who don't believe in it.

GOLDBERG: Right.

BECK: And yet nobody said a word, and they never had to disclose that NBC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of GE, the largest lobbying group has billions of dollars to make on green energy.

GOLDBERG: That's right. And it's -- and it's good corporate promotion for the company.

I mean, the company seems progressive and popular and all these kinds of things. But I agree with you entirely.

We only recognize as fascist those things we don't like. And so, you know, if -- I agree. You know, if FOX had came out with a -- you know, it says, we're going to incorporate pro-life images, or pro-life themes into our programming for a week.

BECK: Imagine that.

GOLDBERG: You know, people would go batty about it, and they would say it's propaganda, it's government -- you know, it's corporate collusion with politics and government and all this kind of stuff, and they would decry it as fascist, and they would have a point. But it's the same point that we have about things like Green Week.

BECK: So how do you -- how do you stop it? How do you -- how do you wake people up?

I've been saying -- a couple of weeks ago, Jonah, I said, please, stop buying my book. Buy this book and give it to your liberal friend. One that is open-minded enough that says, OK, I may agree on these policies, yadda, yadda, yadda, but it's important that I learn the history of...

GOLDBERG: Right.

BECK: ... liberal fascism so I can then judge for myself.

I know, oh, this is what I'm doing. If you know what you're doing, well, then you're making an intelligent choice.

How do you stop this?

GOLDBERG: Well, I think one of the things that is decidedly fascistic, or at least just a bad idea, is looking for silver bullets. You know, when Barack Obama campaigns, he's basically saying, I'm a silver bullet, I'm going to solve all your problems just by electing me.

FDR, Hitler, all these guys, they basically said, all your problems can be solved. I don't think conservatives should buy into that logic.

The logic of conservatism says that there are no final -- there are no perfect solutions to anything. It's just going to take a long argument.

I mean, this argument has been going on in America for a century now. You know, during the Cold War, this was an intense argument.

You had liberals constantly looking to places like the Soviet Union as a model. You know, saying that it was a better place. You still have these incredibly sand-poundingly stupid people talking about how Castro has a better model. You know?

BECK: I wonder who that is.

GOLDBERG: And all you have to do is just -- you have to just keep having the argument, you have to keep focus -- it's a door-to-door fight.

BECK: Right.

GOLDBERG: And saying, you know, it's first principles, and even if freedom makes things harder, it's better to have it harder than to not have it free.

BECK: Right.

Benjamin Franklin said you have a right to fail in America.

Coming up, more with Jonah Goldberg.

Stick around.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECK: When you say the word "fascist," most people's minds go right back to the Nazis, jack-booted storm troopers, World War II. But the true history of the word and the entire fascist movement is a little more complicated than that, and it'll blow your mind when you actually know history.

It is outlined in a great new book I think everybody should read. It is called "Liberal Fascism."

I'm joined again by its author, Jonah Goldberg.

Jonah, my trail started on this with just a few things. I was reading another book that was printed in the 1950s and it was from -- it had a quote from George Bernard Shaw, who was a Fabian socialist. I put the book down and I thought this writer no longer has any credibility with me because this cannot be true.

I went and I started second sourcing. I couldn't believe some of the history.

Let's start with George Bernard Shaw. He said the state has a right to kill you, right?

GOLDBERG: Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes.

I mean, George Bernard Shaw was a eugenicist who believed in wiping out vast swathes of the darker, duskier races that didn't deserve to be living. He was an open fan of Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, all of these guys. You know, talked glowingly about gas chambers as this wonderful solution to all sorts of social problems.

BECK: I mean, I can't believe I didn't -- I didn't know any of this.

(CROSSTALK)

GOLDBERG: ... intellectual of the 20th century in a lot of ways.

BECK: And he and H.G. Wells were part of something called Fabian Socialists.

GOLDBERG: Right, the Fabian Socialists -- Fabian Society still exists today. You can go to their Web site.

They were the cutting-edge intellectual socialists of Great Britain. Huge influence on American progressives. And the title of the book, "Liberal Fascism," comes from a speech by H.G. Wells where -- and he was enormously influential in the United States. It cannot be exaggerated how influential.

And when he's asked to describe his philosophy and where liberalism needs to go, he says what we need is liberal fascism or enlightened Nazism. And he says this in 1932, and he meant it seriously. He thought fascism really was a good idea.

BECK: Basically Nazism without the gas chambers.

GOLDBERG: Right. In 1932, there were no gas chambers.

BECK: Right. OK.

Now, Woodrow Wilson, I was talking to my teenage daughters, and I said, "Tell me about Woodrow Wilson." And we started looking at the history of Woodrow Wilson.

Never really talked. You know, Woodrow Wilson and you're like, oh, League of Nations and First World War. And he was kind of a good guy.

Not what they say about Dick Cheney. This guy actually did and was.

GOLDBERG: Right. Now, Woodrow Wilson is the first Ph.D. to get in the White House, and I think the only one, thank God. And he -- if you just go by a layman`s definition of a dictator, some guy who throws political prisoners in jail, sends goon squads out to beat people up in the street, creates the first propaganda ministry in western civilization, the first modern one, sends propaganda agents out throughout the United States in secret to foment, you know, pro-government, anti-immigrant and all these kinds of ideas, Woodrow Wilson in every way comes across as a fascist.

He's the first president of the United States to openly disparage the U.S. Constitution, saying it's no longer relevant, we need to evolve past it and have a living Constitution, a phrase you hear a lot these days.

BECK: And he's also the guy who also -- the Fed came from Woodrow Wilson.

GOLDBERG: That's right.

BECK: So all of these giant insidious things. He was -- basically, it was the beginning seeds of the United Nations. And when you look back at Woodrow Wilson, you're just kind of like, OK, he's just a president.

FDR, you look back at FDR and I remember thinking, well, I mean, they changed it because he -- you know, he was just in office too long. I don't even know why he was in office too long.

Why would they change the Constitution and say a president couldn't be president for four terms?

GOLDBERG: Right.

BECK: Because he wasn't a good guy. The things that he did were wildly out of control.

GOLDBERG: Right. Well, he was president for life, essentially, you know, which we never had in the United States before then.

BECK: Right.

GOLDBERG: And what needs to be remembered is what FDR was explicitly trying to do. This is not my theory, he said he was trying to do this, was to recreate the war socialism of Woodrow Wilson. That what they did during the war by bringing corporations into government and having government and corporations run society with propaganda ministries and political prisoners and all these kinds of things, they wanted to recreate that to fight the Depression.

And FDR said so explicitly. And basically FDR was a Wilson retread.

He was the assistant secretary of the Navy under Wilson. Had no problem with the propaganda and the political prisoners and all that kind of stuff. And they want to recreate that spirit, that moral equivalent of war in peace time to fight the Depression. And that's what the New Deal was about.

BECK: Yes. And he had the corps for forestry, where they would go out and it was basically an army, which was frightening to me to read because I have read Barack Obama's plan, where he wants to create a green corps, pretty much the same thing that we had in the New Deal with FDR.

GOLDBERG: Right.

BECK: OK.

Please, America, I'm begging you, read the book "Liberal Fascism" by Jonah Goldberg.

Back in a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECK: Jonah Goldberg has been my guest all week, and for this full hour. He is the author of "Liberal Fascism."

You've been called a fascist for writing the book?

GOLDBERG: I was called a fascist and that's why I wrote the book. And now I've been called a fascist more for having written it.

BECK: And it's amazing because "fascist" implies that I'm going to shut you down. I'm going to do whatever I have to do to shut you down.

You've been shut down on amazon.com by what I would describe as fascists.

GOLDBERG: Yes. I mean, some of them -- "fascist" is almost a compliment for some of them. Some of them are just tools. You know?

But, you know, my Amazon page has been hacked several times now. They've replaced pictures of the book with pictures of me in a Hitler moustache and some even less charitable things which we don't need to get into.

The hate mail has just been through the roof. The left-wing blogs despise me, you know, which is not shocking.

A lot of ridicule. A lot of the reviewers even in elite publications very clearly either distort what I've written or just simply ignore it.

BECK: I have to tell you, Jonah, I said this at the beginning of the show. Your book pisses me off at times because you keep going -- I don't know how anybody misses the point. You are not calling liberals people who want to kill Jews.

GOLDBERG: Right.

BECK: It has nothing to do with that. Liberal -- or fascism meant something different in the early progressive movement.

GOLDBERG: Right.

BECK: And yet, now, didn't you have somebody say that they were kicked out of an ice cream parlor for even reading the book?

GOLDBERG: Oh, yes. One of my readers wrote in and said that he got kicked out because they took offense to his book. I've had all these stories from across the country, people hiding the book in the stores.

But you're right about the fascism. One story, the last substantive point, you know, socialism. More people have been murdered, rounded up and put in camps and slaughtered, in the name of socialism than were ever killed in the name of fascism. And that doesn't even count the national socialists of Germany, right?

Mao killed 65 million people. Stalin killed at least 20 million people. If I call you a socialist, it just sounds like you're...

BECK: I know. It's not a bad word.

GOLDBERG: Yes.

BECK: It's not a bad word.

GOLDBERG: And that's all I'm trying to do. I'm trying to say that fascism means something. And then we can have a conversation about what it means.

BECK: Right.

How much trouble do you think we're in for this full hour in this week?

GOLDBERG: Oh, I'm changing my name.

BECK: All right.

There are rare few books that I honestly feel are worth reading by everybody, liberals and conservatives. This is one of them.

Please read it, "Liberal Fascism," Jonah Goldberg. It will likely change the way you and your children think. With the election coming up, do yourself a favor and pick a copy of "Liberal Fascism" up.

From New York, goodnight, America.

END

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