Don't forget about the fasces on either side of the Speaker of the House's position in the U.S. House of Representatives.

"...the Roman symbol of authority from which the word derives. The fasces was a bundle of sticks, often with an axe blade wrapped inside, which was used by Roman magistrates to denote their authority."

Right, but what was the logic of the symbol?

One stick can easily be broken: a bundle of sticks cannot (at least not easily). Ergo, "unity makes strength."

This formulation, by the way, is also the national motto of Belgium, adopted by the liberal constitutional monarchy in the 1830s: just to show that the concept is not limited to either corporatists or authoritarians.

One stick can easily be broken: a bundle of sticks cannot (at least not easily). Ergo, "unity makes strength."

Or, as it says on that dime, "E pluribus unum".

That symbol is of course part of an insidious plot to restore the Roman Empire.

http://www.shout.net/~bigred/Rulers.htm

http://www.rulersofevil.com/chap1.html

Mussolini was a leading Socialist intellectual of his day.

Why do you bother with that partisan fool (well-educated, maybe, but still a fool)? I consider his extemely long left-wing rants essentially political denial-of-service attacks - i.e. a complete waste of time. Rebutting each outrageous point would take too long - life is short.

Oh, yeah, and he does not get to choose who is the "honest conservative" is (except in his own mind) - anyone using the common left-wing epithets for Glenn Renolds ("InstaHack", "InstaCracker", or this bozo's favorite, "InstaHypocrite") deserves an immediate trip to the circular file.

The bundle-of-sticks fasces show up in a lot of US state seals as well. It was a popular symbol in 18th and 19th century republican thought. Too bad the fascists appropriated it for their own uses.

The only significant difference between fascism and Marxian socialism is that fascism has a strong nationalistic streak, while Marxian socialists at least profess to be internationalist in outlook. Everything else (the single governing party; the secret police; centralized economic planning; subordination of the individual, family, and religion to the all-powerful state) is pretty much the same, especially if you're unfortunate enough to live under either system.

Remember, "Nazi" is short for "National Socialism." Hitler was one of Marx's biggest fans.

Why bother with such hack as Newtwit? Let's face it, he has far more in common with the "fascists" as they were all socialists like himself.

Projection is his life cause I guess...

Let's also remember that Stalin's Communism killed some 2 to 8 million Russians outright as well.... Hitler almost seems like a nice guy in comparison.

Regarding the Roman plot, there's also the mace.

Stalin's Communism/Facsim killed approximately 20 million Soviets during his reign. That does NOT include the casualties of WWII.

I have made a point of ignoring Mr. Neiwert in the same way that I ignore holocaust revisionists, white supremacists, and Michael Moore apologists. Having had the experience of trying to argue with such people, I have learned that they are not amenable to reason or thoughtful discourse. Tjeu must therefore, by necessily, be simply shrugged off as irrational.

I won't speculate as to Neiwert's motives, but I will note that for all his bluster at accusing others of being secretly fascist, in truth, it is Neiwert and his ilk (ala the Michael Moores of the world) who George Orwell perfectly described as "Objectively pro-fascist." They opposed a war of liberation of an oppressed and often murdered people from under the jackboot of a fascist oppressor, apparently out of nothing but their own blind adherence to hard-left ideology. And such people are, as I believe both Saddam and Stalin would have said, "useful idiots."

As a liberal, I find such people rather sad. I'm glad that it increasingly appears that they are being left behind by history as strange curiosities, like the Women's Christian Temperance Union or the Know-Nothings or the Marxists.

I was considering weighing in on this topic, so naturally I went to the source and read Mr. Neiwart's work. Apparently Mr. Neiwart believes that a shear mass of words somehow lends substance to one's arguments. There is no real substance to his position, only a very soft pseudo social science surrounded by a fair amount of yapping. Consequently, his positions cannot really be argued as they are more of a trap, than anything else - sort of like a quicksand for the mind.

Frankly, I've got much better things to do with my time. Perhaps I'll go trim my toemails, or some other significantly more productive activity.

Your original satirical response was well-done and appropriate, there being no other reasonable response to such poppycock. Oh, and by the way, have all conservatives stopped beating their wives, yet?

I think it's hysterical that Niewart shows that he has absolutely no sense of humor. There's no other way to explain attacking your satire in the way he did.
"Erecting a straw-man"? Now that's funny. I mean, you wrote a nonsensical post about world domination, taking his absurd post to its logical conclusion. You merely burned his strawman in effigy.
I'm with Dan, the guy seems to think that mass of words=argument. He spends many words talking about a poet's dissent being squashed and never once links to or quotes the poem. It's obvious that all right-thinking people agree with him and anybody who doesn't is a fascist.

As a reader and not a contributor to many blogs, I have something to add to all this. The liberals just cannot fathom the strength that blogging has brought news and events to us, who are the general public. THEY CANNOT LIE ANYMORE... Any lie they tell is instantly out and in the public eye, CBS a case in point and it is the greatest thing to happen to news in my lifetime......They cannot stand it

The charge on Mr. Niewert's site, however, is a very serious one! Did Ashcroft really cut funding for counter terrorism work and doesn't this make the "Wolves" ad terribly hypocritical? It turns out that the Center for American Progress has turned up proof that Mr. Ashcroft had sliced the counterterrorism grants to the states by well over half!

This proves that the Bush Admin was asleep at the wheel! Where's the g**damn outrage people?!

Only...he didn't. It is another example of slimy lawyer-talk in which all context is stripped out to make the Bush administration look bad.

Don't get me wrong, there *were* cuts suggested to the counter-terrorism grants to the states but this was only because so few states had claimed funds in previous years. Indeed, they had already been pouring money in so much faster than it was being taken out, they had a two-year backlog of funds available ($180 million). They simply didn't need more money - especially given the assumptions common on 9/10/01.

So, yes, *technically* they did cut funding if you strip out all context. But, recognizing the context, the claim that Ashcroft cut the actual amount of money required by the states is pure sophistry.

This is wrong. We need a strong and *honest* Democratic Party. While I'm sure that most Dem supporters are genuinely outraged by the "factoids" that people like the Center for American Progress dig up, an outside observer cannot help but conclude the overall Dem strategy is to: "tell yourself lies and then scream for action" (to paraphrase the song).

Oh, well ...

I think that we've all got to start reading each others' blogs and listening to each other much better.

Reading the Neiwert blog, I can see what commenters on this post find objectionable. Neiwert is a dragon-slayer ... and a good one, in my view ... but I'm willing to take another look at the dragons that he is slaying.

Since my original foray into abyss of Little Green Footballs, I still find it thematically repulsive, which is weird, because I find the sense of community among those who post comments on the topics to be perversely endearing. I still don't completely understand the language that they are speaking over there, but I am relatively comforted by the fact that I no longer believe many of these people are ready to take up a rifle and storm the nearest mosque.

Anyway ...

I think Neiwert got it wrong about the blog posting here he responded to. And I think he got it wrong because he just dipped in one day, saw one of his dragons and proceeded to take out the sword. I think we're all fairly guilty of stuff like this.

Food for thought.

Lets see if I can remember from civics. Communism is a system that entails government ownership of the means of production, and fascism a system that allows private ownership on paper, but controls it through high levels of taxation and regulation.

Facism is overpoweringly nationalistic, consolidating power always to the national level, taking power from the state, local and individual level. This includes, most importantly, control over the education of children.

Fascism enforces strict control over the population, among other ways, through the confiscation and strict regulation of firearms, as evidenced by Hitler's quote that a people cannot be controlled until they are disarmed, and Goebbels' memorable quote "If they want to own guns let them join the SS"

Fascism, in its virulent Nazi form, actually divides people into categories according to race and treats them differently under the law.

Isn't one of the Scottish Highlander sports to fling fasces as far as you can?

Eric,

I slogged through two of Neiwert's essays (parts 4 and 5?), and I came to one quite simple conclusion regarding his reasoning: the ruthless pursuit of a vision is bad.

Is George Bush ruthlessly pursuing a vision? Yes. Is Osama bin Laden (or perhaps now Zarqawi now that OBL is most likely taking his eternal cave nap) ruthlessly pursuing a vision? Yes. Did Hitler and Mussolini ruthlessly pursue visions? Yes. So you see, GWB is evil!

I have found that one thing frightens a liberal more than anything is when faced with someone with strong convictions. I attribute this to liberal embracing the "individual is weak" model. Most conservative and libertarian essayists I read I would surmise as subscribing to the "individual is strong" model. This of course translates neither into a "all strong individuals are good" nor "all strong individuals are bad" conclusion for the conservative or libertarian. Each individual is accorded or denied respect (and power) according to their ability to argue persuasively from their core set of axiomatic beliefs.

It is no wonder then that the liberal (if in fact one of their axiomatic beliefs is "individual is weak") would find GWB bad, wrong, evil, =Hitler. There is no way for him to conclude otherwise. Thank God that the Founding Fathers weren't such wussies.

Rational people still read Orcinus? Like, critically and all that? Well...my prayers are with you, friend.

Two points:

1) To whomever said that they were similar, the differences between fascism and Marxism are legion- for just two examples, fascism teaches that nations are the prime actors of history, Marxism classes. Fascism advocates the state as the ultimate end; Marxism is in fact an anarchic philosophy, advocating the ultimate abolition of the state. The two in practice yield similar results, but the philosophical differences really could not be more stark.

2) If the 2nd Amendment will keep us from becoming fascists, then Saddam Hussein's Iraq, in which most Iraqis were more armed than most Americans, could not have been fascist.

Another interesting Instalanche! Good! Keep 'em coming, I say. The more people reading Classical Values, the better. And it's interesting to see Dean Esmay popping up here again. I spend so much time in Dean's World (and the Queen's realm), and when I go to another blog, there he is again. And I agree with him, too. Extremely interesting spectrumologies here.

I'm on the side of the strong individual with strong convictions ruthlessly pursuing a vision. Does that make me a fascist?

"Pseudo-fascist"? What does that mean? "You're only pretending to be a fascist"? Hmmm.... A very interesting blogger once wrote that Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan would soon be in charge of censoring the media under the Bush administration. He sent me an e-mail some months ago saying that Eric Scheie was a fascist, called Glenn Reynolds "InstFascist", and called Steven Malcolm Anderson a "fucking asshole moron bastard". It's hard to dispute that last part, an accurate assessment I must say.

David Neiwert's response to Dean Esmay and Classical Values:

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2004_10_24_dneiwert_archive.html#109898309032742309

Dean Esmay's cartoon

Der Dolchstoss

What is the Dolchstosslegende?

You decide.

Whether an individual or a group of people have been "stabbed in the back" is a question of fact. The assertion is thus either correct or incorrect, but to maintain seriously that the accusation of backstabbing is "fascism" renders the word "fascism" meaningless.

Al Gore was recently accused -- by this organization -- of having "back-stabbed" Joe Lieberman.

It's as logical to say Joe Lieberman's supporters are fascists for saying this as it is to say that about Dean Esmay. I don't see how it assists dialogue in any way (assuming that dialogue is the goal....)