More Goldberg.......Lucky lucky youse

Hello, comrades

I've been pretty ill for the last 6 months or so and have been not up to much blogging wise. I have a few things in my draft folder that I might put up for completeness sake. But apart from a few random bursts of energy, it seems the Republic might be beyond my feeble will :) I'll see how it goes and will surely lurk around comrades blogs, with an occasional ramble

Anyhoo found this, care of Peter Ryley aka Fat Man

http://www.hnn.us/articles/122469.html

Four historians take on 'Liberal Fascism'.

I will add they do seem to miss a trick. Goldberg's thesis depends on three definitions; his highly idiosyncratic take on fascism i.e purely statist with leader cult, his depiction of the right in America as being essentially small government/low taxes, his belief that applies to post war Italy and post depression Germany.

All three are wrong.

I've mentioned at length the problems with his definition here

http://thesocialrepublic.blogspot.com/2009/06/republic-eventually-reviewsliberal.html

and briefly mentioned the other two.

I shall expand (Told you were lucky). To proclaim the right or conservatism (Goldberg is not consistent when he talks about them) as small government/low taxes or 'Classical Liberalism as he puts it in his reply to the historians above is quite a leap. Conservatism, if we take its current configuration is a synthesis of four elements;
A - Religious politics,
B - rejection of the New Deal,
C - security Keynesianism,
D - rejection of the Great Society.

Only part of two (B & D) of these are really small statist issues. To begin with A, using the state to promote or, very charitably, 'protect' religion is very far from small state. It fies in the face of the sacred respect for the constitution conservatism proclaims. Bear in mind, Mike Huckerbee, the last competitor to John McCain in the Republican presidentual primaries in 2008, is a long term advocate of making Christian supremacy (no doubt of the soft and cuddly type) part of the founding document. Merely monitoring Christian and non-Christian numbers in a purely benign way, an essential part of maintaining a Christian nation, is a vast expansion of state power, far beyond any census.What is small government in the illegalisation of Abortion, in the insistence on school prayer, on controlling debate?

B is more complicated than the 'Rugged Individualist' Conservatives or the Libertarian wing of the GOP or the various Randian/Paulian grouplets make out. The New deal certainly increased the state, but it also shifted its focus. By coming to some type of social compact with the unions and ending many of the lopholes in the tax codes, FDR took away the protective arm of the state away from much of American industry and commerce. Whilst saving the banks, no longer would the state act as a free militia to private enterprise against its citizens. The state, as part of the National Liberal program of industrialisation that had reigned supreme from 1863-1912, was a vital big brother to American 'individualism', protecting it from British and German competition, breaking organised labour and direct infrastructure investment. The increase in the state was one of degree, not kind.

When US Conservatives say ‘lets get back to small government’, what do they mean? When? The mid eighties with taxes higher that today? The 1920s when much of the bread basket neared starvation and the economy reached over saturation and collapse? The late 1860s when much of the country was under military rule? The 1790s when the nation was less than a tenth of the size and had a population under 4 million? When? C is the counter point to FDR's social Keynesianism. The vast military apparatus that was created during WWII and maintained into the cold war was and remains a vast component of economic prosperity in the US. Via a regulated use of vast sums of tax payer money, pork was brought and deals made. While it is difficult to quantify the amount gained by private industry via subsidised research and development, a huge workforce of highly trained engineers, workers and white collar staff exist at the end of the military complex’s teat.

The sanctity of this is hardwired into the conservative program. The plethora of programs started under the Eisenhower administration, few of which saw the light of day but consumed multiple billions, were a clear exercise in security Keynesianism, remarkably surpassed by the Reagan administration without regard to budgetary limitations. The modest program of re-entrenchment pursued by the Kennedy and Clinton administrations created a maelstrom of conservative protests.

It is worth noting that the rise in military spending tends to somewhat spotty. Having restarted Star wars, the Bush administration could not afford to up-armour its Humvees in Iraq

I would also add to security Keynesianism the notion of the war on crime/drugs. This has been a huge business, with a thriving market for jails to reinvigorate depressed areas. Oddly these wars, plainly counter-productive, disruptive of due process and liberties, harmful and very expensive must be fought. Beyond a few suddenly quiet Libertarians, this is a conservative given.

D again is more complicated. For all of the moaning about welfare programs, much of the bile, the rhetoric and the policy is aimed at reversing the gain in rights and the presumptions within those advances. What seems to drive much of the US conservative movement is a wish for the state to continue to discriminate and to push the excepted norms of liberty into a pre-civil rights world. The state must protect a form of social solidarity from the manifestations of these reforms. The state must protect the sacred banner, English as a first language, the nature of marriage, the rates of teen pregnancy. It suddenly must do all to return the nation to the pre-60s pristine environment.

No. Even in the land of the free, to claim conservatism as solely or even mostly a movement of small government/low taxes is asinine.

How does this definition of the right/conservatives travel to 1920s Italy and 1930s Germany?

Badly.

The major party of Italian Industrialists, the ANI , was a clear supporter of state planning, cartels and regulation, albeit controlled by them. They were to form the bridge between the Fascists and the elite within the Royal court and provide the foundation of the Fascist bureaucracy.

Italian Conservatism looked to the state to provide both a support to the hierarchies of rural society and promote forcefully industrialisation to maintain Italian pretensions of being a major power. For some reason, they had yet to realise the genius of Atlas Shrugged and school vouchers.

The bete noire of both Fascist and Conservative, along with much of the revolutionary left was Giollitti. He was considered the motif of Italian decadence and decay. Yet, he was one of the first social Liberals, much before Wilson. He created agreements with Unions, created rudimentary welfare schemes and sought to use the state to bring about a liberal social peace. To the syndicalists he was the ‘Great Domesticator’, taming the working class with material benefits and corrupting their leadership within the government. Yet according to Goldberg, he should have been Mussolini’s and the Movement’s hero, their patriach.

In Germany, there is even less of a case. The Vaterland Partei, the General Staff backed wartime front, was intrinsically linked to increasing state power for Conservative Militarist ends. Out of it were to come most of the early DAP/NSDAP leadership. Since Bismarck, the German right had been committed to some form of staatsocialismus to counteract the rise of the SDP. In the run up to the war and after, the German right looked to state mechanisms to revive traditional society via targeted welfare, reinforcing social structures, and thus mobilising the masses around Germany. As hard as you wish to look, no large component of the German right fits Goldberg’s description

Utter udder fail