| December 7, 2006 Civility in the Time of War By Jon N. Hall Gore Vidal and Wm. F. Buckley Jr. made television history at the 1968
Democratic Convention as commentators for ABC News when Vidal called Buckley
a “crypto-Nazi”. Buckley responded, “Now, listen, you
queer! Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddamn
face and you’ll stay plastered.” Conservatives will look back
wistfully at an era when men vigorously defended their honor, but since
the 1960s the left has spewed Mr. Vidal’s brand of invective in
such a continuous torrent that conservatives have become pretty much inured
to it. Indeed, any conservative commentator who hasn’t
been labeled “fascist” by the left might wonder if he’s
really doing his job. Harry Belafonte has used the word “Gestapo” to refer to the
Homeland Security Department. His soul mate Julian Bond of the NAACP has
for years used “Taliban” to refer to his ideological foes.
The left even likes to trot out “fascist” for the likes of
actor John Wayne. (What did The Duke ever do to them?) The incidences
of this verbal abuse by the left are endless. Basically, they throw “fascist”
at whomever or whatever they don’t like. It’s like spam or
boom boxes; you just have to live with it; you can’t be resorting
to fisticuffs all the time. Senator Durbin registered some of his disagreements
with the Bush administration by invoking the Nazis, the Soviets, and,
for good measure, Pol Pot—even in the well of the Senate. The left feels justified in using the word “fascist” because
they see both conservatism and fascism as rightwing. So any conservative
whom they consider too extreme, too out-of-the-mainstream, they tar with
this ugly epithet. But often, it seems, they invoke the word when they’re
losing an argument and want to bring debate to a close. Since fascism is supposedly rightwing, I had always assumed that conservatives
needed to be ever on the alert for veering into it. I just couldn’t
imagine that all those sophisticated leftists and those “scientists”
in our universities’ social science departments could be mistaken
about what’s right and what’s left. And what’s more,
conservatives and others whom I admire and usually agree with—such
as Victor Davis Hanson, Bernard Lewis, and Tony Blankley—have also
identified certain fascist regimes and factions as “rightwing”.
So I just accepted that fascists were conservatives run amok, who had
gone too far to the right. What made me start wondering whether it is actually correct to classify
“fascism” as rightwing was the little essay by Tom Wolfe,
“In the Land of the Rococo Marxists”, which was anthologized,
along with other fine essays, in his Hooking Up (Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2000). The passage that got me going:
I found Wolfe’s essay compelling, and it made me think of the ways
in which fascism (which the left contends is rightwing) is akin to communism
(which virtually everyone agrees is leftwing). To begin with, even in
peacetime both the Nazis and the Soviets ran police states. They allowed
neither dissent, nor freedom of the press, nor opposition parties. Indeed,
for both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the party IS the state. Both
systems were big on slave labor. Both Germans and Russians lived in fear
of the knock on the door in the middle of the night, and of being escorted
off to some concentration camp or gulag. Both the fascist Nazis and the
Marxist Soviets seemed to have an irresistible urge to murder their own
people. By merely stopping and thinking for a moment I saw striking commonalities
between a leftist system and what the conventional wisdom says is a rightist
system. Then I remembered a quote from the certifiable lefty Susan Sontag:
“Communism is fascism”. And actor George Clooney might be
interested to know that years after the events he treats in his movie
Edward R. Murrow said, “the line between philosophy and practice
of Communism and fascism is such a narrow one as to be almost nonexistent.” So what’s the deal? Is there any justification for classifying
fascism as rightwing? When I shared my doubts about whether fascism is rightwing with a college
professor friend he would have none of it, and he informed me that there
were totalitarianisms of the left and totalitarianisms of the right. But
this doesn’t make any sense. It’s like saying that at the
other end from red on the visible-light spectrum is—red. That’s
not the way a continuum works. Surely the opposite of a tyranny is not
another tyranny. The left contends that fascism is rightwing because the “means
of production” are privately owned. Forget about the concentration
camps, the genocides, the slave labor, and all the other practices that
fascist states and communist states have in common. No, what’s important
is who owns industry. (As though the German industrialists could defy
the Reich and not go up the chimneys. Some “private ownership”
that is.) The left says that to qualify as a leftist system, industry
must be owned and operated by the state, and the farms must be collectivized.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I think I can make a categorical
statement: Most folks are more interested in whether the state is going
to oppress or murder them than in whether the Krupp family owns the steel
mills. State ownership of the means of production is of course Marxist doctrine.
But using the tenets of an ideology as criteria for a political continuum
can result in anomalies and discontinuities, which would destroy any continuum.
(Think of the communist and socialist states that allow private enterprise.)
Also, I maintain that when placing the various political systems on a
continuum that it is illogical to use the ideas of just one of the systems
in question to place all the others. And that’s exactly what the
left is doing when it invokes this “private ownership” criterion
to classify fascism as rightwing. The left feels justified in doing this
because of their fervent belief that Marxism is a science; despite its
abysmal record at prediction, the cornerstone of any science. Like so much of the subject matter of the social sciences, political
systems deal with very complicated phenomena and do not easily lend themselves
to the kind of elegant continua that we find in the hard sciences, such
as the electromagnetic spectrum. But inasmuch as the continuum is a useful
model, an effort must be made for as much rigor as we can muster. Just
like any other continuum, the political continuum should be based on characteristics
that, insofar as possible, are quantifiable, measurable, and, perhaps
most importantly, simple. We want our political continuum to be as continuous
as we can get it. Otherwise we won’t have a true continuum. Applying
the just-so rococo criteria of an ideology to a continuum just won’t
do. Now bear with me here. Be they communist, fascist, Islamofascist, socialist,
Ba’athist, monarchist, statist, autocratic, theocratic, totalitarian,
authoritarian, Fabian, or what have you; be they malignant or benign;
I’m here to tell you: The majority of history’s political
systems belongs on one side of the political continuum, and that side
is left. You could say the political spectrum is left-loaded; there
really aren’t that many systems over on the right, mainly libertarianism
and anarchism. The reason for this is that most systems are strong-government
systems. We’re talking about Power. What is politics about if not
Power? Power is what determines whether a political system is left or
right. Traveling leftwards from the center of the political continuum you first
encounter the attenuated socialism that is, alas, overtaking the U.S.
This often manifests itself as “socialism by proxy”, where
the government mandates private business to provide social services, such
as health insurance and pensions. Further left you run up against the
full-blown socialism of Europe, where entire industries are nationalized.
And finally, at the extreme left, the totalitarian states exemplified
by the Soviets, the Nazis, as well as the theocracies of Iran and the
Taliban. So the further left you travel, the stronger the state becomes,
the bigger it becomes, and the more pervasive, to the point where you
can’t even fly a kite, as we saw in Afghanistan under the Taliban.
And the further left you travel, the less Freedom the citizenry has. And
isn’t Freedom the main interest folks have in judging any ism? By
definition, a strong-government state is a weak-citizen state. The “citizens”
of extreme leftwing states are in essence slaves. But what’s in the center of the political spectrum? America, as conceived by the Founders, is in the center. Our system is
one of balance, balance between the power of the state and the rights
and freedoms of the people, where the people have the right to redress
grievances and sue the government. (We’ve even seen that a disgruntled
ex-employee can sue the President while in office. Try that in
a leftist state.) The American system is a power-sharing, limited-government
system that makes the federal government one of enumerated powers only,
as is made clear by the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated
to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
And not only that, but our tripartite system of government pits the 3
branches against each other; each branch making sure the other 2 don’t
get too big for their britches. Ours is a remarkably sturdy system, and
it has provided millions with opportunity, security, and Freedom. So which faction reveres our system the most? Well, it sure as shootin’ ain’t the hard left. It’s
conservatives who most revere our system and its Founders. So,
if the American system itself is centrist, and conservatives are the ones
trying to defend and preserve that system, then it follows as the night
the day that conservatism is centrist—not rightwing. You
read right. In the wider continuum of political systems, contemporary
American conservatism is midway between the extremes of the totalitarian
left and the anarchist right. This may come as a disappointment to conservatives
who have long prided themselves on being charter members of the VRWC,
but there it is. We’re rightwing only in relation to the left; we’re
leftwing in relation to the actual right; we’re centrists; get used
to it. That old lefty Norman Mailer recently said something important: “Democracies
are delicate.” I like that, and in a system like ours it is especially
true. We are forever doing this balancing act of weighing the rights of
the individual against the necessities of the government. Even with the
terrorist threat, some folks are all up in arms about the Patriot Act,
or whether jihadists are getting a fair shake from our justice system.
But all governments must move leftwards in time of war—if they want
to win. The left just doesn’t believe we’re at war, or that
there is a terrorist threat. Even in peacetime there is a natural tendency
for any government to try to amass and consolidate more and more Power.
But our democracy was designed to rein in such growth and retain a delicate
balance. The Founders got it right. During the 2004 campaign John Kerry said, “labels don’t mean
anything”. And others on the left echo that, saying the old paradigm
of left and right is no longer valid. (If so, then what are they arguing
about?) To the contrary, the debate between the left and the right has
been arguably the central debate in world politics since at least the
18th century; one side advocating strong government, the other limited
government. It was the central argument at our nation’s founding,
the one between Hamilton and Jefferson, and it goes on. What really
doesn’t “mean anything” is extremists calling centrists
extremists. If one buys into the idea that the political continuum is based on Power,
then one is driven to this conclusion: Fascism is leftist. You cannot
have very powerful systems on both sides of a continuum that is based
upon Power. Fascists have much in common with commies and theocrats, but
have little in common with decent American politicians of any stripe,
including most Democrats. So when the left uses a word like “fascist”
to refer to conservatives, to the very faction advocating limited government,
it is particularly incoherent. But it seems we can expect neither coherence,
nor decency, nor civility from these people—even in the time of
war. So why does the left deliberately poison the well of public discourse
with charges that make no sense? Why is the left so uncivil? Here are
2 explanations: One reason for the left’s boorish behavior is that they want to
deflect your attention from their ulterior motives, their plans for America.
You see they don’t really like America. They don’t believe
that America is a noble nation, or that it is well-founded, or that America
is any better than any other nation. Make no mistake; the left wants to
change America. They want to change the basic character of America. They’re
trying to mainstream socialism. They are trying to sell America on the
notion that they are the ones who are the centrists and that
socialism is centrist. That socialized medicine, the welfare state, and
entitlements from cradle to grave are just the natural order of things.
After all, isn’t that what the Swedes have? You know, the Swedes,
the ones who have such a vibrant economy and who saved Europe from fascism
in the 1940s. So the left must demonize those in their way, because America
isn’t buying. The left must make America into the enemy of all that
is good and decent in the world, rather than the world’s last best
hope. And since conservatives are the Real Americans—the Classical
Liberals—they get the brunt of the left’s abuse. But resist
we must, because the further we move leftward down their road to socialism,
the closer we come to actual fascism. Another reason these characters behave so badly is they can’t win
arguments. So to mask this inability they fulminate and get all worked-up
and red in the face, shout you down, interrupt incessantly, and accuse
you of being fascist, racist or stupid. And you know, this works with
a lot of folks. But even if they did know how to argue they’d still
be at a rather severe disadvantage, clinging as they do to such demonstrably
bad ideas. If the left objects to this analysis: Great, let’s have
a good old-fashioned debate, and on national TV. And here’s the
topic of debate: Resolved, that fascism is leftist. Let’s have a
formal debate and settle this thing once and for all. And won’t
it be great for our collective mental hygiene when the conventional wisdom—nay,
the received wisdom—has it that fascism is leftwing, and that those
tedious lefties have always been much closer to it than Real Americans. Some will object to the term “Real Americans”, and even conservatives
might think it unnecessarily divisive. I use it merely to identify those
who embrace the founding principles of America, and who don’t want
to see the basic character of their great nation changed for some Euro-styled
experiment. It’s doubtful that the left will enter a real, standup
debate with Real Americans anytime soon. And we can’t be sanguine
that they’ll become civil anytime soon, either. But what’s
least likely is that they will in any numbers go through a long night
of the soul, and examine their beliefs and ideas anew. With all the turmoil in the world right now, are questions of what’s
right and what’s left just academic niceties we cannot afford? I
say no. Because if we are to confront this evil we need the resolve that
comes from national unity, and one of the ways the left undermines our
unity is by its never-ending demonizing of conservatives as fascists and
other varieties of extremists. Calling folks vile names isn’t the
way to get national unity; it would be corrosive even in peacetime. Of
course, the question becomes: Is the left really interested in national
unity? What stands between conservatives and fascists on the political continuum is the American left. But conservatives should resist reciprocating the left’s ugly taunts; that would lower us. Just call them “socialists”, which they mostly are, and leave it at that. |
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