I told you over a year ago, please read about the Weimar Republic. Read about the end of the Republic of Germany, Weimar, before it fell into the hands of the Nazis. We are facing the same kind of financial questions that they faced! It was unsustainable! And for the first time in American history we started to monetize our debt! That's when I told you, please read about Weimar, because they did it! And it ends the same way every single time it has been tried. (Glenn Beck at a rally in Floriday Saturday)
if you actually do study the end of the Weimar Republic, you can see that the final collapse of the Republic occurred precisely because it attempted a "conservative experiment" along the lines that Beck is prescribing: From 1930 to 1932, "In line with conservative economic theory that less public spending would spur economic growth, [Chancellor Heinrich] Brüning drastically cut state expenditures, including in the social sector." This, as it turned out, only heightened the social unrest that gave the Nazis their chance.] (Dave Neiewert quote the Wikipedia article on the Weimar Republic)
What is most remarkable about the psychology of movement conservatives is their prodigious capacity for projection. Movement conservatism can conceive of itself only as a positive force in line with what is best in the American character, and therefore in line with the founders and the constitution. And at the same time it is incapable of seeing how it promotes exactly what destroys what is best in the American character. They tell us to fear the return of the Nazi plague when, in fact, if it returns, they are its carriers. They are so many typhoid Mary's visiting every house to warn of a typhoid epidemic.
At first I used to think that this projection by the right onto the left was a canny way for movement conservatives to inoculate themselves from the accusations of people like Chris Hedges (and me) that they are proto-fascist. You know, a strategy similar to that of kindergartners on the playground responding to the accusation, "No I'm not a fascist, you are," and it works because the media accepts any absurdity in the name of balance. And like the kindergartners, neither the people on the right nor the media really understand what fascism is. It's just a name, like faggot, or kike, or nigger. So it has become unusable, and that suits the more crafty of right-wing strategist fine. What makes for a real fascist has become impossible for people to see because the word has been rendered empty of all real meaning.
I think people like Bill Kristol are cynical enough and shrewd enough to use such a tactic. They are manipulative demagogues who don't care about anything except consolidating power in the hands of a neocon cabal. But people like Beck, the folks at The Corner like McCarthy and Goldberg, guys like Pat Buchanan, and the grandees on the religious right really do believe they are trying to preserve what's best in America.
But they confuse the rule of law with their own authoritarian concepts of law and order. They talk all the time of their love for liberty, but support every measure that undermines American civil liberties in the name of national security or traditional morality. They are social control freaks who are openly belligerent to the idea of an open, pluralistic society. And as their support for torture and endless incarceration demonstrates, they don't really believe in basic constitutional protections or that our institutions are resilient enough even to try a terrorist in a civilian court or even to allow them on American soil. They are such scaredy-cats, and its their fear-driven thinking that is dangerous and contemptible. It's a failure of moral and civic courage.
It's facetious. They want America to believe that our election of Obama and the timid centrism he represents is a precursor to fascism. And the irony is that they're right to the degree that this timid centrism cannot find the resources to resist what movement conservatives, Wall Street financiers, and defense industry militarists will do to this country if their influence continues unabated.
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UPDATE: For another example of the kind of egregious projection that typifies movement conservatism, here's Rush:
But if you live in the universe of lies, the last thing that you are governed by is the truth. The last thing you are governed by is reality. The only thing that matters to you is the advancement of your political agenda. And you tell yourself in the universe of lies that your agenda is so important the world will not survive without it and therefore you can lie, cheat, steal, destroy whoever you have to to get your agenda done because your opponents are evil, and in fighting evil, anything goes. There are no rules when you're in a fight with the devil.
I'm not sure to what degree Limbaugh really believes this. There are times when I think that he's as much into the role of "Rush" on his show as Stephen Colbert is in role on The Colbert Report. It's as if they both parody conservative talk show hosts, Colbert: O'Reilly, and Rush: Rush.