Jon Schaff has an enormous book review of Jonah Goldberg’s hot book, "Liberal Fascism". Excerpt:
Goldberg is on firmer ground when he discusses the ways modern Progressives use "the children" as the equivalent of war, an organizing principle to which no one can object and which justifies any state intervention into our lives. This is best seen in his review of Hillary Clinton's It Takes a Village (and lots and lots of government). Clinton, Goldberg points out, begins with a distrust of parents and a reciprocal trust in government experts who, armed with credentials and scientific training, are much better able to raise your children than you poor slobs armed with common sense (read: unenlightened prejudice) as your only parenting tool.
And this Amazon book review adds to the theme Schaff puts forward:
Still, one doesn't need nearly 600 citations just to allow conservatives to say "I'm rubber, you're glue" the next time they are called a fascist. Goldberg argues that our focus on the atrocities committed by fascists in Germany obscures the fact that the fascist drive is, to a degree, universal in modern politics. The heritage and institutions of America lead it to manifest itself in a different form here. Whether it is the smothering embrace of the "It Takes a Village" mommy state or, to a lesser degree, the big-government, "compassionate conservatism" of Bush, fascism in the U.S. is well-intention, "smiley face" fascism, but it still looks first to the state, last to the individual.
And so I seem to be on solid ground to point out that the preschool legislation being debated in South Dakota (SB26 and SB154) is about the Nanny-state taking control over the children of South Dakota because these experts think they are above South Dakota parents.
And Schaff makes this point about corporations:
Goldberg also is effective in disabusing us of the myth that corporations are conservative. First, when is the last time you heard of a corporation giving large sums to pro-life or pro-traditional marriage groups? But corporate funding of socially progressive causes (such as "family planning") is common. Second, the early Progressives actually liked corporations. These Progressives had drunk deeply from the draught of Darwinism (or a form of). They believed in survival of the fittest. If large national corporations ate up smaller companies, than that was the way of nature. The object, then, was to use the state and its scientific administrators to manage these corporations for the public good. Goldberg argues that both sides are happy. The Progressives are happy because they get their enlightened administration, and the corporations are happy because the statist regulation will drive away any potential competition as the "little guy" cannot afford the massive entry costs created by said regulation. This is known as corporatism or corporate socialism, and the "fat cats" love it.
And I have been using Allen Quist’s FedEd to argue against extending the federal government’s current stronghold on the K-12 curriculum to three and four year olds. Steven Yate’s book review of FedEd supports Schaff position on corporatism:
We should say a word about the view of business implicit in FedEd. Many so-called education reforms are promoted as "good for business," and this is often enough to gain the support of business and business organizations such as the local branch of the Chamber of Commerce. FedEd paints a rosy picture of "reformed" public schools turning out loyal, technology-savvy and business-savvy employees. Businesspeople cannot necessarily be faulted for failing to see through the smokescreen of deceptive language – although an inability to find employees who can read and understand instruction manuals should clue them in that something is wrong. A key is the phrase public-private partnership that has been seen more and more often during the past decade. This means close ties between government and business. What results is not capitalism but corporatism – in which corporations and government cooperate both to discourage the open competition characteristic of genuine capitalism in favor of policy that is established and administered jointly, with each side doing favors with the other (e.g., "tax incentives" for business; support going to certain candidates for political office from business). This method is clearly a species of central planning. It may be used to establish what kinds of vocations and jobs are desirable and available in a given region – to the point of laying out actual job descriptions (sometimes doing it badly – cf. pp 86-89). "Education" then sets out to train students for these specific vocations and jobs. On the surface, corporatism sounds very pro-business, and no doubt there are established business leaders who like it very much. But its overall view of society is statist and collectivist – and, of course, authoritarian. The New Federal Curriculum sets out to indoctrinate and train individuals to meet the needs of the state and its corporate partners. At one time, this kind of system was known as fascism. Both Nazis and Communists employed purely vocational models of education, so that students would learn what they needed to serve the state, and no more.
Now I move to proponent testimony for SB26. Ron Moquist of Sioux Falls, President and CEO of Raven Industries and Chairman of Business Education and Civic Leadership Group (Heads up the pilot pre-K program in Sioux Falls), said this about the pilot program:
This is a public-private partnership, with the Governor’s Office, Sioux Empire United Way, and Forward Sioux Falls which is our business community all contributing.
Bob O'Connell, Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce also testified in support of the legislation. The admitted public-private partnership with business and Governor Round’s is corporatism and in this case, they are implementing Hillary’s "It takes a Village". This is fascism, this is anti-parent, and this needs to be stopped. These people try to argue that they are trying to break the cycle of poverty. No they are looking out for each other as they set up the taxpayers to pay for free daycare so that the business community can profit from the pool of inexpensive labor since mothers will now have free daycare. And this will break the backs of current small private daycare providers. Those who will benefit the most from the taxpayer funded daycares will be the already wealthy business leaders ("fat cats") and their political allies. This is plutocracy. This is what I meant when big government Democrats partner with Country Club Republicans.
If there truly was a financial return for the taxpayers who are making the investment, then lets hear (Pat, I used the right one this time) about when and how much the taxpayer’s return on investment materializes in the form of tax decreases. The increased economic activity these people are talking about will be profits of big business, but at the expense of taxpayers and small private daycares. The taxpayers will get screwed, the women will be cheap labor for the wealthy, while the children will be indoctrinated into useful idiots to be exploited by these fascists in the future. This is not about education.
If we want to break the cycle of poverty, we must break the education monopoly and their Nanny-statism.
Schaff makes this most excellent point:
Continuously through Liberal Fascism Jonah Goldberg speaks of the statist/collectivist agenda of the liberals. Liberals want to regulate the things we buy, the places we work, how parents parent, the things we eat, and, through their commitment to "diversity," even the thoughts we think. Liberals reject the limited government and natural rights philosophy of our founding. But "liberalism" is the politics of "liberty." Liberalism, or as Goldberg likes to call it, "classical liberalism," is committed to limited government, constitutionalism, natural rights, property rights, free exchange, and assumes a kind of moderate, virtuous citizenry capable of self-denial. If this is liberal, then modern liberals aren't liberals. They reject these core ideas or, as with the "living Constitution," reinterpret them in ways that indicate a clear break from the founders' purposes.
Yes, conservatives are classical liberals, moderates, and right. Our opposition are not liberals, and I say they are not progressives, and they are wrong. They are anti-God, anti-Christian, anti-family, and anti-American secular humanists. And their end game is Communism, a one-world government where plutocracy will reign (or is it rein).
