Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains. I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

- Thomas Jefferson

When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.

- Herbert Hoover

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

- John Adams

Many scholars believe the last fifty years of progressive middle-class freedom and prosperity to have been only a temporary aberration of history, since most of human history has been characterized by large poor populations dominated by small ruling classes. Indeed, fascism appears to be the natural political disease of modern society for a number of reasons, and may indeed be the natural end result of human civilization.

Totalitarian fascism in the 1930's found democracy, because of social distortions, inequality, and resultant economic weakness, completely unprepared for the heavy and decisive blows which its implacable enemy intended to deal it, through propaganda, terror, and war. Thus it happened that it became a world-wide movement which put democracy not only on the defensive but in mortal danger. It was only very narrowly defeated through the resources and morality of the US, which resources and morality have now been subverted for the use of fascism against free society.

Fascism in America didn't begin as a reaction by many of the wealthy and powerful industrial elite to FDR's reforms: corporatism is always fascist, and the US has always had corporatist tendencies, as Jefferson deplored. But it has taken fascism in America fifty years to recover from the reversals it suffered from the Great Depression and WWII. Its eventual success was presaged by the joining of the military-industrial complex with the Religious Right in the 1970's.

Democracy, which has grown up in the last three hundred years, represents, with its emphasis upon individual responsibility and individual actions, the most difficult societal system, requiring a definite human maturity. Totalitarianism and especially fascism can in many ways be regarded as an escape from this difficulty into the irresponsibility of following a leader who deprives the people of their liberty and their maturity but promises them 'security' and 'economic progress'.

To that end, personal immaturity and self-gratification are therefore celebrated and promoted by corporate America in particular, and in U.S. culture in general, precisely because it prepares the electorate to give up its responsibility to maintain democracy in favor of totalitarian leadership.

This in turn enables the primary weakness of democracy: the possibility of electing to office persons who are prepared to subvert that democracy. Throughout history, from Athens to Rome to the Weimar Republic, democracies have nearly always succumbed to this weakness and devolved into personal or party dictatorships. Fascism has no such inherent weakness.

Unless the U.S. electorate had been prepared to renounce its political irresponsibility and had been able to assert its authority through the Constitution over its government, the democratic authority of the people would inevitably be supplanted by one that is corporatist and totalitarian. The U.S. electorate, as we have seen, was in no way so prepared, and now that government of the people, by the people, and for the people has perished from this earth. Militaristic corporatism has subverted the greatest democracy in the world, and has the will and the means to make that subversion permanent, and to extend it to other countries by coercion, fraud, and force.

Post lux tenebras

"Americans do tend to be fascinated by violence . . . I think we've all seen this comedy routine before. Get some new material."

Hey neocon.

You will be the victim of that violence no less than any of your victims.

Laugh then. Not before.

Got it?

Didn't think so. Try getting yourself deprogrammed.

In the meantime, fuck off.

"Are you Nacho Libre the luchador or Jack Black as Ignacio the friar?"

I don't share your low taste in 'humor', neocon. Neither do I share your taste for abominations or atrocities.

Unlike yourself, some people don't find brutality entertaining.

'*Eros and Civilization* ... Herbert Marcuse ...

'Norman O. Brown's *Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History*

'If you haven't read either or both, I can recommend them both highly.

'Rudolf Steiner's "Individualism in Philosophy"' ...

-- Libertarian at Large

Excellent. Thanks.

I've been through several hundred titles on related subjects over the years and don't bother with details anymore. Just the results. Probably the best ones came out at the end of the 19th century and then again after WWII, in the attempt to understand Naziism.

I'm so tired of the subject. Forgive me if I just skim them.

These days, I'm partial to The Authoritarians. I get the idea. I won't it read through.

My problem is that in all my searches and researches I have been unable to find any solutions. Ecological collapse or economic disaster, plus a few others, can easily be exploited to establish totalitarianism. They have the tools now, technological, political, social, economic. They can make it happen. Conason is almost right when he says It Can Happen Here, because it is happening here. I do not see any way it can be resisted. I really don't. I'm sorry.

Best of luck to you all.

Goodbye.

"Bingo. Walter, who the hell wrote that last bit (and why have I not yet read him/her)? Would you provide a link to the original text/post please? Or tell me what it is from so I can read up? Thanks."

-- adnoto

I wrote that. It's part of a larger unpublished essay sequence.

Glad you like it.

I thought this was a hotel in France.