- When the leftist radicals, hard left politicians and various numbers of democrat pundits called President Bush names like Hitler, fascist, idiot and other derogatory names, we got mad. Not only did we get mad, we also tended to give little legitimacy to the opinions of the very same people. Now we find ourselves in the same shoes as the people ridiculing Bush except we are doing the same thing to President Obama. Just like the left likes to criticize torture and says we can't bring ourselves down to the level of the terrorists, we conservatives and constitutionalists need to concentrate our efforts on honest discourse and facts of all issues and not bring ourselves down to the levels of the leftist radicals, hard left politicians and various democrat pundits.

In order to sway honest people caught in the middle who just don't know or understand what is going on, we have to be above the petty name calling and stick to the facts. President Obama has already been called a socialist, fascist, Hitler, communist, scum bag, Muslim extremist and many other names. Instead of doing that, let's just look at how his actions fit into the ideology that describes his behavior.

• [Obamaism]

 [Obama has] a radical, authoritarian nationalist ideology that aims to create a single-party state with a government [that] seeks national unity and development by requiring individuals to subordinate self-interest to the collective interest of the nation or race.

(How many times have you heard him state that we all will have to sacrifice through these times of crisis? The single-party state is already essentially in effect since the Democrats control both houses in Congress as well as the Presidency and it has been totally obvious that no matter what the Republicans try to do, they have no power to stop or even delay anythings that the Democrats put on the docket. The Democrat leadership have even stopped any pretense of listening to the Republicans and now just try to push their agendas through without consulting them at all.)

[Obama and his social organizer peers] promote [conflict] between [income level classes], political factions, and races as part of a social Darwinist ... stance that views [conflict] between these groups as a natural and positive part of evolution. In the view of these groups being in perpetual conflict, [Obama and like-minded politicians] believe only the strong can survive by being healthy, vital, and have an aggressive warrior mentality by conquering, dominating, and eventually eliminating people deemed weak and degenerate.

(An excellent example of this tactic is demonstrated in AIG. The company was in trouble and asked for a Bailout. Chris Dodd from Connecticut, who had received over a $100,000 in campaign contributions from AIG, wrote the law into the Stimulus Package that gave AIG permission to give out their contractually obligated bonuses. Then when the news media reveal that the bonuses were paid, a louder cry of indignation could not have been heard than from the politicians in Washington and Chris Dodd himself. All politicians jumped on the band wagon to criticize the bonuses and created such animosity towards not only AIG but all rich, financial industry companies that Obama had his henchmen from ACORN gather into buses and demonstrate in the driveways of the AIG executives. That is an excellent example of using class warfare and generating conflict between factions.)

[Obama] permanently forbids and suppresses all criticism and opposition to the government and the [his attempts to expand the government].

(This has been obvious in the many methods in which they try to pit voices of dissent against other voices of dissent. They have morning briefings then phone calls with major media henchmen and target individuals. Does Rush Limbaugh ring a bell? Even though they have "stated" that they have no intention to pursue the Fairness Doctrine, they have full intent on targeting local radio broadcasters by using "local intent" and FCC regulations to stifle talk radio hosts who oppose Obama.)

[Obama] opposes any ideology or political system that gives direct political power to people as individuals through elected representatives [the electoral college] rather than as a collective nation or race ([card check]); that is deemed detrimental to national identity and unity (communism, class conflict oriented labour movements, internationalism, and laissez-faire capitalism); that protects and empowers people deemed weak and degenerate (egalitarianism) and that undermine the military strength and military ambitions of the nation (pacifism); that may seek to preserve any of the privileges, institutions and cultural values that [Obama] seeks to overthrow (traditionalism and conservatism).

- Compare the few paragraphs above with the definition of "fascism" in Wikipedia. I modified it only a little in order to show how eerily similar what Obama and the Democrat leaders in Washington are doing. With their back-door attempts to control the banking industry, the car industry, the credit industry and their overt intentions of controlling the health care industry and energy industry, is there any question at all as to the description of who these people really are?

We are not there yet, don't get me wrong but unless we like-minded people (who love the country the way it was (despite her flaws), who believe we live in the greatest country the world has ever seen and who believe the Constitution as it was originally written is the foundation of what made this country truly special in history) get together, consolidate our efforts to wake the rest of the sleeping population up, educate them and increase their awareness and vigilance, this country could fall into fascist authoritarianism within a few years.

We haven't even talked about the forced civil service, the national security force which will be armed and funded greater than the military, and the disarming and underfunding of the military and Homeland Security.

The writing is on the wall telling us that unless we stop this in its infancy, Obama may very well turn out to be another Stalin, Mao, Hitler or Mussolini. Notice who he buddies up to (Chavez, Ortega, Castro) versus who he demonizes (Rush Limbaugh, talk radio hosts, any conservative or right wing ideologue). It's up to us and only us to save this country.

• Fascism (from The Library of Economics and Liberty (www.econlib.org):

As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful competition, and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary Marxism, with its violent and socially divisive persecution of the bourgeoisie. Fascism substituted the particularity of nationalism and racialism—“blood and soil”—for the internationalism of both classical liberalism and Marxism.

Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions.

Fascism is to be distinguished from interventionism, or the mixed economy. Interventionism seeks to guide the market process, not eliminate it, as fascism did. Minimum-wage and antitrust laws, though they regulate the free market, are a far cry from multiyear plans from the Ministry of Economics.

Under fascism, the state, through official cartels, controlled all aspects of manufacturing, commerce, finance, and agriculture. Planning boards set product lines, production levels, prices, wages, working conditions, and the size of firms. Licensing was ubiquitous; no economic activity could be undertaken without government permission. Levels of consumption were dictated by the state, and “excess” incomes had to be surrendered as taxes or “loans.” The consequent burdening of manufacturers gave advantages to foreign firms wishing to export. But since government policy aimed at autarky, or national self-sufficiency, protectionism was necessary: imports were barred or strictly controlled, leaving foreign conquest as the only avenue for access to resources unavailable domestically. Fascism was thus incompatible with peace and the international division of labor—hallmarks of liberalism.

Fascism embodied corporatism, in which political representation was based on trade and industry rather than on geography. In this, fascism revealed its roots in syndicalism, a form of socialism originating on the left. The government cartelized firms of the same industry, with representatives of labor and management serving on myriad local, regional, and national boards—subject always to the final authority of the dictator’s economic plan. Corporatism was intended to avert unsettling divisions within the nation, such as lockouts and union strikes. The price of such forced “harmony” was the loss of the ability to bargain and move about freely.

To maintain high employment and minimize popular discontent, fascist governments also undertook massive public-works projects financed by steep taxes, borrowing, and fiat money creation. While many of these projects were domestic—roads, buildings, stadiums—the largest project of all was militarism, with huge armies and arms production.

The fascist leaders’ antagonism to communism has been misinterpreted as an affinity for capitalism. In fact, fascists’ anticommunism was motivated by a belief that in the collectivist milieu of early-twentieth-century Europe, communism was its closest rival for people’s allegiance. As with communism, under fascism, every citizen was regarded as an employee and tenant of the totalitarian, party-dominated state. Consequently, it was the state’s prerogative to use force, or the threat of it, to suppress even peaceful opposition.

If a formal architect of fascism can be identified, it is Benito Mussolini, the onetime Marxist editor who, caught up in nationalist fervor, broke with the left as World War I approached and became Italy’s leader in 1922. Mussolini distinguished fascism from liberal capitalism in his 1928 autobiography:

The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity. The Fascist State with its corporative conception puts men and their possibilities into productive work and interprets for them the duties they have to fulfill. (p. 280)

Before his foray into imperialism in 1935, Mussolini was often praised by prominent Americans and Britons, including Winston Churchill, for his economic program.

Similarly, Adolf Hitler, whose National Socialist (Nazi) Party adapted fascism to Germany beginning in 1933, said:

The state should retain supervision and each property owner should consider himself appointed by the state. It is his duty not to use his property against the interests of others among his own people. This is the crucial matter. The Third Reich will always retain its right to control the owners of property. (Barkai 1990, pp. 26–27)

Both nations exhibited elaborate planning schemes for their economies in order to carry out the state’s objectives. Mussolini’s corporate state “consider[ed] private initiative in production the most effective instrument to protect national interests” (Basch 1937, p. 97). But the meaning of “initiative” differed significantly from its meaning in a market economy. Labor and management were organized into twenty-two industry and trade “corporations,” each with Fascist Party members as senior participants. The corporations were consolidated into a National Council of Corporations; however, the real decisions were made by state agencies such as the Instituto per la Ricosstruzione Industriale, which held shares in industrial, agricultural, and real estate enterprises, and the Instituto Mobiliare, which controlled the nation’s credit.

Hitler’s regime eliminated small corporations and made membership in cartels mandatory.1 The Reich Economic Chamber was at the top of a complicated bureaucracy comprising nearly two hundred organizations organized along industry, commercial, and craft lines, as well as several national councils. The Labor Front, an extension of the Nazi Party, directed all labor matters, including wages and assignment of workers to particular jobs. Labor conscription was inaugurated in 1938. Two years earlier, Hitler had imposed a four-year plan to shift the nation’s economy to a war footing. In Europe during this era, Spain, Portugal, and Greece also instituted fascist economies.

In the United States, beginning in 1933, the constellation of government interventions known as the New Deal had features suggestive of the corporate state. The National Industrial Recovery Act created code authorities and codes of practice that governed all aspects of manufacturing and commerce. The National Labor Relations Act made the federal government the final arbiter in labor issues. The Agricultural Adjustment Act introduced central planning to farming. The object was to reduce competition and output in order to keep prices and incomes of particular groups from falling during the Great Depression.

It is a matter of controversy whether President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was directly influenced by fascist economic policies. Mussolini praised the New Deal as “boldly . . . interventionist in the field of economics,” and Roosevelt complimented Mussolini for his “honest purpose of restoring Italy” and acknowledged that he kept “in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman.” Also, Hugh Johnson, head of the National Recovery Administration, was known to carry a copy of Raffaello Viglione’s pro-Mussolini book, The Corporate State, with him, presented a copy to Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, and, on retirement, paid tribute to the Italian dictator.