REFLECTIONS

“In 1968, in a televised debate during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, when American fascists were taking to the streets outside the studio, Gore Vidal slandered William F. Buckley Jr. as a “crypto-Nazi.” Vidal, a pagan, statist, and conspiracy theorist,had good reason to cast this charge as far from himself as possible. Buckley, a patriotic, pro-market, anti-totalitarian gentleman of impeccable manners, could take it no more and responded: “Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.” It was one of the few times in Buckley’s long public life that he abandoned civility, and he instantly regretted it. Nonetheless, it’s hard not to feel sympathy for him. For at some point it is necessary to throw down the gauntlet, to draw a line in the sand, to set a boundary, to cry at long last, “Enough is enough.” To stand athwart “progress” and yell, “Stop!” That time is now.” (Jonah Goldberg, A Half Century’s Slander — It isn’t conservatives who must answer for fascism, National Review (NRO): JANUARY 28, 2008 VOL. LX, NO. 1.)

     The the first issue of National Review for this election year hits hard on the socialists’ myth of whom are the fascists. Goldberg explains in the NRO article why Democratic politics is liberal fascism. While the radical left claim Nazism (fascism) is simply about terror and violence, they don’t or refuse to recognize their rabid, hate speech directed at the right-wing is bordering on violence. It takes little movement to cross over to crimes against humanity from words of hate. The quote above shows the left-wing have been trying to fool the American public about what they truly desire for this country. By the left-wings’ extreme hatred of President Bush we learn that if they gain the power back that they held for sixty years it is not unreasonable to fear they will enforce, as their ideological fellow bullies had enforced in Nazis’ Germany, Lenin/Stalin’s Russia, Tito’s Yugoslavia and other places who suffered as lab-rats for re-making man into an Utopian image, their socialistic dreams.

     With the confusion among the Republican voters with lackluster candidates for president, there is a developing fear of liberal fascism gaining power again in Washington. Michael D. O’Brien wrote a novel which ask the question, “how does a person retain his identity, indeed his humanity, in absolutely dehumanizing situations?” Island of the World takes us through the life of a twelve year-old boy, Josip Lasta, at the defeat of Germans and Italians and later the defeat five decades later of the Yugoslavian communists. This story gives hope to anybody who may be facing a Godi Otok (a Yugo slave prison camp or camp whatever) that if you don’t lose your faith in an eschaton you can survive to fight another day. As we watch the debates this election year, keep the faith and remember,

“Don’t let THEM immanentize the eschaton.” –William F. Buckley jr. (c. late 1960s)