In spite of my Lenten news fast, word has seeped through that some on-air personality has announced that the Obama administration is leading the country to fascism. Tonight I overheard a Newt Gingrich claim that the current administration is engineering the biggest power grab in American history that could lead us toward a dictatorship. Apparently he doesn’t like the idea of regulatory standards for non-bank financial companies. Refraining from any kind of rant, I thought I would simply offer a portion of one definition of fascism from Wikipedia. I’m sure there is room to argue with it, but it’s close enough. Take a look and then ask yourself whether any of it sounds familiar to you, any echo of recent political leadership perhaps?
Fascism is a radical, authoritarian nationalist ideology that aims to create a single-party state with a government led by a dictator who seeks national unity and development by requiring individuals to subordinate self-interest to the collective interest of the nation or race.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] Fascist movements promote violence between nations, political factions, and races as part of a social Darwinist and militarist stance that views violence between these groups as a natural and positive part of evolution.[9] In the view of these groups being in perpetual conflict, fascists 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.[10][11][12][13]
Fascist governments permanently forbid and suppress all criticism and opposition to the government and the fascist movement.[14] Fascist movements oppose any ideology or political system that gives direct political power to people as individuals through elected representatives rather than as a collective nation or race (individualism, liberalism, representative democracy); that is deemed detrimental to national identity and unity (communism, laissez-faire capitalism, non-nationalist and class conflict oriented labour movements); that protects and empowers people deemed weak and degenerate (egalitarianism) and that undermine the military strength and military ambitions of the nation (pacifism). They also oppose traditionalists and conservatives who may seek to preserve any of the privileges, institutions and cultural values that fascism seeks to overthrow.[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]
This all sounds like the goal of the last republican administration.If Newt was so anxious to stop fascism where was he? John Paolini
We do indeed live in interesting times. As a child I used to ponder \”How did the German people let themselves get into the mess of fascism? Naively I held the notion that this could never happen here, and never again in this world. I am guilty on many fronts of doing nothing, knowing nothing as we sped to the place we are now. My sins are many, from feeling something was wrong or unseemly yet doing saying nothing because of my fear of inadequacy or fear of going against the current of the time, to speaking before praying in an emotional moment and lending credence to a movement that is counter to the Gospel of our Lord.As you asked in your previous post, What Cost? A very good question and like most things in life, small costs left unpaid lead to larger debt with larger costs. I fear we have let ourselves get into such a situation. We have, by letting meaning be molded by the speaker to their whims, allowed lies and darkness to dissolve truth. We have allowed the circular logic employed by those who would be demagogs to stand, especially if it served our own desires or calmed our personal fears. We have confused God\’s purpose with our own purpose. We have allowed the socialism of Jesus to be replaced by the tenets of free capitalism and used calvinism to justify the place of the less fortunate as their lot. We are still in the lie that the Christian is in a place of power, or our place is to be in a place of power. As long as we hold that lie as our truth, we will fail to be servants, doing the Lord\’s bidding, not our own. And the power of darkness, the deceivers, will continue to spread the news that God\’s grace is metered out by man. That man is indeed a god.
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Oh my goodness – is George back?
yes he is