Wake Up Cape Cod
Convened as a Committee of Correspondence
to Reawaken Americans to the Cause of Liberty.

Commentary by Lawrence Brown .......

Seeking a Global Strategy for Our Security

Those of us in the opinion trade make predictions knowing they become public record. When we’re wrong, there is rarely a shortage of readers waiting to point it out to us. From the beginning, I have felt the Iraq war was a mistake. Should the coming months prove me wrong; should a government there coalesce, should the police and military prove capable of maintaining a civil society, should public services and public safety return to the streets of Iraq, then whatever embarrassment I might experience as a columnist will have been offset by the satisfactions I experience as a citizen. Meanwhile, I’d like to see us get the hell out of there.

To support this thinking, I’d first like to identify what seem to be our central problems. After that, let’s see if we can, by addressing these problems one at a time, discover a way out. Two columns for the problems, two for possible solutions. Here goes.

First of all, the conduct of the war has revealed colossally poor judgment. Virtually all our various rationales offered to justify the war have turned out to be ungrounded. No W.M.D.s, no way the war could pay for itself, no “mission accomplished” no adoring crowds but an unforeseen insurgency instead, no way to perform a simple head-transplant on Saddam’s old government. And no end in sight.

To an alarming degree, Iraq has been a faith-based enterprise from the beginning. Even now, the architects of the war still insist that if we fail, it will not be their fault but instead, it will be our fault: the result of deficient public belief. This isn’t our soldiers’ failure. They have done what their commanders have told them to do. Their commanders have done what their civilian managers have decided. And their civilian managers have failed them and us.

We’ve insisted, as an article of faith, that Iraq wasn’t only ready for democracy, that it positively thirsted for it, ¦that all people do. While it may be true that all people may share a common desire to be left alone and not tyrannized, that is not necessarily a democratic impulse and it does not appear that, for all the lost blood and treasure, Iraq is headed towards democracy. It is, in fact, headed towards Islamist rule towards theocracy. Where voting has been permitted in the Middle East, it has favored Hezbollah and Hamas... which is another way to say that democracy has not been an end but only a means to ends we find unacceptable.

The insurgency has developed a strategy for winning in Iraq that does not require the defeat of our armed forces. What it requires is the frustration of American desires for as long as required for us to leave. If we want oil, insurgents can easily blow up pipelines, refineries and convoys. If we want to set up a government, they can more easily destabilize it with terror and assassinations. Now we see what it was that the ruthless Saddam Hussein was containing. With Saddam removed, we’ve exposed our next problem.

We’re not prepared to adopt the methods with which Saddam kept the potential forces of insurgency in check and more humane methods may not suffice. Nor can our dominance on the battlefield be of much use since the insurgency never intends to show up on one. Which reveals our next problem.

The insurgency in Iraq is conducting a public seminar on how to humiliate the United States. We were more feared prior to our invasion of Iraq than we are after supposedly conquering the country. Sure, we have unmatched ability to blow things up, but we simply cannot simultaneously be humane and defeat an insurgency willing to victimize its neighbors as savagely as this one does.

Our conduct of the war has, so far, advanced the national interests of Iran more than it has our own. We have removed the Taliban from power to their east, whose presence they did not like, and removed Saddam from power to their West who had defeated them in war and whom they justifiably hated. They have far more influence over the internal affairs in Iraq, especially in the south than they could have dreamed of prior to our invasion.

The second principal beneficiary of our invasion of Iraq is Al Qaeda, who has a far wider presence and influence in Iraq than prior to our invasion. The third major beneficiaries are certain defense contractors of whom the President and Vice President are particularly fond. For this, we have squandered over 200 billion dollars and buried over 2,000 of our finest young men and women. For this, an additional 15,000 face their futures armless, legless, in pain, disfigured, or haunted with a sickness of heart from which many will never recover. The damage done to Iraq and Iraqis fuels our next problem.

Islamic fundamentalism is spreading in the Muslim world, most rapidly among the young. Teenagers in the laid-back Caribbean are emailing to imams in Iran and Indonesia for instructions on how to be properly Muslim. Ask yourself how many teenagers outside the USA consider our soldiers in Iraq as heroes. Then ask the same question for suicide bombers. The answers you get prove to you that our current approach is unsustainable.

Although we have understood Osama Bin Laden as a terrorist, we have not understood him as a theologian, which is how many of the world’s people see him. Islam is being torn as the Protestant Reformation tore at Christianity. At issue is whether Islam can reconcile itself with modernity. It seems to have never occurred to us that we might have to defend or explain modernity. If we in the West cannot discuss what we have become in theological terms, we are left with only the blunt and reactionary instruments of force. These may protect us for a short run but cannot solve our problem over the long haul.

Our unilateral conduct of the war has isolated us from the rest of the world, and even from our friends, to an unprecedented degree. If our dearest objective is safety from terrorists, then it would make sense if the rest of the world gave a damn about what happens to us. If our objective is empire, however benevolent, our enemies and even our friends will form alliances to thwart our hegemony, which is what we’re seeing now. If we insist on the unilateral right to preemptive war - and that our treatment of prisoners need not conform to the norms of the most advanced nations - we will end up more feared than the terrorists.

Because we’re so bogged down in Iraq, we are effectively limited in our ability to respond with force anywhere else in the world. And every tin-pot dictator on the planet knows it.

Finally, we have insisted on the old colonial proposition that Iraq must remain a single nation. Meanwhile, our invasion has unleashed forces always latent in the country that threaten to split the place into three units which, after some inevitable ethnic and sectarian cleansing, might even make a brutal kind of sense. We are not prepared to duplicate the means by which Saddam held the country together, and lesser means may not suffice.

Even if we give Bush the benefit of the doubt and grant him only the most benevolent of motivations for invading Iraq, the cascade of calamities his decisions has either unleashed, or failed to contain, is staggering. Next, we begin our search for solutions.

Getting us out of Iraq

We’ve spent the last two weeks reviewing the problems we face both in Iraq and in our war on terrorism. We’ve concentrated on Iraq and I’d like to continue to do that. We cannot just walk away, though. To do so would (ironically) turn Iraq into just the threat that Bush had erroneously scared us with three years ago. With American forces gone, not only would American access to Iraq’s petroleum be problematical but the revenues generated by petro sales would likely fall into the hands of people as nasty as Saddam ever was, and far more dedicated to doing us harm.

Colin Powell once likened our Iraq policy to an antique shop: You bust it, you bought it. In the end, it doesn’t matter whether this administration had some hidden agenda or was simply stupid. We need a new management team, a regime change here at home. In light of the massive record of error and miscalculation, the present administration (almost entirely devoid of personal military experience) should be replaced. Removing Rumsfeld would be a good first step.

Second, we should consider allowing Iraq to divide itself into the three ethnic and sectarian pieces that make it up. It appears to be on the road to collapsing into three pieces anyway. So why not get a little credit by assisting in making it a more orderly process. As each sector stabilizes itself, we declare victory and depart. This surely won’t be either as simple or harmonious as it sounds, but large constituencies will get what they want. The Turks will go ballistic over the prospect of an independent Kurdistan, but if they want admission to the European Union, they’ll be forced to behave themselves, and the Kurds will be both oil-rich and genuinely grateful. Here, if anywhere, we might actually get the oil-rich Middle Eastern buddy we’ve been pining for.

In southern Iraq, the Shiites will have lots to fume about, but they finally will have been delivered of Saddam Hussein and, thanks to us, will have a shot at getting what they’ve always wanted. Will they remember to thank us? Probably not, but at least our troops will be safely out of there. The Sunni mid-section around Baghdad will remain the most problematical. They’ll have the least oil to sell, for example. Here, we might have to maintain a presence longer than we’d like, but we can withdraw increasingly to our heavily fortified bases as things slowly gel.

We will have to guarantee the territorial integrity of the Shia, Sunnis and Kurds from neighboring Iran and Turkey, leaving whatever forces Iraq develops to maintain order internally. As it is, the forces we’ve organized in Iraq are already segregated along ethnic and sectarian lines. There is no blended national army there now. To whatever extent the Iraqis need to unify themselves, they can do so, or not, as they like, and on their own. The United Nations would be more able to assist them in such a project than we could be.

Such a strategy would, with a stroke, undo many of the problems we’ve spent the last two weeks explaining. Al Qaeda, stripped of its pretenses of defending Iraqi sovereignty from the evil Americans, would itself become the unwanted foreign presence in Iraq. If need be, we could retain a sufficient military presence in the Sunni sector to give Iran pause. Otherwise, we’d have our army back if we needed it to counter more legitimate threats in Iran, North Korea or Pakistan.

We must abandon the fantasy that democracy can be imposed on a civilization from the top down. For all their patriotic rhetoric, there are many reasons to believe that the Bush team doesn‘t really understand democracy as a grass-roots, bottom-up process. We didn’t need the CIA to tell us that a society in which the tribe is the largest social institution, a society that considers conversion from Islam to any other religion to be a capital crime and goes berserk over cartoons is not a candidate for democracy. Even had Iraq begged us to come teach them the mysteries of a democratic society, it would have been difficult. We didn’t need spies; any seasoned traveler in the Middle East could have told us this. We need a new management team that can make a clean break from previous policies.

Seeking a global strategy for our security

The insurgency in Iraq defines victory not in terms of defeating our forces but in frustrating our desires. That should be our general strategy for countering global terrorists. Frustration of desires is a game two can play.

Limiting the availability of nuclear weapons should be job one. It’s going to be harder now than it once was but we need to re-affirm our previous arms limitation agreements with the Russians and negotiate some with the Chinese as soon as possible. Most urgently for us, we need to insist (and possibly pay for) improved security for the vast arsenal of nuclear artillery shells and other nuclear ordinance built during the Soviet era. It is far easier to steal or purchase a nuclear weapon than it is to build one. This will remain true for years to come. Don’t forget, the two nations with the real capacity, right now, to destroy our country are Russia and China, not Iran or North Korea.

More dangerous than countries that might get nuclear weapons are the countries that already have them. Of these, the countries that have nukes and are vulnerable to an Islamist take-over are the most dangerous of all. The fastest way for Al Qaeda to get nuclear weapons (other than buying some out of Russia) would be to topple the regime in Pakistan. I worry we’re not thinking about this enough.

We need a foreign policy that genuinely champions the little guys all around the world. By little guys, I mean ordinary working men and women. At present, our politicians haven’t the slightest clue what such a policy would look like, either here or abroad. They need to be replaced with politicians that do.

We can no longer assume that our mission is to bring democracy to a thirsting world. The world insists on not wanting the things we want for it, and when we insist, even when our intentions are good, we come across as tyrants, not as liberators. Which is why we need a profound shift in focus from changing regimes to finding ways to be the little guy’s friend. Not everyone either wants democracy or is ready to live in one, but the desire to be free of oppression and exploitation is truly universal. How can we tap into this?

We need to rebuild our relationships with the global community. This requires our seeking allies, not vassals, respecting the rights of prisoners, renouncing our “right” to a military first strike leading the world on issues of collective security like global warming.

We must seek ways to strengthen the hand of Islamic moderates, and welcome any Islamic immigrants who are willing participants in the cultures they’ve moved into. If we treat all Muslims as potential terrorists, we play into the hands of terrorist recruiters. And we miss the genuine goodness of most Muslims. If we embrace the manly allure of the clash of civilizations model of reality, we will have accepted the terrorists vision for the future and we’ll end up living in their world, not our own.

Where there are efforts underway to build bridges between faiths, like the Parliaments of the World’s Religion,s we should support such ventures and report on their accomplishments. We need forums where the people who disagree most can meet and seek alternatives to violent conflict. The terrorists have no interest in peaceful process, but surely the majority of the world’s people put more of their hopes on it than on the threat of war.

Solid intelligence, security and the judicious use of military force can keep us safe for the short run but we should be perfecting other strategies for the long haul. If our only answers are violent, then we’ll be trapped by our own limitations until eventually, what we fear most will find its way to us.

It is not enough to criticize the President for his shortcomings in Iraq (and elsewhere). We need to offer alternatives. When I was a boy, I studied debating. In that pursuit, I learned that a good argument rested on two legs: desirability, and possibility. I can’t fault Bush for wanting to bring democracy to Iraq. But it wasn’t possible to do it, nor did the Iraqi people ask us to. Now, within the limits of the possible, we have to ask in a new way how we can both look to our safety and also be a blessing to the world, understanding that the two are connected. Within the limits of my information and my capacities, I’ve attempted to begin such a discussion, here where I live.

A Thesaurus for Democrats
(Appeared in Cape Cod Times, August 25, 2003)

It was a cartoon I saw years ago. We’re in the office of a marriage counselor. A domineering woman (drawn Thurber-like) leans aggressively forward, blocking off a tiny man in a dark suit and delicate mustache. Now I’ll tell you his side of the story, she says. That this cartoon should remind me of the Democrats over the last 15 years is their own fault. Now, after decades of wimpishness, the Democrats need to regain control of the words they need to tell their own story. So let’s get right to it: a thesaurus for Democrats.

Liberal: In economics, the belief that those who’ve most benefited from life in America have the greatest obligation to the common good. In morals, slow to condemn the private affairs of others, especially if no visible injury is caused. In religion, having the conviction that Heaven has more than one door. In politics, having the conviction that government, when freed of corruption and balanced by diverse opinion, can perform useful social service.

Government: The means by which the people in a democratic society see to their common defense and, by common consent, promote prosperity, order, and protect the weak from the strong. (By the way, the protection of the weak from the strong was given by Hammurabi in 1,700 B.C. as his justification for law.) Also: a balance to the unrestrained ambitions of Capital, unless of course, Capital buys out the government.

Labor: Verb: to work. Noun: The collected number of those who work for others and who may, despite their best efforts, have nothing but their labor to sell. Such people, Liberals say, deserve a liberal share of the affluence they create through their efforts.

Capital: money available to invest. Thus Capital-ism is an economy run by its investors. Since it is natural for investors to seek the most secure and rapid growth for their investments and since the cost of labor is an expense, Liberals instinctively seek to protect labor from the kinds of advantages Capital can take of it, if left unrestrained by government. (See Teddy Roosevelt.)

Poverty: Having fallen out of economic membership in the society of which one is a part. Conservatives see poverty as a consequence of character deficiencies, and so hardship serves to improve the characters of the poor. Though Liberals understand the relevance of character, they also see poverty as simple misfortune deserving of compassion and “if necessary” social adjustments. Liberals dispute the idea that while luxury is the appropriate motivational tool for management, insecurity and deprivation should be the appropriate motivations for labor.

Patriotism: Love of country. Liberals are tired of the continual representations that they love their country less than Conservatives do. Liberals’ patriotism is expressed as concern that we remain not only strong but virtuous and deserving of the world’s respect.

Character: Conservative Republicans tend to the Darwinian/competitive model requiring toughness and respecting success. Liberal Democrats stress compassion and attention to detail. National health requires a balance of these two. Of course, that’s Liberal of me to see it that way. Conservatives see liberalism as error and feel better when error is crushed and silent.

Diversity: Coexistence of differences. Liberals are optimistic about how well people can live with differences but mindful of how precarious diverse societies can be. Conservatives are more uncomfortable with diversity, seeing strength in national unity. Combine these values and see that America’s destiny is to profit from the diverse gifts of a people unified by their love of country, their tolerant culture, and equal protection under the law.

Our differences are mostly between people of intelligence and good will who simply disagree about what’s best. (We both want the best.) There are also natural constituencies that gravitate to each side of the argument. In most cases, what at first appear to be antagonistic turn out to be the yin and yang, the balancing faces of our common good. Liberals should fight for a public confession that this is so.

Principles to Run on and Win

The Democrats need to make a case to America why they should be preferred over Republicans. Here, in brief, is what we need to say.

Elect Democrats and we’ll reform the electoral process. No election in any state should be supervised by the party in control. If an election in some banana republic were supervised by the campaign director of a contesting candidate, in a region where the candidate’s brother was already governor, we’d all roll our eyes. I ask Republicans to imagine what they’d want if Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and Hillary was running. All voting machines should be tamper-proof and provide a paper trail of votes cast. No state’s elections should be turned over to corporate interests to organize, run, count and verify. And the grotesquely gerrymandered districts that currently favor incumbents of both parties should be totally redrawn.

Elect Democrats and we’ll insist on fairness where you work. It‘s a moral and reasonable principle that workers, who create wealth through their labors, should be given a fair share of the value they create in their wages. The Republicans have instead resisted any justification of the minimum wage and sneered at any suggestion that American full-time workers should be able to live on their earnings. Meanwhile, the gap between ordinary Americans and the nation’s earning elites grows wider and more rapidly here than any place on earth. This is not the politics of resentment I’m talking about; it’s the politics of fairness.

Elect Democrats and we’ll fight for a Euro-style health insurance program for every American. Our present system burdens everyone in it with unacceptable costs and leaves the most vulnerable of us out. Starbucks pays out more to ensure their employees than they pay for coffee beans. Our auto industry pays more to ensure its past and present employees than it spends for steel. A single-payer plan would lift a staggering burden from business as well as protect you and me.

Elect Democrats and you’ll be electing people who believe that global warming is real. The temperature outside your window is not a matter of opinion; it’s a matter of measurement. So is the average temperature of the whole planet, as is the whole planet - over 10, 20 and 30 years - not a matter of opinion, or a political ploy. It‘s simply a set of numbers, scientifically available rising numbers with terrible implications for the human race.

Elect Democrats and you’ll elect people who care what the human race thinks. When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he recognized a decent respect to the opinions of mankind. We cannot craft a national policy that addresses our security either as regards terrorism, the environment, or our place in the global economy if we are unwilling to be team players.

Elect Democrats and we’ll organize a more sensible plan to protect ourselves from terrorists and secure the resources we need. As concerns in Iran and North Korea mount, we realize we have no significant ground troops to commit anywhere that are not already bogged down in Iraq. There are exit strategies available to any administration that wants them. We promise to put the best of these into practice as soon as we’re given the authority to do so.

Elect Democrats and we’ll promise not to use religion as a campaign tool. The Federal government has no authority to dictate to America’s churches the contents of their sacraments, nor to officially prefer any denomination’s judgments over another’s. We promise never to tell you that God prefers our candidates, or that Jesus expects you to vote for them or, when we win, that it was Divine intervention. We are no less Godly or moral, nor are we more so, than Republicans. People of all faiths are always free to examine for themselves in the privacy of their consciences whose policies offer the necessary mixtures of mercy and justice as seems proper to both faith and conscience.

Elect Democrats and we promise, once again, to balance the budget. Clinton proved it was possible by doing it. The present program of cutting Federal income while increasing Federal spending is catastrophic. We won’t be too upset if Republicans want to borrow any of these values for their own campaigns. America will be the better for it if they do. Which is why the Democrats better be the ones to say these things first. If they do, if they offer new options in faith, fairness and security, advance them with zeal and defend them with courage, they’ll have earned themselves a chance to lead. Nothing less will do.

The future of Freedom in America

I’m not sure exactly when it was that someone sent me my first reprint of an article comparing George Bush to Hitler. It bothered me a lot, not because I’m a Republican but because it simply wasn’t a fair attack. Read Mein Kampf for yourself, then ask if you think George Bush is the next Hitler. Had Bill Clinton the wit to get Bush named Commissioner of Baseball soon enough, the man would never have entered politics – and wouldn’t have wanted to. No. George Bush is no Hitler, and the Left does him a slander to suggest it, and squanders its credibility by doing so.

Having said all that, another question remains – one worth asking: how safe is America from Fascism today? It took a world war, a fortune in American blood and treasure and 70 million lives around the world to wrestle fascism to the ground last time. It is to honor our fathers and grandfathers – and the world’s teeming dead – that we take a look around and inquire about the future of freedom in America.

A patriot should worry about fascism like a religious devotee worries about sin… because both have to be confronted every day. Both arise from perennial temptations. What is fascism? Fascism is what happens when concentrations of wealth and power join forces to consolidate their advantages and advance their interests. “Modern fascism should properly be called ‘corporatism’, since it is a merger of the state, military and corporate power.” said Benito Mussolini, Italy’s tyrant in WW2.

There may be neo-Nazis in America today, but they’re not really going anywhere because they’re still in love with German fascism, its heroes and symbols. We have to consider something different. We have to watch for things as American as apple pie – things that won’t feel foreign at all.

Mussolini spoke of a “merger”. This concept is the key to understanding fascism. Fascism is an unholy alliance of potentially good things: our government in Washington, the people we send there and those they appoint… the media who can reach us everywhere – in our cars, living rooms, online… our most successful corporations and the powerful men who run them… our military and the police… and our dominant religions. Those are the main ingredients – and taken one by one, they are good things. They are ours, and we’re proud of them.

But what happens when they begin to cooperate – not in meeting the needs of the American people – but in consolidating their own advantages? Is it not the proper business of enterprises to succeed… and do they not see their growing success as a good thing? Indeed they do – and therein lies the temptation.

Fortunately, we have lots of history to look at now. The German people elected Hitler, for example. The Serbs loved Milosovitch, the Italians loved Mussolini. But for all the patriotic rhetoric, did their champions love them back? No. Their leaders were elitist snobs, convinced they could hoodwink their people into surrendering their liberties one by one. We have the advantage of historical hindsight; we have their papers and communications. They wrote the book on conquering their own nations from within. It should be required reading in every school.

What I’d like to do is review with you what we know about fascism and then you can decide whether it’s anything patriotic Americans should be worried about. We’ve made a start: we’ve identified the key players. They are the ones who always stand to benefit the most from fascism, however much of it they can get. And, however difficult this might be in an election year, let’s proceed in the understanding that both our political parties face the same temptations here. Founding father James Madison gave us fair warning: “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by sudden and violent usurpations.”

Recognizing A Matrix Of Temptations

There is a risk that we might keep our eyes trained on the horizon for some foreign enemy while we are quietly looted and disenfranchised from within. This is what Ben Franklin had in mind as he left a session of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. A woman approached him on the street. “So, do we have a king?” she asked. “No madam,” Franklin said. “You have a republic – if you can keep it.”

Fascism arises out of a matrix of temptations. The corporation may wish to maximize profits by reducing workers’ wages and benefits. At some point, they run afoul of worker-protection laws and must secure the cooperation of elected officials to remove the obstacles to further profits. They offer campaign contributions and other amenities to those politicians most responsive to their needs.

Needless to say, the newspapers and other media could raise the alarm. That problem is best solved by purchasing as many of them as possible and gradually weaning them (and the public) away from investigative reporting. Short attention-spans get even shorter.

What if striking workers need a little physical instruction from police batons and, in extremis, army bayonets? These things have been arranged in America’s past. Later on, as modern history reminds us, inconvenient intellectuals can be silenced –along with uncooperative media – until eventually we have more enforcement than law.

History even illustrates how religious institutions can be tempted with the chance to see their values made compulsory… by the silencing of rival sects and faiths… or in harsher conditions, protection in return for silence. “In short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess…” Adolf Hitler. How ironic: Hitler offers to improve the morals of his countrymen and defend them from the evil of liberal impulses.

You don’t attack fascism by attacking or demonizing any of its constituent parts. This is what the Left hasn’t understood. Corporations are not villainous things, nor are cops on the beat or our own kinsmen who make up the military. Our churches are clear forces for good. But all institutions are subject to the temptations to advance their wealth and influence at the expense of ordinary people, even while declaring themselves to be the people’s protector and friend. We’ve seen it all before, both here and abroad.

So this is a good time to offer our first weapon against fascism. We vigilantly protect the political and economic interests of ordinary people against encroachment by any of the concentrated power interests we’ve been talking about. With every policy question that comes up, we ask, “Will this new suggestion put more money in the workers’ pockets – or less? Will Americans be more free – or less so? Is our government more secret, or more open?” Then we vote.

Why, after all, did we go to war against Hitler and Mussolini and Tojo? Why did we hold the line against the Soviet Union all those years but to protect our liberty and the chance ordinary people have here for a decent life. That being the case, we have to ask how a free and prosperous people can be tricked into surrendering their freedom and prosperity to fascists. How that happens is next.

Extracting The Freedom From A Free People

There is a science to this. The assault on the freedom of free people is as old as freedom itself. We see it in ancient Athens and Rome, but the most instructive lessons come after the Industrial Revolution and the creation of the mass media. The clearest lessons are offered by Hitler’s rise to power, overthrowing the existing democracy in Germany.

How shall a free people be persuaded to yield their freedoms up to a central government? In America, this should be a non-partisan (or a multi-partisan) question. Nobody owns this.

First, you need an emergency. You can always make one up, but usually there’s something scary going on you can point to. Top Nazi Hermann Goering put it this way: “…it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship,. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

So you need a climate of fear. Put a steady diet of fear into a man and soon a steady stream of anger comes out the other end. Fascism loves anger, encourages it as a form of civic righteousness, then uses its political steam to do the new work of the state. We can recognize fear and anger as spiritual toxins. Fascism depends on those. Citizens are encouraged to think of themselves as victims whose desperate plight excuses them from moral restraints.

The fascist enthusiasm for manly action prefers polarization to reconciliation, war-making to peace-making. This preference wins fascism the allegiance of defense contractors and many in the military, especially the senior officer corps. Those who don’t go along are replaced with new, enthusiastic recruits.

Fascism distrusts intellectuals not already on board, and seeks to crush dissent from any defenders of civil rights and freedom. So fascism makes war on ambiguity. Problems are distilled to childlike simplicity; all questions are reduced to yes or no. Fascism glorifies decisive action and the masculine. “Whenever anyone says the word “culture,” said propaganda genius Goebbels, “it makes me want to reach for my pistol.”

Fascism identifies with a fixed set of national symbols and narrowly defines what it means to be a true member of the country. Those who can’t or won’t conform, either for reasons of faith or conscience or intellectual scruples, are denounced as unpatriotic and enemies of the state. In the name of country, citizens are encouraged to despise their fellow countrymen if they fail to conform.

Ironically, the interests of God and faith can be invoked in the midst of the most immoral projects. We saw this in the medieval inquisitions. The faithful were threatened with hidden evils only a trained elite could detect and save them from. As always, extreme measures were called for. They always are.

Fascist leaders will appear blasé and arrogant. Their usurpation of civil liberties must be justified by their superior knowledge and foresight. Here’s where a subservient media is vital, so inconsistencies and mistakes can’t be pointed out in public. When cornered, national security can always be cited, as Goering suggested over a half-century ago.

If we have a color-coded system of national alert for terrorism, we should have one for fascism too. Watch for the signs; then vote against anyone whose behavior suggests fascism to you. Such patriotic vigilance transcends political party concerns. I know lots of people in both parties. None of them want fascism for America. Love of country is a good thing, but it has to translate - as love always must - into actual benefit for the beloved. Democracy is safest when economic and political power is not concentrated in too few hands. Such concentration cannot be justified as a defense of democracy. It is, in fact, democracy’s executioner.

The Character Of Freedom

We are Americans who love our country. We love our freedom. We love the land we live in and we’re grateful for the quality of life it gives us. We also know that freedom always has its enemies. In today’s world, those enemies come at us from two main fronts: they are religious extremists bent on terrorizing us into conversion… or they are powerful persons intent on tightening their grip on wealth - and their advantage over those whose work produces it.

If we do what citizens in a democracy are expected to do, faced with a threat, we’ll ask ourselves what we need to do to counter the threats that face us. At the moment, I’m not talking about the things somebody else is supposed to do to protect us. I’m talking about what we ourselves can do. (I can feel Jefferson clearing his throat impatiently behind me.) We must perfect ourselves as best we can as citizens. We must embody – each one of us – the character of freedom.

How, you ask, can traits of character – any character – detect a nuclear device being smuggled into Detroit? Obviously, it can’t. We have the FBI for that. What possessing the character of freedom will do is equip us to respond appropriately to whatever happens to us next… that whatever casualties our enemies inflict on us, our liberty itself will not be among the missing. So what would a democratic character look like? It would be the character of fascism turned inside out.

If fascism stokes fear and anger, democracy responds with courage and forbearance. We have people shouting at us and telling us every day why we deserve to be angry and who we’re supposed to be angry at. If we’re going to think straight, we need to calm down. Keeping a clear head under pressure is the stuff of heroism. The democratic character expects every human being to be capable of self-transcendence when it counts.

If fascism promotes a punitive intolerance of non-conformity, freedom asks for proof of injury before judging others. A free society can be defined as diversity thriving in an atmosphere of tolerance. We have our civil law to regulate our public lives, and the democratic character demands the law be applied equally to all. About religion and other private matters, democracy requires a respectful silence and a respect of others’ privacy.

If fascism distrusts the life of the mind and champions violent action instead, democracy requires critical intelligence from all its citizens – and an understanding of history. At the opening of our history, John Adams reminded us, “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.” In a democracy, the construction of a library is a patriotic act.

If fascism glorifies war and its war leaders, democracy calls its citizens to it with extreme reluctance. The democratic character knows that the best way to support our troops is not to send them into danger unnecessarily. When we have no choice, we expect honor and valor from our warriors, but we also recognize the threat any permanently armed force poses to our own freedom. This ambivalence about armed force can be traced right back to the founding fathers.

Most of all, the democratic character continually seeks to expand the fortunes of the common man and woman. There is, in that hope of expansion, an innate distrust of power and privilege. “He mocks the people,” said Grover Cleveland, “who proposes that the government shall protect the rich and that they, in turn, will care for the laboring poor.”

Any charlatan can burst into tears at an unfurled flag. American fascism, if it ever comes, will be as American as half-time at the Super Bowl. So it won’t be on their expressions of patriotism that we should choose our leaders but for their protection of liberty and the lack of secrecy with which they do the public’s business.

At the beginning of our history, the founding fathers had to justify, in an age of autocracy, the vesting of ordinary people with political power. To do so, they had to insist that ordinary people can have the wisdom to know what is right and the moral courage to do it. No institution can be better than its members. Nothing has changed. While freedom occasionally requires us to fight for it, we defend it best, and daily, by living in it.