Friday, February 20, 2009

It Smells Like Fascism

By Alan Caruba

With growing rapidity, Americans are waking up to bits and pieces of news that all smell of fascism, defined as “a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.”

Let’s start at the top. President Obama is no ordinary political leader as this nation has long been accustomed to. He is the leader and focus of a cult. His supporters come to him asking that he provide them with a home or believing that he will ensure they will always be able to fill their car’s gas tank for next to nothing. He has deliberately encouraged this view of him, staging huge rallies during his campaign. Women swoon. Men weep.

Now, with virtually no coverage by the mainstream media, we learn that H.R. 45 is legislation, a “Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009”, that would strip Americans of the right stipulated in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to possess and bear firearms. An estimated 90 million Americans own firearms and the vast majority do for the purpose of self defense. They are going to need their firearms if the Obama administration continues on its path to total control, not merely of the federal government, but over all fifty States.

I will not bore you with the details of this firearm act. Suffice it to say it exists to make the right and the process of ownership extremely difficult and, at the same time, authorizes government searches without warrant and the creation of a federal bureaucracy to monitor who owns guns. Not only is H.R. 45 unconstitutional on its face, there are literally thousands of firearm laws at the state level that ensures that law enforcement officials know who legally owns firearms.

The February 19 issue of The New York Times reported that “E.P.A. Expected to Regulate Carbon Dioxide.” Despite all the dancing around that the EPA and the White House are engaged in, the “fix” is in to expand the Clean Air Act to allow the federal government to extend control over every business, industry, and activity in American that generates carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

This is pure fascism and it is not based in science as we all know by now that there is no global warming and CO2 plays virtually no role whatever, if any, in climate change.

The response is a growing movement among the states, all sovereign republics, to combat the way the federal government under the control of President Obama has moved to swiftly assert even greater control over what the individual states can and cannot do if they accept federal “stimulus” funding or any funding.

In a February 20 article in The Washington Times, David M. Dickson reported that, “worried the federal government is increasing its dominance over their affairs, several states are pursuing legislative action to assert their sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution in hopes of warding off demands from Washington on how to spend money or enact policy.” At least a dozen states are actively engaged in this effort and I predict it will spread to many others.

The Tenth Amendment states that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.”

This nation was not founded on, nor ever intended to be government by an all-powerful central authority. If you want an example of what that looks like, read about the former Soviet Union or the failed and defeated fascist nations of Germany and Italy in the last century.

Lastly, there was the recent proposal to reintroduce the so-called “Fairness Act” that would throttle talk radio and its ability to air a dissenting point of view from the Obama administration. You can read Rush Limbaugh’s rejoinder as published in The Wall Street Journal here.

That whiff of fascism in the air must not be ignored and must be opposed.

To learn more about H.R. 45, visit http://www.ccrkba.org/, the website of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

1 comment:

Rich Kozlovich said...

Fascism? “It couldn’t happen here!” Sure it can…it has happened before. Even while taking in Abraham Linclon's serious violations of the U.S. Constitution during the Civil War, Woodrow Wilson’s egregious violation of Constitutional guarantees awards him the dubious honor of being called “America’s first Fascist President” by historians.

He introduced campaigns to reduce people’s food intake and recruited people (over a half a million) to go around and to people’s homes to attempt to get them to sign “pledges” to stop consuming so much food, including a demand for “meatless days” and wheatless days”.

Herbert Hoover was in charge of that little piece of tyranny and was quoted as saying that “Supper is one of the worst pieces of extravagance that we have in this country”.

He became president after Warren G. Harding and was as big a socialist as Wilson and F.D.R., who actually further implemented Hoover’s actions and called it the New Deal. All of which was almost identical to the policies of Wilson, with many of the same people running them. The only major difference was that the names of the programs were changed, however the philosophy behind them was all the same.

It might be noted that the same type of people who scream about the Patriot Act were that same kind of people who instituted much worse policies. I'll bet you won’t see any effort to overturn the Patriot Act now, and it will probably be made stronger along the lines being discussed.

Rationing and price fixing were part of the package also. Wilson passed the Espionage Act if 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 banning “uttering, printing, writing, or publishing and disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language about the United States government or the military, and could be jailed if the courts decided that you presented a “clear and present danger”. “ One Wisconsin state official got 2 ½ years for criticizing a Red Cross fund raising drive.” A movie producer received a “10 year stint” for showing war atrocities committed by British troops in the American Revolution. One man was arrested and tried for not buying Liberty Bonds.”

They would deny mailing privileges as they saw fit. Foreign publications were censored. Journalists were jailed, editors were charged with crimes, and newsprint was denied to those who printed things they didn’t like.

This fostered the American Protective League who spied on and reported on their neighbors and this “secret police” reached a “quarter of a million’. Considering that he population then was only 103 million that was a substantial number. Then came the American Vigilante Patrol, which fostered local mimics such as the Wisconsin Loyalty Legion and no matter how you view the American Legion currently; this are how they got started. The number of people jailed during that time was egregious and didn’t end until Warren G. Harding became president and the people got tired of all this fascist socialism. But it happened….It is unfortunate that the Wilson era is never talked about, nor is it properly taught in the schools. But it happened.