Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

19.

63. The famous passage is from FDR's 1935 State of the Union address: 'The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of a sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America. Work must be found for able-bodied but destitute workers.'

64. Hayward, Age of Reagan, p. 20, citing 'T.R.B. from Washington,' New Republic, March 14, 1964, p. 3, and citing Gareth Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996), p. 48.

65. Mickey Kaus, The End of Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1995).

66. Hayward, Age of Reagan, p. 124. A demographic surge in male baby boomers is partly to blame for the rise in crime, but the cultural, legal, and political climate was undoubtedly the chief culprit. In the 1960s policy intellectuals believed that 'the system' itself caused crime, and virtually all of the legal reforms of the day pushed in the direction of giving criminals more rights and making the job of police more difficult. Culturally, a wide array of activists and intellectuals had proclaimed that crime — especially black crime — was morally warranted political 'rebellion.'

67. Ibid., p. 26, citing Richard Epstein, Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 186-88; Penn Kemble and Josh Muravchik, 'The New Politics & the Democrats' Commentary, Dec. 1972, pp. 78-84. McGovern later joked that his rules opened the doors to the Democratic Party and 'twenty million people walked out.'

68. Hayward, Age of Reagan, pp. 90-92.

69. 'Text of the Moynihan Memorandum on the Status of Negroes,' New York Times, March 1, 1970. See also Peter Kihss, ''Benign Neglect' on Race Is Proposed by Moynihan,' New York Times, March 1, 1970, p. 1.

70. Parmet, 'Kennedy Myth and American Politics,' p. 35, citing Randall Rothenberg, 'The Neoliberal Club,' Esquire, Feb. 1982, p. 42.

71. Douglas Brinkley, 'Farewell to a Friend,' New York Times, July 19, 1999, p. A17; Reliable Sources, CNN, July 24, 1999. See also Tim Cuprisin, 'Few Shows, Cost Blurring Appeal of Digital TV,' Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 27, 1999, p. 8.

7. LIBERAL RACISM: THE EUGENIC GHOST IN THE FASCIST MACHINE

1. Michele Parente, 'Rangel Ties GOP Agenda to Hitler,' Newsday, Feb. 19, 1995, p. A38; Bond is quoted in 'Washington Whispers,' U.S. News & World Report, July 28, 2003, p. 12; Marc Morano, 'Harry Belafonte Calls Black Republicans 'Tyrants,'' Cybercast News Service, Aug. 8, 2005; Steve Dunleavy, 'There's Nothing Fascist About a Final Verdict,' New York Post, Dec. 13, 2000, p. 6.

2. And to the extent these various dark chapters of liberalism are ever mentioned, they are mentioned by hard-left critics of America itself. The net effect is that whenever conservatives commit an alleged evil, it is the result of conservatism. Whenever liberals commit an alleged evil, it is the result either of liberals' insufficiently severe liberalism or of America itself. In short, liberalism is never to blame and conservatives always are.

3. Adolph Reed Jr., 'Intellectual Brownshirts,' Progressive, Dec. 1994.

4. Sherwin B. Nuland, 'The Death of Hippocrates,' New Republic, Sept. 13, 2004, p. 31.

5. Alan Wolfe, 'Hidden Injuries,' New Republic, July 7, 1997.

6. A former adviser to Teddy Roosevelt, and an extremist even by the standards of many eugenicists, Grant wrote, 'Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race.' Quoted in Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 10. See also Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 24; Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003), p. 291.

7. Black, War Against the Weak, p. xviii.

8. Charles Murray, 'Deeper into the Brain,' National Review, Jan. 24, 2000, p. 49; Thomas C. Leonard, ''More Merciful and Not Less Effective': Eugenics and American Economics in the Progressive Era,' History of Political Economy 35, no. 4 (Winter 2003), p. 707.

9. Diane Paul, 'Eugenics and the Left,' Journal of the History of Ideas 45, no. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1984), p. 586 n. 56, citing H. G. Wells, Sociological Papers (London, 1905), p. 60; William J. Hyde, 'The Socialism of H. G. Wells in the Early Twentieth Century,' Journal of the History of Ideas 17, no. 2 (April 1956), p. 220; H. G. Wells, The New Machiavelli (New York: Duffield, 1910), p. 379. In A Modern Utopia (1905), Wells wrote:

The State is justified in saying, before you may add children to the community for the community to educate and in part to support, you must be above a certain minimum of personal efficiency...and a certain minimum of physical development, and free of any transmissible disease...Failing these simple qualifications, if you and some person conspire [note the use of the criminal 'conspire'] and add to the population of the State, we will, for the sake of humanity, take over the innocent victim of your passions, but we shall insist that you are under a debt to the State of a peculiarly urgent sort, and one you will certainly pay, even if it is necessary to use restraint to get the payment out of you. (H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia [London, 1905], pp. 183-84, quoted in Michael Freeden, 'Eugenics and Progressive Thought: A Study in Ideological Affinity,' Historical Journal 22, no. 3 [Sept. 1979], p. 656)

10. George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: University Press, 1903), p. 43; Paul, 'Eugenics and the Left,' p. 568, citing George Bernard Shaw, Sociological Papers (London, 1905), pp. 74-75; Shaw, Man and Superman, pp. 45, 43; George Bernard Shaw, preface to Major Barbara (New York: Penguin, 1917), p. 47.

11. Freeden, 'Eugenics and Progressive Thought,' p. 671; Chris Nottingham, The Pursuit of Serenity: Havelock Ellis and the New Politics (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1999), pp. 185, 213; Paul, 'Eugenics and the Left,' p. 567, citing J. B. S. Haldane, 'Darwin on Slavery,' Daily Worker (London), Nov. 14, 1949.

12. Paul, 'Eugenics and the Left,' pp. 568, 573.

13. In its first year of publication, a full quarter of the magazine's contributions came from the British Isles. Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 276.

14. For more of such encomiums, see Yosal Rogat, 'Mr. Justice Holmes: A Dissenting Opinion,' Stanford Law Review 15, no. 1 (Dec. 1962), pp. 3-44.

15. William E. Leuchtenburg, The Supreme Court Reborn: The Constitutional Revolution in the Age of Roosevelt (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 19. Emphasis mine.

16. Robert J. Cynkar, 'Buck v. Bell: 'Felt Necessities' v. Fundamental Values?' Columbia Law Review 81, no. 7 (Nov. 1981), p. 1451.

17. In 1911 Wilson asked Edwin Katzen-Ellenbogen, the state's leading eugenicist and an expert on epilepsy, to draft the law. A Polish Catholic of Jewish extraction and American citizenship, Katzen-Ellenbogen has a story too lengthy to recount here. But it is worth noting that this profoundly evil man later found himself a doctor to the SS in France and ultimately a 'prisoner' who ended up working with the butchers of Buchenwald. He personally murdered thousands — often in the name of eugenic theories he developed in American psychiatric hospitals — and tortured countless more. The 'science' he learned in America was quite warmly received by the SS. In a grotesque miscarriage of justice, he escaped execution at Nuremberg. See Edwin Black, 'Buchenwald's American-Trained