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

16. As Allan Bloom wrote, 'I have seen young people, and older people too, who are good democratic liberals, lovers of peace and gentleness, struck dumb with admiration for individuals threatening or using the most terrible violence for the slightest and tawdriest of reasons.' He continued: 'They have a sneaking suspicion that they are face to face with men of real commitment, which they themselves lack. And commitment, not truth, is believed to be what counts.' Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), p. 221.

17. Michael Kelly, Things Worth Fighting For: Collected Writings (New York: Penguin, 2004), p. 170. This profile, 'Saint Hillary,' first appeared in the May 23, 1993, New York Times Magazine. For reasons that may strike some as suspicious, it is impossible to find in the Lexis-Nexis database, in professional academic databases, or on the New York Times Web site. Fortunately, it appears in Kelly's posthumous Things Worth Fighting For. Sadly, and oddly, the New York Times does not consider this historic essay to be something worth saving.

18. Christopher Lasch, 'Hillary Clinton, Child Saver,' Harper's, Oct. 1992.

19. Ibid.

20. Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), p. 235; Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged (New York: Norton, 1995), p. 14. While she summarized the environmental position well, it's worth noting that Gilman herself was an unreconstructed racist eugenicist.

21. John Taylor Gatto writes:

A small number of very passionate American ideological leaders including Horace Mann of Massachusetts, Calvin Stowe of Ohio, Barnas Sears of Connecticut, and others visited Prussia in the first half of the 19th century, fell in love with the order, obedience, and efficiency they saw there, attributed the well-regulated, machine-like society to its educational system, and campaigned relentlessly upon returning home to bring the Prussian vision to these shores...So at the behest of Horace Mann and other leading citizens, without any national debate or discussion, we adopted Prussian schooling or rather, most had it imposed upon them...The one-and two-room schoolhouses, highly efficient as academic transmitters, breeders of self-reliance and independence, intimately related to their communities, almost exclusively female-led, and largely un-administered, had to be put to death. (Charlotte A. Twight, Dependent on D.C.: The Rise of Federal Control over the Lives of Ordinary Americans [New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002], p. 138.)

22. Burleigh, Third Reich, p. 236.

23. Martha Sherrill, 'Hillary Clinton's Inner Politics,' Washington Post, May 6, 1993, p. D1; Kelly, Things Worth Fighting For, p. 172.

24. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Remarks at University of Texas, Austin, April 7, 1993, clinton4.nara.gov/WH/EOP/First_Lady/html/generalspeeches/1993/19930407.html (accessed March 18, 2007).

25. David Horowitz, Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey (New York: Free Press, 1997), p. 175.

26. Tom Gottlieb, 'Book Tour Includes a Political Lesson,' Roll Call, May 16, 2006.

27. Lee Siegel, 'All Politics Is Cosmic,' Atlantic Monthly, June 1996, pp. 120- 25.

28. Michael Lerner, The Politics of Meaning: Restoring Hope and Possibility in an Age of Cynicism (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1997), pp. 13-14.

29. Tikkun, May-June 1993.

30. Lerner, Politics of Meaning, p. 226; Michael Lerner, Spirit Matters (Charlottesville, Va.: Hampton Roads, 2000), p. 325.

31. Lerner, Politics of Meaning, p. 58.

32. Ibid., p. 59.

33. Ibid., pp. 88, 91.

34. Among the points he fails to grasp is the fact that the left has always been about constructing communities; that the right-wing movements he identifies are not necessarily fascistic; or that he is employing the classic liberal tactic of calling the 'other' 'fascist.' Indeed Lerner writes, 'The delegitimization of the notion of a possible 'we,' who could act from shared high moral purpose and could achieve morally valuable results, is the number-one goal of the conservative forces in America's elites of wealth and power.' Ibid., p. 318.

35. In the former he offers an interesting interpretation of liberal history in order to persuade liberals to reconnect with the old Progressive Social Gospel mission. 'With the rise of fascism,' he writes, 'the American religious Left abandoned the Social Gospel of its pre-World War II past, with its cheery hope of steady progress toward the Kingdom of God.' He identifies the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr as the culprit behind this move because he convinced liberals to take seriously the threat of Nazism. 'For Niebuhr and the Christian realists who rallied around his writings, sinfulness required recognizing the limitations of any politics aimed at fundamental social change, accommodating the inequities of their own capitalist societies and championing the Cold War. The Christian 'realists' helped reinforce individualism when they focused religious energy away from social movements.' Michael Lerner, The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), p. 164.

36. Lerner, Politics of Meaning, pp. 219, 283.

37. Charles Krauthammer, 'Home Alone 3: The White House,' Washington Post, May 14, 1993, p. A31.

38. 'By the Dawn's Early Light,' National Review, Jan. 22, 1990, p. 17.

39. Norman Lear, 'A Call for Spiritual Renewal,' Washington Post, May 30, 1993, p. C7.

40. John Dewey, 'What I Believe,' Forum 83, no. 3 (March 1930), pp. 176-82, in Pragmatism and American Culture, ed. Gail Kennedy (Boston: Heath, 1950), p. 28; Adolf Hitler, Hitler's Table Talk, trans. Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens, introduction and preface by Hugh Trevor Roper (New York: Enigma Books, 2000), p. 143.

41. Indeed, O'Rourke argued that It Takes a Village is a fascist tract in 1996. He wrote:

If a name must be put to these stupid politics, we can consult the Columbia Encyclopedia under the heading of that enormous stupidity, fascism: 'totalitarian philosophy of government that glorifies state and nation and assigns to the state control over every aspect of national life.' Admittedly, the fascism in It Takes a Village is of a namby-pamby, eat-your-vegetables kind that doesn't so much glorify the state and nation as pester the dickens out of them. Ethnic groups do not suffer persecution except insofar as a positive self-image is required among women and minorities at all times. And there will be no uniforms other than comfortable, durable clothes on girls. And no concentration camps either, just lots and lots of day care. (P. J. O'Rourke, 'Mrs. Clinton's Very, Very Bad Book,' Weekly Standard, Feb. 19, 1996, p. 24)

42. Hillary Rodham Clinton, It Takes a Village (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), p. 13.

43. Ibid., p. 14.

44. Lear, 'Call for Spiritual Renewal,' p. C7.

45. Clinton, It Takes a Village, p. 20.

46. Ibid., pp. 299, 301.

47. Paul A. Gigot, 'How the Clintons Hope to Snare the Middle Class,' Wall Street Journal, Sept. 24, 1993, p. A10.

48. Howard Fineman, 'Clinton's Brain Trusters,' Newsweek, April 19, 1993, p. 26.

49. Jacob Weisberg, 'Dies Ira: A Short History of Ira Magaziner,' New Republic,