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Re: Is Schmidt speaking for himself or the government? said by MaynardKrebs:One man's anti-social behavior is another man's freedom of speech. Similarly, "facism" is dependent upon the perspective of time and how a society's challenges become more (or less) complicated.
For example, the federal Deptartments of Education and Energy would have seemed facist to the founding generation. But, as an agrarian society with little dependence on oil, or threat of global economic competition, there was no need for such centralized, uniform regulation.
Heck, to the founding generation, the creation of the federal government would have looked fascist prior to 1789. They needed 12 years of experience with the relatively anarcho-libertarian Articles of Confederation to evaluate their challenges and willingness to compromise liberty for efficiency (independence at the expense of corporal uniformity).
That's where I think modern, self-styled freedom fighters miss the boat entirely. Relatively speaking (in terms of what they gave up, and what they accepted), the founding generation embraced "big government" and fascism like no other generation since. (Perhaps the Civil War generation embraced a similar relative jump when it destroyed the idea of succession, and gave the federal government the power to enforce the Bill of Rights against state enfringement via the 14th Amendment.).
Anyway, I don't think recent generations have done anything different than the founding generation, expanding government power/efficiency to balance individualism versus society's collective need for "ordered liberty."
If anything, recent generations have done a worse job of it because we have an incessant desire to create *ineffective* government. For example, resistance to National ID is almost a shibboleth of being American. The result? Dozens of national and state IDs. Private companies creating what amounts to a national database, with government being their largest customer. No control by individuals over the information collected about them.
All because a National ID would be "fascist." |
