That the American Left in the first half of the 20th century were essentially Fascists is extensively documented here. Roosevelt even referred to Mussolini as "That admirable Italian gentleman" and he tried hard to emulate Musso's "corporate state". Only the Supreme Court defeated him -- as we see below.
Do free-marketeers need their own judicial pantheon? In a recent forum at the Council on Foreign Relations, Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, argued that conservatives and libertarians ought to induct Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States into such a pantheon.
In a nutshell, Schechter is the case that saved us from a centrally planned economy. Although, Roosevelt ultimately bullied the Court into abandoning Lochner, after Schechter the New Dealers were chastened, and they never again tried anything as massive and intrusive as the NRA. Indeed, I think that you could plausibly argue that since 1935 no one in the United States has dared try anything on the scale of the NRA. Had it stood, we would have been saddled with an economy where every major sector was regulated by detailed codes that not only dealt with issues of safety or working conditions, but also things like prices, permissible production levels, the scope of consumer choice (the New Dealers thought it was bad), and the terms of agreements between government regulated cartels. Gauche as Red-baiting is in New Deal history, there is no denying that many of the New Dealers were enamored of totalitirian economic planning, and, while the NRA never came close to the state-owned monstrosities of Stalin, it would have created an economic world in the United States closer to Fascist Italy than the modern welfare state. It was ultimately less of an exercise in economic redistribution than of political domination and control of economic life.
As a myth rather than a historical or legal theory, Schechter has much to commend it. A small, religious, family business built by immigrants searching for the American dream of advancement and self-improvement gets shut down by arrogant government bureaucrats hell-bent on imposing economic idiocy on the nation. They push back, and David-like force the government Goliath to its knees. The chicken triumphs over the eagle.
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ELSEWHERE
The Approach Of The Arab Pol Pot: "Peter Rodman has a column on the aftermath of the American abandonment of Vietnam which is timely since the old legion of anti-war propagandists are assembling on the virtual Mall in response to the president's speech yesterday. When I heard a radio interview with octogenarian Stanley Karnow last night --was it the first time he had been rung up by the MSM since the Bill Clinton-dodged-the-draft stories of 1992?-- I knew the president had not just touched a nerve, he'd touched the nerve in American history: Complicity in foreseeable genocide is, after all, a big deal. This is the ghost haunting the anti-war left, and the left shudders and screams whenever it floats into the room. All those millions of Cambodians didn't have to die, and all those Boat People didn't have to sail into death or exile. The Kennedys didn't have to topple Diem any more than Senators Levin and Clinton have to work to force the toppling the Maliki. And the Democratic Congress elected in 1974 didn't have to abandon South Vietnam to North Vietnam."
The UN sends itself up yet again: "The UN is lining up its 2009 Anti-Racism Conference with the same collection of players that made the last Racism Conference in Durban, South Africa a shocking anti-Semitic international scandal! UN member states Libya (the Chair), Cuba, Iran and Pakistan will meet at the Second Durban Preparatory Committee in Geneva on, August 27, 2007 to make preparations for this next disgusting Jew-bashing conference planned for 2009. As Iranian Fars News reported- Iran is very excited about leading this next UN racism conference. It was nice of the UN to allow the genocide advocates to lead the effort, wasn't it?"
Iraqi leaders sign unity accord: "Iraqi Shia, Sunni and Kurdish leaders have signed a reconciliation deal, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki says. The accord was the second step towards rebuilding Iraq's political process, Mr Maliki said, after four Kurdish and Shia parties formed a new alliance. A committee formed by the parties had "accomplished some solutions", he said. Issues under discussion include holding provincial elections and easing a ban on former Baath party members in the civil service and military. Mr Maliki was speaking at a news conference alongside Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, Shia Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi and Massoud Barzani - president of the Kurdish region."
India is the No. 2 terrorism target: "India has since 2004 lost more lives to terrorist incidents than all of North America, South America, Central America, Europe and Eurasia put together. All of these vast swathes of the globe lost a total of 3,280 lives in terrorist incidents between January 2004 and March this year. India alone lost 3,674 lives over the same period of three years and three months."
US Strikes Inside Pakistan!... 30 Rebels Dead! : "US-led forces and Afghan troops struck Taliban positions inside Pakistan in fresh clashes with the Islamic militia that left at least 19 local Taliban dead, security forces said on Sunday. The US-led coalition said it received permission from Pakistan to attack across the border on Saturday, but this was denied by the chief military spokesman in Islamabad. Afghan and coalition forces used mortars and artillery fire to destroy insurgent attacking positions on both sides of the border after a military post in Afghanistan came under attack, the coalition said in a statement. "The Pakistani military gave permission for the Afghan National Security Forces to fire on the targets located within Pakistan," it said. Six insurgent positions were destroyed, three on each side of the border, and more than a dozen insurgents were killed."
The brains of men and women are, indeed, different: "Women really are better than men at shopping. And they really do prefer pink. And, surprisingly, it is possible that these facts are connected. The first conclusion was drawn by Joshua New of Yale University and his colleagues. The second was drawn by Anya Hurlbert and Yazhu Ling of Newcastle University in England. The connecting theme is that in the division of labour that forms the primordial bargain of human hunter-gatherer societies, it is the men who do the hunting and the women who do the gathering.
Czech Republic Joins the Flat Tax Club: "The cabinet's package of public-finance reforms passed the final vote in the Chamber of Deputies yesterday thanks to two unaffiliated opposition MPs who voted with the governing coalition. ... Starting next year, the legislation will gradually reduce corporate and personal-income taxes, cut social spending and introduce cash fees for health care. It still requires Senate approval and President Vaclav Klaus's signature, but no resistance is expected from either. .The reform package will gradually lower the corporate tax rate from today's 24 percent to 21 percent next year, 20 percent in 2009 and 19 percent in 2010. The existing progressive taxation of personal income at 12 to 32 percent will be replaced by a flat tax of 15 percent in 2008 and 12.5% in 2009. The personal income tax will be calculated from super-gross income, including social and health insurance contributions paid by the employee and the employer. This means effective taxation will be 23.1 percent of gross income in 2008 and 19.4 percent in 2009."
For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.
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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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