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, Jan. 24, 1994, p. 18. Even the Swedish embassy couldn't get a copy when it asked for one on behalf of Fortune magazine.
50. Jonathan Rauch, "Robert Reich, Quote Doctor," Slate, May 30, 1997, www.slate.com/?id=2447 (accessed Jan. 19, 2007). See also Robert Scheer, "What's Rotten in Politics: An Insider's View," Los Angeles Times, April 29, 1997.
51. Rauch, "Robert Reich, Quote Doctor." See also Robert Reich, "Robert Reich Replies," Washington Post, June 5, 1997, p. A21; Thomas W. Hazlett, "Planet Reich: Thanks for the Memoirs," Reason, Oct. 1997, p. 74.
52. Jonathan Chait, "Fact Finders: The Anti-dogma Dogma," New Republic, Feb. 28, 2005; Herbert W. Schneider, Making the Fascist State (New York: Oxford University Press, 1928), p. 67.
53. Walter Lippmann, The Good Society (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2004), p. 92; Clinton, It Takes a Village, p. 200.
54. Mickey Kaus, "The Godmother," New Republic, Feb. 15, 1993, p. 21; Kay S. Hymowitz, "The Children's Defense Fund: Not Part of the Solution," City Journal 10, no. 3 (Summer 2000), pp. 32-41.
55. James Bovard, Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen (New York: St. Martin's, 2000), p. 68, citing U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition, Feb. 1972.
56. Hymowitz, "Children's Defense Fund," pp. 32-41.
57. Lasch, "Hillary Clinton, Child Saver" Hillary Rodham Clinton, Address to the General Conference, April 24, 1996, www.gcah.org/GC96/hilltext.html (accessed Feb. 6, 2007).
58. Clinton, It Takes a Village, pp. 314, 315. Emphasis mine.
59. Ian Williams, "Big Food's Real Appetites," Nation, May 6, 2002; Tim Russert, CNBC, June 10, 2000.
60. Nomination of Janet Reno, White House, Feb. 11, 1993, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=47044&st=&st1 (accessed Feb. 6, 2007); Janet Reno, Remarks to Justice Department Employees, Washington, D.C., April 6, 1993.
61. Clinton, It Takes a Village, pp. 82, 113.
62. Lasch, "Hillary Clinton, Child Saver."
63. Clinton, It Takes a Village, pp. 45, 63, 88-89.
64. Ibid., p. 83.
65. Ibid., pp. 233, 132.
66. Kate O'Beirne, "The Kids Aren't Alright," National Review, Sept. 1, 2003; Kate O'Beirne, Women Who Make the World Worse: And How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports (New York: Penguin, 2006), pp. 36-38.
67. Gretchen Ritter, director of the Women's Studies Program at the University of Texas, likewise writes that mothers who stay home to take care of their children are the equivalent of slackers who refuse "to contribute as professionals and community activists." Gretchen Ritter, "The Messages We Send When Moms Stay Home," Austin American-Statesman, July 6, 2004, p. A9.
68. O'Beirne, Women Who Make the World Worse, p. 40.
69. Clinton, It Takes a Village, p. 189.
70. Ibid., pp. 239, 169.
71. William Jennings Bryan, Omaha World-Herald, Sept. 23, 1892, quoted in Paolo E. Coletta, William Jennings Bryan: Volume 1 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964), p. 75; H. Wayne Morgan, From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877-1896 (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1969), p. 496.
72. Ian Kershaw, The "Hitler Myth": Image and Reality in the Third Reich (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 73.
73. Elizabeth Kolbert, "Running on Empathy," New Yorker, Feb. 7, 2000, p. 36.
74. Bovard, Freedom in Chains, p. 19.
75. "The Real Hillary Just Stood Up," New York Post, June 30, 2004, p. 30; Amy Fagan, Inside Politics, Washington Times, June 30, 2004, p. A07.
10. THE NEW AGE: WE'RE ALL FASCISTS NOW
1. "Reality-based community" became a slogan for left and liberal bloggers starting in 2004. The phrase is generally used as a form of derision for President George W. Bush and his policies. It comes from an October 17, 2004, New York Times Magazine article by Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality"..."That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Hitler's speech is quoted in Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939 (New York: Penguin, 2005), p. 257.
2. John J. Miller, "Banning Legos," National Review Online, March 27, 2007.
3. It's interesting to note that during the height of the Kulturkampf, America's president, Ulysses S. Grant, lobbied for a constitutional amendment banning the teaching of "sectarian tenets" in any school receiving any amount of public assistance — and mandating that "all church property" be subject to taxation. See Jeremy Rabkin, "The Supreme Court in the Culture Wars," Public Interest (Fall 1996), pp. 3-26.
It's important to understand how Protestantism in Germany became corrupted by both nationalist and socialist agendas, in much the same way it had been in America by the progressives. Surveys in 1898 and 1912 revealed that a majority of German workers did not believe in God, but nearly all of them believed that Jesus was a "true workers' friend." If Jesus were alive today, surmised one worker, "he would certainly be a social Democrat, maybe even a leader and a Reichstag deputy." (Michael Burleigh, Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe from the French Revolution to the Great War [New York: HarperCollins, 2005], p. 268.) For non-Marxists, the emphasis was less on class and more on the nation as the subject of religious ardor. Adolf Stoecker, the court preacher to Wilhelm II, helped lead the charge and was a direct influence on Hitler and National Socialism. Stoecker denounced capitalism — in part because of its alleged inherent "Jewishness." He advocated workers' communes and a lavish welfare state. He also demanded racial quotas for universities and other professions and went on to found one of the first anti-Semitic parties in Germany, the Christian Socialist Workers' Party. The process of turning Germanism into a religion became symbolically complete when another party came along and changed the word "Christian" to "National" — the Nazis.