I would like to juxtapose two quotations and then tell you where they come from:
Here's the first one (the bracketed reference to Liberalism is to the classical liberalism of the 19th century kind, not to the corrupt, collectivist, pseudo-liberalism that prevails in America today):
Fascism believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. . . . War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it. . . . It may be expected that this will be a century of authority, a century of the Left, a century of Fascism. For the nineteenth century was a century of individualism. . . . [Liberalism always signifying individualism], it may be expected that this will be a century of collectivism, and hence the century of the State. . . . For Fascism, the growth of Empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is the essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite is a sign of decay and death.
And now the second one, which is a bit long, but please bear with me. It, too, will be broken by ellipses but the elements are in the original order and come from one speech:
What are those demands [of the "one thing needful" for the success of the present war against terrorism]? . . .
We need, after dwelling for so long on what may be wrong with us, to remember, and to celebrate, how much more is right and good and noble. We need to realize that the answer to the plaintively asked question, "Why do they hate us? is not for whatever crimes we may have committed, but for our accomplishments and our virtues. . . .
I for one pray that our victory in this war – World War Four – will result in the creation of conditions under which the same blessings can be heaped on as many countries as possible. And I pray that it will set Islam onto a path of reformation from within. Both Judaism and Christianity began undergoing such a process centuries ago. Why should Islam alone remain forever exempt?
"America! America!" – sang Katherine Lee Bates in 1893 – "God shed his grace on thee." Appealing to God to shed the same grace on the rest of the World can no doubt be taken as a call for American imperialism. I confess that the word imperialism does not frighten me, but since a term like "leadership" would be less incendiary, I will resort to it.
In advocating such leadership by America, I do not make light of the widespread doubts that this country, by its very nature, is endowed either with the will of the skill to play even a benevolently imperial role in the world. . . .
[The author then closes with a paraphrase that updates a quite famous remark made in 1947 by George F. Kennan concerning World War Three, the Cold War]: The thoughtful observer of Islamic terrorism will experience a certain gratitude for a Providence which, by providing the American people with this implacable challenge has made their entire security as a nation dependent on their pulling themselves together and accepting the responsibilities of moral and political leadership that history plainly intended them to bear.
The author of the first quotation was Benito Mussolini. I took it from John V. Denson's "A Century of War," posted on this site March 9. (Denson gives the source in Mussolini's writings). Even translated, Il Duce's style is pretty crisp; he was rather clear-headed in expressing the bad ideas he entertained.
The second, longer quote is from a speech, "The One Thing Needful," given February 13, 2002 by Norman Podhoretz in his Francis Boyer Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy in Washington, D.C. Stylistically, Podhoretz has a tendency to wander and loop around quite a bit; he's not entirely confusing, only somewhat, but also alternately enlightening and infuriating.
I expect you picked up on the fact that "Poddy" (to use a nickname that is easier to keyboard than his full name and is often employed by his friends or enemies or both) has formally announced what our present hostilities amount to. We are in World War Four. I'm glad to know that. I thought what we had done was to send out a posse to get Osama, but I recognize now that I was not perceiving the real challenge we had been given.
We have been sunk in sloth and disregard of the plight of so many peoples plagued by (to coin a word) undemocracy. We were as nation being hopelessly unimperialistic, that is, woefully lacking in "leadership" of a kind that would get us off our duffs, the way the Duce got the lay-about Italians off theirs back in the 20s and 30s. The one thing needful is, precisely, warrior pundits of the type of Poddy, wielding pen and keyboard fearlessly against all those unenlightened Muslims and threatening them with F-16s, B-52s, blockbuster bombs, and fearsome Special Forces.
I read on the Net a few weeks ago that Salmon Rushdie is hoping Islam will get the message of secular, that is, atheist materialism, join the civilized nations, and quit its terrorist jihad. I take it that is what Poddy also sees as needful, because that is indeed what it has taken across the last couple of centuries to "reform," if that is the correct word, Judaism and Christianity. And if the ragtops don't "reform," well, whammo, there goes a blockbuster over Baghdad. Enormous inducement to get on with reformation.
"For Fascism, the growth of Empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is the essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite is a sign of decay and death." Substitute "America: for "Fascism" in Il Duce's line and you have the "Podhoretz Program" in a lapidary sentence.
The Duce was a man of the Left, and he described Fascism as a collectivist program of the Left triumphant. Hitler was of the Left. The effort has been made to say they were of the Right, which is nonsense. All collectivism and all statism are of the Left, the party of Marx and Hitler and Pol Pot. The neoconservatives, of whom Poddy is a major prophet, have made it a principal business to describe themselves as of the Right, but they are not, as Poddy makes very clear. They are of the Left; they are Fascists, collectivists, imperialists, and warmongers.
A good friend who is a patriot and in the oil business in Texas emailed Poddy's piece to me; he evidently got it from Andrew Sullivan's web site. He liked it because of its flag-waving and "up-America" message. I suggested to him that Poddy tends to be less than open about his motivations; and that perhaps we should all back up and review our national interests and vital principles before rushing off to lop off heads in all Islam.
I don't quote here the part of Poddy's speech where he credits the American Founders with the "wonderful" freedoms we enjoy today. A man who can be simultaneously that simplistic and that inaccurate is perhaps to be admired for skill but not trusted as a political guide.
Indeed we have such freedoms as we have left today because of the Founders, but the many freedoms we have lost and are continuing today to lose with each passing hour, we have lost because of pundits and politicians who quote and praise the Founders while betraying them and the marvelous Constitution they crafted. These treacherous people care only for power over others and ultimate victory for their collectivist, statist, leftist cause.
March 11, 2002
