A little bit different Notable Quote here concerning some quotes from the 20th Century Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini. Why? Too often, those on the Left say that Fascism is a creature of the Right and this pull quote from the post may seem to confirm that quaint notion:
Writes Christopher Hibbert in Mussolini: The Rise and Fall of Il Duce: “The Fascists put themselves forward as saviors of the country, the only force by which Bolshevism could be checked and strangled.”
And that part was true, but where true Western Liberalism (and the democracies that philosophy gave birth to) were all about the Rights and emphasis on the Individual, Mussolini’s Fascism was all about the primacy of The State over the Individual. In fact, as with Socialism and Communism, Fascism’s aim is the complete absorption of the Individual into the collective:
- “Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual. Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual.”
- “It is a question of organizing the state to ensure the greatest individual and social well-being.”
- “We demand the right and proclaim the duty to transform Italian life,”
- The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State — a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values — interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.
And of course his most famous quote:
Everything Within the State, Nothing Against the State, Nothing Outside the State
We have the current crop of Democrat Prez Wannabes promising a transformation of America a la Obama (“We are 5 days from fundamentally transforming America”) saying the same thing as Mussolini. They act, speak, and act in ways that seem they truly believe that is the Proper Role of Government – to tell us how we are to live our lives? How different do we see their ideas of the collective now being pushed in punishing those of us that simply wish to live our lives OUR way and to be simply left alone?
(H/T: National Review: Mussoline and the End of Liberal Democracy); go read the whole thing as a good history lesson.
