Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, addressed a campaign rally outside a World War I museum in Kansas City, Mo. He suggested to a crowd of about 2,000 people that America was slipping into a fascist system, according to CBS News. Paul made the assertion the U.S. had begun to go off track a century ago, during the administration of Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat who was elected in 1912 and is considered one of the leaders of the so-called progressive movement.
What is it about President Wilson that annoyed Paul?
According to the White House webpage on Wilson, the 28th president enacted a number of pieces of domestic legislation that the libertarian Paul finds irksome. These included a federal income tax and the establishment of a Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve. Paul has been especially outspoken about the Federal Reserve, which he blamed for having a hand in the boom and bust cycle since its founding in 1913 in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
Wilson also was instrumental in the creation of the League of Nations in the wake of World War I. Paul, who calls himself a "noninterventionist" but who is called by others an isolationist, has denounced the modern incarnation of the League of Nations on frequent occasions, according to the Political Guide.
What does Paul mean by fascism?
Paul is referring not to the form of fascism that involved secret police and concentration camps, but to the concept of "Liberal Fascism," a term coined by National Review writer Jonah Goldberg in a book by the same name. Goldberg suggests there are common threads among the progressivism of people like Wilson, fascism, Nazism, communism, socialism and modern liberalism. He made the case that to some degree, each of these ideologies promoted the primacy of the state over that of the individual. Goldberg suggested, as the cover of his book indicates, that modern liberalism is nothing but fascism with a smiley face. A number of reviews, including one published in Slate, took umbrage with Goldberg's thesis. Slate found Goldberg's argument "unconvincing" and "incoherent" and suggested he regarded any government that is not strictly libertarian as fascist.
What evidence did Paul have to suggest that America is slipping into fascism?
Paul, in his speech, denounced a recent law that authorized the indefinite military detention of any American thought to be associated with terrorist groups or of planning an attack on the United States. Paul regards this law as a violation of due process.
Poster Comment:
Ron Paul needs to take his train of thought to the logical conclusion and lay all the blame at the feet of Abraham Lincoln. After all, he was the genesis of centralized FedGov and all of the tyrannical progressivism that followed.