The Origin of the Two Party System, Pt 2

The 'First Party System' is a term used by political scientists to refer to the politics of the period from 1792 to the 'Era of Good Feeling' during the James Monroe administration. As previously noted in 'The History of the Two Party System, Pt 1', the first true American political parties were Alexander Hamilton's Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The Federalist Party was pro-business, pro-bank, and in favor of a strong national government. The Democratic-Republican Party was against taxes and a national banking system and strongly advocated states' rights. The Federalists advocated a rapprochement with Great Britain, the leading economic power of the world, for the trade benefits this would bring the United States. The Democratic-Republicans favored a policy of strict loyalty to the American Revolutionaries' ally, France.

The two parties came into being during George Washington's first term and would fight bitterly throughout Washington's second. While Hamilton's economic policies largely passed as he had envisioned them, the Democratic-Republicans were more successful at building a national party. In the first great partisan election in the United States, Democratic-Republican George Clinton defeated Federalist John Jay for the position of governor of New York. Clinton used the immense political patronage available to the governor of an important state to strengthen the Democratic-Republican party.

The rematch came with Washington's decision not seek a third term as president. Vice President John Adams became the Federalist candidate while party leader Thomas Jefferson would represent the Democratic-Republicans. It should be noted that while the party apparats endorsed these candidates, however, that there was no nominating system as exists today. Other candidates ran for president as well, and most them were Federalists and Democratic-Republicans who served to divide the votes of the party's leading candidates. Candidates during this phase of U.S. history ran as individuals, not as the nominated representatives of a political party.

The Federalists won this first national clash, but the Adams administration would sow the seeds of the Federalists' destruction. The French Revolution was at its height. Many Democratic-Republican leaders saw the revolution in France as a spread of 'American' ideals to its ally and were strongly in favor of the revolutionaries. The leading Federalists, however, saw the French Revolution as a complete social and political breakdown and a threat to other nations. Democratic-Republicans wished to aid the French republic in its clash with Great Britain, while Federalists saw French Republican trade policies as hostile and wished a war with France.

Neither side got their way. John Adams was determined to have peace and to keep the United States neutral in European conflicts. Despite the outbreak of the Quasi-War with France in 1798, Adams firmly resisted declaring war and resolutely pursued a diplomatic solution to the
tensions between the two countries. This angered the dominant Hamilton faction of his own party. When Adams and Jefferson faced each other in a presidential election for the second time in 1800, Hamilton's so-called 'High Federalists' (the hard-core wing of the party) backed vice-presidential candidate Charles C. Pinckney (the hero of the so-called 'XYZ Affair' that led to the Quasi-War and the official Vice-Presidential candidate of the Federalist Party) for the presidency and the divided votes led to Adams' defeat and the fracturing of the Federalist Party.

The Democratic-Republicans were also badly damaged, however. Jefferson ended up in an electoral tie with his Vice-Presidential candidate, Aaron Burr. The decision was sent to the House of Representatives, where disgruntled Federalists who had lost their seats in the election initially began voting for Burr at a rapid clip to block Jefferson from the presidency. Hamilton, who was more afraid of a Burr presidency than even of Jefferson, used his personal influence to rally votes to ensure Jefferson's election. This was merely one sordid chapter in a political feud between Hamilton and Burr that ended with Burr shooting Hamilton dead in a duel in 1804. Hamilton's death was the final nail in the Federalist Party's coffin. Though they limped on as a regional party in New England, the Federalists never again made a serious bid for either congressional or presidential authority and in 1820's presidential election they could not even muster party unity behind a single candidate. As a result, in many states incumbent President James Monroe was the only name on the ballot.

With Monroe's re-election, the Federalist party was officially dead. A new system, however, was already forming within Monroe's own party. It would result in the birth of the Democratic Party and begin a desperate quest for effective and unified opposition to the Democrats.

Why I Respect William F. Buckley

You Live With It

In all the discussion of morality in politics, all the heated argument about what is or isn't 'right' or 'wrong', and (most of all) all of the refusal by those who hold opinions and whose profession it is to share those opinions to depart from the bracket in which they 'belong', William F. Buckley has consistently said what he really felt and believed was right even when other conservatives would take issue with it. I don't agree with his politics, but he's a good and sincere man of intelligence and moral fiber. Read the article, please.

How Much Help Do They Need?

" You don't have to be a Harvard University researcher to figure out that the media is infected with liberal bias — or to realize that some left-wing journalists will use any means necessary to create ideological narratives that fit their worldview. The Rathergate debacle at CBS News involving faked National Guard memos to smear President Bush was an extreme example. But if you look closely, you'll find everyday examples of Serious Journalists manufacturing the news and concocting social crises.
Amazingly, they always manage to make conservatives look racist, intolerant and evil. Funny how that works."

-Michelle Malkin, Punked: Faking the Hate, Manufacturing the News

With all due respect to Ms. Malkin, many modern social conservatives do just fine making themselves look racist and intolerant on their own. Let's also not forget that the 'Rathergate' expose turned out to have been 'managed' itself. Rather's story was legitimate and it was the conservative blogger-journalist 'debunkers' who were making it up as they went along. Yet Fox News (for whom Malkin frequently stints as a talking head when she's not writing) are the only people not to have figured it out and their ignorance has somehow made the rest of the news media mention it only in passing and without the bullet it deserves. Maybe, though, it wasn't to help Fox News save face. Maybe it was to help CBS save face after replacing Dan Rather on the word of bloggers claiming to be journalists.

(As an aside, I am not a journalist. I am a blogger and I write my opinions and items I think of historical interest. Sometimes I get my facts wrong. In Does It Matter Who The Frontrunners Are? I mistakenly noted that Dick Gephardt came in second in Iowa. He came in third, after Kerry and Edwards. The point is, I don't claim to be a journalist. The bloggers who 'debunked' Rather's story on Bush's National Guard service did.)

I digress. The topic is racism and intolerance, not to forget contemporary conservatives. In Equality OR Freedom or Equality AND Freedom? I made reference to an article by Pat Buchanan which first extolled the great personal freedom of the Jim Crow era and then suggested that homosexuality should be a crime rather than a civil rights issue. It doesn't look like he needed a lot of help from me, in the so-referenced article, to look racist and intolerant. Fox News recently ran pieces on 'Girl Power' and 'Religious Intolerance' that were webcast on Yahoo. The 'Girl Power' story was a commercial for the so-called 'Global War on Terror' and the 'Religious Intolerance' story was Sean Hannity condemning Muslim extremists in Sudan for demanding the execution of a British teacher who was convicted of insulting Islam. The problem is that in the United States, the people practicing religious intolerance believe much the same as Mr. Hannity and he doesn't speak out against them.

Ms. Malkin is likely, in a hypothetical argument on the subject, to point out her own racial heritage and the racial heritage of such noteworthy conservative spokespeople as Larry Elder and Alan Keyes. They are embraced by the conservative community and they are obviously non-white. So where is the racism?

The answer to that question is that modern American conservatism is a very special club. Anyone who agrees with the basic thesis is welcome and those who do not are stupid, cowardly, atheistic, or immoral. Those who disapprove of the legislation of fundamentalist Christian values in a pluralistic society are persecuting fundamentalist Christians, or 'elitists' who think they are better than fundamentalist Christians. Those who want to see biology taught in the classroom with scientific accuracy are 'elitists' whose view of education is 'undemocratic.'

We live in a modern, pluralistic society and many modern social conservatives have a problem with that. They see the teaching of accurate science, social tolerance of alternative lifestyles (Say that without smirking if you're anything but heterosexual and vanilla, eh?), and legal legitimacy for abortion as an assault on their beliefs. They really do see themselves as persecuted and as 'losing the culture war.' In their minds, Jim Crow laws banning evangelicals from school drinking fountains are the logical next step after teaching scientifically accurate biology. The institution of Christian marriage really is under attack from the idea of state-sanctioned gay marriage.

I am going to agree with the reactionaries on one important issue: social morality is on the decline and not just in the United States but around the world. Even more, to some extent the reason for that is the secular willingness to reject Christian values. Unfortunately, I disagree wildly with the modern social conservative on the definition of the problem. The Christian values being rejected are brotherly love for mankind, peace, the embrace of fellow human beings regardless of cultural differences (the very first Christians were a polyglot group of Jews, Greek-speaking Middle-Easterners, Greeks, and Romans), and forgiveness. 'Turn the other cheek' and 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' are replaced by sociological moral relativism married to political realism. The real enemy is not gay marriage or the teaching of evolution, the real enemy is Realpolitik. The real enemy is nationalism. The real enemy is the capitalist economic system that allows one part of the world to live in relative wealth and security while the rest lives in poverty and squalor.

In Michelle Malkin's defense, she's right about one thing. Schools should teach math, not 'the concept of math.'

Equality OR Freedom or Equality AND Freedom?

For many years conservatives and communists have been telling us that we can't have both equality and freedom. Even conservatives who themselves were genuinely not racist and who had taken significant steps in end discriminative practices (Barry Goldwater, who helped desegregate the Arizona Air Force National Guard while a general in same, for example) have believed that the government taking action to forbid racial discrimination in the private sector was a violation of individual rights and a threat to personal freedom. They have argued that such legislation served to strengthen government control of people's lives and reduce liberty. They have cited government regulation of business practices as irreconcilable with the economic freedoms of capitalism since Theodore Roosevelt started busting trusts. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the argument, it has cogency. Government power, as the Bush administration has demonstrated repeatedly since September 11 of 2001, can be a threat to individual liberty. This was demonstrated during the Red Scare and the self-promoting demagoguery of Joseph McCarthy.

To argue that government has to be a threat to freedom, however, is to ignore basic historical facts. It was government that ended the brutal cultural genocide of slavery in the United States of America. President Abraham Lincoln began the process with the Emancipation Proclamation and the post-war Republican congress completed the process with the Thirteenth Amendment. Since the early 1800s, when the majority of northern states abolished slavery, only two states would voluntarily abolish slavery prior to the Thirteenth Amendment: West Virginia in 1863 and Maryland in 1864, both of which abolished slavery in state constitutional conventions. Certainly, there has been no greater act on behalf of freedom in the United States before. Since, the only possible rival is granting women the right to vote.

Conservatives argue that in the absence of government interference, free enterprise will promote liberty through the natural forces of competition. It should be remembered that it was free enterprise in the form of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the textile industry, and the commercial plantation economy of the Southern states that established slavery in the first place. As long as it was profitable, free enterprise was not about to shoot itself in the foot to dispose of it.

Now Pat Buchanan, whose motives can hardly be called as pure as those of Goldwater on the issue of civil rights, claims that legislating to end workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation would lead the United States toward tyranny and trample civil rights.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20071122/cm_uc_crpbux/op_334464;_ylt=AgVWb.EkB0V_N6cGea.uItn9wxIF

Mr. Buchanan even goes so far as to extol the freedom that men and women of all races enjoyed during the days of segregation. He agrees that racism and discrimination were terrible things, but finds that government action to end segregation violated the rights of all Americans and curtailed their freedoms. He claims that ending discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation would be equally damaging to the rights of all Amnericans. His idealistic nostalgia for the loss of restricted clubs and signs reading 'Whites Only' and 'Colored' somehow fails to move.

Yes, despite the arguments of many of my fellow liberals, this country's legal system and mores were constructed on a Judeo-Christian base. Male homosexual sex (lesbianism is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible, it should be noted) is a violation of Old Testament law and was considered a sin by the Catholic and Protestant churches extant during the American Revolution and the early days of the republic. Contrary to popular argument, the morality of the Deistic faith professed by some of the Founding Fathers did not differ significantly from the Christian morality of the time.

That said, the Founding Fathers were not perfect. The men who drafted the laws of the first thirteen states were not omniscient and morally pure. They distrusted the artisan, small farmer, and laboring class and wished to keep the 'right people' in charge of the nation. Their ideal model, whether they sought a mercantile or agricultural nation, was the timocracy of the Roman Republic where the value of one's citizenship was determined by one's land ownership. They denied women the right to vote and they owned slaves. In nearly all cases, those free blacks of the time were not allowed to vote either. There's a possibility they were wrong about the issue of homosexuality as well.

What the Founding Fathers were right about was the importance of both personal liberty and equality before the law. While we do not have economic equality in this nation and likely never will, we are supposed to believe in the ideal of equality of economic opportunity. This ideal is incompatible with any kind of discrimination not based on merit. Denying a man or woman the ability to work, to support themselves, to support any family they may build is an act restraining their personal liberty.

It's this simple: the government isn't the only threat to personal liberty in the society of the United States. In the system of checks and balances that society relies upon, when another agency threatens individual liberty the government is duty bound to act against them.

The Origin of the Two Party System, Pt. 1

In my last essay I covered the effects of the American two party system of politics, most importantly the lack of real choice in presidential politics after WWII (when voters essentially had a choice between a center-right moderate and a center-left moderate until the move to the left by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson and the nomination of conservative Senator Barry Goldwater by the Republicans in 1964) and today (when voters have the choice of a reactionary 'conservative' party who wish to undo all social reforms across the board and let corporations and religious fundamentalists run the country and a conservative 'liberal' party whose leaders wish to protect programs under attack by the right but have very few new ideas they are willing to pursue with vision and vigor). In this column I will begin to describe the process by which the system in place today evolved.

The very first 'party line' dispute in the history of the United States was far from inconsiderable or irrelevant, to be fair. The first 'political parties' in U.S. were the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. For a period of one year (1787-1788), with no 'election' as we understand it involved, they disputed the single most important issue the country would grapple with for many years. The Federalists advocated the ratification of the United States Constitution and the Anti-Federalists opposed said document.

The Anti-Federalist argument is quite familiar today, even still quite in vogue in conservative political circles. The Anti-Federalists were opposed to the Constitution for one simple reason: an organized, centralized national government could grow strong enough to threaten the individual liberty of its citizens. When one considers the Patriot Act, the theory in the Bush administration that the President can do as he likes without consequence because he is President, and the rapid encroachment of federal law enforcement on personal freedoms during the Clinton era and states' right to legislate for themselves in the Bush era one starts to seriously see the Anti-Federalists' point. A powerful government is certainly very capable of threatening our liberty.

The Federalist argument, however, was crushing to any opposition. At the time of the debate over the Constitution, the United States had no genuine central national authority. The consequences were battering the country. The fiat currency issued by the Continental Congress had little to no real value. As a result, it was ignored in favor of money issued by the various states (which was worthless when one crossed from Massachusetts to Connecticut) and hard British currency (which was extremely rare and in very short supply); the results were brutal hyperinflation. The country's economic chaos meant that even those whose income and labor would have entitled them to a middle class or upper class lifestyle in England were living in effective poverty in the United States. A strong central government would have the power to take steps to end the economic crisis by minting coinage and issuing money with real value. Likewise, a strong central government would have the power to organize a military defense against any renewed attempt by outside powers to conquer the United States by force.

The Federalists won, the Constitution was ratified, and (in the only 'non-partisan' election in the history of the United States) George Washington was elected president. With the ratification of the constitution and Washington's elections, there were no longer 'political parties' in the literal sense of the word.

There was, however, a growing and divisive spirit of factionalism that would lead to the creation of the first true political parties in United States history. Alexander Hamilton, Washington's dynamic Secretary of the Treasury (who enjoyed something very close to a father-son relationship with the first president) had a broad and sweeping vision of what government could be and could accomplish. Hamilton was not a 'liberal' in the modern sense of the word. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787 he had made an eloquent but irrelevant speech in favor of a parliamentary monarchy on the British model. It did little to affect the final product of the convention, but served to cement his image in the minds of others as an 'aristocrat' and a 'monarchist.' He believed that interesting the wealthy in the succes or failure of the nation was critical, and that available capital would lead to a more diverse economy. Rather than the government subsidizing the rich, as the modern 'pro-business' politicians often appear wont to do, Hamilton's vision was of the rich investing in the government and the interest on the debt would generate capital that would keep the wealthy active in business for the good of all. His belief in the idea that 'what was good for business will be good for the country' was comparable to many of the neoconservatives and moderate Democrats of today. All the same, Hamilton's vision of government and his belief in a credit based economy driven by a funded national debt would become the basis of modern American political liberalism in the future.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, on the other hand, were very much alarmed by Hamilton's economic vision. They were southerners and they saw a credit-based, money-driven economy as a threat to the land-based economy of the southern states. It is ironic that the aristocratic, landed slave-owners of the South would attack Hamilton's economic policy as 'seeking to create an aristocracy' and his use of government power to establish his economic vision as 'monarchist' and launch their own political opposition in the name of 'the common man.' They believed, firmly, in limited government, literal interpretation of the Constitution, and states' rights. They saw the states as independent, sovereign entities and the federal government as a forum in which these separate entities agreed on common policy. They did not believe the central government had power over the internal affairs of the states (beyond that articulated in the Constitution) and their vision of a nation of yeoman farmers was incompatible with Hamilton's economic agenda. While the vision of the states as independent entities to which the federal government is subordinate ended with the Civil War, the Jeffersonian idea of limited government would become the cornerstone of American political conservatism for many years. This is the conservatism advanced by Herbert Hoover, Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater in their days and the conservatism of Ron Paul today. Its resemblance to the tide of religious and social reaction labeled 'conservatism' in the modern era can be debated both ways.

It should be noted that the aristocratic planters of Virginia and the rest of the South were anything but 'yeoman farmers' and that the self-made Hamilton, born illegitimately and into poverty, was anything but an 'aristocrat.' However, self-image and political perception can be very different than reality. Both sides very likely saw themselves as campaigning to save the country from the folly of the other and each certainly saw themselves as the champions of 'ordinary Americans.' Neither was entirely right. While Hamilton was certainly more of a 'common man' than Jefferson or Madison, his policies could easily be interpreted as favoring moneyed wealth over craftsmen and farmers. While Jefferson and Madison embarked on their crusade against today's conservatives call 'big government' in the genuine desire to protect what they saw as the rights of ordinary Americans, their vision of what the 'ordinary American' really was happened to be warped by their own experience as aristocratic scions of Famous Families of Virginia.

The pro-business, pro-bank, pro-national government party that grew up around Hamilton would take the name of the faction that had promoted the Constitution: the Federalists. The pro-agriculture, anti-bank, states' rights party founded actively by Jefferson and Madison would take the name 'Republican' and would eventually become known as the 'Democratic-Republican' party. The modern Democratic party's roots can be traced directly back to the Democratic-Republican party of Jefferson through clear lines of descent, but its modern ideological basis as developed by Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson is in the vision of Alexander Hamilton. The Republican party's origins are more difficult to accurately trace, but the bulk of their modern ideology as developed by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan owes its existence to the vision of Jefferson and Madison.

George Washington, in his famous Farewell Address, warned Americans to forsake the spirit of party. They didn't listen. The spirit of party would rule American politics for the administrations of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. Its short term conquest in the 'Era of Good Feeling' of James Monroe's presidency would be proven to be a lull before the storm. That, however, is for a future essay.

Why Only Two Parties?

A lot of people talk about our 'two party system' in the United States without really understanding exactly what it is, what it means, or that it wasn't always that way. What has become the modern 'two party system' grew up primarily by chance and happenstance, and then became institutionalized by those very two parties in order to protect their own control of the political process. Law requires Federal Election Committee members to be an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, thus mandating that only Republicans and Democrats can serve on the FEC at all. In the name of giving neither party an advantage over the other, both parties are given a collective advantage over all other potential challengers to their position in American politics. Public fascination with Ross Perot and Democratic ire at Ralph Nader aside, both of our political parties have become ingrained into the system and the system has been redesigned around them.

During the post-WWII period dating from 1945 to the nomination of Barry Goldwater by the Republicans in 1964, the country possessed a 'center-left party' in the Democrats and a 'center-right party' in the Republicans. The bogeyman in the closet, Cold War Communism, made it imprudent for liberals to swing too far to the left, while the improvements that the New Deal had brought to many Americans' lives made a swing far to the right by conservatives equally imprudent. Even the 'right wing' candidacy of Robert A. Taft, which Eisenhower sought the Republican nomination to block, was centrist by the standards of today's conservatives. Yet the mainstream of the Republican party saw a Taft nomination as a disaster. Today, the 'mainstream' of the Republican party is so far to the right that Taft would poll in the single digits in a presidential primary. Eisenhower would be a liberal in today's political world, and to get on the ballot anywhere he'd have to run as a Democrat.

There was very little choice, because there were only two parties with a genuine chance of winning. The States' Rights Democratic Party was unable to even tilt the national election against Truman in 1948 and entirely dissolved in the wake of Truman's victory. The South voted for Adlai Stevenson, Truman's hand picked successor, twice in his two unsuccessful bids for the Presidency. There were no significant third party challenges and the Eisenhower administration ended up incorporating many of the Stevenson campaign's ideas. The historical difference if Stevenson had won instead of Eisenhower appears negligible. The same can be said of the famous 1960 race between Nixon and Kennedy.

Third parties did appear again, in the form of the American Independent Party candidacy of Alabama Governor George Wallace in 1968. Their platform, opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and government run welfare programs, bears strong resemblance to the Republican Party of today. The AIP still exists, but hasn't had a nationally recognizable candidate since Wallace. Parties like the Peace and Freedom Party and the Libertarian Party have had even less success.

The chinks in the armor of the two party system apparently shown by H. Ross Perot in 1992 soon disappeared. Perot made quite a splash in the '92 election, and in its wake and preparatory to the 1996 election he established the Reform Party. Initially planning not to run again, he ended up running against his own party's candidate in 1996 and essentially wrecking his own nascent political organization to little result.

Ralph Nader's Green Party candidacy was accused of turning the 2000 election in favor of George W. Bush. He polled two million votes with national media attention given his run. While most people failed to notice, Nader had been the Green Party candidate for President in 1996 as well. The main difference was the media ballyhoo connected to his run in 2000. Lacking the recognizable Nader or similar ballyhoo, the Green Part polled less than 120,000 votes in 2004.

There are two reasons for the current two party system in the United States. The first is the aforementioned institutionalization of the Democratic and Republican parties, which is the result of a long and awkward period of evolution. This will be covered in my next entry. The second is the media and how it covers elections. Third party candidates given equal media treatment (Wallace, Perot, Nader in 2000) with the major parties attract a surprising number of votes from those who share their views, even when those views are fringe views. They can even affect the election, taking votes from one party or the other. However, when the media ignores them, the voters ignore them as well.

Is the current system what best serves the United States voter? Probably not. Today we have a right wing party and a center-right party posing as a liberal party. The Republicans have become the party of evangelical Christians afraid of the complexities of the modern world and unwilling to bow to the realities of science and social change. They are not conservative, they are reactionary. The Democrats cling to the programs and doctrines of the past in a manner that can only be defined as 'conservative.' Unfortunately, the institutionalization of the parties into our election system means that they are unlikely to be replaced in the near future.

Perhaps someone should sue, challenging the law dictating who can sit on the FEC?

What Is Fascism?

fas-cism (fa-shi-zem, also fa-si-zem)

noun

1. often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

2. a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

- Merriam-Webster Online


The 'fasces' was a symbol of authority in Republican Rome. The senior magistrates of Rome, praetors (who served as supervisory over courts dedicated to specific criminal or civil proceedings, and often as provincial governors and army commanders), provincial governors during their term, and Rome's consuls (the elected heads of government) were escoted by lictors (ceremonial bodyguards) who carried the fasces. It was a bundle of sticks bound together, symbolizing that the magistrate had the power to chastise offenders. The primary means of judicial punishment in Rome, at the time, was corporal punishment. The primary implement of this was the switch. Hence the fasces, a bundle of switches symbolizing judicial authority. Outside the city limits of Rome (also in times of war), if the magistrates jurisdiction so extended, the fasces included the head of an axe. This served two distinct purposes. The first was symbolic, it served to show that the magistrate had the judicial power of execution. The second was practical. In dangerous situations, it was best the bodyguards have a real weapon to hand.

Centuries later the fasces (axe included) would be adopted by Mussolini as the symbol of his 'Fascist' Party. Fascist Party ideology was straightforward, and yet slightly more complex than the above dictionary definition. Mussolini's philosophy (though he did not originate the political theory, to be sure) was that the individual by himself was weak and easily broken; a single stick. A society, organized in pursuit of the common good, was unbreakable; a bundle of sticks tied together. Mussolini's fascism meant the corporatization of society; the government, the citizenry, and business would all work together to achieve the goals of the state and all would benefit. The government would have a single leader, because rule by committee never ends well, and his ministers would advise him and carry out his instructions in a strict hierarchy of power. Business would act as an extension of government, advising the leader on economic matters but also carrying out government needs in the economy. The citizenry would provide the military and economic manpower to meet the goals of the state. All would work together and all would benefit from success.

In the wake of World War II, 'fascism' became the word applied to all of the defeated Axis governments. It wasn't strictly accurate in the case of the Japanese government (which was, despite the relatively significant level of power enjoyed by its leaders and the universally acclaimed but ceremonially circumscribed absolute power of the emperor, much more democratic than given credit for being) and Hitler's imprint of racism on the Nazi party was no part of the fascism articulated by Mussolini. Still, the name stuck and the word has been used to describe far right dictatorships ever since.

Today the word is being thrown around a lot, again. Liberals (as well as libertarians and anarchists) throw the word around on blogs describing right wing governments that aren't quite dictatorships yet but appear to some to be heading in that direction. Conservatives speak in strident tones about 'Islamo-fascism' when they cite causes for 'global terrorism.'

The word comes close to being accurate in the case of the current administration. We were called to fight the 'Global War on Terror' as a nation, pulling together to achieve this overriding national goal. Dissent, reluctance, or concern has been denounced as 'Anti-American' and differing opinions have been pushed out of government circles whenever possible, to be replaced by cronyism and the spoils system. Corporations have been brought into the administration and have become de facto extensions of government policy, or perhaps the government has become a de facto extension of corporate policy. It's not always clear. Central authority, the antithesis of conservatism, has become strengthened under neoconservative rule. We are told that the government and its experts know what is best and that if we all stick together and win the GWOT, then things will be great.

In the case of Islamic extremism, the word is less accurate. While religion can be a powerful tool of fascism, it is not integral to fascism nor is it, in itself, a goal of fascism. The goal of fascism is a strong, streamlined, corporate state working like a machine in the name of prosperity and stability. The goal of Islamic extremism is a return to the days when 'the commander of the faithful' directed an Islamic empire from a position of both political and religious supremacy. Islamic extremists are theocrats, not fascists, and their ideal government system is theocracy, not fascism. Iran's government, as an example, could be called an excellent example of working democracy... were it not for the fact that the religious authorities control the military and the police and can arrest government officials at will. During the liberal presidency of Mohammad Khatami (elected by a huge popular margin, especially among young people eager for reform), government ministers were frequently arrested and imprisoned by the military on orders of the religious leadership. Definitely not fascism, though every bit as bad. Worse than anything happening in the United States right now, as serious as our own problems are made by immediacy.

The antidotes for fascism are already inherent in our constitution. Federalism, the system of checks and balances in the American government, is supposed to prevent any one branch from gaining absolute power. Republicanism, the system under which we elect our leaders and have the power to vote them out when their term ends, allows us to exert control over who makes the important decisions for us. Democracy, the universal adult participation in the voting process, is meant to assure that the government serves the needs and wishes of as many people as possible. They are the things that make us free. Without them the freedom that our current administration wishes to spread to Iraq and Afghanistan means nothing. As citizens, we need to remember that. As our elected representatives, our government needs to remember that.

Fascism only succeeds when enough people buy into it to make it work.