Re: Ideas don't matter

Perhaps I spoke too strongly. My point wasn't that ideas don't matter at all; I read my fair share of Hegel and Fukuyama to appreciate the dialectic (bring out ye snobbery now!). But why do we care if fascism has socialist roots? Say I agree with you, and the Right has nothing to apologize for Nazism, and that the Left caused all the messes of the 20th century, in Germany and in Russia.

OK. What's the upshot? Does that tell you anything about our current political debates in America? Does it tell you how you should think about, say, the public option, or whether or not we should subsidize health care for the poor or create high-risk pools for those with pre-existing conditions? That's not to dismiss any lessons from fascism, which is why I said we should pay more attention to the conditions that allowed the Party to rise in the 1920s and 1930s, and not necessarily try to sift through Mein Kampf to completely explain its power.

As to your questions: 1. I don't know what fascist leaders in America (or even in Great Britain) you're talking about -- Henry Ford? Charles Lindberg? -- but the more important for me isn't that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union increased state spending, but that it suspended all individual rights and due process. The totalitarian animal exists outside the classical liberal spectrum of Rawls v. Nozick; it's an explosive grenade that percolates where basic principles like free speech and government by consent still prove controversial. That's the scary thing, not the Autobahn.

Besides, there were also important differences between the Nazi version of control and the socialist one, which explains why until the 1930s, the Communists and Social Democrats were Hitler's main opposition. (It also explains Hitler's support among industrial leaders, who gleefully watched his suppression of independent unions.)

2. Alas, I'm not sure what a "heavily socialist background" means, but even if it were true, it wouldn't prove anything. So at one point, Mussolini was a socialist -- does that mean he remained one until he died? (If so, I hope it doesn't mean the Left will have to welcome back Norman Podhoretz. No, really, you can keep him.)