The words fascism/fascist certainly are"strong meat", especially when applying it to politicians who claim the democratic ideal, who protest that their election by the majority via the ballot box ensures their democratic credentials. Yet, the Weimar Republic, foundering in economic crisis and moral relativism proved its "democratic ideals" as nothing but a house built on sand. Moral relativism could offer no defense against the Nazi rise to power via the ballot box. The EU, the US, Canada etc. are all precariously in a Weimarian situation. It would do us well to re-read the words of Pope John Paul II on politics and the tyrant state.
"...what is happening also at the level of politics and government... is the sinister result of a relativism which reigns unopposed...in this way democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism. The State is no longer the "common home" where all can live together on the basis of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant State, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenceless members...the appearance of the strictest respect for legality is maintained, at least when the laws permitting abortion and euthanasia are the result of a ballot in accordance with what are generally seen as the rules of democracy. Really, what we have here is only the tragic caricature of legality; the democratic ideal, which is only truly such when it acknowledges and safeguards the dignity of every human person, is betrayed in its very foundations...when this happens, the process leading to the breakdown of a genuinely human co-existence and the disintegration of the State itself has already begun.
To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom: "Truly, truly, I say to you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin" (Jn 8:34). (Evangelium Vitae, Sec.20).
4 comments:
Given the choice most people will choose security over freedom. We are missing something here that is quite important. Hitler was seen as a solution to the chaos of the Wiemar Republic, not its logical consequence. Even Msgr. Kass and the Catholic Center Party, which held the deciding votes, thought Hitler would preserve religious liberties and protect Catholics. By this reasoning it is not the one who attacks our religious liberties that we need to worry about, but the one who purports to save us from him. Both Mussolini and Hitler came to power because people were fed up with liberalism, moral relativism and societal decay. It was a lie and people embraced the lie.
It would also be useful to remember that Chesterton said that the servile state is the end result of both ends of the political spectrum. It is a circle... merely avoiding socialism will not protect you.
I would agree that the present phase is (potentially) a transition to traditional fascism. Obamaism (or for that matter recent Canadian politics vis-a-vis the so-called same -sex marriage issue) is a new form of fascism, in that the individual is supreme (as the State was for the fascist). Obama is fascistically inclined to impose his moral relativism. And his moral relativism - leading to the inevitable insecurity that you point out - will span fascism. In essence, a morally relativistic democratic State is a halfway house on the way to fascism. Nonetheless, his treatment of the Catholic Church vis-a-vis the HHS proposed mandate is fascistic
Hitler was one of two options - either return to sanity or proceed to insanity. Sadly, most Germans chose the latter. The paradoxical "strength" of moral relativism created the vacuum for an evil force to impose itself. Germans, accustomed to amoralism gave way to an evil option that proposed "security". But this "security" itself deriveditself already from a strongly hedonistic and individualistic mindset.
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