By Dennis Prager
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
I cannot count the number of times I heard liberal
professors and liberal writers quote the phrase: "When fascism comes to
America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
The phrase is brilliant. There is actually no threat to
America of fascism coming from the right. The essence of the American right,
after all, is less government; and fascism, by definition, demands ever larger
government.
Therefore, if there is a real fascist threat to America,
it comes from the left, whose appetite for state power is essentially
unlimited. But because the left has so long dominated American intellectual,
academic, artistic, and media life, it has succeeded in implanting fear of the
right.
I have never written that there is a threat of fascism in
America. I always considered the idea overwrought. But now I believe there
really is such a threat -- and it will come draped not in an American flag, but
in the name of tolerance and health.
Before explaining what this means, let's be clear about
what this does not mean.
First, it does not mean, or have anything in common with,
Nazism. Nazism may have been a form of fascism. But Nazism was a unique form of
fascism and a unique evil. It was race-based and it was genocidal. No other
expression of fascism was race-based. And not all fascism is genocidal. So my
fear that the American left is moving America toward an expression of fascism
in no way implies anything Nazi-like or genocidal.
Second, it is not liberals or liberalism that presents a
threat of fascism. It is the left. Liberals of the 1940s to 1970s such as John
F. Kennedy, Harry Truman, Hubert Humphrey, Henry "Scoop" Jackson,
Daniel Patrick Moynihan and so many others were not leftists. They were
liberals.
But liberalism has been taken over by the left. There are
virtually no non-left liberals.
The left now has a president who is a true leftist who is
asserting unprecedented presidential power through his cabinet and myriad other
agencies (such as the Environmental Protection Agency) and through presidential
decrees. The left has taken over the universities and, increasingly, high
schools and elementary schools. It dominates the news and entertainment media.
And many judges and courts are leftist -- meaning that their decisions are
guided by leftism more than by the law or the Constitution.
With all this power, the left controls more and more of
the life of the American citizen. And when nothing stops the left, the left
doesn't stop.
Take tolerance.
Last week, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that an
event photographer's refusal on religious grounds to shoot the commitment
ceremony of a same-sex couple amounted to illegal discrimination.
The photographer had never objected to photographing
gays. She did not, however, wish to be part of a ceremony to which she
religiously objected. In America today, thanks to myriad laws and progressive
justices, people can go to prison for refusing to participate in an event to
which they object.
This is what happened to a florist in Washington state
who had always sold flowers to gay customers but refused to be the florist for
a gay wedding: sued and fined.
This is what happened to a baker in Oregon who had always
sold his goods to gays but refused to provide his products to a gay wedding:
sued and fined.
This is what happened in Massachusetts, Illinois and
elsewhere to Catholic Charities, historically the largest adoption agency in
America. Their placing children with married (man-woman) couples, rather than
with same-sex couples, was deemed intolerant and a violation of the law. In
those and other states, Catholic Charities has left adoption work.
In the name of tolerance -- and fighting sexual
harassment -- five- and six-year-old boys all over the country are brought to
the police for innocently touching a girl.
In the name of tolerance, girls' high school teams in
California and elsewhere must now accept male players who feel female.
In the name of tolerance, businesses cannot fire a man
who one day shows up on the sales floor dressed as a woman.
For the left, tolerance does not mean tolerance. It means
first, acceptance. And second, celebration. That is totalitarianism: You not
only have to live with what you may differ with, dear citizen, you have to
celebrate it or pay a steep price.
Meanwhile, in the name of health, there is a similar
intrusion into the life of the individual. We saw it in New York City Mayor
Michael Bloomberg's call for a law limiting the amount of soda a person can
order at one time.
In the name of health, people are banned from smoking
outdoors, cigar stores are prohibited from allowing customers to smoke inside,
and, incredibly, California is about to ban electronic "cigarettes"
as if they were real cigarettes, even though they contain no tobacco, nothing
is burning, and they emit only water vapor.
In the name of health, some businesses, like the Bert
Fish Medical Center in Florida and Kids II, Inc. (Baby Einstein, Disney Baby)
do not hire those who smoke at home. In the name of health, for the first time
in American history, what you do -- legally -- at home will be reason for
companies not hiring or terminating employees.
In the name of safety, first-grade boys are suspended
from schools for playfully aiming a pencil at another boy and
"shooting" him.
And then there are the ubiquitous
"re-education" and "rehabilitation" seminars that the
allegedly insensitive need to take at both private and government workplaces
and the speech codes at nearly all universities.
The only question is: Will Americans awaken to the
increasingly rapid deprivation of their freedoms -- not draped in an American
flag but draped in tolerance and health?
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