2016 April 1^st

Kathleen Parker’s column yesterday produced some disturbing comments. She claims we know what is wrong but we have no action plan. Under these circumstances she leans on “her personal wizard, Van Wishard, for advice.” I am not acquainted with Mr. Van Wishard but Parker tells me that he “is a retired trend analyst who can’t stop his fertile mind from examining the problems of our age. Nothing can be fixed or stopped, he says, until we come to terms with globalization as a profound psychological issue, not just a matter of economics or immigration patterns.”  Then she says, “In one of his highly distilled observations he wonders whether this will be our last election for a while.” That notion will get your attention.

We have Parker claiming that, “Americans have begun to feel resigned to a country no longer their own and a world that is out of control.” Her guru, Van Wishard claims that the only institutions left capable of governing are the military and Silicon Valley. Ah Yes, when in doubt call on the military. (How Silicon Valley would be involved in governing the country isn’t clear.) In most countries without a strong democratic tradition, a little turmoil can lead to a turn away from whatever vestigial democracy they have. Sometimes, even when things are going well, the strong man and the concentrated power that goes with it have appeal. It did when Mussolini and fascism found fertile ground and a sympathetic hearing in surprising quarters in the late ‘20s right here in America.

Mussolini used strong-arm tactics to come to power and then continued to use them to hold power in Italy. He did, however, bring order to a chaotic country and that endeared him to a number of observant Americans including our ambassador to Italy, Richard W. Childs, who was appointed by President Harding in 1924. Childs wrote of Mussolini, “No one will exhibit equal to Mussolini…he has changed hearts and minds and spirits.” In 1928 Childs became a paid propagandist for Mussolini. He even ghost wrote most of Mussolini’s “autobiography.”

The ambassador was not a one-off. No less a capitalist’s capitalist than J.P. Morgan was in the same camp. Indeed the “Fascist League of North America,” the FLNA, was now doing well and impressing sympathizers, intellectuals and business people all over the country. The President of Columbia University, Nicholas Murray Butler, was a Mussolini fan.  Butler named a building on his campus the “Casa Italiano” and it became a home for fascist students and faculty. Mussolini himself contributed to the furnishing of the building. The fascist group which took over Casa Italiano tolerated no dissent, no doubt copying from their hero, Mussolini. Indeed, Columbia’s President Butler allowed no dissent either. There was dissent because neither the entire Columbia faculty nor all students there of Italian descent were fans of Il Duce (the leader). President Butler, who was Columbia’s President for an astonishing 43 years, simply dismissed any faculty member who objected to his actions… then he dismissed any faculty member who objected to those dismissals. This was before tenure and a splendid argument in its favor.

The point of this excursion into American fascism is that there is a strong undercurrent of sympathy in this country for the “strong leader,” someone who will “get things done” and never mind how he does it! I don’t believe any of the current candidates qualify as nascent fascists, but when a columnist quotes her hero saying that only the military (and Silicon Valley) is capable of governing we are getting close to the old days of the FLNA.