10 September 2011 - Great Depression 2

Fascism and the Tea Party are both revolutionary conservative movements—doesn’t that sound strange? They arose in times of trouble and confusion and appeal to people who want to cut through the confusion by returning to an updated version of the imaginary good old ways of the nineteenth century: The fascists wanted authoritarian government, and the Tea Party wants laissez faire. But stop! No more! That’s a big difference already, and both Mussolini and Hitler rose to power on the knuckles of private armies. So far, there are no tea-shirted thugs waging street battles against Democrats and assassinating liberal candidates. It will take at least one more economic downturn for that to happen, so the comparison is not valid at all!