It pleases me to no end when people notice that today’s liberals, particularly the noxious far left, made up of Progressives, Socialists, Marxists, and even Anarchists (yes, they are), and wholly in control of the Democratic Party, notice their Big Government inclinations. In this case, the Daily Beast’s Joel Kotkin
This could be how our experiment with grassroots democracy finally ends. World leaders—the super-rich, their pet non-profits, their media boosters, and their allies in the global apparat—gather in Paris to hammer out a deal to transform the planet, and our lives. No one asks much about what the states and the communities, the electorate, or even Congress, thinks of the arrangement. The executive now presumes to rule on these issues.
For many of the world’s leading countries—China, Russia, Saudi Arabia—such top down edicts are fine and dandy, particularly since their supreme leaders won’t have to adhere to them if inconvenienced. But the desire for centralized control is also spreading among  the shrinking remnant of actual  democracies, where political give and take is baked into the system.
Yes, I ran across this while searching news on ‘climate change’.
The will to power is unmistakable.California Governor Jerry Brown, now posturing as  the aged philosopher-prince fresh from Paris, hails the “coercive power of the state†to make people live properly by his lights. California’s high electricity prices, regulation driven spikes in home values, and the highest energy prices in the continental United States may be a bane for middle and working class families, but are sold as a wonderful achievement among our presumptive masters.
This autocratic impulse is very much present among the Cult of Climastrology, which looks to force Other People to practice what Warmists preach, yet mostly fail to implement these same measures within their own lives. They want Big Government control of people, economies, energy, private entities, yet, interestingly, fail to notice that this will effect themselves. This is all what Kotkin notes as the Authoritarian Impulse
Under President Obama, rule by decree has become commonplace, with federal edicts dictating policies on everything from immigration and labor laws to climate change. No modern leader since Nixon has been so bold in trying to consolidate power. But the current president is also building on a trend: Since 1910 the federal government has doubled its share of government spending to 60 percent.  Its share of GDP has now grown to the highest level since World War II.
Democrats yammer about democracy and voting rights and getting signatures for petitions and such, but they seem to be intentionally ceding all their collective citizen power to unfettered elected officials and unelected bureaucracies, investing them with this autocratic power, which is one of the main points of Progressivism.
Today climate change has become the killer app for expanding state control, for example,  helping Jerry Brown find his inner Duce.  But the authoritarian urge is hardly limited to climate-related issues. It can be seen on college campuses, where uniformity of belief is increasingly mandated. In Europe, the other democratic bastion, the continental bureaucracy now controls ever more of daily life on the continent. You don’t want thousands of Syrian refugees in your town, but the EU knows better. You will take them and like it, or be labeled a racist.
This domineering autocratic/Progressive (nice Fascist) impulse is alive and kicking among the Democratic Party, and even the protests, such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, have this same Big Government fondness.
Anyway, it’s a very long article, well worth the read, which ends by noting that the United States will soon no longer be able to fulfill a world leader role as a beacon of freedom in world dominated by centralized tyranny, because the U.S. would be the same. “Nice Fascism” is about the Central Government doing things “for your own good”, but it is still tyranny.
Crossed at Right Wing News.
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Agreed, it’s a good read. Kotkin, a conservative Democrat, is a gifted writer and solid academic. He has written eloquently and factually on the developing feudalism (only the super-rich and super-poor) in large cities and especially California.
In this long essay, you missed that his only mention of fascism was in connection with the formerly dominant right-wing, top down old autocrats. He writes:
Both sides clearly eschew true democracy, the right pays lip service but has historically wanted to limit voters; and according to Kotkin, the new left autocrats advocate eliminating voting altogether and replacing it with tech panels. This has always been the challenge – since the super wealthy want to rule to their advantage – we have to find ways to combat it.
You failed to mention his concerns with the newly emerging corporate plutocrats/oligarchs, mostly stemming from the technology revolution. Our new overlords arise from Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo (110 million monthly viewers),Google (65 million), Amazon (owns WaPo), Microsoft and Apple rather than from GM, Ford, GE or Exxon. The tech execs tend to be liberal democrats as opposed to the manufacturing giants of decades past who were republican conservatives. Note too, that the new tech oligarchs control much of the information we view and share. Yikes! But make no mistake, the new oligarchs are traditional capitalists and make their money the old fashioned way – exploiting the cheapest labor available – mostly in Asia – or by abusing the US working poor (that’s you, Amazon!).
In the US our entrenched plutocracy (both Dems and Republics) have used and abused the working classes to the benefit of the plutocrats. The plutocrats are transitioning from right to left and their methods for dominance are changing with a changing world.
Any time the civilized world perceives an existential threat, e.g., Germany/Japan in WWII, and now global warming, the civilized world responds. During WWII, the US government restricted many freedoms and activities – rationing, price controls, production of new cars, appliances, some clothing etc was banned, no auto racing, no auto sightseeing. In fact, one needed government issued ration coupons to purchase coffee, sugar, meat, cheese, butter, lard, margarine, canned foods, dried fruits, jam, gasoline, bicycles, fuel oil, clothing, silk or nylon stockings or shoes. To get a book of rationing stamps, one had to appear before a local rationing panel. Obviously there were so-called “skeptics” (the mostly liberal America Firsters and other isolationists) at that time who thought the war effort was a hoax or unnecessary.
The solutions prescribed to combat global warming are less onerous than what were used during WWII.