Frogburger; Third in the Continuing Series....

Thanks for your great support of this series! Here is the THIRD ANSWER in our continuing series with Frogburger. For those of you who didn't see the first two answers or what prompted this interview series, please click HERE , make sure you read the excellent comments there and then come back and read this one....I know you'll appreciate this French new- American's insights:

3. When did you first start to get a feeling something was changing for the worse in America?

I don’t have a specific event or date in mind. Obviously 9/11 was a terrible moment to live through, especially because I was in DC and worked close to the Pentagon. However, I did not realize at the time that this event would trigger so many real changes.

It is mostly by talking to friends -- who are mostly Democrats or Liberals since I have lived on the coasts – that I felt socialist ideas may take place in this country. The healthcare issue has made people confused. They confused healthcare with welfare and think they go hand in hand. That is why a lot of people think the European model is wonderful without making the intellectual effort of looking at what it really entails.

But beyond socialism I fear a greater danger is looming: fascism coming from the left, which some people on the right could very well join at some point because they are either opportunistic (big businesses like GE) or do not believe strongly in individual liberties.

History has shown fascistic ideas, wrongly associated to the right, are rooted in Marxists and populist ideologies and are far from advocating free market, globalization and personal freedom. Hitler was a national-socialist. Mussolini started his political journey as a Marxist and even the French revolution, revered by the French left, established years of bloody dictatorship.

The French revolution cannot be compared to the American Revolution, for it was fascistic in nature and replaced a monarchy with State terror. I personally despise what the French revolution did past 1789. It was one thing to freed people from aristocracy, it was another to commit genocide against its own citizens (Vendee) and cut the heads of many moderate opponents (Robespierre’s Jacobins vs. Danton’s Girondins) in the name of enlightment.

Mitterrand is another example of how the fascistic and leftist ideas are intertwined. Mitterrand was the most celebrated man in France when he got elected as president in 1981. After years of a bad economy due to the two oil crises, France wanted hope and change and elected the leader of the Socialist Party (Parti Socialist or PS). But the interesting thing to know is that the first French Socialist Party was created by the founder of a very far-right nationalist movement called Croix-de-Feu, which Mitterrand joined in his youth.

Even the current National Front in France and its leaders like Jean-Marie Le Pen or Bruno Gollnisch, defined as right extremists, are for big government and support a strong welfare state for the “true French.” Their electoral success in the 80s and 90s was actually due to their ability to take votes on the left, especially amongst the working class folks used to vote for the French Communist Party (PCF).

You’re getting my point: fascistic ideas are not a right-left thing. It actually blurs the lines created by political parties. When our two party system is becoming pretty much one party, when Specter becomes a Democrat for his career, I think there increasingly are signs we may very well be on our way to fascism. Here are signs that make me think that way:

• Willingness to not only control the economy but also human behavior (anti-tobacco laws, tax on transfats, etc…) to purify society from unhealthy behaviors that are costly to the State. (That is why nationalized healthcare is not a good thing.)
• Increasing criticism of true free-market as a model on the left and the right.
• Anti-CEO or “anti-bourgeois” sentiment helped by rare episodes like the Enron and Maddoff. (Another common trait about extreme ideologues, fascists and the left: they transform rare situations into generalities.)
• Corrupted officials who disrespect the Constitution and think it’s a living document. It would be very convenient to some if freedom of speech was a living concept, wouldn't it? In that case the Fairness Doctrine would be respectful of the Constitution, n'est-ce-pas?
• Increased corporatism of the past and current administration with the banks bailout, the “Goldman Sachs connection”, car makers and GE.
• Fascination and admiration for strong leaders like Chavez and Ahmadinejad, and veneration of Obama
• Increased anti-Israel stance on the left evolving into European anti-Semitism
• Fight to eliminate religions in our society and replace it with State morality, very much like the French revolution and Hitler tried with either the Cult of Reason or Paganism. (I’ll try to address the separation of Church and State through the other questions because I have a lot to say about this.)

Doesn’t it feel like the 1930s and what happened in Europe when fascistic movements in France, Italy and Germany were getting stronger? I may be ultra pessimistic but if the world community decides to change the global currency because of the money printing business devaluating the dollar, and if the economy worsens, it may very well feel like the Weimar Republic.

I hope I am flat out wrong. But when Liberals and Obama sympathize with gangsters like Chavez, organize parties for Ahmadinejad, bow to a Saudi king but don’t show much respect for Western allies or Israel, I think it shows our leaders don’t have much concern for Freedom or have their “rationality” pretty messed up. Europeans thought Hitler was a clown in 1938 or actually liked his socialistic ideas and we know what came next.

Am I saying Obama is Mussolini or Hitler? Obviously not. But some of his policies are fascistic. Firing a CEO is an Il Duce-like decision. Having GE serve your purpose and your economic policies to later reward them is fascistic. Even the bank bailout started with Bush and the fact that no citizen can have a say or sue the government for legalized robbery is corporatism, which is of fascistic nature.

If we as citizens don’t react to all of this, this can only get worse. The government will think it can do anything. Socialism, communism or fascism only lead to greater corruption and less freedom. That’s my #1 concern for this country right now.