Liberal fascism: the new normal?

Yuval Levin, at NRO, has written a sharply-focused, highly perceptive piece on Obama’s views concerning the proper relationship between the citizen and the state. In a nutshell, when Obama said he wanted to be a “transformative” president, he wasn’t kidding.

Again and again, the administration has sought to hollow out the space between the individual and the state. Its approach to the private economy has involved pursuing consolidation in key industries — privileging a few major players that are to be treated essentially as public utilities, while locking out competition from smaller or newer firms. This both ensures the cooperation of the large players and makes the economy more manageable and orderly. And it leaves no one pursuing ends that are not the government’s ends. This has been the essence of the administration’s policies toward automakers, health insurers, banks, hospitals, and many others.

It is an attitude that takes the wealth-creation capacity of our economy for granted, treats the chaotic churning and endless combat of competing firms (which in fact is the source of that capacity) as a dangerous distraction from essential public goals, and considers the business world to be parasitic on society — benefiting from the infrastructure and resources provided by the genuine common action of the state. Of course, the state’s benevolence is made possible precisely by the nation’s wealthiest citizens, but the president seems to see that as simply an appropriate degree of “giving something back.” His words and his administration’s actions imply that he views the government as the only genuine tribune of public desires, and therefore seeks to harness the private economy to the purposes and goals of those in power [my emphasis – Paco].

There is, in all of this, a chilling echo of a worldview which we like to delude ourselves into thinking perished many decades ago: All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.