Sarah Palin: America's Lipstick Fascist

Sarah Palin summed up the Republican Party's turn to Fascism perfectly when she mocked Senator Obama as someone who would want to read enemies we capture "their rights".

"Terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's [Obama] worried that someone won't read them their rights."

Long before Sarah Palin's son was preparing to deploy to Iraq, my son John joined the Marine Corps, did two deployments in Afghanistan, one mission in Iraq, and fought for and defended his country and family. I was proud of his service, in spite of the fact that I believed that my son had a fool for his commander-in-chief. In my mind, John's motive (regardless of who the President was) was to defend an American way of life based on a set of principles and our Constitution that place the value of the rule of law and human rights above mere expediency.

John and I wrote a book, Keeping Faith: A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps, that, after my appearance on Oprah, became a bestseller and has since become a standard book many Marine Corps families read as a guide to Marine Corps boot camp, and the lives of Marine families.

I won't take a back seat to flag-waving Republicans and their "patriotism." Besides the fact that my son stood up and volunteered, Sarah Palin would not have been nominated if it were not for the abortion issue and John McCain's need to shore up the commitment of the Evangelical pro-life right wing. As John McCain and the leaders of Religious Right know (including figures such as Dr. Dobson and Pat Robertson, Rev. Hagee and their ilk) there would have been no Evangelical pro-life movement as we know it without my and my father's connecting the Republican Party to the Evangelicals.We led that movement into the pro-life camp in the 1970s and early 80s with a series of influential books and film series.

So, I know something about the Republican Party having been a lifelong Republican until recently when, disgusted with the dirty tricks perpetrated by Rove and others, I quit and registered as an independent voter. (I even worked for McCain in 2000 by going on many religious radio shows to plead his case against Bush.)

But there is a better reason for not being a Republican today: the Republican Party stands on the brink of becoming the Fascist American party. Republicans seem ready and willing to trample everything my son stood up for when he put on the uniform of United States.

The Fascist side of the Republican Party is summed up in her historic line: "He's worried that someone won't read them their rights." This snide off-the-cuff remark embodies everything that has gone wrong with America since George W. Bush became president.

In this one little aside is the American equivalent of another "little" phrase: "the final solution." Palin's is an attitude that places ideology and rabid nationalism above the law. For her, war trumps ethics. This attitude has turned America into a country that tortures prisoners, has put us on the wrong side of our Constitution, has taken the country that liberated Auschwitz and made it a place that now uses torture, intimidation and the desecration of human freedom as a means of war.

Palin and the Republican Fascists believe that we are so right, so great and so powerful that we no longer need to obey our own laws or even -- in the case of global warming -- the laws of nature. We can start wars for no reason and then claim "victory". We can torture in the name of Jesus.

Sarah Palin is a member of a theologically extreme church, one that views history as in its "final dispensation" wherein Jesus is about to return and wherein America can help this event along by spurring the apocalypse by goading Israel into a war eternal with its Arab neighbors.

So, our new Republican Fascism is actually Fascism with a twist of nutty Evangelical theology, much like German Fascism evolved with a nutty twist of bizarre superstition and stargazing on the part of Hitler and many leading Nazis who were as enamored by the occult as by politics.

We have seen the next Mussolini and she's wearing a skirt. Don't let Palin's "hockey mom" image fool you. Sarah Palin is the face of a post-democracy America, post-constitutional and post-freedom America. She is the home town "little Austrian" vice presidential candidate to a cancer-riddled old man who, chances are high, won't see the end of his first term in office if he becomes president due to illness and old age. The woman who said that we don't need to read people their rights may well be the next president.

The Fascist tactic that destroyed the democracies of old Europe was simple: mock and belittle your opponents, nibble at the edges of the rule of law, promote violence, and grasp at a weird religion of "destiny" (their version of American exceptionalism) with an "us" against "them" mentality, blame others, including the intellectual classes and the media, pit the working people against the perceived elite (Jews in Europe and today's university-educated Democratic Party leaders in America), take power based on grievance and fear and then set aside the constitution altogether based on claimed threats by outsiders.

This is the path that America is on with Palin and McCain. The election of 2008 is a choice between United States Constitution and Lipstick Fascism.

Frank Schaeffer is the author of CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back.

Read more analysis from HuffPost bloggers on Sarah Palin

Follow Frank Schaeffer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/frank_schaeffer

Comments

[Swedishgal]

The closeness in the polls is frightening. They should be worlds apart but they're not which tells we have a really dumb electorate, much dumber than I originally thought. Obama needs to start using smaller words or something or its just sheer racism at its ugliest. I do not understand why people consistenly vote against their own interest.

[pikakeskin]

Frank,

I've been wondering how evangelical fundamentalists square the doctrine of Submission re women in church leadership roles w/this veep pick by McCain.

Wouldn't the same premise transfer to POTUS in the event Palin elevates to that position?

I hope you read these! LT/Texas

[metropixie]

With Palin's fastrack ascendence to the presidency, the hands of those that want to curtail civil liberties under the guise of increased control have been strengthened. We have seen that before.
Hitler used the burning down of the Parliament building (Reichstag) as an impetus to attack Poland after first making a mentally handicapped Dutchman (an outsider) and alleged communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, the scapegoat by charging him with arson. He was found guilty and executed. Hitler was elected Chancellor, but crowned himself Führer. Within 3 months after his inauguration, Hitler suspended civil liberties using the fire as a national emergency. Free expression of opinion; freedom of the press; right of assembly and association; right to privacy; protection against unlawful searches and seizures, and more, all went into the trash can virtually overnight.

With Bush, we have seen that democracy can be destroyed by using a law-and-order crisis and offering as a ‘solution’ the abdication of civil liberties and install a powerful but unaccountable central authority. By supplemental decree Hitler created the SS (Special Security) a federal police agency, perhaps in essence somewhat comparable to Tommy Ridge’s Homeland Security Office. Even the before seldom heard word “homeland,” closely resembles the “heimat” the Germans patriotically referred to.
Tell me, what's the difference between shouting "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil," and "USA, USA"?

[metropixie]

After 9/11 John McCain said: “The American people must, and I am sure, will understand that we will wage this war to its complete resolution however long and difficult the road ahead. But they should not be expected to wait one day longer than necessary for our enemies to be vanquished, for the full measure of justice to be done, for freedom and righteousness to prevail. May God bless us in this trial, comfort us, strengthen our resolve, and make our justice as terrible and certain as His.”
Bush's “holy war,” with “our” God on our side is still being waged. The NRC brought nothing new but the same rhetoric from yet another fighting fanatic and his lipsticked bulldog. Rhetoric that could just as well have come from the mouth of Saddam, Hitler, or indeed, Mussolini.­..

[grannysharp]

As always a excellent post by Frank Schaeffer ! . He really helps me under stand a lot of things

[Lotus19]

This is all very fascinating. Now I get it. This was no accidental selection which just happened to thrill the extreme right. Absolutely she's been vetted by the Evangelicals and they called the shots. WOW.

As I've repeated to anyone who will listen...e­ven IF, for the sake of argumen, Palin really does have all the executive experience and decision making background that's been trumpeted.­..why in God's name would we want that type of experience and the decisions that are not in our best interests of women and the American People in general.

[Lotus19]

Hi...I didn't see this question answered on the FAQ. Can articles (like the one from Frank Schaeffer) be copied and posted to another forum (like NY Times or CNN)?

[booksnmore4you]

Follow fair use. Post an excerpt followed by the link to the full article.

[HeevenSteven]

Thank you again Mr. Schaeffer. I agree 100%. They are a scary bunch of nut-jobs.

[08Barack08]

In the Bible, it says that if you have a set of laws for citizens you must have the same set of laws for foreigners. Thus, if we have the writ of habeas corpus, so do the detainees, regardless of their guilt (since the rights are meant to expedite the guilt-finding process). What a hypocritical Christian.­..

www.imPALIN.com

[Swedishgal]

I forgot about that. Thanks for the reminder.

[prismin08]

Is there any way Huff Post can put this article as front page headline news? Because that is where it should be! Naomi Wolf was so frighteningly clear on this in her last book. McCain has bought in and Sarah Palin is merely showing her lack of experience by actually saying what they are all really thinking. There is a crack in the shield of democracy and America is in trouble. Serious trouble.

I think it is too late. If it were not, McCain would be essentially out o this race. Sarah's past and religiosity would have already taken her down. Obama definitely would win in a free and fair election. But people, this is bigger than Obama and McCain. This is an ongoing takeover.

Were the last two elections "stolen" via tampering with the voting machines? I have not seen anyone addressing that issue for the coming election. There is ample evidence of how easy that is to do and thus change the outcome without anyone ever knowing it was done. They will do it again if they need to.

Will the internet be next and will those of who are now still willing to risk our opinions in public be fair game as "terrorists"? God help us all...My worst fears as an American have played out over the last 20 years.

[wingman1]

Good article. And great to see the word "fascist" finally used to describe the direction the Republican Party has been taking and is taking. One note: the Americans did not liberate Auchswitz. The Russians did. The US Army (and British Army) liberated many Nazi concentration camps in the western parts of the crumbling Third Reich, but Auchswitz is in Poland, and was liberated by the Red Army in February 1945.

[spiritguide08]

Wow! Incredible shot right to the black heart of the Republican Party. I will send this to everyone I know and urge them to forward it too. Thank you for telling the raw unvarnished truth and calling Sarah Palin and the Republicans out. Palin is even more ignorant and dangerous than George W. Bush. I am to see someone of Mr Shaeffer's stature and history pointing this out.

[histryteacher]

How many Republicans have you convinced?
No - really - tell us -
we believe you, we know you're right, but how many of your ex compatriots believe you?

[JaneForster]

Thank you! This sentence, her sneer, and the applause of the audience was the most frightening moment of her speech for me. And that almost no one has even commented on it is even more terrifying. The lack of public discussion about the decline of human rights and the rise of executive power under the Bush admin. is astounding, and Palin's comment (and the delegates' reaction) strongly suggests that the erosion of human rights in the United States will continue under a McCain/Palin administration. And yes, of course, this is how fascism begins.

[Swedishgal]

Their very limited mentality is that as long as you're not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to worry about. As I said they are of limited thinking they don't see the big picture and they won't until something happens to them in their lives, but then it will too late.

[lewes17266]

You really do know what you are talking about, Mr. Schaeffer. They are "supreme beings" who think they have special authority to ignore the Constitution and the Commandments while crying in the streets and invoking God in their rants against Democrats.