The Federalist Goes Fascist -They're telling us who they are, and we damn well better believe them.

[kpete]

I can't believe I'm saying this, but everyone should read the Federalist article. Because it articulates where the Right has been going for some time and makes clear that wielding power to force the rest of us to do what a small minority of Americans want is the real goal.

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The Federalist, a rightwing media outlet cofounded by the serial-plagiarist spouse of John McCain’s Daughter™️, published a screed yesterday that pushes the “saying the quiet parts out loud” cliché to a new level. Titled “We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives,” the content suggests that they should start calling themselves “fascists” instead and rechristen their media outlet The Fascist.

The left will only stop when conservatives stop them, which means conservatives will have to discard outdated and irrelevant notions about “small government.” The government will have to become, in the hands of conservatives, an instrument of renewal in American life — and in some cases, a blunt instrument indeed.

To stop Big Tech, for example, will require using antitrust powers to break up the largest Silicon Valley firms. To stop universities from spreading poisonous ideologies will require state legislatures to starve them of public funds. To stop the disintegration of the family might require reversing the travesty of no-fault divorce, combined with generous subsidies for families with small children. Conservatives need not shy away from making these arguments because they betray some cherished libertarian fantasy about free markets and small government. It is time to clear our minds of cant.

In other contexts, wielding government power will mean a dramatic expansion of the criminal code. It will not be enough, for example, to reach an accommodation with the abortion regime, to agree on “reasonable limits” on when unborn human life can be snuffed out with impunity. As Abraham Lincoln once said of slavery, we must become all one thing or all the other. The Dobbs decision was in a sense the end of the beginning of the pro-life cause. Now comes the real fight, in state houses across the country, to outlaw completely the barbaric practice of killing the unborn.

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Seemingly using The Handmaid’s Tale as an instruction manual, the author goes full eliminationist on what he chillingly calls “the transgender question,” berating right-wingers who hold live-and-let-live views and proposing that a conservative government arrest parents, doctors and teachers for wrong-think:

On the transgender question, conservatives will have to repudiate utterly the cowardly position of people like David French, in whose malformed worldview Drag Queen Story Hour at a taxpayer-funded library is a “blessing of liberty.” Conservatives need to get comfortable saying in reply to people like French that Drag Queen Story Hour should be outlawed; that parents who take their kids to drag shows should be arrested and charged with child abuse; that doctors who perform so-called “gender-affirming” interventions should be thrown in prison and have their medical licenses revoked; and that teachers who expose their students to sexually explicit material should not just be fired but be criminally prosecuted.

https://balloon-juice.com/2022/10/21/federalist-goes-fascist/
https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/20/we-need-to-stop-calling-ourselves-conservatives/