With some pundits wondering if we are already fascist, see how classical antiquity has been mobilized by both social democrats and hard leftists to undercut democratic participation.
In the late 1930s, two books were published that traced the trajectory of European civilization, and found that The Greek Way (as classicist Edith Hamilton titled her book of 1930*) was clearly protofascist. One was by social psychologist Ellis Freeman: Conquering the Man in the Street:A psychological analysis of propaganda in war, fascism, and politics (N.Y.: Vanguard Press, 1940), the earlier by future Labour M.P. Richard Crossman: Plato Today(N.Y.: Oxford UP, 1939). Both are available on Amazon.com and I highly recommend them, for social democratic journalists (Stanley Fish and J. M. Bernstein), blogging this week in the New York Times, are calling for renewed attention to a classical education as a remedy to a narrow science/technology education that is allegedly suppressing critical thought. (In one case, the philosopher J.M. Bernstein, compares the Tea Party to Jacobin terrorists, rage-driven and standing for a mythical autonomous individual…
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