The Road to Serfdom - pages 65-66

When the course of civilization takes an unexpected turn—when, instead of the continuous progress which we have come to expect, we find ourselves threatened by evils associated by us with past ages of barbarism—we naturally blame anything but ourselves. Have we not all striven according to our best lights, and have not many of our finest minds incessantly worked to make this a better world? Have not all our efforts and hopes been directed toward greater freedom, justice, and prosperity? If the outcome is so different from our aims—if, instead of freedom and prosperity, bondage and misery stare us in the face—is it not clear that sinister forces must have foiled our intentions, that we are the victims of some evil power which must be conquered before we can resume the road to better things? However much we may differ when we name the culprit ... we all are, or at least were until recently, certain of one thing: that the leading ideas which during the last generation have become common to most people of good will and have determined the major changes in our social life cannot have been wrong. We are ready to accept almost any explanation of the present crisis of our civilization except one: that the present state of the world may be the result of genuine error on our own part and that the pursuit of some of our most cherished ideals has apparently produced results utterly different from those which we expected.

F. A. Hayek (1944) - Chapter 1, The Abandoned Road

The Road to Serfdom - page 61

The problem is not why the Germans as such are vicious, which congenitally they are probably no more than other peoples, but to determine the circumstances which during the last seventy years have made possible the progressive growth and the ultimate victory of a particular set of ideas, and why in the end the victory has brought the most vicious elements among them to the top. Mere hatred of everything German instead of the particular ideas which now dominate the Germans is, moreover, very dangerous, because it blinds those who indulge in it against a real threat. It is to be feared that this attitude is frequently merely a kind of escapism, caused by an unwillingness to recognize tendencies which are not confined to Germany and by a reluctance to re-examine, and if necessary to discard, beliefs which we have taken over from the Germans and by which we are still as much deluded as the Germans were. It is doubly dangerous because the contention that only the peculiar wickedness of the Germans has produced the Nazi system is likely to become the excuse for forcing on us the very institutions which have produced that wickedness.

F. A. Hayek (1944) - Introduction

The Road to Serfdom - pages 59-61

The supreme tragedy is still not seen that in Germany it was largely people of good will, men who were admired and held up as models in the democratic countries, who prepared the way for, if they did not actually create, the forces which now stand for everything they detest. ... Few are ready to recognize that the rise of fascism and naziism was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies. This is a truth which most people were unwilling to see even when the similarities of many of the repellent features of the internal regimes in communist Russia and National Socialist Germany were widely recognized. As a result, many who think themselves infinitely superior to the aberrations of naziism, and sincerely hate all its manifestations, work at the same time for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny.

... [These developments] can be prevented if people realize in time where their efforts may lead. ...

It is because nearly everybody wants it that we are moving in this direction. There are no objective facts which make it inevitable. ... Is it not possible that if the people whose convictions now give it an irresistible momentum began to see what only a few yet apprehend, they would recoil in horror and abandon the quest which for half a century has engaged so many people of good will? ... Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavor consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?

F. A. Hayek (1944) - Introduction

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Two and a half millennia ago in Athens stood a sage of the stature of Hayek, Solon.

[Solon] held the belief of his countrymen, Surfeit breeds Pride, when great success attends. And Hubris, Insolent Pride, to him was not so much a usurpation of the rights of a god as the appropriation of the rights of other human beings, so that they were left a life less than human.

Kathleen Freeman (1976) The Work and Life of Solon, pp. 201-202

Liberal Fascism - page 134

Or consider H. G. Wells. ... In the summer of 1932, Wells delivered a major speech at Oxford University to Britain's Young Liberals organization, in which he called for a "'Phoenix Rebirth' of Liberalism" under the banner of "Liberal Fascism."

Jonah Goldberg (2008) - Chapter 4, Franklin Roosevelt's Fascist New Deal - Liberal Fascism

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This passage solves a mystery. Why are there a phoenix and two tight bundles of rods above the entrance to Coit Tower?

Coit Tower was built the year after Wells' call to arms.

I'm a native San Franciscan and was troubled to see these there some 20 years ago. I've always wondered.


What's even more troubling is that the bundles line up with the columns below. Each of these columns resemble the tower itself. Is the tower meant to symbolize a tight bundle? How horrifying a concept to someone like me who grew up loving the look of Coit Tower on top of Telegraph Hill.


These fascistic bundles (sans ax) are spooky. They speak to me of factions uniting with little if any respect for individual rights.



At the founding of our country, we had another symbol for unity, the unity behind the American Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. This symbol was a bundle of arrows, loosely held together. The looseness and the respect for rights make all the difference. This symbol reportedly came from the example of the Iroquois Confederacy, and its legendary founder Deganawidah.

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Credits:
shellswong (photo #1, derivatives allowed, cropped by me)
speedwaystar (photo #2)
Dave Smith (photo #3)




Update (Feb 5, 2008, 9:15 pm Central): Jonah Goldberg has written an excellent, informative post on this subject today - Coit Tower, Fascist?

Goldberg writes,

Now, as for the Coit Tower, I don't know a lot about it. But if you wanted to make the case that it's fascistic it probably wouldn't be too hard. Aesthetically, a lot of the stuff built, sculpted or painted in the 1930s had that feel. Check out the sculpture on the Hoover Dam next time you're out there. It could be Soviet or National Socialist — to my admittedly untrained eyes. That the murals in the Coit tower were painted under the auspices of the Federal Arts Project is a good sign that the builders of the tower were in that milieu (though the pictures of the mural at Wikipedia don't look particularly fascistic to me). And of course, by 1933, it might tell you something that these guys were still using fasces more than a decade after Mussolini had co-opted the word and symbol.

Still, three things make me skeptical that the Coit tower was directly inspired by HG Well's speech. First, phoenixes and fasces were still commonplace icons in the 1930s. Second, fascistic architecture, loosely speaking, was all the rage anyway. And three, I doubt that Wells' speech had that sort of impact in San Francisco back then. That said, I would just love to be proven wrong. [emphasis added]

I, myself, would prefer to think that the artist had no mean intent, but I can't shake my horror, given its context.

I wrote an email to Goldberg this morning, discussing the murals a bit. You can read it here.

Update (Feb 6, 2008, 11:00 am Central): I'm convinced now that my hypothesis doesn't hold water. Here is the comment that convinced me, and here is my response.

The Road to Serfdom - page 58

Although one does not like to be reminded, it is not so many years since the socialist policy of [Germany] was generally held up by progressives as an example to be imitated....

F. A. Hayek (1944) - Introduction

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... reminded by, say, Jonas Goldberg.

The Road to Serfdom - page 58

It is not to the Germany of Hitler, the Germany of the present war, that England and the United States bear yet any resemblance. But students of the currents of ideas can hardly fail to see that there is more than a superficial similarity between the trend of thought in Germany during and after the last war and the present current of ideas in the democracies. There exists now in these countries certainly the same determination that the organization of the nation which has been achieved for purposes of defense shall be retained for the purposes of creation. There is the same contempt for nineteenth-century liberalism....

F. A. Hayek (1944) - Introduction

The Road to Serfdom - page 57

An accidental combination of experience and interest will often reveal events to one man under aspects which few yet see.

F. A. Hayek (1944) - Introduction