Soft Fascism is Here.

The soft fascism embodied in political correctness was demonstrated when none other than Jane Fonda was chastised for using the "C word" on Network TV.

Arguably there are few public figures who are as iconic on the left as Jane Fonda in the entertainment world, and no public figure which has remade herself so many different times, be it as the sex kitten Barbarella, the prostitute in Klute, the anti war activist, the exercise video Diva, the wife of Ted Turner.

Indeed, even the use of the aforementioned "unmentionable" word was in the context of a discussion of the "Vagina Monologues." so its utterance was totally innocent, and not even remotely offensive, and definitely cannot be considered "anti-feminist," since the context was a discussion of feminist art.

Still, the tolerance police had to be satisfied, and even one of the more preachy and self righteous had to engage in one of those 1930's style Stalinist apology sessions meant to placate the authorities... or else you have committed the crime of "insensitivity." Boo Wooo.

Recently, on a high school alumni Facebook page, I posted about a college era incident in which I anticipated (unwittingly, since I was a liberal in college) the rise of soft fascism on the left.

I recounted that at about 22 years old, I sustained one severe writer's block from my frosh year in college up through about graduation from Law School, when I began writing again.

The cause was a creative writing class. I had an idea for a short story about a society in which people didn't read anymore, and there were no more newspapers or books, but folks watched cable on hundreds of channels, and all the politicians were really good looking, and ethnically, racially, and sexually represented in proportion to their numbers in society, but was an absolute tyranny.

The project was really too ambitious for a short story, and I couldn't capture the universe I wished to create in those few pages. And it was in the days before word processors and computers so I really couldn't slam out a major work for just little creative writing class.The story had its obvious plotting and stylistic issues. This story was written in the Spring of 1985, before the Berlin Wall fell, and before the wide spread use of fiber optic cable and the Internet communications revolution.

But I confess. The story sucked.The story just didn't move, and while the concept was great, it just didn't have life. But, curiously, this is not what angered the instructor.

The instructor was a grad student who was ultimately tough of the work because it offended his political sensibilities. He was a self styled Marxist who bragged about being harsh with a Cuban colleague, calling him "a counter revolutionary." Needless to say, he was a real a-hole.

He criticized the universe created in my story because "they could never invent the bandwidth necessary to have hundreds of channels on TV. "Years later, even though this project was long abandoned, I came to realize that my vision was correct, even if my execution was flawed. I was told that I needed to read more books about Marxism before criticising this philosophy. Again, I fancied myself as a "liberal," someone who was committed to civil rights and tolerance, but I was always "anticommunist."

But this instructor embodied the short sightedness of the statist campus radical, the safe little man with a limited imagination who cannot see beyond the parameters of a limited and flawed ideology. He cannot see the murders and atrocities committed by his heroes in brutal Marxist regimes. He does not appreciate the freedoms he enjoys through a society which at least for now is committed to the rights of life, liberty, property, and free expression.

Sadly, what originates on campuses often comes to inform the intelligentsia, be it the journalists who never truly left college or even business people who do not understand that the surrender of some economic and political liberties eventually means the surrender of their own liberties.

Ultimately, it is a sad irony that Jane Fonda is not chastised by "mainstream media" for consorting with the enemy during war time, but for uttering a "dirty word" which references female genitals during a discussion of a play which discussed lfe and current events from the point of view of sentient female genitalia.