Fascist America or Sacred America: The Choice is Ours
by Glenn Aparicio Parry, Reprinted with permission from ReVision Journal, Winter 2026 Volume 35 issue entitled Dancing with Uncertainty
When a man unprincipled in private life … bold in his temper…—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ride the storm and direct the whirlwind. (Remnick, David, 2019).
This is a time of great uncertainty in America. The world order was upended in the first weeks of the new administration. Long-term alliances were undone while cozying up to long-term enemies. Tariffs were placed on nearly 100 countries, with the glaring exception of Russia and Belarus. The on again and off again tariffs were terrifying to almost everyone. Wild fluctuations in the stock market have induced anxiety, if not outright panic, over what the future might bring. A recession seems inevitable, if not a depression, or a world war. Why make international trade so unpredictable and unstable? Does Trump really believe tariffs will be beneficial or is something else afoot? I suspect the latter.
In times like these, the words of Alexander Hamilton quoted above come to mind. Trump is a trickster figure intentionally sowing chaos so that he may direct the whirlwind and consolidate power. He has already installed sycophants into positions of power. He has significantly eroded the justice system, and many of his executive orders—such as putting an end to birthright citizenship—basically ignored the Constitution. People are being deported without due process, including green card holders and those on student visas. The president has sought to withhold funds from universities, including Harvard, and also from law firms who assisted the prosecution in the January 6th insurrection case against him that was suspended after he won reelection.
One of the first steps Trump and his unelected conspirator Elon Musk took was to eliminate the watchdogs within government, firing the very people responsible for investigating fraud and abuse (Inspector Generals) under the pretext of eliminating fraud and abuse. Musk left his full-time role, but the man who hired him remains. The same man who has been convicted multiple times of fraud in both civil and criminal court has somehow hoodwinked his base into believing he is the one most suited to clean up corruption in the so-called deep state.
The first Trump administration was a little like this—chaotic and seemingly out of control. But there were “adults in the room” then (people like General Mattis, HR McMaster, and chief economic advisor Gary Cohn) who successfully restrained the worst instincts of the president, at least for a while. However, by the end of the first term, it was obvious that the guardrails protecting democracy were disintegrating.
The Long View of American History
In my book Original Politics: Making America Sacred Again, published in 2020, I began a chapter called Fascist America or Sacred America with these words:
I have said that America is on an inexorable path toward realizing its original sacred purpose of unity in diversity. I believe America—the place and nation—will return to that sacred purpose again. I admit to another possibility, however: one in which America rejects its destiny and devolves in the opposite direction so far it cannot right the ship. …America could become a fascist state. In truth, both possibilities have been in play ever since we broke away from monarchy and began our experimental path forward. Today, a fascist America seems more possible than ever before; yet, at the same time, the seeds of a sacred America are still present. (Parry, 2020, p. 217)
To understand why both a sacred or fascist America is in play it is necessary to take a long view of United States history. The colonists lived in close proximity to Native Americans for 150 years before they chose to break away from their mother country of England to establish a new nation. During that century and a half, the settlers had ample opportunity to observe Native American governance, which was truly egalitarian. The core values of the young nation—liberty, equality, and natural rights—were all profoundly influenced by, if not directly appropriated from Native American values.
For the first fifty years of our nation’s history, the entire world recognized the United States as a hybrid of Native American and Euro-American cultures. It was only after Andrew Jackson came into power in the late 1820s and began a century long reign of terror on Native America that the memory of such influence was nearly totally erased.
In the past half century, a number of researchers: Oren Lyons (1992), John Mohawk (1992), Bruce Johansen and Donald Grinde (1991), Sally Roesch Wagner (2001), Betty Booth Donahoe (2020), and Stephen Sachs (2020), to name a few, have sought to reestablish a revisionist history of America that properly acknowledges Native influence on the founding fathers. The US Government explicitly acknowledged this truth during the 1980s, making a resolution honoring Indian Nations for their influence:
Be it resolved by the Senate (The House of Representatives concurring) that the Congress on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the signing of the US Constitution, acknowledges the historical debt which the Republic of the USA owes to the Iroquois Confederacy and other Indian Nations for their demonstrations of enlightened, democratic principles of government and their example of a free association of Independent Indian Nations. (http://www.oneidaindiannation.com/haudenosaunee-impact-recognized-by-congress/).
In truth, Native influence on our core values and founding documents was even stronger than acknowledged in the 1980s. Native influence was the primary inspiration for the original founding document that preceded the US Constitution: The Articles of Confederation. The principal writer of the Articles was Benjamin Franklin, who drew heavily upon The Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Great Law of Peace in crafting the document. Franklin, who became friends with Chief Canasatego when he was Indian Ambassador to the Haudenosaunee during the French and Indian Wars, closely modeled the Articles after the Indian practice of community service. All politicians served a limited term and received no compensation or emoluments of any kind. The Articles were the law of the land from 1781—when France and Morocco recognized the United States as a country after the Articles of Confederation were ratified—until 1789, when the US Constitution supplanted it.
Most of us are unaware that under the Articles of Confederation there were presidents, at least in name. These proto-presidents held a much different, less powerful role than today, serving a one-year term that was largely ceremonial. Historians rightly distinguish these early presidents from those that came after because they essentially held little power. Yet that is precisely the main point I wish to convey in this paper: We began as far away from monarchy as possible. We have been ceding more and more power to the presidency ever since.
The US Constitutional Convention: A Shift Toward Greater Presidential Powers
At the Constitutional Convention, two plans emerged: the New Jersey Plan that proposed relatively modest changes to the Articles of Confederation, and the Virginia plan that proposed much bolder changes. The New Jersey plan retained a legislature of just one chamber with each state having one vote, and in lieu of a president, it proposed an executive council with all voices heard equally.
The Virginia Plan was not a revision as much as a new document. Its salient features included a system of checks and balances provided through the articulation of three distinct branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial; it also proposed a bi-cameral legislature (the House and Senate). Significantly, the proposal called for a legislature with proportional representation depending upon state population and a much stronger executive—a president with a seven-year term—a huge departure from the one-year presidency defined under the Articles of Confederation. The Virginia Plan also proposed that the Federal government have the power to tax the people in order to build a common defense against foreign enemies. In fact, the Virginia Plan represented a dramatic restart of the republic with a significantly enlarged role for the federal government, the president, and a corresponding diminishment of state powers. (Chernow, Ron. 2005)
As these two plans were being debated, Hamilton made a passionate and long-winded speech in which he envisioned a hybrid form of government that had the continuity of a monarchy combined with the liberties of a republic; the president could continue to serve indefinitely provided he embodied “good behavior.” Hamilton’s intent was to guard against anarchy and tyranny alike, and he distinguished his form of monarchy from its European counterparts by referring to the president as an “elected monarch.”1 William Samuel Johnson quipped that Hamilton’s speech was “praised by everybody [and]…supported by none,” but in actuality four states voted in favor of Hamilton’s proposal of “good behavior,” including the delegation from Virginia that included James Madison. Madison even proposed that the federal government be given the power to veto any state laws “as the King of Great Britain heretofore had.” Franklin and others strongly opposed a presidential or federal veto, for this smacked of monarchy, and they wanted nothing that too closely resembled that from which they had just broken away. Hamilton, chastened by those in attendance, never again uttered a kind word about monarchy, “elected” or otherwise other than to caution against it. (Chernow, p 231-232).
While the idea of an “elected monarch” was seemingly expunged from American history, the truth is it did not disappear from the American psyche. There has always been a faction of the nation somewhat uncomfortable with the radical nature of the American experiment. Today, nearly two and a half centuries after Hamilton made his speech at the Constitutional convention, the idea for an American monarch is making a surprising comeback.
The History of Ceding Power to the Presidency
It is important to realize that the nation has been ceding power to the presidency from the start, beginning with the changeover from the Articles of Confederation to the US Constitution. The presidency was given far greater power at that time, but such concession of powers did not stop there. The executive branch has been accruing power ever since.
The checks and balances of the US Constitution were well conceived, but many of the checks against the executive branch have proven ineffective over time. Consider impeachment. While several presidents have been impeached, none have ever been convicted by the Senate, including Trump, who was impeached twice in his first term, the second time for fomenting an insurrection against his own government. Only Congress is supposed to declare war, but the last time that happened was 1942. Since WWII, presidents have skirted the law, waging war in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, while Congress has stood idly by.
Many Americans are aghast at what is currently transpiring. The executive branch is aggressively usurping power from both the legislative and judicial branches, and neither Congress nor the Supreme Court are taking steps to reassert the authority of their own branches. Americans are wondering: Why is this happening today?
What we are currently witnessing is the culmination of a half century long effort from the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation (founded in 1973) to implement a “unitary executive,” in which nearly all governmental power would be transferred to the executive branch. The “Mandate for Leadership” of Project 2025 first appeared in 1981 under the same name at the beginning of the Reagan administration (Goza, 2024). In the opening pages of the Project 2025 document, its current leaders openly acknowledge the lineage that connects them to the Reagan administration. It was under Reagan that the nation not only began a shift toward enhanced power of the presidency, but also a rapid turn toward income inequality, with top tier income tax rates being cut from 70% to 33%, and further protections enacted to limit inheritance taxes, ensuring intergenerational wealth.
The Heritage Foundation went on to become the most influential arm of the Republican Party in Supreme Court nominations, which led to the 2010 Citizens United decision that opened the floodgates of unlimited corporate money in politics. The Heritage Foundation was also instrumental in bringing about the controversial decision granting legal immunity to the president for official acts. The sum total of all of these actions has been to set the stage for an authoritarian takeover of government. In short, we cannot simply blame Trump for the current predicament we are now in. If not him, someone else would have come along to take advantage of the situation.
As soon as the Trump administration ends in disgrace, while the embers of the charred republic are still warm, we need a second Constitutional convention. A truth and reconciliation commission is not enough. There must be a convention with the express purpose of protecting against the abuses of power that have occurred in the past 50 years that have dismantled the checks and balances that were intended by our founders. Among the many actions I might envision, the Supreme Court must be completely revamped, with no Justices enjoying lifetime appointments and some basic rules for ethical conduct established, overseen by a committee composed of emeritus and emerita members of the Congress and Supreme Court. The immunity decision clearly must be reversed and the tenet that nobody is above the law, not even the president, reaffirmed. Moreover, the current Department of Justice practice prohibiting indictment of a sitting president must also be rescinded; even a sitting president must be able to be prosecuted if they are egregiously ignoring the law. Congress must also no longer give presidents a blank check for war powers, reasserting their Constitutional authority as the only branch empowered to declare war. And if Congress establishes a department, such as the Department of Education or the Environmental Protection Agency, there should be reasonable limits as to how much the executive branch can restructure the agency. Any government department or agency that has been legally established by an act of Congress should not be cut by more than 15% (or some other reasonable agreed upon percentage) during any one term of the presidency. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision must be overturned, for as soon as unlimited corporate contributions became possible, the imposition of an oligarchy became inevitable. All these changes and more must be done to ensure the reconstitution and continuation of a representational republic that, despite its faults, was once the envy of all democracies throughout the free world.
https://revisionpublishing.org/35-1-dancing-with-uncertainty-fascist-america-or-sacred-america-the-choice-is-ours/
Glenn Aparicio Parry is an educator, ecopsychologist, and two-time Nautilus award winning author of the trilogy Original Thinking: A Radical Revisioning of Time, Humanity, and Nature (North Atlantic Press, 2015), Original Politics: Making America Sacred Again (SelectBooks, 2020) the two books that preceded the publication of Original Love: The Timeless Source of Wholeness (SelectBooks, 2026). The founder and past president of the SEED Institute, Parry is currently an adjunct faculty member of the California Institute of Integral Studies, the president of the think tank: Circle for Original Thinking, and the host of the Circle for Original Thinking podcast. https://glennaparicioparry.com
References
Chernow, R. (2005). Alexander Hamilton. New York, Penguin.
Parry, G. A. (2020). Original Politics: Making America Sacred Again, Berkeley, Ca. SelectBooks.
Lyons, Chief O., & Mohawk, J., editors. (1992). Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations and the US Constitution.Santa Fe. Clear Light Publishers.
Grinde, D., & Johansen, B. (1991). Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy. Los Angeles. American Indian Studies Center.
Roesch Wagner, S. (2001). Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists. Summertown, Tn. Native Voices .
Remnick, D. (2019). “The Sober Clarity of the Impeachment Witnesses.” New Yorker, November 15.
Sachs, S. (2020). Editor Honoring the Circle: Ongoing Learning of the West from American Indians on Politics and Society. Cardiff by the Sea, Ca. Waterside Productions.
Goza, J. E. (2024). Los Angeles Times, Opinion. August 25. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-08-25/project-2025-trump-heritage-foundation-election
From:
'LIBERAL FASCISM:
The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning',
by Jonah Goldberg.
- "Fascism is fundamentally a left-wing phenomenon, not right-wing as commonly portrayed.
Goldberg argues that classical fascism (e.g., Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's National Socialism) emerged from socialist roots, emphasizing state control, collectivism, anti-capitalism, and opposition to classical liberal values like individualism, free markets, and limited government.
- The conventional left-right spectrum is misleading when applied to fascism.
European fascists opposed traditional conservative pillars (e.g., Judeo-Christian values, family structures, free markets, and constitutional limits on power), aligning them more closely with leftist collectivist impulses than with the Anglo-American right.
- American Progressivism (late 19th/early 20th century) shared significant ideological DNA with European fascism. Progressives admired Mussolini (and sometimes aspects of Hitler) early on, embraced eugenics, centralized planning, nationalism fused with social reform, and state intervention in all aspects of life for the "greater good."
- Woodrow Wilson's administration exemplified "liberal fascism" in America through wartime suppression of dissent, propaganda, economic controls, and admiration for authoritarian models like Bismarck's Prussia—creating a proto-totalitarian state under progressive ideals.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal continued and expanded this fascist-like approach, with corporatist economic policies, cult-of-personality leadership, attempts to pack courts, and expansive state power over society and economy, all justified as benevolent social engineering.
- Modern American liberalism (from JFK/LBJ's Great Society through to contemporary progressives) retains "fascist" impulses in a softer, more "smiling" form—seeking to regulate health, behavior, speech, education, and economy via an all-encompassing welfare state, moral certainty, and demonization of opponents, often under the guise of compassion and utopia-building.
Fascism is defined as a "religion of the state":
It views the state as an organic, unifying force embodying the collective will, demanding total alignment of society toward shared goals, suppressing individualism, and using coercion (or social pressure) to enforce uniformity—traits Goldberg sees echoed in liberal statism more than in conservatism.
Contemporary liberals exhibit fascist-like tendencies through identity politics, political correctness, demands for ideological conformity, and faith in expert-led central planning to perfect society—though Goldberg stresses this is "benign" or "nice" fascism (more Brave New World than 1984), not equivalent to Nazi or Italian horrors.
The American right (rooted in constitutionalism, classical liberalism, and individualism) is largely immune to fascist temptations, contrary to left-wing accusations that conservatives are the real fascists."
From: European Thought and Culture in the 20th Century by Professor Lloyd Kramer:
the 20th century “State” was an administrative structure increasingly dominated by a bureaucracy which was empowered to regulate and integrate the economy and provide social welfare service.
Theorists of the Frankfurt School called this new structure of the state, "State Monopoly Capitalism" (fascism) and its cause was championed in the U.S. by Social Democrats, Progressives, New Dealers, and by European Socialists.