Since (I assume) no one will be interested in taking fascism seriously as an ideology we might want to adopt or promote, I would like our discussion of fascism to focus, in part, on whether a drift or slide into fascism is a serious danger in the US these days. A lot of people have been sounding the 'fascism alarm' over the past few years. Should we take any of these alarms seriously? If fascism were coming to America, how would we recognize it?

Here are some links to things to help get that discussion going:

Thom Hartmann draws on a 1944 speech by Henry Wallace (then the Vice President of the US) to analyze the danger of American fascism:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0719-15.htm

Franklin Loehr, a Unitarian minister from Austin, Texas, argues that "the style of governing into which America has slid is most accurately described as fascism," here:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7478.htm

Loehr's sermon refers to an article by political scientist Harry Britt outlining  '14 characteristics of fascism'. Britt's article doesn't have much to offer besides the list Loehr has already given you, but here is a website that has tried to assemble links to evidence that each of these 14 characteristics is found in the US today:

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm

That website is devoted to exposing and opposing the agenda of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a think tank that includes many officials who have served in the current administration (and in past administrations). Here is a brief YouTube video (agitprop, as we used to call it) addressing their vision and linking it to fascism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sg_NRC8ozk&NR

A good brief critique of PNAC by Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is at:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BOO210A.html

Philosopher of law Brian Leiter (U. of Texas) has a blog in which he posts occasional "Authoritarianism and Fascism alerts", indexed here:

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/authoritarianism_and_fascism_alerts/index.html

See this link for a fairly startling example ("Brown Shirts in Waiting, Part 37"):

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2006/12/brown_shirts_in_1.html