I was more than a little surprised to see that the New York Post now equates being a Christian with being a fascist. On October 27 of last year, the Post printed two headlines on top of page 8, placed side by side. The first reads, "Pat: 'I'd Like All Folks to Be Christians," and the second one (smaller, almost like a subtitle to the first) reads: "Buchanan Offers U.S. Fascism With a Happy Face." To drive the point home, the second article highlights a pull-quote by Buchanan: "I believe Christianity is the true faith."

Now, we've all heard the term "fascist" cast about like a curse word. It's used as a club to silence dissent from left-wing orthodoxy on university campuses across America. But for those of us who do not want to be condemned to relive the past because we have failed to remember it, let me ask: Is there really any such cozy relationship between fascism and Christianity? Far from it, as Gene Edward Veith documents in his book Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview: Fascism and Christianity stand in total antithesis to one another.

Consider, for example, the following quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, whose philosophy had a profound influence on Nazi theory: "Christianity, sprung from Jewish roots and comprehensible only as a growth on this soil, represents the counter-movement to any morality of breeding, of race, of privilege: It is the anti-Aryan religion par excellence." This antithesis is the reason the Nazis despised both Christian and Jew. Both held worldviews based on a monotheism that says the state is not autonomous, for there is a God whose law is above the law of any government, before whom even seemingly all-powerful dictators must bend the knee. Moreover, any man, woman or child who had the Ten Commandments had an adequate moral basis for judging and resisting the National Socialist state as an objective evil.

What we need to remember is that fascism is a total worldview. It offers a comprehensive set of answers to questions about the ultimate origin of humanity, of evil, and of salvation. Fascism tells people that nature, not God, is their true creator and that they can, therefore, do whatever seems natural. This is how the Nazi elites justified their cruelty: Why should we be any less cruel than nature, with its survival of the fittest?

Fascism also tells people what the source of evil is: alienation from nature, a separation that is attributed to the Jews, who gave the world the monotheism of Genesis. And finally, fascism says salvation comes by erasing all vestiges of transcendence, by destroying the Jews and their influence, and by emasculating Christianity. (Thus Hitler hated Catholic theology but envied its organization and wanted to co-opt it for his purposes.)

Fascism's answers to these fundamental worldview questions captured the minds of many anti-Christian and anti-Jewish intellectuals both inside and outside Europe. It is a worldview that casts a net capable of sweeping up an entire society into an idolatrous, immanent love of nature, race and power.

This is the real definition of fascism; and its ideas remain dangerously potent even today. "Fascism is back," Veith writes. "That is, it refuses to go away." We see the popularity of these ideas in the embrace of naturalistic evolution as our true creator; in the emphasis on racial groups (no longer Aryans per se but whites, blacks, Hispanics, and so on).

We see the revolt against transcendent norms as the ACLU tirelessly seeks to cleanse America of her Judeo-Christian heritage. We see the triumph of the will in the reduction of all moral acts to questions of power and choice, so that today in America, we can kill Jews, Blacks, women, you name it, without question; so long as we get at them early enough: in the womb. Instead of Arbeit Macht Frei ("Work Makes You Free," the slogan that greeted Jews as they entered the concentration camp Dachau), we have Abortion Macht Frei. "Only five decades ago, the world was in the nightmare of war and Holocaust," writes Veith. "We seem to have forgotten everything." It's time to refresh our memories, and gear up to fight the real thing.