Jonah Goldberg's new book Liberal Fascism is missing a crucial definition. His thesis (as discussed earlier) is that fascism is fundamentally a statist, non-individualist political philosophy. But as he discusses fascism, he doesn't describe what fasces are.
According to Wikipedia:
The traditional Roman fasces consisted of a bundle of birch rods, tied together with a red ribbon into a cylinder, and including an axe amongst the rods.
Symbolically, the bundle of rods represents unity. More to the point, a single birch rod is easy to break, but are very strong when bound together.
The axe represents government power, particularly the power to punish through the taking of life.
Taken to an extreme, the fasces represent a symbolic argument against Individualism. The fasces literally come apart if the cords binding the rods are loosened.
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