I guess centralized power is centralized power.

I was in DC last weekend, visiting the nation's capitol and other things. My lovely tour guide took me through two of the House Office Buildings, the Capitol building, and around other bits of the city. It was all very pretty, but after my visit to Rome last month, I couldn't help but notice that a fair share of the architecture is decidedly fascist, in the style of Mussolini's constructions. Huge slabs of smoot gray stone rising out of the ground with angular edges and harsh columns. Ferociously stylized statues and reliefs of symbolic figures of power (eagles, men with swords, etc.). The similarities are really striking.

It makes sense, I guess. The purpose of Fascist architecture is to convey the immense power of The State, its monolithic ability to crush you and its inherent right to everything you have. Washington basically does the same thing, but I suppose its architecture is more revealing than its rhetoric. When you go to DC, you don't see the seat of a nation of the people, by the people, for the people; you see a collection of stern white and gray buildings crawling with armed guards who inspect you and bureaucratize you before you even walk in the door. If I were a crazy libertarian, this stuff would probably scare me, but because I'm sympathetic to the idea of a centralized federal aristocracy, I'm generally OK.

Still, they must have known about the Fascist thing. Mussolini's Rome was built largely in the 20s, and I'm pretty sure that most of modern Washington was constructed after that. I guess if you want to send a message, you aren't going to let a few negative connotations of authoritarian dictatorship get in your way.