A letter

That was quick. The London Review of Books published a letter I wrote just last week about Nicholas Guyatt's piece on the Christian right.

In the letter I did not mention one other minor error. Following the lead of a number of Web sites and T-shirt manufacturers, Guyatt attributes this cute line to Sinclair Lewis:

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.

I cannot be sure, but I don't think Lewis ever wrote this. It's not in It Can't Happen Here, which is where most place it.

There are two similar-sounding quotes from the same era. In the Teachers College Record, J. A. Gengerelli wrote in 1939:

When fascism comes to America it will wear the knee-breeches of the Spirit of 1776.

And no later than 1940, Time magazine was attributing to Huey Long:

When fascism comes to America, it will be called anti-fascism.

(Long, incidentally, is a venerated figure here in Paraguay. Another local hero: Rutherford B. Hayes, who has a whole province named after him.)

Of these three versions, the faux-Lewis is most boring, the Gengerelli most vivid, and the Long not only smartest but also most pertinent.