As Professor Bond makes clear, the fasces was a classical symbol of magisterial authority, which, by definition entailed the power to punish—which is why Mussolini and Franco used it.

Bizarre as it seems, many federal buildings in Washington were designed prominently with fasces, the emblem of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s twentieth-century regime. Even more surprisingly, ...

For generations, Americans have surrounded themselves with the symbols of ancient Greece and Rome: marble columns, laurel ...

The fasces symbols consists of bound bundles of sticks or rods into which an axe is inserted or tied. “The symbol dates to ancient Rome, whose leaders used it as a symbol of authority and power ...