| Is Schmidt speaking for himself or the government?
One man's anti-social behavior is another man's freedom of speech.
Fascism is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy.
Scholars generally consider fascism to be on the far right of the conventional left-right political spectrum.
Fascists believe that a nation is an organic community that requires strong leadership, singular collective identity, and the will and ability to commit violence and wage war in order to keep the nation strong.
Fascists reject and resist the autonomy of cultural or ethnic groups who are not considered part of the fascists' nation and who refuse to assimilate or are unable to be assimilated. They consider attempts to create such autonomy as an affront and a threat to the nation. Under fascism, the will and autonomy of the individual is subjugated to that of the state.
In layman's terms, most of the far-right Republicans and almost certainly all Teabaggers in the USA, and some of the Reform Conservatives in Canada fit the fascist bill quite well. |
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| Yeah ok, you go run with that buddy! LOL |
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| It amazes me how Americans can't or refuse to see the forest for the trees. Here we have an articulate and eloquent description of the Fascist State and how Conservative Corporate American ideology fits the model almost to a T, and immediately we have a rejectivist comment in response. |
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dynodbPremium,VIP
join:2004-04-21
Minneapolis, MN | Probably because the "articulate and eloquent" description... isn't. "Batshit crazy" would be more accurate. |
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| reply to MaynardKrebs
said by MaynardKrebs:One man's anti-social behavior is another man's freedom of speech. Similarly, "facism" is dependent upon the perspective of time and how a society's challenges become more (or less) complicated.
For example, the federal Deptartments of Education and Energy would have seemed facist to the founding generation. But, as an agrarian society with little dependence on oil, or threat of global economic competition, there was no need for such centralized, uniform regulation.
Heck, to the founding generation, the creation of the federal government would have looked fascist prior to 1789. They needed 12 years of experience with the relatively anarcho-libertarian Articles of Confederation to evaluate their challenges and willingness to compromise liberty for efficiency (independence at the expense of corporal uniformity).
That's where I think modern, self-styled freedom fighters miss the boat entirely. Relatively speaking (in terms of what they gave up, and what they accepted), the founding generation embraced "big government" and fascism like no other generation since. (Perhaps the Civil War generation embraced a similar relative jump when it destroyed the idea of succession, and gave the federal government the power to enforce the Bill of Rights against state enfringement via the 14th Amendment.).
Anyway, I don't think recent generations have done anything different than the founding generation, expanding government power/efficiency to balance individualism versus society's collective need for "ordered liberty."
If anything, recent generations have done a worse job of it because we have an incessant desire to create *ineffective* government. For example, resistance to National ID is almost a shibboleth of being American. The result? Dozens of national and state IDs. Private companies creating what amounts to a national database, with government being their largest customer. No control by individuals over the information collected about them.
All because a National ID would be "fascist." |
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