Out of Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler and FDR, you think FDR was the conservative one?
He dressed more conservatively. 
FDR was radical as hell–his notions of reform shook some portions of America (which then reviled him), but the working man was glad to have work again (I’m sure some of them weren’t glad, but let’s not get picayune).
The other ones completely upset constitutional arrangements, persecuted political opponents and two out of the three committed mass murder/genocide. That isn’t small-c conservative - it is radical in the extreme.
FDR wasn’t a conservative American leader - but he was the leader of a basically conservative country. Indeed, the memoirs of New Dealers point out this fact all of the time. And this made a huge difference - America frankly wasn’t as easily radicalized as the populations of Italy, Germany and Russia.
I see. You’re attempting to use the revisionist definition of fascism as a “liberal” ideology. They were totalitarian, authoritaian, nationalistic, militaristic, and moralistic. They were right wingers to the core.
What was conservative about it?
America was never pushed as far. It never sank to the kind of desperate economic straits as post WW! Germany or Russia did, even during the Depression. Even during the Depression, they survived because FDR “radicalized” the economy. WWII then pulled them all the way out. It had nothing to do with any imagined “conservative” values. Liberalism saved America from the Depression. It also gave us the civil rights movement which conservatives fought tooth and nail.
Incorrect. Fascism and Communism both were opposed to European style conservatism - embodied in what Marx would have called the bourgeoisie - and also opposed to philosophical liberalism - which in America was represented by both political parties, essentially, since both supported a constitutional order that was liberal in attitude and execution.
The mistake that you make is taking Stalin’s criticisms of fascism, Trotskyism, liberal democracy, and essentially everything not Stalinism seriously. He would call all of these things right-wing movements - and I guess to him they were, since they were to the right of him. Pretty much everything was.
That doesn’t mean that Nazism has much in common with the Grand Old Party. Indeed, it has a lot more in common with Communism. And pointing this out isn’t revisionism - it is recognizing the fact that all of these movements sprang from socialist thought on the European political left.
:rolleyes:
I guess you consider that this is still news for all the dead Communists and Socialists the Nazis sent to the concentration camps.
Please don’t take this the wrong way, because it’s not meant as such (even though this is the Pit) but I believe you are allowing your personal partisanship to blind you to what people are really saying here. Nobody is suggesting (in this thread, at least) that fascism is liberal. Fascism, however, is not necessarily conservative. In terms of what Mr. Moto is saying, he’s not arguing Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini were liberals, he’s arguing they were radicals.
To say that FDR was more conservative than Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini is, to my eyes, so obviously true as to make me wonder why anyone would say otherwise. Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini were RADICALS - they were exactly the opposite of conservative. Hitler was probably the most radical, unconservative head of state in the entire history of the nation-state. Each dictator was completely dissatisfied with the status quo of his state (the world, actually, esp. in Hitler and Stalin’s cases) and completely changed their states in an effort to destroy the old order. They wanted change to an extent that no U.S. President has ever attempted - indeed, I’d argue George Washington was less radical in his desire for change than Hitler or Stalin were. And Washington rebelled against his King, so that’s saying a lot.
Conservative does not equal right wing, nor does radical equal left wing. Hitler was right wing, but obviously not conservative. A conservative does not want things to change; he wants things to stay as they are, or as they very recently were, or at least to change only cautiously. Hitler changed EVERYTHING about the governance of the state he led - its structure, almost every area of policy, and even the very core concepts of law, justice and the civil compact between rulers and ruled. Hitler was probably the most radical, unconservative head of state in the entire history of the nation-state. His positions were totally alien and incompatible with liberal democracy and even with the Western tradition of objective morality; no leader I can think of has changed his country as much, as quickly, as Hitler did. Right wing and fascist to be sure; conservative, not at all. FDR, for all the New Dealing, didn’t change the way the United States works; he inherited the executive of a 144-year-old Constitution and handed it unchanged to his successor. Social policy initiatives like the New Deal are order of magnitude smaller changes than what Hitler or Stalin did.
Perhaps not “Conservative” in the sense of the people who you don’t personally like. However, the USA has been admirably conservative, in the small-c sense of the world, in terms of its manner of structure and governance. The U.S. had a Constitution and a structure that worked, and chose to basically stick with the program in the belief that it would continue working, which as it turns out was the correct move. That’s a “conservative” decision, in the central sense of the word. Other nations tear themselves apart in an effort to fix problems, which is inherently unconservative, even if (as with Nazi Germany) it’s reactionary and fascist.
They sent Adenauer to prison as well. And you will note that the Nazis after 1933 banned all other political parties, not just the Communist and socialist ones.
Nitpick: Nowadays the phrase “conservative in a social sense” refers to attitudes towards things like abortion and gay marriage – not things like the distribution of wealth, class relations, or organization of the economy. (Regarding things like abortion and gay marriage, most Americans are liberal in a social sense, though I’m sure it was not so in FDR’s day.)
You lost me here, you really then do not know what a rebel is or how radical the idea was that we could have a government with no kings.
Hitler actually repackaged the old ideas of the past European empires.
Hitler gave back the banks to the former owners that the Weimar republic took from them. The fact remains that the big German industrialists kept their businesses under Hitler and kept the Communist and Socialists from gaining power. A Faustian bargain that shamefully worked for the industrialists.
Of course, but that does not mean Hitler rejected very conservative ideas.
I will always believe that the real promise of the constitution was when the USA affirmed with laws that indeed even minorities are entitled to constitutional rights, and that virtually took place yesterday. The fact is that the US constitution, even to this day, is a radical idea.
A radical idea that many conservatives today in the US would love to set restrictions or remove when it is not convenient.
Habeas corpus? How quaint.
Way to miss the point. The bourgeoisie were not removed by Hitler. Some Communist!
I guess slave labor for the bourgeoisie (they later claimed that did not approve of it but hard to believe when they helped Hitler gain power) was Hitler’s plan to mess with them.
To say the Nazis even sprang from the European political left could be mentioned and debated, but it is misleading to ignore that to gain power Hitler and the Nazis dropped any socialist ideals they had very early. And even the few idiots that remained with the Nazi party with that idea found the truth when Hitler told the factions that still had leftist ideas to take a hike (to a nice camp for sure) when they opposed Hitler’s idea to give the banks back to their former owners.
From The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, by George Orwell (1941):
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Agreed. The real dumbth is in his conclusion:
But Obama, whose father came over, must have more of these initiative genes than the other two combined, so he is the one to be trusted!
BTW, just from the description in the OP I could tell Medfly was a creationist. His understanding of genetics is simplistic in the extreme.
A system over two centuries old, which is now one of scores of constitutional democracies in the world, is “Radical”? Do you know what that word means? Dude, the USA isn’t as special as you seem to think it is. If we aren’t even going to agree to use words like “Radical” to mean what they actually mean, it’s not going to be much of a discussion.
I’m flabbergasted people would think someone like Hitler was either conservative OR liberal - he was neither - but not radical, which he is the poster child for. It’s amazing, as if discussing a completely different person.
When I see conservatives attacking the first amendment, yes, I stand by what I say. Seeing that gays can find protection in it while many conservatives are trying to take their freedoms away, and many other examples, continue to remind me of the radical idea this was, is, and can be in the future.
After having seen lots of history I have have to say that for sure Hitler was a radical in many subjects but also a conservative in others (you do remember gays were also sent to the camps do you?), he was however in no way a liberal (taking into account how we see liberalism in the USA nowadays)
Hitler was the poster child for reactionaries, not radicals.
You do know that Castro similarly sent gays to camps. And nobody should accuse him of being any kind of conservative.
Your last sentence shows your mistake here - you’re defining liberalism in terms of the values of a liberal American Democrat in 2008 and assuming everything that differs from this worldview anywhere else or in any other time must be some flavor of conservatism.
I don’t think that’s a definition that will be particularly helpful - it will tend to make things confusing far more than it clarifies.
Only Marxists tended to use “reactionary” in this sense. Most of the time it described monarchists or people who supported a greater clerical role in society - neither of which, obviously, applied to Hitler.
You must confuse me with someone else, I’m on record of not confusing castro with a liberal.
And I’m also not in favor of Castro for the reason that he never opened up to democracy.
The anti gay stance IIRC in Cuba comes as a legacy of Catholisism in the area, that even today it remains an influence in Cuba.
Oy vey.