Can anyone find me a liberal who supports the PATRIOT ACT or the NSA?
He was certainly neither a political theorist nor a deep thinker.
The root of “progressive” political thought is that the obligation of government encompasses providing assistance in the form of entitlement programs and subsidies (WIC, school lunch programs, subsidized health care, educational assistance or government-sponsored education, et cetera), and to act to protect the interests of specific groups or the whole against business and political interests which have sufficient power to drive or influence markets disproportionate to their representation (environmental protection, regulation of large banking and investment interests, consumer protection and representation, et cetera). Most self-proclaimed conservatives are no less in favor of entitlements and regulation per se; they simply want to preserve the entitlements which benefit their particular interests, such as excess military spending, trade tariffs, indemnification of entire industries against legal action or accountability, et cetera. Conservatives certainly don’t object to invasive government regulation when it comes to issues in their basket, such as reproductive rights, recreational and medicinal use of marijuana, and asset forefeiture.
In reality, there is some rationale for both positions; unchecked entitlements offered to pander votes from critical swing blocks results in unchecked deficit spending (“bread & circuses”), and excessive regulatory authority generates often unworkable requirements against legitimate business which serves to foster “gaming the system”. On the other hand, not providing any services to underprivileged or underrepresented groups results in growing inequality of income and education, and no regulation of powerful industries results in fraud, abuse, and manipulation. We’ve certainly been witness to the fact that the mortgage and investment banking industries cannot hold themselves accountable for behaving irresponsibly. On the other hand, we’ve seen entitlement programs with no accountability requirements grow into such a sprawling mess that even a supposedly progressive liberal president agreed to disband them (unfortunately without any real system to track former defendants and evaluate the results).
Fascism is a political ideology of nationalistic authoritarianism, typically built as a cult of personality around a self-proclaimed strong central leader who possesses some unique trait or knowledge allowing him alone to lead the nation, typically dispensing with any but the most superficial aspects of democracy or representative government and often appealing to the racial or cultural superiority of its supporters by scapegoating marginal ethnic or cultural groups. This is the essentially universally accepted definition of fascism and bears no resemblance to “liberalism” (either in the classical, libertarian sense, or the modern progressive regulatory socioeconomic sense) in any material way, even if you extend it to obligate non-democratic socialism such as East Germany. Many Communist regimes have held certain trappings of fascist-like cults of personality but the notion of a specific ethnic group being uniquely superior really sits in opposition to Marxist, Maoist, and other major Communist doctrines. In other words, it is an attempt to take a concept that the extreme end of conservative political thought leans to and apply it to the entire opposite side of the political spectrum as misdirection.
Stranger
WADR this seems like a semantic game, where you define things as “entitlements” and then declare conservative support for them to be support for entitlements.
[Obama was a past master at this, where tax increases were transformed into “spending cuts” by use of the term “spending in the tax code”, and the like.]
Conservatives also don’t object to invasive government regulation when it comes to other issues in their basket like outlawing murder and theft etc. This is really a meaningless point.
(FWIW, I don’t know if you’re correct about conservative support for asset forfeiture - ISTM that it cuts across conservative/liberal lines.)
Centrally planned economics. Communists, who are to the left of liberals like this idea but it doesn’t seem to have worked well. Even the remaining communist nations have abandoned it for market economics.
Enforcing oppressive social hierarchies. Conservatives tend to support the government for this (oppression of minorities by majorities, oppression of women by men, etc) whereas liberals oppose this form of government force. However liberals do support government force to protect the oppressed groups (federal government intervening in the south in the 50s and 60s).
Espionage on citizens. A lot of the pushback against espionage comes from libertarians and liberals.
Support for military production and installation that the Department of Defense hasn’t asked for, doesn’t want, and does not increase the national security posture is the very definition of a corporate entitlement, as are protectionist tariffs and regulation which benefits corporate business interests at the expense of consumers to no net benefit for the nation.
This kind of semantic manipulation is in no way limited to Obama. Witness Dan Quayle’s justification for Republican-backed tax increases: “Our party has been accused of fooling the public by calling tax increases ‘revenue enhancement’. Not so. No one was fooled.”
Meanwhile, President Reagan presided over the largest non-wartime expansions of federal authority and federal spending in the history of the nation. Mother Jones: “These Charts Show How Ronald Reagan Actually Expanded The Federal Government”
You are now equivalencing decisions about personal behavior that do not harm or affect others or society as a whole to actions that are universally recognized as violent and destructive crimes.
Asset forefeiture goes glove-in-hand with the “War On Drugs”, a Reagan-initiated and conservative-backed political agenda. Virtually all asset forefeiture is justified in terms of preventing the use of purported profits from illegal drugs from being used to fund legal defense of drug distribution and associated charges, and is overwhelmingly supported by conservative politicians as necessary despite the dubious Consitutionality of such laws. So much for “strict Constitutionality” when it comes to an issue that conservative politicians feel morally righteous about.
Stranger
“When I use a word,” Humpty-Dumpty said…
I disagree that either “military production and installation that the Department of Defense hasn’t asked for, doesn’t want, and does not increase the national security posture” or “protectionist tariffs and regulation” are conservative causes.
I disagree that any of your examples are “personal behavior that do not harm or affect others or society as a whole”.
I disagree that your claim about overwhelming support from conservative politicians is true.
It is, of course, your right to disagree, but it doesn’t change the fact that excess military spending is federal money which is essentially given to military contractors for unneeded services and materiel, that conservatives enthusiastically support regulating personal behavior when it suits their whims, or that the justification for asset forefeiture stems from an aggressive, punitation-based policy on drug prohibition that is an essential plank of conservative ideology.
Stranger
ISTM that what you’re saying WRT all these issues is that conservatives tend to support things that are related to these things, but you have no evidence that conservatives support these things themselves.
Beren Erchamion wrote: “Communists want to abolish the state.”
You’re discussing theory, I’m talking practice.
(I can not only spout nonsense, I can recognize it as well.)
Go Arachnid Laser wtore: “I mean, it’s called National Socialism for a reason, you know.”
Yes, that reason is called “marketing ploy”. Socialism was a popular philosophy at the time and calling yourself socialist was a means of attaching to that popularity. Kind of like how contemporary fascists call themselves “conservatives”.
Poor liberals, they’re called fascists by both the left and the right.
Fascism entails reverence for the military; hyper-nationalism and patriotism; disrespect for the arts and intellectual pursuits unless it uplifts the state or traditional culture; reverence for traditional family units and gender roles; hatred of sexual deviants; and good ol’e corporatism. These are usually considered right-wing values.
Fascists and Nazis aren’t extinct. Spend some time in a Neo-Nazi forum and see if they seem like liberals to you. Call them a liberal and see what happens.
Another way to weigh a faction is how they view human nature and the blank slate. Generally, as you go to the right you find a more deterministic outlook. Certain people are superior to others, whether they’re monarchs, nobles, capitalists, or they’re a member of a certain race, caste, or country. As you go to the left the rhetoric embraces blank slate ideas like egalitarianism, feminism, anti-racism, or conceptualizing all of humanity working together. By this rubric, fascists are far right, socialists are far left.
During WWII, the governments of Germany, the USSR, and America had total war economies, and so were superficially similar in some respects. You could also perform silly comparisons, like saying 1. Nazis were anti-smoking and Hitler was a vegetarian 2. American liberals push anti-smoking and vegetarianism 3. QED.
If you equate “big government” (whatever that means) with liberalism then most powerful countries through history might be called liberal. They taxed and spent on huge militaries, bread and circuses, welfare to stop the peasants from rising up, and public works like roads, canals, and churches. Some of the more expansive empires sometimes had a cosmopolitan culture which accepted different races and religions in the interest of internal peace— obviously the forerunners of the dreaded SJW.
That’s only part of liberalism and certainly not “the roots”, which are grounded in liberty and equality.
Not all liberalism sees that, and certainly most modern liberalism doesn’t see it in in the Hegelian Sittlichkeit.
:rolleyes: Yes, he certainly had nothing to offer liberalism besides antistatism, that’s why he’s commonly know as the “Father of Conservatism”…
Oh, wait…
Liberalism does not stem from Hegel or Romanticism; radical Enlightenment authors like Voltaire and Rousseau were writing about it decades before either. Hegel wasn’t quite six years old at the start of the American Revolution.
That sounds like notruescotsmanism to me. But frankly, if you can tell me what’s the big difference between Hitler’s and Stalin’s policies, I’d like to know.
What they were writing about was classical liberalism, modern liberalism is a descendant of progressivism not classical liberalism.
Reagan was speaking about the economic policies of fascism not the militarism or the artistic trappings. Corporatism was the economic policy of fascism.
Corporatism is not liking corporation. Corporatism was the government organizing the economy into sectors and then dictating how those sectors should be run. It’s forerunners were the welfare state of Bismark and the war socialism of WW1.
Examples of each system.
Under a free market economy a bunch of people open restaurants and decide on their own what to serve, how much to charge, how much to pay workers, and everyone either gets paid by the owner for labor or supplies or pays the owner for food. Competition decides which restaurants stay in business.
Under socialism the state owns all the restaurants and the commisar of restaurants decides how they are run. The customers pay the state, and the suppliers and employees get paid by the state. No competition is allowed.
Under corporatism/fascism the governments bring the restaurant owners together in an organization and tells them how to run their restaurant. The owners still get paid or still pay but all prices are determined by the government. No competition is allowed.
Under liberalism people are granted a license by the government to open a restaurant and as long as they obey certain rules they are allowed to keep operating. Over time there are more and more rules. Competition is allowed but the proliferation of rules discourages it.
Liberals who voted for the Patriot Act: Joe Biden, Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Diane Feinstein, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Chuck Schumer, Debbie Stabenow, Nancy Pelosi, and Paul Wellstone. I could list more but those are some of the more prominent.
This is a distinction without a difference. By deciding who gets the money they decide what gets produced.
What “practice”? If there’s a state, then by definition you’re not practicing communism.
You know why he was kicked out?
Because he rejected the party’s stance on neutrality in WW1.
Concluding that socialists were a bunch of weak-kneed treasonous pantywaists, he then became violently anti-socialist.
Or in your world, does nobody ever change their mind?
What an incredibly unthinking thing to say.
Aside from the whole “calling it something doesn’t make it so” bit and the specific historical origins of German fascism, which was indeed violently anti-socialist…you do realize that the Nazi party was the German organization, not Italian, right? So it’s really not relevant to understanding anything Mussolini did.