Heck , Dissonance, I don’t think that the left-thinkers who post on this board are all defenders of Communism, my overcute remark was merely intended as a mild jab at the left in good humor… as well as to underline the salient point that the same draconian methods are used by both communists and fascists alike in order to keep their respective tyrants in power.
And as to my use of color in my post… well, after all,
it is** Christmas.** 
Thank you. I would say the process leading to a state of fascism should take many years, it’s not something that would happen overnight. And it’s a condition that leaders abuse their executive power at key moments in time to curb their opponents (look at recent events in Azerbaijan vs. Georgia), something that’s not happening in America. Frankly, I think Americans love their Constitution too much for it to ever be done away with.
My concern for America isn’t that the current Administration may be granted four more years to implement its politics, it’s a 60 seats GOP controlled Senate combined with four upcoming years during which there will be a string of judiciaries to replace, including probably 2 or 3 at the SCOTUS. This may tilt America decisively to the right for many years, and may effect redistricting, campaign contribution laws, the freedom of information act, etc. Not to mention possible civil rights limitations somewhere down the road. For America I think the 2004 elections may be the most important elections since 1960.
Moving on to something else, may I ask you US dopers how much public support Ann Coulter actually enjoys? Reading this thread made me go back to read mhendos’s excellent post from a while back, a few snaps:
And this:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=213821
Anyone care to elaborate on her standing?
**My concern for America isn’t that the current Administration may be granted four more years to implement its politics, it’s a 60 seats GOP controlled Senate combined with four upcoming years during which there will be a string of judiciaries to replace, including probably 2 or 3 at the SCOTUS. This may tilt America decisively to the right for many years, and may effect redistricting, campaign contribution laws, the freedom of information act, etc. Not to mention possible civil rights limitations somewhere down the road. For America I think the 2004 elections may be the most important elections since 1960.
**
It’s not so simple as just giving Republicans a majority. There are just as many Republicans who are civil libertarian as there are John Ashcrofts. They, combined with the Democrats that care about civil liberties(there are less than some people think), will help to nix any attempts at a Patriot II. As for the judiciary, right-wing politics on the judicial level is mainly a concern for liberals who don’t want many limitations on federal power. At worst, a right wing judiciary will let states decide abortion rights. In all other cases, you can expect a right-wing judiciary to behave much as the judiciary did prior to the New Deal.
Ann Coulter has some followers, much as Michael Moore does. They tend to be inured to any sense of reason, proportion, or intelligence. In both cases, they mainly just want to hear someone rant about certain things, and these two demagogues deliver in spades.
And yes, the followers are even more scary than the demagogues. I see the same thing to a smaller extent among Deaniacs. Dean himself is not particularly threatening, but his followers are to put it mildly, emotional when any criticism of him comes up, ESPECIALLY when liberals do it.
Well, after checking the work, and finding that nobody, but nobody, agrees with your assessment that the United States qualifies as fascist, are you rethinking your position?
One wonders about people who create a thread and then never return. It’s just as likely that Stoid has not read any follow-up posts and is unaware of how unimpressed this community is with her thesis.
Posting in red and green is really frustrating for the red-green color blind among us, by the way. 
I think you really hit the nail on the head with regards to curbing opponents and the love for the Constitution. During its worst moments, the US has always allowed free and fair elections, even in the midst of civil war as in 1864. The curbing of civil liberties as has been seen to some extent in the past as well as currently hasn’t ever extended to curbing political opponents. Were anyone to attempt to do so, the uproar would be as great from the right as it would be from the left. While another four more years under the Bush administration isn’t something I’d like to see, I can’t see it fundamentally affecting the US political landscape.
I think the 2004 election is going to be a major election with regards to validating or reputing Bush for his handling of Iraq, but I can’t see it seriously affecting fundamental civil liberties, even if it results in a serious tilt to the right in the house, senate and the SCOTUS. As adaher said, there are as many Republicans who are civil libertarians as there are John Ashcroft’s. Regarding Ann Coulter, personally I disregard her as complete demagoguery, sort of an extreme Rush Limbaugh. She isn’t going to change America.
I think the U.S. population may be more nationalistic than those of other countries, but I don’t hear anyone, even Dick Cheney, crying out for lebensraum in Canada & Mexico. I also fail to see why pride in the military should be considered a bad thing. As for “a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia,” Britt needs to get real. Look at the vast number of foreign restaurants in this country, the influence Hong Kong action films have on our own films, the millions who listen to world music, etc. You’ve called me a right-winger before, Stoid, but on Thursday I watched The Fellowship of the Ring, a movie made in New Zealand with a largely British cast; on Friday I finished reading Oliver Twist and reread some Sandman comics, both being written by Brits; and today I ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Yeah, we Americans are xenophobic as hell.
I don’t see many advocating the repeal of the Bill of Rights.
Professor Britt needs to ID these scapegoats. I think al-Queda & the Taliban are enemies for real. Saddam apparently wasn’t much of a threat, but I think you can make a good case for international action to curb a vicious regime; the Bush administration was just too stupid to do so. And while there have been abuses in this country’s treatment of Moslems, none have been on the scale of the interment of Japanese citizens in WW2.
Prove that “a disproportionate share of national resources” is allocated to the American military, which, incidentally, has always been under civilian control.
True enough, but anyone who thinks American women are as badly treated as German women were is simply ignorant of history. As for the anti-abortion remark, I have encountered a few liberals who are anti-abortion. As for homophobia, no doubt the Nazis were incarcerating homosexuals in concentration camps toward the end of their regime. However, a fair number of homosexuals were quite prominent in the early Nazi movement, most notably Ernst Roehm. William Shirer goes more into this in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
We don’t have this.
Bush and probably most people in his administration consider themselves Christians. However, Americans remain free to practice Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Wicca, etc. Furthermore, both you and Prof. Britt need to read Shirer’s The Nightmare Years 1930-1940. He details at fairly great length the Nazis’ assault on both Lutheranism and Catholicism. It’s also worth noting that Mussolini began his career as a Socialist with an especial dislike of religion.
Strictures on coporations in this country may be loose by your standards, but I fail to see that the personal lives of individuals are under strict control in this country. If they were, I and several of my friends would be in jail by now.
I grant you the unions ain’t what they used to be in this country, but that stems from a globalized economy. In The Nighmare Years, Shirer also contends that many German workers were willing to accept Nazi BS because they had jobs once again.
Been dragged off in chains lately, Stoid?
Yeah, we do have one of the largest prison populations in the world, but that stems from our insane War on Drugs. And somehow, I don’t see Hitler & other tyrants turning a benign eye on turning on.
It’s been a problem in this country since The Revolutionary War. The Bush administration didn’t invent them, and they aren’t going away soon. And based on my observations of Indiana Democrats, both parties in this country are equally guilty of these practices.
2000 is only one election, Stoid. Furthermore, had the SCOTUS made the correct ruling, according to the U.S. Constitution, the Florida vote would have been declared null & void, and the matter referred to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Oh, BTW, Stoid, if I were you or Prof. Britt, I would get used to Dubya. He’s going to be President for four more years.
Goody gumdrops! Well, that’s certainly a relief. Stoid, you really should stop making these absurd claims, PC is on to you!
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I refer you to History of Civilization, Vol.1- 254
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Let me get this straight. You are offering your own cosmopolitan tastes in culture and restaraunts as proof that Americans are not overweeningly nationalistic? Sarcasm collapses, you are too many for me. I fold.
** Then you haven’t been paying attention. And, of course, not * all* our civil rights, just the people who don’t deserve them, who misuse and abuse them. You know who they are.
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“And, this years SDMB Award for Thunderous Understatement, the nominees are…”
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Splendid news! We are not nearly so hideous as we used to be! I’m sure thats an enormous relief to our Religously Unreliable co-citizens!
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A military budget that exceeds the total spent by the next 10 nations combined? Would that qualify? Does for me, YMMV.
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As have we all. Point of fact, I am one. I simply don’t believe I have the right to tell a woman what she can, or cannot, do with her own body.
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You’re kidding, right? Droll underplayed humor?
psssssst! Night of the Long Knives You could look it up
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Yet.
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Well, yes, I suppose. Of the type of Christianity that presents the Sermon on the Mount as a stirring polemic in favor of repealing corporate taxation.
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This conjecture might require just a wee tad of backing. Not that you’re necessarily wrong, but its a bit naked, don’t you think?
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That’s a perfectly legitimate fetish!
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I am quite certain there is a point here. Regretably, it eludes me.
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Well, its the only one I can recall wherein someone actually lost the popular vote, and proceeded to rule as though he were favored with an absolute mandate by landslide.
All valid points Dissonance, and to which I agree. I’m not concerned that Congress will ever go anti-civil rights. But I am puzzled by the immediate future of the balance of powers. To be more specific, in my view the current Administration - the executive power - has adopted a policy of secrecy, mostly as it relates to information and documents, but also when detaining and prosecuting citizens suspected of “terrorism-related” activities. Usually, if the executive power is about to go to far, it’s the judiciary branch that has to keep them in place, at least until the legislative branch can get their act together. A judiciary tilted to the right or far-right might not be as willing to do that.
http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/8/podesta-j.html
One example is the threat of declaring defendants enemy combatants and thereafter take them away for secret trials, even if the case is already in civil court.
http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/8/gourevitch-a.html
And it’s not only non-citizens that has been targeted:
Because…?
As for fraudulent elections…Diebold, anyone? I have little confidence in the future.
Stoid: For the simple fact that I don’t see any of the current candidates being able to beat him.
Incidentally, Stoid, you started this thread; why don’t you have the intellectual honesty to address some of the points raised therein?
elucidator: Try offering something besides ad hominemattacks sometimes, and I might actually think you have the IQ of a rotting rutabaga and honesty of a pimp. Until that time, drop dead, maggot.
Stoid, I think your OP is valuable because we do need to be vigilant that our Constitution is not twisted and distorted by any political party.
Was that supposed to set us straight about something? Yes, I would say there is a disdain for human rights:
“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” That was presented in Congress as an amendment to the Constitution almost 32 years ago, but those rights haven’t been guaranteed yet.
That means that both men and women may be denied equal rights because of their sex.
Even Amnesty International, winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, has been critical of our country’s abuses of human rights since 9-11.
Iraq, Saddam Hussein, Muslims, Muslim-Americans
Moreso than it was when President Bush took the Oath of Office. That is why there is so much buzz about and opposition to the Patriot Act and Patriot Act II. In the name of “National Security,” the Bush Administration, and John Ashcroft in particular, seek to bypass some of our civil rights and they have been doing just that. Fortunately, the courts are beginning to step in. The government is not supposed to have the right to hold someone without charging her or him, without giving her or him access to an attorney, and without a trial. But they have done just that – in the name of National Security.
I wonder if you are old enough to remember that Nixon refused to turn over the Oval Office tapes to Congress because of “National Security.” I’ve been skeptical of its frequent use ever since. We can’t even find out who advised Vice President Cheney on the Energy Policy because of “National Security.”
Meanwhile, I have become very nationally insecure.
Some citizens are very adamant that we do indeed have an official state religion and that it is Christianity.
Our currency and our Pledge of Allegiance indicate that we are at least Deists.
Just this week I heard about the new “faith based prison” in Florida.
And certainly, when I worked for the government as a teacher, I was harassed by the fundamentalists who ran the school system and were offended that I took All Saints’ Day and Ash Wednesday off each year. And each year I had to go through hoops of fire to get the time off – even though they knew they had to allow it.
And I had to sit through hell fire and damnation sermons by televangelists in public school assemblies.
YES! Fifty years ago the poor were looked upon with compassion and respect. We recognized that what had befallen them could happen to any of us. We didn’t assume that the poor were lazy or ambitionless. There was no shame in being poor. And there was a lot of pride in being able to give someone a helping hand or a leg up.
No one has said that things are run perfectly in France or Switzerland or Denmark – so apparently that’s not what we think. You just made that up. But I will say a few things about the way that Denmark “muddles” through.
I saw no poverty there at all. No homeless. No one begging for food or sleeping on the street. I did see an enormous pride in work. No one worried about health care or insurance because if they got sick or had a baby, it was paid for. And they got five weeks of vacation time every year.
They were part of the “coalition” in Iraq. They sent a submarine to a desert war. (Well, they really don’t like to hurt anyone.)
I don’t think they would change places with the most powerful country on earth.
[Moderator Hat: ON]
The Peyote Coyote said:
Ah, irony, thy name is Peyote Coyote. Thy other name is Rulebreaker.
I find it hard to believe you could actually accuse somebody else of ad hominem attack while at the very same time engaging in that rule violation. But there it is for all to see.
Let’s make this very simple: Don’t do it again. Ever. Period.
Got it? Good.
David B, SDMB Great Debates Moderator
[Moderator Hat: OFF]
Well, actually, the full protection of all rights has been guarantied for quite some time. The Fourteenth Amendment (which most certainly has been ratified states:
This surely sounds like gender inclusive language to me. The ERA is completely redundant to this.
Zoe, while Denmark is indeed a lovely country which I do love, it has been known to have homelessness and poverty. Not to the degree that we have it here in the US, but it does exist. As the Danes told me when I thought otherwise, “Du tror, at Danmark er et lille eventyrland.”* I don’t claim to be incredibly familiar with Denmark’s non-pretty underside, but it’s there.
*Essentially, “You think we live in a fairy-tale country, don’t you?” --in a very annoyed tone of voice.
I take these 14 points as indicators, not definitive proof, of fascism. It’s more like a sliding scale than a simple binary thing. The idea is to catch the fascism BEFORE you’re being dragged to the clink for thought crimes. Therefore, the criticisms that treat these indicators as proofs are off base.
Nationalism? There’s been a definite increase. America is a lone wolf, even its allies aren’t trustworthy, let alone those Evil Terror States. That said, it’s not even close to the intensity characteristic of the regimes cited. We’re moving in the wrong direction, but we haven’t moved far. If you think of the scale as a clock face, we were at 15 past noon, now we’re at 1:30.
Disdain for human rights?
If you grant that civil rights are a subset of human rights, definitely. The courts have made it legal for the cops to appropriate one’s property and money for certain classes of crime, and have generally decreased the requirements that police behave properly in conducting criminal investigations.
More alrarmingly, there has indeed been some discussion of the notion that instituting torture in the U.S. would be possible or desirable (lawyer Alan Dershowitz and Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter, for example). And there are widespread allegations that the U.S. has intentionally released captured terrorist suspects to our allies who DO practice torture.
Finally, there’s the whole secret tribunals for terrorists thing and their lawyerless detention at Gitmo. Not good. Not good at all.
I’d say the clock hand was on one, it’s now moved to 3:30. We’ve got a way to go, but the groundwork has been laid.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, Ann Coulter has been decrying liberals as traitors. She doesn’t have a real big public following, but I wonder about all the teevee idjits who are nodding in agreement with the hot blonde who hates to much. Still, Bush did refuse to scapegoat Muslims publicly, though there is that profiling thing. I’d call the clock moving from 1 to 1:30.
I’d say we’re getting more militant, and what’s more worrisome, the military is getting more militant and more divergent from the mainstream. Since the 1970s, when I’d say we were at about 12:05, We’ve moved to about 3 o clock. Not a good thing, but still a long way to go.
I’d say we’ve become less sexist generally since the 1950s, moving from about six o clock to about 2:30. Good on us.
Vast movement on this one. We used to be at about 12:15 in the sixties and seventies, now we’re at about 4:30. Fox News is an admin. mouthpiece, talk radio, um, ditto and mainstream news outlets are increasingly owned by a small number of corporate oligarchies, which might just account for their strange silence on many issues, as noted by others. The recent FCC decision to go against more than 90 percent of public comment to allow increased concentration of media ownership is also a bad sign. Maybe we’re at 5 o’clock.
Definitely, wrt terrorists accessing our borders and such. But understandably so, given 9/11. Unless Ann Coulter’s scapegoating combines with this to produce a new wave of McCarthyism, I’d say we’re at about 6, with enormous potential to move either way depending on events. We were more obsessed in the 1950s with McCarthyism, but we’re definitely in danger of returning there if things go wrong.
The fundies definitely have clout with the ruling party right now, and they’ve increasingly tried to pass coercive legislation, but without much success. We’ve moved from 12:15 in the seventies to about 2 o’clock.
Definitely a major problem now. Lots of power, little accountability, and most worrisome, the power of money to control elections appears unstoppable no matter what legislation gets passed. The difference between Repub and Dem warchests is ludicrous. We’ve definitely moved from about six o’clock to aobut 9 o’clock on this one.
Jailing and murder are merely the crudest and clumsiest tools of oppression. Still, labor unions ahven’t really been powerful for decades. I’d say we haven’t moved much from 6 o clock on this one. There’s plenty of legislative and corporate power arrayed against labor unions, but not much popular call for them either. Still, give us a few more years of jobless recession, things may heat up.
Not much supression, plenty of disdain. I’d say we’re at 1:30 on this one and not moving much.
Definitely. the War on Some Drugs anyone? We’ve got the biggest fucking prison population in the world, far in advance on a per capita basis of any industrialized country, and probably almost all of the nonindustrialized ones, too. 10 o’clock and not moving much at present.
Cronyism and corruption?
The Master has spoken on this one in his recent column answering the quesitosn, have we moved into a new Gilded Age. His answer involved al ot of careful defining and qualifying, but was an overall “yes.” We’ve moved from about 6 to 9 o clock. Also not good.
Fraudulent elections?
In the 2000 Presidential election, there’s ample evidence that the Republican party used its control of the election machinery to disenfranchise opposition voters (the Choice Point purge of legitimate voters) disallowing legal votes (hanging chads anyone?) and used the power of a Supreme Court appointed by the father of the “winning” candidate.
We used to be at about 3 on the federal level here, though the state level in some places was more like, um, 12, with both Dems and Pubs guilty. Now we’re at a 5 on the Federal level, and we’re in serious danger if we dont’ look very, very hard at Diebold’s software in the next year or so.
We don’t live under fascism, it’s not something to stay up late at night worrying about … yet. But this is one beast best caught and killed when it’s very young.
Nearly all fourteen of these points could easily about as easily be applied to Sweden or Mexico as the United States, in that they are so broad in nature. Is there some nation where there are no powerful economic interests in collusion with politicos? Or where women make up exactly 51% of the national legislature!
The term “nationalism” has always been problematic when applied to America for a simple reason. What exactly constitutes the American nation? This makes the premise of American Nationalism to be rather limited. Its more than a simple matter of nationalism being a dirty word and “patriotism” being warm and cuddly sounding by contrast. They simply refer to two different things.
Patriotism can be and is carried to extremes by elements in the United States; and I can see why some aspects of our patriotic culture can seem rather troubling to people who live in less demonstratively patriotic nations. But I would counter that the prevalence of flag waving, lapel wearing, and array of bombastic, maudlin, and cheery national hymns is here due to our lack of a cohesive nationalism in the traditional ethnic sense of the word. A Greek or Dane only has to speak his tongue to affirm his nationhood, we have to oversymbolise it because nearly everything we have culturally is borrowed, loaned, or stolen.
Also the United States has a very large military partly due to our sheer size in relation to other developed nations (if we committed ourselves militarily to the scale of a fascist/communist regime, we’d easily have 20 million soldiers instead of 1.2 million).
In truly fascist regimes, militarization was pervasive throughout society. In the United States there is a genuine aversion to military involvement in “civilian” spheres. In many ways, our military has become increasingly civilianized instead. I think most United States World War II or Korea War veterans would be astonished at how decidely non-military basic training or barracks life is today in comparison to their own experiences.
Also, I think while most Americans are supportive of military personel, there is an ingrained suspicion toward the military establishment which runs quite deep. I truly think, short of a full blown World War, that a draft is now politically impossible.American individualism and pluralism tends to run counter to avid militarism.
Totalitarianism is always a distant possibility. However we are nowhere close to that as of now. Make no mistake, some of our individual freedoms have become imperiled by the last two presidential administrations, but I also would argue that America was closer to totalitarianism in the 1940’s and 1950’s than it is today.
syncro: I agree. I think I could come up with a much more credible list of 10 or so points “proving” that the US is teetering on the edge of Socialism. The more the left cries 'Fascism", the more they look like wild-eyed idiots and end up marginalizing themselves.