Posted on 02/11/2005 11:53:24 AM PST by technochick99
This is a major barf alert that I wouldn't even post, but I think that Jim Rob is in one of the first pictures! You should be able to click on the link near the title to view the movie. It took some time to download.
Can't Jim sue them for using his image without permission?
Mussolini on fascism
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html
I too love the style of conceding the talking points and then using the "logic" therein to prove that it still doesn't work, but lots of what was posted there is flat-out wrong.
With regard to corporate power, it is no secret that Fascist governments were notorious for Nationalizing vital industries. The Nazis did this quite a bit.
With regard to Religion and Government, Dr. Britt has a lot of explaining to do. Hitler's personal literature shows a great deal of disdain for Christianity. One of the Nazi goals was to establish a non-religious society, because they felt that organized religion was the creation of Jews, ergo the domain of the inferior. It is no secret that fascist regumes all around the world have executed all kinds of people across all kinds of lines. The Nazi regime executed the mentally ill, Jews, Catholics, Gypsies, and, of course, homosexuals.
The notion that organized labor is somehow a threat to fascism is also ludicrous. Unionization did not exist in America for nearly a century of our history, and not even the most extreme on the left argue that we had a fascist government around the time of the founding. By the way, the Native Americans did not have unions. Were the Native Americans fascist? Organized labor may have done many good things for certain groups of individuals, but they did not inherently lead to the prevention of fascism. Indeed, the fascists were largely fueled by the working classes in Germany and in Italy.
I would again return to the key differences between Nationalism and Patriotism in general. The terms are wrongfully used as equals, when in fact they are different. Nationslism is loyalty to a nation, as in race, while Patriotism is loyalty to a country, as in political organization. The implications of the difference here are obvious. Using Nationalism to describe Patriotism is a dishonest attempt to hoodwink the public into believing that love of country is equivalent to racism.
Curiously, Britt ignores the presence of various powerful government regulations in fascist societites that were aimed at bettering the public health. The Nazis were the first to prohibit smoking at certain social functions, for example.
I hardly know where to begin with the "disdain for intellectuals and the arts" business. One would truly have to be stupid to call this a common characteristic, given the famous stories about Hitler's insatiable appetite for collecting art. In addition, it is noteworthy that quite a number of Nazi officials were considered intellectuals in their day. For a group of peple who hated intellectuals and academia so much, the Nazis sure managed to amass quite a number of intellectuals and researchers to do their bidding. Indeed, more than a few intellectuals in America were sympathizers to the Nazi cause, largely because of its anti-semitic appeal. Anti-semitism persists among the intelligentsia to this day in some circles.
The only media we have in America that it predictably controlled by the state and atriculates a constant viewpoint is the NPR/PBS nexus. Ironically, I note that it consistently tilts to the left. The rest of the media has at least some component of diversity to it.
As a final point, quite a number of fascist societies embraced the pseudo-scientific movement known as Eugenics. Eugenics was concerned with the selective breeding of human beings to create physically and mentally superior offspring by design. At its core, Eugenics carries with it the classical elitist undertone that the government ought to be taking action to control the ability of citizens to reproduce. That is what Planned Parenthood was initially about, and one would therefore not be surprised to learn that Margaret Sanger, its founder, was a Nazi sympathizer. Amazingly, everyone remembers Father Coughlin and perhaps even Charles Lindbergh, but they curiously forget about Margaret Sanger.
When I was sent this thing it included a point by point agreement by some lib, and under the point about art the comment was "Just ask Spongebob Squarepants about Bush's censorship of the arts".
You can't make this stuff up, it just pours out of them...
It seems fascism can be a little tricky to define. We know it's supposed to be a bad thing, so this allows people to use the word very recklessly, defining it in such a way to demonize those they disagree with. I've seen liberals argue that the U.S. is headed in the direction of fascism (using their definition of fascism of course). However, any country must necessarily be headed in some direction and so may be headed in the direction of fascism or in the direction of communism or in the direction of democracy, etc. In regards to the U.S., it becomes rather meaningless to speak about direction and wholly dishonest, to put it politely, to speak of the U.S. as any kind of fascist state.
Any country will have something in common with almost any definition of fascism, but one can not therefore conclude that country is fascist, which is exactly what many liberals appear to do.
I see that several libs have picked up on SpongeBob and have tried to make it a political issue. Christie Whitman, the faux Republican from NJ, was the last I saw reference this tempest in a teapot. The issue of SpongeBob never had anything to do with the feds, of course. This is just another reframe to try and cover the facts.
SpongeBob has been dealt with at length on here. The spat there was between Dr. James Dobson and an affiliate of tolerance.org, which is somehow connected to the SPLC. He offered his opinion that the group was trying to use cartoon characters to do political advocacy in the schools. Dobson for his part has clarified this one about a dozen times by now.
I guess the libs figured they'd reframe it into an attack on SpongeBob, hoping that they could do a replay of the Jerry Falwell thing with the Teletubbies. Even if Dobson were in fact trying to attack SpongeBob, Dobson is not a Bush official, so who cares? Private individuals can do whatever they want, and only the government can be guilty of "censorship". If voicing discontent with an idea is a form of censorship, I must be quite a book-burner. I suspect most of us would be, left or right.
Interesting how the same people who claim Dobson and crew are somehow censors when they complain about a privat enterprise they have no control over are the ones defending Ward Churchill, who is paid by taxpayer (government) funds.
Tree-Huggers are Fascists too.
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Fascist is such an elastic term that I'm starting to think to liberals it means "anyone who's not a liberal".
During the war, FDR imposed wage and price controls --- no bargaining for higher wages. He also promised to send in the Army when the UMW threatened a strike in the coal fields. Truman did send in the Army after the war to break a rail road strike.
Brilliant commentary! Do you mind if I steal it???
"What? You mean other people are allowed to have opinions that I disagree with? What is this, Nazi Germany?"
Certainly. There's no copyright and I'm sure you can easily improve on it. :)
Volley Bump, since I am using this elsewhere...
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