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To: 2111USMC
"Progressive" is code for either socialism or fascism... I haven't decided which. Perhaps it should become the word used for fascists who, like communists, eschew the notion of nations, but unlike communists, only wish to CONTROL, not own, business.

As far as I have been able to discover, that is a political philosophy which currently bears no name.

That would make:

Progressive is to Fascist :: as :: Communist is to Socialist.

To make it more clear, Progressive is a MORE EXTREME form of Fascism, just as Communism is a more extreme form of Socialism. . . . Both apply to a "one world government" philosophy. However in Progressivism, the means of production is CONTROLLED and REGIMENTED by government, whereas in Communism it is OWNED by government.

Since Pelosi and Dear Leader describe themselves as "Progressive", and they are more extreme than Fascists when it comes to the devolution of "nation-states" but Fascist in every other way (see this link), this would fit their own self description as well as provide a textbook example of Progressivism- a more extreme form of Fascism.

80 posted on 08/16/2009 8:23:29 PM PDT by AFPhys ((.Praying for President Bush, our troops, their families, and all my American neighbors..))
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To: AFPhys
Both Fascism and Communism are left-wing, socialist (defined as a statist, i.e. directly opposite from capitalist free market economic - not political - system) systems. In fact, Marx and Engels used socialism and Communism interchangeably, but only because their original ideas (Das Kapital) implied state's total ownership of means of production within a classless society.

The name Nazi itself came from official name NSDAP - National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei - National Socialist German Workers' Party. Classic Fascism allows private ownership but relies partially on corporatism as means of total economic control, while not necessarily ownership of all means of production. As Goebbels said, "Why own when you can control?" This allows some individualism and reward of initiative and, while socialist, is a more efficient economic system than Communism, which has fallen under its own weight everywhere. This is why these days we are seeing formerly Communist countries like Russia and China relaxing the state's ownership and moving towards more economically efficient fascist system, while remaining essentially socialist and statist in nature.

Shortly before Gorbachev's "perestroika", his predecessor Leonid Brezhnev tried to explain away harsh economic conditions and failures as not yet having a complete Communism, but rather Soviet Union being still in a stage of "advanced socialism".

"Progressives" is just another name that "liberals" in the West adopted when "liberal" became discredited and associated too closely with policies and ideology of Soviet communism. In fact, Henry Wallace, FDR's Vice President and friend of Joe Stalin, ran for President on the Progressive Party ticket and was endorsed and supported by Communist Party USA.

More recently, faced with the fall of Communism and its discredited economic system, "Progressives" / "liberals" moved away from the notion of government ownership and into government control through "taxation, restrictions and regulations". Also, some leaders (most visibly, Tony Blair in UK and Bill Clinton in USA, via DLC platform, as well as Hillary Clinton; Paul Martin in Canada and Kevin Rudd in Australia) of different left-wing Labour / People's / Workers' / Progressive parties in the West started advocating an economic system of Third Way, which is a close integration of government and private enterprise, especially large corporations.

If Third Way sounds a lot like a mask for fascism, it's because it is. That's where "Progressives" are really moving, whether most of them realize it or not. of course, they don't want to be associated with fascism, they are just trying on different - new or well forgotten - names or terms. Ironically, for a long time, they have taken to using the term "fascist" and "right-winger" to attack and discredit anyone who disagrees with them, when they are correctly accused of favoring communist or socialist philosophy, and because the term, unfortunately, is much more pejorative than "communist" or "socialist". It simply serves as a convenient counter argument for "leftists" commonly associated with "socialism" or "communism" but not "fascism".

The view that Fascism is a right-wing ideology became fixed, incorrectly, after Hitler and National Socialists (Nazis) persecuted, among others, German Communists, who were understood to be left-wing. Somewhat similar to what happened earlier in Russia around and after Communist Revolution, with a hard split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks (factions of Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party) over relatively minor differences in proposed direction and policies.

83 posted on 08/16/2009 11:30:40 PM PDT by CutePuppy (If you don't ask the right questions you may not get the right answers)
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