[Centurion2000]

forgot to add my point :) ....

No communist or fascist state has survived longer than 100 years.

[weikel]

Hmmmm wouldn't agree there. Imperial Rome was pretty Facist in structure it kept on ticking and survived in a mummified form in the East for 1500 years( 1800 if you count the Holy Roman Empire as a legitimate heir to the Roman Empire in the West, I don't except perhaps for the reign of Charlemagne himself).

Democracies and Republics are what tend to fail. Don't know of any historically besides Switzerland which have gone 200 years without becoming a socialist mob rule statem. The mob gets full franchise rights eventually... the productive people get robbed blind to pay the looters and eventually when Atlas Shrugs a dictator comes to power.

[sneakypete]

No communist or fascist state has survived longer than 100 years.

Really? Ever heard of the feudal system?

[wcbtinman]

"No communist or fascist state has survived longer than 100 years."

I believe that the US is now a quasi-fascist state. The only reason that it survives in the US is that the citizens are armed, and that right is supposedly protected by the Constitution.

As more and more laws regulating and controlling firearms ( and other aspects of our everyday existence) appear, the US will move ever closer to the classical definition of Fascism. At some point, this movement will spill over into open conflict.