[mmercier]

knew i was going to get deservedly hammered on this one.

i was in error as i misread the original statement. the qualifier to his/her statement "traditionally" changes everything and proves that i can jump the gun.

i still however maintain my belief that communism and fascism are both extreme right wing ideologies.

a communist dictatorship and a fascist dictatorship are entities which enforce total state control over every aspect of the individual. there is no difference from the perspective of the citizen living under these forms of government. this is the right of the political spectrum, total government.

anarchy and libertarianism are the absence of government, this is left of the spectrum, total absence of government. again there is no difference as far as the citizen is concerned, the strong survive and the rest perish.

we live in the middle, a republican or liberal democracy.

communists who have been dictating educational policy in the west for the last 90 years so hate their opposition that they have schooled generations to believe they are opposite philosophically. in practice there was no difference between hitler and stalin. do you believe their respective philosophies define both ends of the political spectrum...? if so then total government control exists as the entire realm of human possibility on the extreme left and extreme right.

i reject this notion in totality.

hope this clarifies things, though nothing is clear when these issues are considered

[marron]

in practice there was no difference between hitler and stalin. do you believe their respective philosophies define both ends of the political spectrum...? if so then total government control exists as the entire realm of human possibility on the extreme left and extreme right. i reject this notion in totality.

Then you and I are more or less in agreement that we are not half way between Stalin and Hitler. You have tried to make sense of it by putting both at one end of the spectrum, and I have resolved it by rejecting the model altogether. But we agree that you can't get to Jefferson by watering down Hitler or Marx, which renders the traditional left-vs-right meaningless.