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To: x
Having trouble connecting the dots are you? :) Without having read a thing on this thread other than your post, let me reiterate: I don't like grand unified theories. They generate more noise than light.
94 posted on 09/27/2006 8:37:14 PM PDT by Torie
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To: Torie
Historians like to classify each other as "lumpers," who see the similarities between things and form big theories, and "splitters," who can't overlook the differences between things. They concentrate on the particulars and avoid big picture theories.

The thing about VD is he's got the idea in advance and he's ransacking history for the particulars to fill in his big picture. He's not considering the differences between the German, Italian, Japanese, and Arab cases. Even when we were fighting Japan, American public opinion avoided simply regarding Japan as another example of European fascism. Aside from Marxists, we were "splitters" who saw the differences, and use the term "militarism," rather than fascism.

His way of thinking is too subjective for me. Now we're involved in conflict with Chavez and other Latin American demagogues. So soon VD will dig up examples of governments and parties that under other circumstances might have favored or been neutral towards, and push them as examples of "Latinofascism." I certainly don't say that such movements and tendencies were good, just that the pattern gets imposed on things because of the needs of present policy. It doesn't always grow out of careful study of things in themselves and their own characteristics.

100 posted on 09/28/2006 1:46:16 PM PDT by x
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