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Missing the old “Early Bird” . . . . What’s a good news source these days?
- Thread starter robav8r
- Start date
The name was a formality. It was not a "union," it was a communist Russian empire. And during WWII, Stalin appealed to the nationalist sentiments of the Russian people.
So basically, any form of totalitarianism is left wing, and communism is fascism? Even though a good part of both German and Italian fascism, both right-wing, was premised on virulent anti-Communism? You’re tying yourself in knots to make things comport to a definition only you use.
That’s some twisted logic. Trump is a fascist. Fascism is premised on right-wing nationalism, often tied to an idealized past. That’s why the Nazis got so into an idealized mythology of racial purity and Paganism mixed with Christianity. Make America Great Again is practically a carbon copy.
Oh come on dude. This is a completely biased take that goes beyond any sort of reasonability. It’s fine to have a liberal worldview, but to minimize the craziness of the left and maximize the craziness of the right in an attempt to make the right seem like it’s uniquely awful is ridiculous.
All the examples made by Random8145 are stances that have been espoused by certain individuals at the front of the modern day left. Just because said examples do not fit cleanly into the dictionary definition of “fascist” doesn’t detract from the idea that those are examples of the left espousing wackjob ideas. The right also espouses whack job ideas too, by the way.
Let’s all take our political blinders off and stop making sweeping generalizations about our ideological opposites. I’d like to think that the majority of Americans are reasonable people, who agree on far more than we don’t.
No, that is a different thing. You were talking about a pure popular vote, I’m not.
If you portion the electoral votes in each state by the percentage that the candidate gets in that state, then you maintain the disproportionate weight given to the small states, but also give all of the voters at least some voice in the election.
At the level of the nation-state, pretty much all forms of totalitarianism will be a form of left-wing (by the economic definition). That was one of the great realizations by the late, great free market economist Milton Friedman, that political freedom and economic freedom are inextricably interlinked. It is pretty hard to maintain a dictatorship if the private-sector can tell you to take a hike. At the non-nation state level, oppression can be right or left-wing, for example you can have very economically right-wing racists who hold the conspiratorial belief that the Jews secretly run the world and cause all the wars and the Federal Reserve is a primary instrument of such and have no problem oppressing the rights of non-whites, gays, etc...but in order to establish an actual authoritarian government, they will have to reverse on that whole free market absolutism thing.
There are some exceptions, but they are rare: Singapore, which is an authoritarian government but a free-enterprise economy, but Singapore is a city-state. Pinochet's Chile is another one, but going free-market under him it could be argued eventually led to his being removed from power after sixteen years. Modern China is another, a mixture of socialism that has gradually adopted free-enterprise, but since Xi made himself dictator, the CCP has since cracked down on much of the freedom of Chinese companies as it was viewed they were acting too independently. But otherwise, almost all authoritarian systems are socialist or involve a heavy-handed form of government intervention in the economy. This, BTW, is part of the reason why the West was so pro-help China, because of the belief that by growing the Chinese free enterprise economy, it would eventually lead to the transition to democracy. The CCP is well aware of this and has acted as needed to maintain its power.
And yes, communist systems it could be argued are generally a form of fascism. Communism the fantasy ideology is not, as in communism there is no state or business owners, everything belongs to everyone and it's all one big happy communist family, but to try and create it, you have to implement what basically amounts to a form of fascism.
If Trump (and MAGA) is a fascist, why do his positions so undermine such a system? (free-markets, reduce regulation, adhere to Constitution, gun rights, keep America out of wars, etc...?). And again, you can't just throw out "right-wing" without a definition. The Nazis for example were most definitely not strict believers in the rights of the individual and limiting the powers of the State. Their belief in racial purity was also scientific in nature (well pseudoscientific but no one thought it that at the time), via the (pseudo)science of eugenics. In the U.S., much of the early 20th century American Progressives were it could be argued a form of light-hearted fascist, and they leaned (economically) left. They disdained the limits of the Constitution, favored state control and top-down rule by the elites, seeking to remake America into an administrative state. They also were strict eugenicists. Planned Parenthood, for example, was founded by a eugenicist and run by a eugenicist for many years. In Buck v Bell, when the SCOTUS ruled that the State could forcibly sterilize people, numerous states then enacted such laws. California, being the most progressive state, performed more forced sterilizations than any state in the union. The Nazis took all this to a super-duper extreme, actively conquering other countries, trying to conquer others, and rounding up and executing all the "subhumans."
All of that heavily deviates from the right, which favored individual rights and limiting the powers of the State and rule by the people as opposed to experts. Also the right traditionally was very suspicious of militarism. This goes back to the Founding Fathers who were suspicious of standing armies and because the right correctly saw that militarism requires heavy state involvement and/or control in the economy. After WWII, we saw a new form of right emerge in the form of the neoconservatives, who generally were for individual rights, limited state power, free enterprise, but also for a very powerful standing military and okay with whatever state intervention was required to maintain it. This was in response to the experience of WWII and the onset of the Cold War and the recognition that the old way of having a tiny standing military wasn't realistic.
And before anyone starts dusting off the artillery, no I am not saying if you are a left-leaning Democrat or believe in abortion or give money to Planned Parenthood, you're the equivalent of a Nazi, I'm just pointing out how tossing out the "fascism=right-wing" claim is way overly simplistic.
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I will say I am not knowledgeable enough about the EC to speak about how it should be reformed. But I do not support the elimination of it as some on the left do.
The EC allocates votes to a state same as it allocates Congress peoples. Two votes (two senators) and then same as the reps. Wyoming gets 3 EC votes, for example.
The problem is winner take all. If the Repubs win by 50.1% or by 99% in Wyoming, they take all 3 votes. Since Wyoming always goes Repub, there is zero reason for a Prez candidate to give a shit about Wyoming, other than grubbing for money. PA gets all the love and attention.
Allocate those 3 votes proportionately, and now there’s a reason to care.
Could be wrong on this, but Maine is the only state/one of a very few states that allows this, albeit with two congressional districts/electoral votes.
But that example also gets at another dynamic that should be reformed- gerrymandering. Those two districts are pretty blue (along the coast) and pretty red (everything else). When really the state at large is pretty purple; the thing I appreciate is both of their Senators, Collins a more centrist Republican, and Angus King, an independent, take seriously their responsibility to parse through why they vote a certain way on an issue, weighing pros and cons, and how they determined the way they voted was best for the country and for their state.
I think knowing you’ll probably piss off half your voters is a healthy thing in terms of appreciating you work for them and communication and levelheadedness are valued. Gerrymandering allows politicians of either side to govern by soundbite only.
Such bullshit
Again man, let’s stop with the sweeping generalizations. The left and right can be (and have been throughout history) guilty of behavior that could be called totalitarian. Both at the national level (20th century dictators/national leaders come to mind) and at the modern day social level (American politicians).
From an economic standpoint, no it isn't. That's why you virtually never see any totalitarian states with vibrant free-enterprise economies. I think you also missed where I said that the right is fully capable of a totalitarian mindset too, but to implement it at the nation-state level, they have to renege on strict adherence to being (economically) right-wing.
I am not engaging in any sweeping generalizations here. I pointed out in my prior posts that the right is plenty capable of being okay with oppression. My point is that when it comes to actually creating a dictatorship though, they will economically have to move to the left.
Nebraska is the other state.
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
This is an unpopular opinion, but I don't think that we should have direct elections of either the President or Senators. Roll back to legislatures voting for Senators and governors should elect the President.
Our founding fathers envisioned that the federal government mostly worked for the states functioning as a glue to hold them together, and we've eroded that over time. When government officials elect their governing bodies, you're going to shift the focus away from the population of state A trying to impose their moral and social values on state B and onto more pressing interestate / federal matters that states feel like they can't solve alone (like education funding).
Our state and local governments are meant to be the most impactful to the everyday person. And it's much more likely for a blue state to elect a moderate red governor (and vice versa) than for entrenched states to change color in a Presidential election.