"The Party of Civil Rights" -Kevin Williamson

[legend11 32]

This article recently came out in the National Review, and has generated a great deal of discussion from other notable journalists such as Jonathan Chait. I think it's worth the read, simply because of its current scope of dialog that it's generating: http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/300432

 

This magazine has long specialized in debunking pernicious political myths, and Jonah Goldberg has now provided an illuminating catalogue of tyrannical clichés, but worse than the myth and the cliché is the outright lie, the utter fabrication with malice aforethought, and my nominee for the worst of them is the popular but indefensible belief that the two major U.S. political parties somehow “switched places†vis-à-vis protecting the rights of black Americans, a development believed to be roughly concurrent with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the rise of Richard Nixon. That Republicans have let Democrats get away with this mountebankery is a symptom of their political fecklessness, and in letting them get away with it the GOP has allowed itself to be cut off rhetorically from a pantheon of Republican political heroes, from Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass to Susan B. Anthony, who represent an expression of conservative ideals as true and relevant today as it was in the 19th century. Perhaps even worse, the Democrats have been allowed to rhetorically bury their Bull Connors, their longstanding affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan, and their pitiless opposition to practically every major piece of civil-rights legislation for a century. Republicans may not be able to make significant inroads among black voters in the coming elections, but they would do well to demolish this myth nonetheless.

 

Even if the Republicans’ rise in the South had happened suddenly in the 1960s (it didn’t) and even if there were no competing explanation (there is), racism — or, more precisely, white southern resentment over the political successes of the civil-rights movement — would be an implausible explanation for the dissolution of the Democratic bloc in the old Confederacy and the emergence of a Republican stronghold there. That is because those southerners who defected from the Democratic party in the 1960s and thereafter did so to join a Republican party that was far more enlightened on racial issues than were the Democrats of the era, and had been for a century. There is no radical break in the Republicans’ civil-rights history: From abolition to Reconstruction to the anti-lynching laws, from the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964, there exists a line that is by no means perfectly straight or unwavering but that nonetheless connects the politics of Lincoln with those of Dwight D. Eisenhower. And from slavery and secession to remorseless opposition to everything from Reconstruction to the anti-lynching laws, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, there exists a similarly identifiable line connecting John Calhoun and Lyndon Baines Johnson. Supporting civil-rights reform was not a radical turnaround for congressional Republicans in 1964, but it was a radical turnaround for Johnson and the Democrats.

 

The depth of Johnson’s prior opposition to civil-rights reform must be digested in some detail to be properly appreciated. In the House, he did not represent a particularly segregationist constituency (it “made up for being less intensely segregationist than the rest of the South by being more intensely anti-Communist,†as the New York Times put it), but Johnson was practically antebellum in his views. Never mind civil rights or voting rights: In Congress, Johnson had consistently and repeatedly voted against legislation to protect black Americans from lynching. As a leader in the Senate, Johnson did his best to cripple the Civil Rights Act of 1957; not having votes sufficient to stop it, he managed to reduce it to an act of mere symbolism by excising the enforcement provisions before sending it to the desk of President Eisenhower. Johnson’s Democratic colleague Strom Thurmond nonetheless went to the trouble of staging the longest filibuster in history up to that point, speaking for 24 hours in a futile attempt to block the bill. The reformers came back in 1960 with an act to remedy the deficiencies of the 1957 act, and Johnson’s Senate Democrats again staged a record-setting filibuster. In both cases, the “master of the Senate†petitioned the northeastern Kennedy liberals to credit him for having seen to the law’s passage while at the same time boasting to southern Democrats that he had taken the teeth out of the legislation. Johnson would later explain his thinking thus: “These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days, and that’s a problem for us, since they’ve got something now they never had before: the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this — we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.â€

 

Johnson did not spring up from the Democratic soil ex nihilo. Not one Democrat in Congress voted for the Fourteenth Amendment. Not one Democrat in Congress voted for the Fifteenth Amendment. Not one voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Eisenhower as a general began the process of desegregating the military, and Truman as president formalized it, but the main reason either had to act was that President Wilson, the personification of Democratic progressivism, had resegregated previously integrated federal facilities. (“If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it,†he declared.) Klansmen from Senator Robert Byrd to Justice Hugo Black held prominent positions in the Democratic party — and President Wilson chose the Klan epic Birth of a Nation to be the first film ever shown at the White House.

 

Johnson himself denounced an earlier attempt at civil-rights reform as the “nigger bill.†So what happened in 1964 to change Democrats’ minds? In fact, nothing.

 

President Johnson was nothing if not shrewd, and he knew something that very few popular political commentators appreciate today: The Democrats began losing the “solid South†in the late 1930s — at the same time as they were picking up votes from northern blacks. The Civil War and the sting of Reconstruction had indeed produced a political monopoly for southern Democrats that lasted for decades, but the New Deal had been polarizing. It was very popular in much of the country, including much of the South — Johnson owed his election to the House to his New Deal platform and Roosevelt connections — but there was a conservative backlash against it, and that backlash eventually drove New Deal critics to the Republican party. Likewise, adherents of the isolationist tendency in American politics, which is never very far from the surface, looked askance at what Bob Dole would later famously call “Democrat wars†(a factor that would become especially relevant when the Democrats under Kennedy and Johnson committed the United States to a very divisive war in Vietnam). The tiniest cracks in the Democrats’ southern bloc began to appear with the backlash to FDR’s court-packing scheme and the recession of 1937. Republicans would pick up 81 House seats in the 1938 election, with West Virginia’s all-Democrat delegation ceasing to be so with the acquisition of its first Republican. Kentucky elected a Republican House member in 1934, as did Missouri, while Tennessee’s first Republican House member, elected in 1918, was joined by another in 1932. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the Republican party, though marginal, began to take hold in the South — but not very quickly: Dixie would not send its first Republican to the Senate until 1961, with Texas’s election of John Tower.

 

At the same time, Republicans went through a long dry spell on civil-rights progress. Many of them believed, wrongly, that the issue had been more or less resolved by the constitutional amendments that had been enacted to ensure the full citizenship of black Americans after the Civil War, and that the enduring marginalization of black citizens, particularly in the Democratic states, was a problem that would be healed by time, economic development, and organic social change rather than through a second political confrontation between North and South. (As late as 1964, the Republican platform argued that “the elimination of any such discrimination is a matter of heart, conscience, and education, as well as of equal rights under law.â€) The conventional Republican wisdom of the day held that the South was backward because it was poor rather than poor because it was backward. And their strongest piece of evidence for that belief was that Republican support in the South was not among poor whites or the old elites — the two groups that tended to hold the most retrograde beliefs on race — but among the emerging southern middle class, a fact recently documented by professors Byron Shafer and Richard Johnston in The End of Southern Exceptionalism: Class, Race, and Partisan Change in the Postwar South (Harvard University Press, 2006). Which is to say: The Republican rise in the South was contemporaneous with the decline of race as the most important political question and tracked the rise of middle-class voters moved mainly by economic considerations and anti-Communism.

 

The South had been in effect a Third World country within the United States, and that changed with the post-war economic boom. As Clay Risen put it in the New York Times: “The South transformed itself from a backward region to an engine of the national economy, giving rise to a sizable new wealthy suburban class. This class, not surprisingly, began to vote for the party that best represented its economic interests: the GOP. Working-class whites, however — and here’s the surprise — even those in areas with large black populations, stayed loyal to the Democrats. This was true until the 90s, when the nation as a whole turned rightward in Congressional voting.†The mythmakers would have you believe that it was the opposite: that your white-hooded hillbilly trailer-dwelling tornado-bait voters jumped ship because LBJ signed a civil-rights bill (passed on the strength of disproportionately Republican support in Congress). The facts suggest otherwise.

 

There is no question that Republicans in the 1960s and thereafter hoped to pick up the angry populists who had delivered several states to Wallace. That was Patrick J. Buchanan’s portfolio in the Nixon campaign. But in the main they did not do so by appeal to racial resentment, direct or indirect. The conservative ascendency of 1964 saw the nomination of Barry Goldwater, a western libertarian who had never been strongly identified with racial issues one way or the other, but who was a principled critic of the 1964 act and its extension of federal power. Goldwater had supported the 1957 and 1960 acts but believed that Title II and Title VII of the 1964 bill were unconstitutional, based in part on a 75-page brief from Robert Bork. But far from extending a welcoming hand to southern segregationists, he named as his running mate a New York representative, William E. Miller, who had been the co-author of Republican civil-rights legislation in the 1950s. The Republican platform in 1964 was hardly catnip for Klansmen: It spoke of the Johnson administration’s failure to help further the “just aspirations of the minority groups†and blasted the president for his refusal “to apply Republican-initiated retraining programs where most needed, particularly where they could afford new economic opportunities to Negro citizens.†Other planks in the platform included: “improvements of civil rights statutes adequate to changing needs of our times; such additional administrative or legislative actions as may be required to end the denial, for whatever unlawful reason, of the right to vote; continued opposition to discrimination based on race, creed, national origin or sex.†And Goldwater’s fellow Republicans ran on a 1964 platform demanding “full implementation and faithful execution of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and all other civil rights statutes, to assure equal rights and opportunities guaranteed by the Constitution to every citizen.†Some dog whistle.

 

Of course there were racists in the Republican party. There were racists in the Democratic party. The case of Johnson is well documented, while Nixon had his fantastical panoply of racial obsessions, touching blacks, Jews, Italians (“Don’t have their heads screwed onâ€), Irish (“They get mean when they drinkâ€), and the Ivy League WASPs he hated so passionately (“Did one of those dirty bastards ever invite me to his f***ing men’s club or goddamn country club? Not onceâ€). But the legislative record, the evolution of the electorate, the party platforms, the keynote speeches — none of them suggests a party-wide Republican about-face on civil rights.

 

Neither does the history of the black vote. While Republican affiliation was beginning to grow in the South in the late 1930s, the GOP also lost its lock on black voters in the North, among whom the New Deal was extraordinarily popular. By 1940, Democrats for the first time won a majority of black votes in the North. This development was not lost on Lyndon Johnson, who crafted his Great Society with the goal of exploiting widespread dependency for the benefit of the Democratic party. Unlike the New Deal, a flawed program that at least had the excuse of relying upon ideas that were at the time largely untested and enacted in the face of a worldwide economic emergency, Johnson’s Great Society was pure politics. Johnson’s War on Poverty was declared at a time when poverty had been declining for decades, and the first Job Corps office opened when the unemployment rate was less than 5 percent. Congressional Republicans had long supported a program to assist the indigent elderly, but the Democrats insisted that the program cover all of the elderly — even though they were, then as now, the most affluent demographic, with 85 percent of them in households of above-average wealth. Democrats such as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Anthony J. Celebrezze argued that the Great Society would end “dependency†among the elderly and the poor, but the programs were transparently designed merely to transfer dependency from private and local sources of support to federal agencies created and overseen by Johnson and his political heirs. In the context of the rest of his program, Johnson’s unexpected civil-rights conversion looks less like an attempt to empower blacks and more like an attempt to make clients of them.

 

If the parties had in some meaningful way flipped on civil rights, one would expect that to show up in the electoral results in the years following the Democrats’ 1964 about-face on the issue. Nothing of the sort happened: Of the 21 Democratic senators who opposed the 1964 act, only one would ever change parties. Nor did the segregationist constituencies that elected these Democrats throw them out in favor of Republicans: The remaining 20 continued to be elected as Democrats or were replaced by Democrats. It was, on average, nearly a quarter of a century before those seats went Republican. If southern rednecks ditched the Democrats because of a civil-rights law passed in 1964, it is strange that they waited until the late 1980s and early 1990s to do so. They say things move slower in the South — but not that slow.

 

Republicans did begin to win some southern House seats, and in many cases segregationist Democrats were thrown out by southern voters in favor of civil-rights Republicans. One of the loudest Democratic segregationists in the House was Texas’s John Dowdy, a bitter and buffoonish opponent of the 1964 reforms, which he declared “would set up a despot in the attorney general’s office with a large corps of enforcers under him; and his will and his oppressive action would be brought to bear upon citizens, just as Hitler’s minions coerced and subjugated the German people. I would say this — I believe this would be agreed to by most people: that, if we had a Hitler in the United States, the first thing he would want would be a bill of this nature.†(Who says political rhetoric has been debased in the past 40 years?) Dowdy was thrown out in 1966 in favor of a Republican with a very respectable record on civil rights, a little-known figure by the name of George H. W. Bush.

 

It was in fact not until 1995 that Republicans represented a majority of the southern congressional delegation — and they had hardly spent the Reagan years campaigning on the resurrection of Jim Crow.

 

It was not the Civil War but the Cold War that shaped midcentury partisan politics. Eisenhower warned the country against the “military-industrial complex,†but in truth Ike’s ascent had represented the decisive victory of the interventionist, hawkish wing of the Republican party over what remained of the America First/Charles Lindbergh/Robert Taft tendency. The Republican party had long been staunchly anti-Communist, but the post-war era saw that anti-Communism energized and looking for monsters to slay, both abroad — in the form of the Soviet Union and its satellites — and at home, in the form of the growing welfare state, the “creeping socialism†conservatives dreaded. By the middle 1960s, the semi-revolutionary Left was the liveliest current in U.S. politics, and Republicans’ unapologetic anti-Communism — especially conservatives’ rhetoric connecting international socialism abroad with the welfare state at home — left the Left with nowhere to go but the Democratic party. Vietnam was Johnson’s war, but by 1968 the Democratic party was not his alone.

 

The schizophrenic presidential election of that year set the stage for the subsequent transformation of southern politics: Segregationist Democrat George Wallace, running as an independent, made a last stand in the old Confederacy but carried only five states, while Republican Richard Nixon, who had helped shepherd the 1957 Civil Rights Act through Congress, counted a number of Confederate states (North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Tennessee) among the 32 he carried. Democrat Hubert Humphrey was reduced to a northern fringe plus Texas. Mindful of the long-term realignment already under way in the South, Johnson informed Democrats worried about losing it after the 1964 act that “those states may be lost anyway.†Subsequent presidential elections bore him out: Nixon won a 49-state sweep in 1972, and, with the exception of the post-Watergate election of 1976, Republicans in the following presidential elections would more or less occupy the South like Sherman. Bill Clinton would pick up a handful of southern states in his two contests, and Barack Obama had some success in the post-southern South, notably Virginia and Florida.

 

The Republican ascendancy in Dixie is associated with the rise of the southern middle class, the increasingly trenchant conservative critique of Communism and the welfare state, the Vietnam controversy and the rise of the counterculture, law-and-order concerns rooted in the urban chaos that ran rampant from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, and the incorporation of the radical Left into the Democratic party. Individual events, especially the freak show that was the 1968 Democratic convention, helped solidify conservatives’ affiliation with the Republican party. Democrats might argue that some of these concerns — especially welfare and crime — are “dog whistles†or “code†for race and racism, but this criticism is shallow in light of the evidence and the real saliency of those issues among U.S. voters of all backgrounds and both parties for decades. Indeed, Democrats who argue that the best policies for black Americans are those that are soft on crime and generous with welfare are engaged in much the same sort of cynical racial calculation President Johnson was practicing when he informed skeptical southern governors that his plan for the Great Society was “to have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years.†Johnson’s crude racism is, happily, largely a relic of the past, but his strategy endures.

[hokie07 11]

 

(but will when I have the time.)

[legend11 32]

 

(but will when I have the time.)

 

Ha! I know it.

 

Disclaimer: It's a long article. (<--- Should have said that earlier).

[Deleted Account 5,203]

 

(but will when I have the time.)

 

Classic! And I think the article brings up some very good points. The Dixiecrats bury their racist leaders of the 1950s and 1960s in a deeper casing than South Park buried Tyler Peery. And everyone just pretends like this is somehow OK. It's baffling.

 

With the copious amount of reading I have to do between now and the end of July, forgive me if I don't read the whole thing, yet skim it.

[bucfan64 309]

Very well written and very informative!

 

In reference to Jonah Goldberg, I would highly recommend anything the man has written, with special props to his last effort titled, Liberal Fascism, the man has a way of showing, through numerous facts how the Progressive Left has re-written history and how the very policies that they promote are in fact the reason for oppression among so many minorities. The book was so interesting and well written, I could hardly put it down. Very informative and very eye opening!

 

Thanks for sharing...........

[Deleted Account 5,203]

Very well written and very informative!

 

In reference to Jonah Goldberg, I would highly recommend anything the man has written, with special props to his last effort titled, Liberal Fascism, the man has a way of showing, through numerous facts how the Progressive Left has re-written history and how the very policies that they promote are in fact the reason for oppression among so many minorities. The book was so interesting and well written, I could hardly put it down. Very informative and very eye opening!

 

Thanks for sharing...........

 

Fascism, by its very nature, cannot be liberal.

This gives me pause for concern to read an author that would put "Liberal" and "Fascism" next to one another.

[bucfan64 309]

Fascism, by its very nature, cannot be liberal.

This gives me pause for concern to read an author that would put "Liberal" and "Fascism" next to one another.

 

You are lost on this one Observer.

 

Jonah Goldberg shows in his book how liberal policies have directly resulted in the merger of corporations and government. I understand that classical liberalism doesn't lead to Fascism, but it is important to remember that historically during the Progressive movement in the early 1900's, that the darling of most progressives was a guy named Mussolini. In fact the Progressive policies of Eugenics were heavily embraced, adopted and modified by Adolf Hitler.

 

Fascism is a type of Socialism, socialism is liberalism.

 

I think that you may be looking at Fascism as a far right wing system as compared to Communism as a far left wing liberal system. This could not be further from the truth.

 

Both Fascism and Communism are liberal ideologies and although one is commonly referred to as left of the other, both are left on the political spectrum.

 

POLITICAL SPECTRUM

 

Total Govt. {----------------------------} Anarchy

 

Both Fascism and Communism are Socialist systems that are BIG GOVT. systems. In their extremes both would fall to the left of the above political spectrum.

 

The only part of the spectrum that most folks view is the one below.

 

Liberal (Communism) {--------} Conservative (Fascism)

 

What many fail to realize is that this is nothing more than a type of slide rule for our form of government, since we have two major political parties in America.

 

If those parties are both placed on the political spectrum it would look something like this.

 

Total Govt. {-----A---B-------------C---------D---} Anarchy

 

A would equal Communism and B would equal Fascism or you could easily flip flop them. The only thing that really matters is the fact that both political parties in America are rapidly moving to the left on the above spectrum, I wouldn't say that they are terribly close to total government, but they are too close for comfort. Interestingly enough the Government that our Founders envisioned was originally over there where the D was at, but Shays Rebellion proved that the government was just too weak, that's why there is a C on the chart, it represents the Constitution.

 

PLEASE UNDERSTAND, I am in no way whatsoever implying that we are headed towards a Hitler type Orwellian state, in fact, my biggest fear is that of a Nanny State that becomes rather intrusive into our individual lives. I don't think for one minute that Americans have it in their DNA to fall into such a tyrannical state.

 

Most of the time when one uses the term Fascism, everyone has a Nazi Knee Jerk reaction, it is important to remember that Mussolini was praised by many in America for his Fascism long before he ever cuddled up next to a guy named Adolf.

 

It is important to remember that the Nazis didn't rise to power promoting violence, hatred, racism and genocide. On the contrary, the promoted national restoration, peace, pride, dignity and a very, very generous social welfare program. The latter of which is most certainly not a "conservative" idea, but rather a champion idea of the left.

 

It is an undeniable fact that modern "Liberals" and their policies, ideas and agendas are descended from early 20th century Progressives. It is also an undeniable fact that Fascism was "widely viewed as a progressive social movement with many left wing adherents in Europe and in the United States."

 

 

Economist Thomas Sowell wrote,

 

Those who put a high value on words may recoil at the title of Jonah Goldberg’s new book, Liberal Fascism. As a result, they may refuse to read it, which will be their loss — and a major loss. Those who value substance over words, however, will find in this book a wealth of challenging insights, backed up by thorough research and brilliant analysis. This is the sort of book that challenges the fundamental assumptions of its time — and which, for that reason, is likely to be shunned rather than criticized. It is a book for people who want to think, rather than repeat rhetoric.

[Deleted Account 5,203]

You are lost on this one Observer.

 

Jonah Goldberg shows in his book how liberal policies have directly resulted in the merger of corporations and government. I understand that classical liberalism doesn't lead to Fascism, but it is important to remember that historically during the Progressive movement in the early 1900's, that the darling of most progressives was a guy named Mussolini. In fact the Progressive policies of Eugenics were heavily embraced, adopted and modified by Adolf Hitler.

 

Fascism is a type of Socialism, socialism is liberalism.

 

I think that you may be looking at Fascism as a far right wing system as compared to Communism as a far left wing liberal system. This could not be further from the truth.

 

Both Fascism and Communism are liberal ideologies and although one is commonly referred to as left of the other, both are left on the political spectrum.

 

POLITICAL SPECTRUM

 

Total Govt. {----------------------------} Anarchy

 

Both Fascism and Communism are Socialist systems that are BIG GOVT. systems. In their extremes both would fall to the left of the above political spectrum.

 

The only part of the spectrum that most folks view is the one below.

 

Liberal (Communism) {--------} Conservative (Fascism)

 

What many fail to realize is that this is nothing more than a type of slide rule for our form of government, since we have two major political parties in America.

 

If those parties are both placed on the political spectrum it would look something like this.

 

Total Govt. {-----A---B-------------C---------D---} Anarchy

 

A would equal Communism and B would equal Fascism or you could easily flip flop them. The only thing that really matters is the fact that both political parties in America are rapidly moving to the left on the above spectrum, I wouldn't say that they are terribly close to total government, but they are too close for comfort. Interestingly enough the Government that our Founders envisioned was originally over there where the D was at, but Shays Rebellion proved that the government was just too weak, that's why there is a C on the chart, it represents the Constitution.

 

PLEASE UNDERSTAND, I am in no way whatsoever implying that we are headed towards a Hitler type Orwellian state, in fact, my biggest fear is that of a Nanny State that becomes rather intrusive into our individual lives. I don't think for one minute that Americans have it in their DNA to fall into such a tyrannical state.

 

Most of the time when one uses the term Fascism, everyone has a Nazi Knee Jerk reaction, it is important to remember that Mussolini was praised by many in America for his Fascism long before he ever cuddled up next to a guy named Adolf.

 

It is important to remember that the Nazis didn't rise to power promoting violence, hatred, racism and genocide. On the contrary, the promoted national restoration, peace, pride, dignity and a very, very generous social welfare program. The latter of which is most certainly not a "conservative" idea, but rather a champion idea of the left.

 

It is an undeniable fact that modern "Liberals" and their policies, ideas and agendas are descended from early 20th century Progressives. It is also an undeniable fact that Fascism was "widely viewed as a progressive social movement with many left wing adherents in Europe and in the United States."

 

 

Economist Thomas Sowell wrote,

 

Those who put a high value on words may recoil at the title of Jonah Goldberg’s new book, Liberal Fascism. As a result, they may refuse to read it, which will be their loss — and a major loss. Those who value substance over words, however, will find in this book a wealth of challenging insights, backed up by thorough research and brilliant analysis. This is the sort of book that challenges the fundamental assumptions of its time — and which, for that reason, is likely to be shunned rather than criticized. It is a book for people who want to think, rather than repeat rhetoric.

 

Where to begin?

 

1. You're conflating socialism with corporatism, which advocates a nationally imposed class system in lieu of national ownership of production. It's a "bats have wings" problem. It might look a little like a bird, and it might fly a little like a bird, but it's not a bird. Corporatism exercises national control over, but does not OWN, the mechanisms. And that's a significant difference, a difference that snowballs through the remainder of your post.

 

2. Eugenics is about as socially conservative a doctrine as you'll ever find. Not progressive.

 

3. Mussolini never "cuddled up" to Hitler. In fact, quite the opposite: Mussolini despised Hitler, especially after the Nazis had assassinated his friend and ally, Engelbert Dollfuss, the Austrofascist dictator of Austria, in 1934. Hilter's rabid social conservatism meshed with Mussolini's, so it was easier for them to make a pact and fight later rather that carving themselves up early on.

[redtiger 1,742]

for what its worth,

 

Nazism was a fallacy; it used social programs to gain the support of the lower classes and made ties to Germany's rich past to gain the support of the upper classes. Just about all of what they did publicly was a facade to gain support to achieve their goals. It definately wasnt Socialism.

 

Fascism is neither purely Liberal nor Conservative, it attacks both in order to set itself apart.

Edited June 8, 2012 by redtiger

[bucfan64 309]

Where to begin?

 

1. You're conflating socialism with corporatism, which advocates a nationally imposed class system in lieu of national ownership of production. It's a "bats have wings" problem. It might look a little like a bird, and it might fly a little like a bird, but it's not a bird. Corporatism exercises national control over, but does not OWN, the mechanisms. And that's a significant difference, a difference that snowballs through the remainder of your post.

 

2. Eugenics is about as socially conservative a doctrine as you'll ever find. Not progressive.

 

3. Mussolini never "cuddled up" to Hitler. In fact, quite the opposite: Mussolini despised Hitler, especially after the Nazis had assassinated his friend and ally, Engelbert Dollfuss, the Austrofascist dictator of Austria, in 1934. Hilter's rabid social conservatism meshed with Mussolini's, so it was easier for them to make a pact and fight later rather that carving themselves up early on.

 

1. Fascism is the merger of Corporate entities and the government. The government uses regulation to choke out the competition, and in turn leaves only a few compliant businesses. As long as these corporate giants tow the government line they are allowed to exist free from competition. Socialism, the Communist kind, disallows private ownership or private property, the Fascist type permits corporate entities to exist, albeit very few, as long as those entities follow the strict guidelines placed on them by the government.

 

2. Eugenics was the brainchild of Progressives, Progressives by definition are what we would refer to today as LIBERAL, therefore if anything about the Eugenics movement was considered "conservative," then it was nothing more than the "conservative" version of Big Govt. Socialism. Eugenics was championed by the Progressives (who are very liberal, compared to the Classical "Conservative" Liberalism of the Founding Fathers) and by the most progressive President of our time, Woodrow Wilson. It was only after Hitler adopted the ideas and then took it to the next level with Genocide, that the Progressives and the modern day liberals disassociated themselves from the term Eugenics, they did not however disassociate themselves from the practice of Eugenics. One can easily see patterns of the Eugenics movement today in groups such as Planned Parenthood and the last time I checked this organization is considered anything but "conservative."

 

3. When I said that Mussolini "cuddled up" to Hitler, I was not implying that he was BFF's with the guy. On the contrary, I am historically knowledgeable about the two. But what you are failing to see is the fact that many, during the early 20th century, who were considered some of the most rank of the Progressive movement, embraced Mussolini and the Fascist state that he had created in Italy. One note of interest, the next time you are in New York, check out 30 Rock Plaza and notice the sculptures on the outside of the building. If you look closely, you will notice that the image is of none other than Il Duce himself. And everyone knows that J.D. Rockefeller was a major player in the Progressive movement.

 

Don't forget that Wilson, a Progressive, segregated the military, made it rather difficult for blacks to be hired by the Federal government. Wilson didn't do these things because he was from the South, on the contrary, he did them because he felt that blacks were not as "evolved" as whites. This is and was a progressive policy and need I remind you once again, Progressivism was not and is not "conservative."

[bucfan64 309]

for what its worth,

 

Nazism was a fallacy; it used social programs to gain the support of the lower classes and made ties to Germany's rich past to gain the support of the upper classes. Just about all of what they did publicly was a facade to gain support to achieve their goals. It definately wasnt Socialism.

 

Fascism is neither purely Liberal nor Conservative, it attacks both in order to set itself apart.

 

Not trying to stir things up, but what do you think the term NAZI means?

 

NATIONAL SOCIALISM

Not trying to argue, but FASCISM is SOCIALISM!

 

You are viewing the political spectrum from the view that the only choice we have is left communism and right fascism, you are neglecting to pull away and look at the entire spectrum, which I described earlier. Under your viewpoint there is no room for ANARCHY, we know that it exists, so one needs to pull back notice that the other two, communism and fascism are both total forms of government and both are versions of Socialism.

 

Under Communism property rights were eliminated, under Fascism one was permitted to retain legal title of one's property but one was not entitled to total control of said property. So, no matter how you look at the two, you must agree that the individual did not have true ownership of property under either system.

Edited June 8, 2012 by bucfan64

[redtiger 1,742]

Oh, no offense taken.

 

Nazism wasnt socialism, the movement claimed to be but it wasnt(the socialist concept wasnt real, just a tool used to manipulate and controll the Geman people). It was originally concived to be a Military Oligarchy but due to Hitlers influence became a Totalitarian Autocracy movement. I guess you could define it as socialism but that would be ignoring why the socialist policies were put into place.

 

Fascism is a Dictatorship with the trappings of Socialism(from my point of view), not a Socialist movement. Therefore it is neither left nor right but a combination of both and set apart from both.

 

 

No, I dont believe Anarchy is real; some form of government will establish itself(even if it is only on a small local level). Anarchy basically means no rulers, and thats not possible.

 

For example, on a basic level; if there is no government to controll us I am bigger than you and I have a gun so this is a Totalitarian state if I choose it to be(im the leader). Or we work together to solve our problems, thats socialism(were coleaders). Or we work together and share everything thats Comminuism(again coleaders). That small scale example applies equally on a national scale.

Anarchy isint possible imo.

Edited June 8, 2012 by redtiger

[Hacker 82]

I am bored so I will weigh in. There are two Communisms. The theoretical one of Marx and Engel, which never existed. The other is the one that used the trappings of everything belonging to the "people" to mask what was really an oligarchy.

 

Fascism by its very nature feeds on a nationalistic fervor and zenophopia to rally the nation. It too tuned very quickly into an oligarchy in both Italy, Spain (yeah, you forgot Franco), and Germany.

 

In truth what we see today are corporations and the very rich subverting political systems to their own benefit. Their is no left or right in their views, just profits and control.

 

Anarchy is in the end unsustainable, but does exist. Current example Somalia. In the end some kind of system always follows mob rule; the anarchy of the French Revolution was followed by Napoleon.

Edited June 8, 2012 by Hacker

[redtiger 1,742]

agreed

[bucfan64 309]

Total Government {-----A----B-------------C---------D--------} Anarchy

 

Whether you believe that Anarchy is real or not, and I contend that it is indeed real, regardless of how long it actually lasts, there must be a place on the political spectrum for Anarchy.

 

For one to continually view the spectrum as a Commie vs Fascist model, which is rather popular with today's culture, is incorrect and it is very misleading.

 

Any system that leads to total government is to the left of the spectrum, whether it be Communism or Fascism, therefore it MUST be leftist in ideology, hence the left and right of the spectrum.

 

Any system that advocates less and less government must therefore be to the right of the spectrum.

 

This is the true left-right not the false left-right paradigm that we have been misled to focus on in the last 60-80 years which would have us believe that our only choices are Fascistic Dictatorship or a Communistic Dictatorship. Both are nothing more than variants of a dictatorship. While the true argument is actually man vs the state, tyranny vs liberty, Socialism vs Capitalism.

 

While continue to argue over which group, the Dems or the Repubs, are left or right, we are neglecting to see that BOTH left and right are indeed LEFT in their ideology.

 

 

The Founding Fathers were to the RIGHT and when I say Right, I am not referring to the often referred to Right Wing of the Republican Party, but rather right on the scale above.

 

A= Dems

B= Repubs

C= Constitution

D= Articles of Confederation

 

Ayn Rand says: "it is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering capitalism; it switches the choice of “Freedom or dictatorship?†into “Which kind of dictatorship?â€â€”thus establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering only a choice of rulers. The choice—according to the proponents of that fraud—is: a dictatorship of the rich (fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism)."

[redtiger 1,742]

youre approaching the political spectrum from a ideological perspective as where im approaching it from a real world perspective.

 

from my point of view true/pure communism or anarchism cannot exist(atleast not for very long). It is human nature to strive for power and control, and eventually someone or some group will take control. I would agree that both do have to be on the spectrum.

 

"Any system that leads to total government is to the left of the spectrum, whether it be Communism or Fascism, therefore it MUST be leftist in ideology"

 

Disagree, commnism is left but fascism draws from and denounces both left and right, but if anything is right. They are opposites. Communism - power to many, fascism - power to a few.

 

The left or right in America is overall right of center

 

were looking at things on different scales

Edited June 8, 2012 by redtiger

[redtiger 1,742]

youre approaching the political spectrum from a ideological perspective as where im approaching it from a real world perspective.

 

from my point of view true/pure communism or anarchism cannot exist(atleast not for very long). It is human nature to strive for power and control, and eventually someone or some group will take control. I wll agree that both do have to be on the spectrum.

 

"Any system that leads to total government is to the left of the spectrum, whether it be Communism or Fascism, therefore it MUST be leftist in ideology, hence the left and right of the spectrum"

 

Disagree, commnism is left but fascism draws from and denounces both left and right, but if anything is right.

 

 

The left or right in America is overall right of center

[redtiger 1,742]

How im looking at things( I hate to use this since it came from wikipedia but thats the only place I could find it),

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/European-political-spectrum.png/372px-European-political-spectrum.png

 

It also shows how two very different things ex. Anarchism and Communism can both be "Left" but are very different