Thread: O America

Why did you do this X ?

Remember my rant about the Left once?

I'm not going to rant, I'm not going to rant, I'm not going to rant... one.... two..... three..... four.... five.....

Aww screw it!




The Right is just as far left as the Left !! There is no more Right!

THEY ARE ALL SOCIAL DEMOCRATS.

We are already a socialist nation, why not fascism ???? OR Communism????

WHERE THE FFFF IS JOE McCARTHY WHEN YOU NEED HIM !!!!

They are all forms of Socialism, like you can say one for is better than another?
Thats like saying you aren't gay because you only give oral !

http://www.communism.org/

SEE??

I have included this link to make my case for me, please read it all.
It lists examples of socialism as applied to daily life.

http://www.guns.connect.fi/gow/ideas.html

It is all true. You know it is.

This country is going to shit. I have no idea who to vote for anymore.

They're all starting to look like the same dickhead to me.

Hillary is going to make a run at guns.

You mark my words.

Hillary is going to make a run at guns.

Hey moderators, we need a smile hanging his head in sadness.

I almost forgot

"In Germany they came first for the communist, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time nobody was left to speak up." - Martin Niemoeller

Originally Posted by Scrapyard Ape

*gives xman a Moe Howard-esque eye poke and runs away*

Oh, wise guy, eh? ... WOO-WOO-Woo-woo-woo.

Sorry xman but this article was agitprop, and not even particularly well-reasoned or well-researched agitprop.

The plural of anecdote is not data.

"unnamed" and "anonymous" sources rank damned near 0 on the credibility scale.

Low-level functionaries are not privy to The Truth, in any shape form or fashion.

Never attribute to malice or conspiracy that which is easily explained by incompetence.

Entities ought not to be multiplied unnecessarily. If you need "secret databases" or any sort of conspiracy to prop up your thesis, you need to really examine your thesis. See previous point.

You can demonstrate anything if you're willing to cherry-pick hard enough

I can show you thousands of pictures of fires and claim that this proves the world is being destroyed by fire, but if they're all pictures of fireplaces or candles it kind of undermines the argument. This article was all fireplaces and candles.



1) Sometimes the external enemy really is both external and an enemy. This article fails to examine how a false external enemy is distinguished from a true one. Secondly, I thought the big enemy the Germans used to whip up the people was in internal one (Jews).

2) Equating gitmo with the russian gulags is intellectually dishonest. The gulags held political prisoners, gitmo contains terrorist thugs, very few (none?) of whom are US citizens. When gitmo is holding significant numbers of democrats then get back to me.

3) The current paramilitary outsourcing is not a recent invention, though it has returned to prominence in recent years as a way of compensating for a drastically downsized military. When brownshirts run through the streets smashing in the windows of millions of democrat-owned businesses then get back to me.

4) The programs described have been around for decades, and known to congress for the entirety of that time. Somehow they weren't "fascist" when Clinton or Carter was in office.

5) These "secret" databases aren't terribly secret are they? And a database of "four dozen" rallies? You've got to be kidding me! That's not a database, that's not even a full pack of index cards. When the military is rounding up all the members of those "marches" (1500 marchers isn't even a parade, much less a march) and sending them to gitmo for life then get back to me.

6) Seriously? This isn't a joke? One guy's conversation with a clueless ticket-counter girl is proof of harassment? Delayed luggage is harassment? (it wasn't lost, it showed up a few hours later) *This* is proof that the constitution has collapsed and the US is charging towards fascism?

7) One of Bill Clinton's first actions upon taking office was firing *all* US district attorneys and installing his own men in their place. Now *that* is firing people for insufficient political loyalty. But somehow that wasn't fascism, that was just smart politics. As for the charge of coordinating civil servants - the last I checked the civil servants in the executive branch work for the elected executive - "coordinating" with him to execute policy is their job; this claim is as absurd as claiming that the US is fascist because the trains run on time. And this "Bush supporters lobbying state regents" business is just democracy at work, unless the author is seriously claiming that republicans can't lobby state regents, only democrats can. Sadly, this appears to be exactly what she is claiming, and even more sadly she appears to be unaware that her attitude is more consistent with totalitarianism than the actions she is criticizing.

8) Yeah, the press has really been muzzled. You never hear any criticism of this administration in the press nowadays. Once Valerie Plame was exposed as a spy (who drove through the front gate of Langley every day) the press got the message and really shut up.

9) When the government (and not just it's supporters) start casting dissent as treason, and especially when the government starts prosecuting it as treason then get back to me. But nongovernment actors can say whatever they want, and if they want to cast antiwar comments as treason well then that's free speech for you. Free speech for thee, free speech for me.

10) Seems like the big complaint about the post-Katrina response was largely about the inability of the feds to send enough troops quickly enough. Washington's defense was that Louisiana didn't mobilise their guard and the president didn't have the authority to mobilize another state's guard. So the president is damned if they doesn't and damned if he does? This is fine for political posturing, but I have to admit that I fail to see how solving some of the legal problems with a Katrina-level response rises to the level of Fascism.

Mr. Parker,
first let me say that your post was very well written and concise.
When I write it's more akin to when someone prods Pat Buchanan on some political talkshow.



I think you missed the point of the article though.

The point was

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.
As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.


Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.


The point was that any reduction in rights equals a threat to democracy.

More law less justice.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, sorry, thats what size it pasted.

"Free government is founded in jealousy, not confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind those we are obliged to trust with power.... In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1799


What do you think the founding fathers would say? You do know that they were a
bunch of radicals right?


I mean come on, they did start a war over their beliefs didn't they?
How much more hardcore can you get? I think they would be livid.

Some good common sense to answer any question you may have about the government.


TWELVE TRUTHS ABOUT LEGISLATION
1) Any law the electorate sees as being open to being perverted from its original intent will be perverted in a manner that exceeds the manner of perversion seen at the time.
2) Any law that is so difficult to pass it requires the citizens be assured it will not be a stepping stone to worse laws will in fact be a stepping stone to worse laws.
3) Any law that requires the citizens be assured the law does not mean what the citizens fear, means exactly what the citizens fear.
4) Any law passed in a good cause will be interpreted to apply to causes against the wishes of the people.
5) Any law enacted to help any one group will be applied to harm people not in that group.
6) Everything the government says will never happen will happen.
7) What the government says it could not foresee, the government has planned for.
8) When there is a budget shortfall to cover non-essential government services the citizens will be given the choice between higher taxes or the loss of essential government services.
9) Should the citizens mount a successful effort to stop a piece of legislation the same legislation will be passed under a different name.
10) All deprivations of freedom and choice will be increased rather than reversed.
11) Any government that has to build safeguards into a law so that it will not be abused is providing guidelines for abusing the law without violating it.
12) Any legislator up for re-election will vote against a bad law if and only if there are enough other votes to pass it.

Originally Posted by gratewhitehuntr

If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.
As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.

Oh I didn't miss the point of the article. Neither did I miss that the examples the article uses utterly failed to demonstrate the fulfillment of these 10 steps in a way that wasn't trivial, specious, contrived, or cherry-picked. Even the introductory paragraph you quoted (included above) is trite and contrived.

"If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship."

Show me where it has been proven that these 10 steps are both sufficient and necessary for the formation of a dictatorship.

"That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective."

Bull. Cincinnatus turned Rome into a dictatorship without fulfilling any one of these conditions (ok, maybe the first, though it's hard to argue that the external enemy was "manufactured").

"But it is always effective."

Really? You can't show me *one* single case where these conditions were fullfilled that *didn't* turn into a totalitarian government? 'Cause I certainly can (this happened a good half-dozen times in the US during the 19th and early 20th centuries).


" It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. "

True but trite. It's also much more difficult to create and sustain a building than it is to tear it down.
Edit: False and still trite. I just thought of two pretty solid counterexamples: Athenian democracy was established (twice) with much less effort than it took the spartan league to tear it down. And English democracy was also established pretty easily compared to what Cromwell had to do to tear it down. But maybe these counterexamples don't "count" for some reason (like inconvenience).


"You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps."

Again, that's assuming that these 10 steps are both necessary and sufficient, which is far from proven, much less that the US has fulfilled those steps in any meaningful way, which the article "proves" with laughable examples.

Edit: And it would be handy to show that similar examples haven't happened in prior non-fascist-and-totalitarian eras in the US. Like how come when my luggage was lost and I wasn't allowed to board my flight for 10 hours after I made unflattering comments to a US Senator about the size of her ass, and yet that doesn't prove the Clinton Administration was fascist and totalitarian.


"As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration."

If by "initiated by the Bush administration" you mean "some guy claims some low-level ticket clerk said so" or "initiated by the Wilson administration" then I guess so. But don't expect me to take you seriously, because these are not serious claims no matter how hysterically they are made.

I'm not going to comment much but I thought it was an interesting read.

If anyone has similar articles (or contradicting ones as well) I'd love to read them.

Well said MP. I like to have a little faith in us for goodness sake.

Jordan

MP, you used a slightly different statement but mine is essentially the same in the end.

Never attribute to malice what can be readily explained by stupidity.

Also,
"entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem"

I don't think that Bush is trying to make a dictatorship.
I don't think he could if he wanted.

I don't think Bush could make a ham sandwich because he is an idiot.
I don't trust idiots to drive my car or watch my baby, why should I trust him to run the country?

I don't trust this site either, but somehow I can picture Bush saying this.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles...eceofpaper.htm