Will the Government shut down on the 27th of March?

[Razgovory]

Fine.  So all those nasty things some people said about Bush and the GOP being fascist during the Bush Presidency are warranted, right?  I mean, conservatives are closer to those far right ideologies then Democrats, and fascism covers a great deal of ground.

[Valmy]

The honest objection to the applying the term socialism to Obama and his policies is not that it is inaccurate but rather that it carries a negative connotation in the US.

Yes.  It carries the connotation of a Soviet style government....which is inaccurate and therefore that is a perfect and honest objection to using it.  I mean not that it matters, they can call themselves Nazis for all I care just manage the freaking deficit.  Oh and follow the Bill of Rights.

[Valmy]

The problem with this argument is that it ignores the possibility of a difference of degree.

You can basically use this to describe everybody as anything.  How post-modern.

[Admiral Yi]

Fine.  So all those nasty things some people said about Bush and the GOP being fascist during the Bush Presidency are warranted, right?  I mean, conservatives are closer to those far right ideologies then Democrats, and fascism covers a great deal of ground.

Fascism doesn't cover very much ground.  There have only been a handful of self-described fascist governments in history, and they were characterized by a set of traits that doesn't seem to me to be very accurate in describing Republican policies:  Racial superiority, territorial expansion, subjugation or extermination of inferior peoples, nurturing of historical grudges, one party states, tight government control of the economy.

[Valmy]

There have only been a handful of self-described fascist governments in history, and they were characterized by a set of traits that doesn't seem to me to be very accurate in describing Republican policies:  Racial superiority, territorial expansion, subjugation or extermination of inferior peoples, nurturing of historical grudges, one party states, tight government control of the economy.

I don't think those traits describe any of the fascist regimes very accurately except Nazi Germany but to be fair the Fascists themselves had a hard time vocalizing what exactly their ideology was about.

The corporatism is pretty key I think you can call out both parties on that to some degree if you really want to split hairs.  Granted that would be idiotic but perfectly reasonable in the standards you are describing.  After all it is just a different in degrees.

[Admiral Yi]

You can basically use this to describe everybody as anything.  How post-modern.

My point specifically is that everyone is not everything.  Greens are greens because they want *more* environmental protection than others, not because they want absolute, total environmental protection.  Libertarians are libertarian because they want *less* governmental intrusion, not because they want to return to a state of nature.

[alfred russel]

If you want to look at things in a modern western european context, then it isn't off the charts crazy to label Obama a socialist. Many of the center left parties are called socialists. For that matter, the Labor Party under Blair and Brown was a member of the Socialist International.

The issue though is that while those parties have kept their labels and associations from ~100+ years ago while they moved to the center, in the US the definitions haven't shifted. Socialism has a connection here of something like soviet communism. Calling Obama a socialist in the US is either off the charts crazy or deliberately misleading.

[Razgovory]

Fine.  So all those nasty things some people said about Bush and the GOP being fascist during the Bush Presidency are warranted, right?  I mean, conservatives are closer to those far right ideologies then Democrats, and fascism covers a great deal of ground.

Fascism doesn't cover very much ground.  There have only been a handful of self-described fascist governments in history, and they were characterized by a set of traits that doesn't seem to me to be very accurate in describing Republican policies:  Racial superiority, territorial expansion, subjugation or extermination of inferior peoples, nurturing of historical grudges, one party states, tight government control of the economy.

Well, that's not the most accurate list as you left out things like celebration of the military, anti-communism and opposition to socialism.  In these things it is a few degrees closer to the GOP then the Dems.  And using the can of worms you opened, that should be enough.

[Admiral Yi]

Well, that's not the most accurate list as you left out things like celebration of the military, anti-communism and opposition to socialism.  In these things it is a few degrees closer to the GOP then the Dems.  And using the can of worms you opened, that should be enough.

Fascists weren't opposed to socialism.  Their economies were highly socialized.  In that aspect Democrats are a few degrees closer than Republicans.

[Razgovory]

They killed the socialists.  That's pretty fucking opposed.

[Admiral Yi]

They killed the socialists.  That's pretty fucking opposed.

That's pretty fucking opposed to threats to their power.  That's pretty not fucking opposed to socialism as a guiding economic philosophy.

[Razgovory]

You know that not all economic policies that aren't capitalism aren't socialism, right?  The Fascists weren't socialist.

[Warspite]

Well, that's not the most accurate list as you left out things like celebration of the military, anti-communism and opposition to socialism.  In these things it is a few degrees closer to the GOP then the Dems.  And using the can of worms you opened, that should be enough.

Fascists weren't opposed to socialism.  Their economies were highly socialized.  In that aspect Democrats are a few degrees closer than Republicans.

Fascists were corporatist, not really socialist. Unless there were fascist movements that believed in the workers' ownership of the means of production?

[Admiral Yi]

Fascists were corporatist, not really socialist. Unless there were fascist movements that believed in the workers' ownership of the means of production?

Is Francois Hollande a socialist?

[Razgovory]

Anyway, that's sort of missing the point.  My point was that if we use a stupid degree system, we can apply all sorts of labels.  Obviously Republicans aren't actually Fascist.  That's puerile and silly.  Are they marginally more like fascists then Democrats, yeah.  Is calling Republicans fascists dishonest, yeah.  Is calling Democrats socialists because they are marginally more like socialists then the Republicans dishonest, yeah.