Rep vs. Dem Differences

G.R. Patterson III wrote:

NPR recently interviewed a U.S. Army General (retired). IIRC, it was
"Stormin' Norman". When asked about this incident, he said basically the
same thing. He stated that, when he was younger, he had been prone to make
rapid decisions, and they were almost always inferior to those he would
have made had he thought about them for a while.

I'm no fan of Bush, but I think this particular issue is a little silly.
Isn't there some old story about an old airline pilot and a young examiner
of some sort where an emergency is "caused" and the pilot's immediate step
is to wind a watch, or some such? "I ain't never killed nobody winding a
watch" was the punchline.

- Andrew

In article , "Peter
Gottlieb" wrote:

Do I think we are better off than we were 4 years ago? No. Does the
current administration seem to have a clear plan to improve things? No.
Therefore, time for change.

any change? or change for the better?

--
Bob Noel
Seen on Kerry's campaign airplane: "the real deal"
oh yeah baby.

On Tue, 31 Aug 2004, Ash Wyllie wrote:

Martin Hotze opined

"Ash Wyllie" wrote:

Weren't you the guys that with the Hungarians conquered a large chunk of
Europe?

we conquered half of the world.

Anybody checked Bush's ancestry?

Yes, he's just a son of a Bush.

Ducking,

Brian.

Wdtabor wrote:

Fascism comes in a number of flavors, but the key elements a

An authoritarian power structure

Agreed.

A collectivist economy (either socialism or feudalism will do)

Disagree. While Fascism morphed somewhat over time, it was intensely
against socialism from the beginning. That opposition was one of the
prime tenets of the philosophy. That said, the ideology was also
against a completely free economy, preferring government direction, but
also not for the benefit of the masses. The idea of government control
was more in line with their authoritarian bent than it was a statement
of left or right leaning in economic terms. Overall, using strictly an
economic measure, Fascism was neither left nor right, but somewhere
slightly right of center.

"James Robinson" wrote in message
...
Wdtabor wrote:

Fascism comes in a number of flavors, but the key elements a

An authoritarian power structure

Agreed.

A collectivist economy (either socialism or feudalism will do)

Disagree. While Fascism morphed somewhat over time, it was intensely
against socialism from the beginning. That opposition was one of the
prime tenets of the philosophy. That said, the ideology was also
against a completely free economy, preferring government direction, but
also not for the benefit of the masses. The idea of government control
was more in line with their authoritarian bent than it was a statement
of left or right leaning in economic terms.

In other words, a collectivist economy, as Wdtabor stated.

Overall, using strictly an
economic measure, Fascism was neither left nor right, but somewhere
slightly right of center.

Irrelevant.

"Andrew Gideon" wrote in message
online.com...
Brian Burger wrote:

They aren't mutually exclusive, the larger one (freedom of...) should
automatically include the detailed one (freedom from...).

Of course. The set of subsets of any set includes the empty set.

The problem is that C.J. Campbell believes that "freedom from" implies
that
religion is kept away. Others on this thread apparently read this as
"freedom from imposition of".

I would say that the remarks of many here would support my thesis that they
believe that religion should be suppressed from public view entirely.
Freedom of religion means anyone can worship anywhere at any time, even if
they are a public official. You should not lose your civil rights just
because you became a government employee.

This thread reminds of a joke over on a humor news group:

Can you imagine what would have happened if Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie
had children? Jackson is a Jehovah's Witness. Lisa Marie is an agnostic.
Their kids would have gone around knocking on doors for no reason
whatsoever.

ackatyu (Wdtabor) wrote in
:

In article , "Ash Wyllie"
writes:

snip

I can make it simpler. Look at the party NAMES.

Do you want to live in a Republic, with unalienable rights not even the
power of government is permitted to violate, or do you want to live in
a Democracy, where there is no right of yours that is not subject to
transgression if 51% of the populace lusts for what right protects?

That is what the political spectrum is all about, the degree to wich
the individual is soveriegn compared to the degree to which the
collective is soveriegn.

The order is, strarting with maximum individual rights

Libertarian Republican Democrat Nazi Socialist Ants

If you own yourself, and are willing to be responsible for yourself,
you are a Libertarian. If you are owned by the collective, and expect
to be guided and protected from your own failures by that collective,
you are an ant.


snip

Interesting, then, that our Republican government enacted the Patriot Act
that basically allows government to violate just about every basic right of
the individual without any checks and balances whatsoever...

David CL Francis wrote:

Always seems to me that there is no adequate definition of left and
right in politics.

There is a group that is trying to introduce a second dimension to
political descriptions:

http://www.politicalcompass.org

In essence, they suggest using left - right strictly to describe the
economic policies, and they superimpose a second dimension that measures
the degree of authoritarianism. Therefore, you can have authoritarian
or libertarian governments at either extreme of the economic spectrum.

The above web site also has an interesting test, where you can evaluate
your own views to see how they would fit into their definition, and
compare the result to many past and current political leaders.

C J Campbell wrote:

If the dictionary says that Nazism, which promotes political change
and which believes it promotes greater freedom and the well being
of the common man is a right wing philosophy, then it contradicts
itself.

Nazism was the antithesis of what you describe above.

It was very authoritarian, opposed to individual freedom in deference to
the power of the state, and believe in forced suppression of any
opposition. While it might have seemed that they promoted political
change, they change they wanted was a return to more traditional morals,
which was a conservative philosophy.

C J Campbell wrote:

James Robinson wrote:

C J Campbell wrote:

If the dictionary says that Nazism, which promotes political change
and which believes it promotes greater freedom and the well being
of the common man is a right wing philosophy, then it contradicts
itself.

That's your definition of Nazism, not what it acutally was.

http://encyclopedia.fablis.com/index...-wing_politics

"Nazis opposed individualism and laissez faire capitalism, vigorous
opposition to international socialism was a founding and continuing
tenet of Nazi fascism."

Try these sources for why others label Fascism as right wing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing

"... fascism is almost universally considered to be a part of "the
right"."
"Like other forms, it arose in antithesis to the agenda of leftists,
Communists, and Socialists."

http://www.publiceye.org/eyes/whatfasc.html

"Fascism is a form of extreme right-wing ideology that celebrates the
nation or the race as an organic community transcending all other
loyalties."

"Fascism is hostile to Marxism, liberalism, and conservatism, yet it
borrows concepts and practices from all three."

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Right-wing

"... fascism and communism share much in common, and this is to be
expected since they are the most extreme forms of conservatism, fascism
being of the right, and communism being of the left."

Now you are contradicting yourself. Now you are saying that communism is
left wing conservatism, where before you defined the left as being liberal.

I don't give a hoot about your definitions. They are self contradictory and
arbitrary, as many have pointed out before me.

They aren't "my" definitions. They are ones that are generally accepted
in political discussions, and can be found all over internet. I provided
links to them to show that Nazism is considered by most to be a right
wing political philosophy. Some suggest it is slightly right of center,
because of their economic policies and opposition to socialism, and
others suggest far more to the right, considering their strong
authoritarianism and political conservatism. Few suggest it is left of
center.

Your discomfort with the definitions is perhaps based on the fact that
the single dimensional characteristic of "left" and "right" as a
political description is simply inadequate to describe all the
complexities of politics. You are free to make up your own, but until
the mainstream accepts a diverging definition, then it is useless.

The original definition of left-right was intended to separate those who
wanted change, i.e. abolition of the French monarchy, from those who
wanted to keep things as they were. The overtones of that definition
still remain today with "liberal" and "conservative."

Over time, the definitions evolved to include an economic description,
where left described socialism, and right a more laisez faire economy.
Others suggest the economic distinction is more an emphasis of person vs
property. Today, this is probably the most important definition of left
and right.

Superimposed on this is how authoritarian the government is. Harking
back to the original definition of left-right, many people connect
authoritarianism with the right, since this was a tendency of
monarchies. Further, pretty well every government that has had right
leaning economic policies has been authoritarian to some extent or
other.

That said, there is no question that there have been very authoritarian
left wing governments, Stalinism comes to mind as an example. Thus, the
concept of how authoritarian or liberal a government tends to be is an
entirely separate concept from the traditional definitions of left and
right.