(02-20-2017 03:03 PM)john01992 Wrote: (02-20-2017 03:00 PM)Machiavelli Wrote: Fascists do not have their roots in leftist movements. They are actually 180 degrees from communists. Where in the world did you get that idea from? How old are you and what level of education have you obtained?
Only idiots with zero understanding of history claim that fascists are left wing. They are right wing and communists are left wing. It's really not that hard.
Being a progressive is merely a tag for those willing to sell out a short term profit for a long term goal. We've had conservative progressives like Teddy Roosevelt and we've had liberal ones like Woodrow Wilson. Being a progressive is just a general tag that presents yet another spectrum of political thinking in which both the liberals and conservatives find themselves in hopefully an informative debate yet again. God I miss the days of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley.
It's why I generally hate labels. I'm a fiscal conservative, a social libertarian, a hawk defensively but only as long as the military is subservient to the people they defend. And yet those descriptors don't even begin to size up the variance in degree that I feel over individual issues. People are complex beings informed by experiences, education, and crisis. I wouldn't want to merely label anyone I've known as left or right. We have two hands. One left and one right hand intended to be balanced for full usefulness. Neither is the enemy of the other, and both are needed to fully extend our grip upon reality.
I generally find those who label themselves as liberals and conservative to be useless in contributing to the overall debate of what is best moving forward, and useless in bringing consensus to the direction of the nation. They are generally more interested in attacking each other than in constructive dialogue and many times don't even grasp the nuances of the cause they celebrate. In fact they are most reminiscent of Dante's first bolgia of hell. Two groups that only exist to attack one another engaging in nothing productive. In other words a waste of life which is why Dante put them in hell in the first place.
That said I find totalitarianism to be the same whether from the left or the right. It is intolerable, arrogant, and leads only to death and destruction. Furthermore it is doomed to fail because it is most frequently an abnegation of free thought, constructive debate, and is limited to the abilities of one massively powerful force with a very limited scope. In that regard there is little difference between a fascist or communist dictatorship. Can it happen here? Sure if one side of the narrow minded or the other ever truly seizes power. And if it ever does, we're toast.
As an Aristotelian I look for things that build up the mind, the body and the human spirit. And the balance and harmony of them are essential. It is the idea behind E Pluribus Unum.
In my decades of life I have found that America has always been in flux between its conservative and liberal natures. Sometimes what many here call the right has been necessary in vanquishing that which would threaten our way of life from beyond our shores, and sometime that which many here would call the left has been essential in vanquishing that from within that would destroy the balance of our lives.
Found within these two longitudes is that Forrest Gump moment when the simplest explanation is the most profound. It is not one or the other, but both at the same time. Whether from the left or the right those who would seek to silence or destroy the other are at best fools, and at worst representative of the only nature anathema to freedom.
