@georgeob1,
Thanks george for your thoughtful response.
georgeob1 wrote:I don't dismiss any of the things you cite. However, I do include many other elements of the rhetoric and, more importantly, the real actions of the Nazi state that you omit from your arbitrary and self-serving selection. For example, during their ascent to power the Nazis presented themselves as the alternative to the socialist and communist political movements which were then a real force in Germany.
Sure, that is understandable. In fact, it is not at all unusual for politicians, even extremists and radicals, to try to frame themselves as moderates. There are those claiming Obama was and is a centrist too. Is he? Very doubtful, george, and he certainly is not conservative or right wing. And we see that right here on this forum with posters in fact. And it does not hurt repeating that Fascism is defined as a Third Way, wherein the co-called benefits of both capitalism and communism can be combined into a better way, but the fact still remains that being a combination and anti communist does not by virtue earn a designation of being right wing. Communism is not the only left wing idealogy, george.
Quote:During this period and later in power they systematically fought, imprisioned and murdered the leaders of these movements. State run schools and social services had been a well-regarded feature of German governments for fifty years before Hitler came on the scene - he didn't create them: he merely transformed them into organs of Nazi state control and propaganda.
Understood. I do not believe I claimed that Hitler created State run schools. My primary point was that he did in fact, as you confirm, make them into a fully dedicated tool of the State, which in my way of thinking is a left wing ideology. We see that very battle going on right here in this country. Conservatives would like to see less indoctrination in schools and they would like to see more freedom to have more private schools, but Leftists are heavily invested in the public school system, including the unions and all of that.
Quote: While Hitler condemned the "profiteering" of Jewish business owners, doctors and professors, seized their property and slaughtered them, he amply rewarded the profits and status of German industrialists and businessmen of every variety, and never confiscated any of their property.
Here is a very important point to address. Hitler only favorably treated those that served him and the State, such as turning out equipment and goods for his building war machine. And probably also only if they propagated his propaganda and social programs for young people, etc.
Quote: In all of this the Nazis cynically (and selectively as you do) employed the political cant and rhetoric of both the right and the left to rationalize their real goal, the establishment of absolute control over the German state, and the use of it as a tool of conquest in Europe. The Nazis also richly rewarded their henchmen with status and property (usually stolen from unfortunate Jews), and actively employed status, hierarchy and economic incentives in a decidedly unsocialistic way throughout German society.
Perhaps, but how is that radically different from Franklin Raines milking Fannie for 90 million and getting away with it, because he walks the party line of Democrats? How is it different from Obama giving billions to investment houses as long as they walk his party line?
Quote:My point is that the simplistic left right scale on which you attempt to measure all political and economic systems is inadequate to the task. There are other, independent factors or dimensions involved that are not included in the taxonomy you attempt to use. It is somewhat analogous to the attempt to locate the points on a plane with one coordinate or number - it can't be done, because there is an independent, orthogonal second component required (actually, arguably more than that). Here, parados is - for once - close to being right (however he errs by conflating progressives with libertarians).
Here is where I believe you are injecting too much complexity to a fairly simple spectrum, which includes basically one extreme versus another, which all revolves around individual freedom and responsibility versus groupism, the Good of the whole. I believe the advent of America in the past 200 years has in fact redefined what this spectrum really is, so that we do not have to become mired into some complicated and obfuscated argument of all the factors in Germany in the 1920's and 30's. Boil it down, and Hitler was a groupee, looking for the Common Good of the Folks, the nation of Germany, and he could care less about the rights of any one person. He only would treat them right if they worshiped at his alter. That is a leftist, george, plain and simple.
Quote:A well-known irony of political life in the modern age is the reoccurring and perverse similarity of the extreme left and the extreme right as they impose authoritarian controls and the suppression of individual political and economic rights. This itself is a demonstration of the inadequacy of a left right metphor, based on the seating arrangements in the legislatures of representative governments, to the reality of tyrannical and authoritarian governments.
To a point, george, but you are forgetting that Leftists undermining capitalism, such as the Weather Underground, Bill Ayers and company, they were against authority of a Democratic Republic form of government, but they would replace it with a very authoritarian dictatorship to achieve their utopian vision. So I disagree with you, it is not authoritarianism that extreme Leftists oppose, it is who is in authority. Authoritarianism does not in and of itself indicate a right wing idealogy. In fact, it is more indicative of the Left.
Quote:In short, both human nature and the political economic orders humans create are much more complex than you appear to acknowledge. The record of history demonstrates this again and again.
I will agree that tyrannies generally attempt to suppress human individuality and freedom in the name of various values they select and pursue, all labelled in a self-serving way as for the common good. That, however, is a different perspective from the left right stuff you so persistently use.
You are admitting a basic truth that Leftist tyrannies suppress individuality and freedom. My point is that the very definition of Left versus Right revolves around how governments treat the individual versus the whole, who they deem the most important. Individuals were not important to Hitler and his Nazism at all. Neither were they to Mussolini and his Fascism. It all revolved around the State and their power. Similarly, it was the same philosophy in Stalin's Russia, in Pol Pot's Cambodia, in Chairman Mao's China, in Castro's Cuba, and now in Chavez's Venezuela.
George, I think you know in your gut that I am onto something basic and right, but you do not wish to let go of the stuff, all the twisting and complexities, so-called conventional wisdom, much of which has been put out there by leftist professors and authors. Let it be known however that their opinions are not universal. I am not the only one out here arguing this point as I am.
