Brandon9000 wrote:Frank Apisa wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:Bi-Polar Bear wrote:Ticomaya wrote:Are you of the opinion that assisting Cuba to transition to a democracy would be a bad thing?
Or do you just want to bitch about Bush?
I'm saying no ones asked for our help and that the presumptious bastard ought to wait until somebody does....
bush reminds me of the idiots who come up to me and tell me how to run sound when they don't know a fader from a volume knob.....a damned annoyance and a lot of balls....
I'm sure that many of the poor, downtrodden Cubans, in their fascist dictatorship, would ask for help if they could.
Learn the difference between fascism and communism before posting this horseshyt, Brandon.
This is a goddam laugh!
I believe you're mistaken. Here's how the American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism:
Quote:1. often Fascism a. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. b. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government. 2. Oppressive, dictatorial control.
Clearly Cuba fits this definition. Please show me where I'm wrong.
You really are not an especially bright person, are you, Brandon.
Even some stupid people realize that while both fascism and communism often are present in totalitarian states...they are, by nature, almost polar.
If you had said, "I'm sure that many of the poor, downtrodden Cubans, in their
communist dictatorship, would ask for help if they could"...
...it might have made a slight bit of sense.
But to suggest that the Cubans are bearing up under a fascistic dictatorship...is simply the result of stupidity.
In any case...here are a few items (part of an essay and a few links) that might bring you up to speed.
Liberalism vs. Fascism
by Roderick T. Long
Fascism differs from its close cousins, Communism and aristocratic conservatism, in several important ways. To understand these differences is to see how classical liberalism offers a completely different view of social and economic organization, a perspective that departs radically from the views of both right and left, as those terms are understood in contemporary political language.
Let's begin with its difference from Communism. First, where Communism seeks to substitute the state for private ownership, fascism seeks to incorporate or co-opt private ownership into the state apparatus through public-private partnership. Thus fascism tends to be more tempting than Communism to wealthy interests who may see it as a way to insulate their economic power from competition through forced cartelization and other corporatist stratagems.
Second, where Communist ideology tends to be cosmopolitan and internationalist, fascist ideology tends to be chauvinistically nationalist, stressing a particularist allegiance to one's country, culture, or ethnicity; along with this goes a suspicion of rationalism, a preference for economic autarky, and a view of life as one of inevitable but glorious struggle. Fascism also tends to cultivate a "folksy" or völkisch "man of the people," "pragmatism over principles," "heart over head," "pay no attention to those pointy-headed intellectuals" rhetorical style.
These contrasts with Communism should not be overstated, of course. Communist governments cannot afford to suppress private ownership entirely, since doing so leads swiftly to economic collapse. Moreover, however internationalist and cosmopolitan Communist regimes may be in theory, they tend to be just as chauvinistically nationalist in practice as their fascist cousins; while on the other hand fascist regimes are sometimes perfectly willing to pay lip service to liberal universalism.
All the same, there is a difference in emphasis and in strategy between fascism and Communism here. When faced with existing institutions that threaten the power of the state?-be they corporations, churches, the family, tradition?-the Communist impulse is by and large to abolish them, while the fascist impulse is by and large to absorb them.
Power structures external to the state are potential rivals to the state's own power, and so states always have some reason to seek their abolition; Communism gives that tendency full rein. But power structures external to the state are also potential allies of the state, particularly if they serve to encourage habits of subordination and regimentation in the populace, and so the potential always exists for a mutually beneficial partnership; herein lies the fascist strategy.
The respects in which fascism differs from Communism might seem to align it rather more closely with the traditional aristocratic conservatism of the ancien régime, which is likewise particularist, corporatist, mercantilist, nationalist, militarist, patriarchal, and anti-rationalist. But fascism differs from old-style conservatism in embracing an ideal of industrial progress directed by managerial technocrats, as well as in adopting a populist stance of championing the "little guy" against elites?-remember the folksiness. (If fascism's technocratic tendencies appear to conflict with its anti-rationalist tendencies, well, in the words of proto-fascist Moeller van den Bruck, "we must be strong enough to live in contradictions.")
http://www.mises.org/story/1957
http://www.remember.org/guide/Facts.root.nazi.html
http://www.123helpme.com/preview.asp?id=59486
