Economist Magazine on NRA vs UN

[mordechaianiliewicz]

tellner, I don't think you understand the issues very well. Granted, I don't think Zen or Kim understands either.

This isn't a matter of left and right anymore, it is a matter of power resting in the hands of the state, and power resting in the hands of individuals, and their smaller organizations freely assembling and associating.

Zen, you are talking about a dying portion of the Republican party. There was a part of the party which was for all the bill of rights. And minimal trade restrications and regulations, but the neo-cons have hijacked the party. Now, corporations looking out for corporate welfare, and attempting to expand their markets, drive down prices and competition, and up quarterly profits, have begun to use the government to acquire welfare in the form of subsidies, and tax credits, and grants, and government guareanteed loans. What is the best consumer? The consumer who has no choice but to take your services. Eliminating the BoR is integral to this plot because corporations do not want free association, or a free market. This could allow a small business to supplant them through a better, cheaper, faster, etc. product. I've said before, corporations love the free market, until they get beat in competition. This current crew of Republicans are fascists wrapped in a U.S. flag. But despite that, you can see the cheap lipstick, jean miniskirt, and leopard print bustier that marks them clearly as, you guessed it folks Corporate Whores!

As for you Kim:

Understand, the party of AuH2O and the party of Jorge "Who Let Our Jobs Go to India?" Shrub are at odds with each other.

Whereas Goldwater would be vehemently against the trampling of the BoR that Bush has done, and would have been much more carefull about pursuing the "War on Terror," Bush simply pushes onward as if "Yeehaw" was a foreign policy statement.

A traditional Republican administration would be trying to balance our budget, and would prohibit our selling of our debts to the communists to fascists Chicoms.

A traditional Republican administration would have some serious debate going on concerning job outsourcing and measuring the good of the country against possible returns in cheaper products and services.

tellner, my question to you is, If the Democrats are the "defenders of American rights, and the middle class," Why did so many Dems vote for the Patriot Act?

Why are so many for illegal immigration which obviously drives down the wages of unskilled labour (and by extension, skilled labour, which cannot bargain for as high a wage they might have been able to if they could walk into an unskilled job and get payed decently)?

Why are they still for tax increases to save SS and Medicare which always have a much harder impact on the middle class than any other in terms of take home salary, and buying power?

Why haven't they presented a major job protection plan which helps us to possibly retain some jobs from outsourcing by offering credits to employers who keep jobs here?

All are things which the Dems should be all over. They aren't, and I wonder, Why?

 

[Zedicus]

I think this quote fits this well.

"All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." -Edmund Burke

 

[Mongo the Mutterer]

a huge segment of the American public who would support anything their masters tell them to.

Yep, you lost one of your propagandists today, Dan Rather. I guess that's why you've got your panties in a bunch, comrade...

 

[Eleven Mike]

What do you mean by Know-Nothing? On your planet, does any sincere conviction merit the title of "Pavlovian"?

When there weren't commies to kick around any longer the heirs of Lee *spit* Atwater needed someone else to kick around, a new goblin under the bed.

Are you serious? That is a ridiculous idea. If we needed a new bogey, China and/or North Korea would have sufficed. So would militant Islam. So would Saddam, for that matter.

Best of all, they make the Know Nothings all hot and bothered.

Pride parades tend to do that. So do changes in school curricula so that our children are properly indoctrinated to accept homosexuality. So do demands that homosexual relationships be recognized by state governments. My point being that we "know-nothings" did not pick this fight.

So gay marriage became a constitutional crisis and an opportunity for evil mamzers (technical term here) like FoF, AFA and the rest of that mean-spirited vicious crowd to get the sheep to all baa in the same direction.

Mean-spirited and vicious? What are you talking about? Anyhoo, if you'd like to blame someone for getting us Bible-thumpers in a lather, you can thank those who decided to call us bigots and equate our marriages to something we consider morally wrong and disgusting. You act as if we "know-nothings" were the ones on the offensive when quite the opposite is true.

Mission Accomplished was a lie? How so?

 

[Eleven Mike]

This current crew of Republicans are fascists wrapped in a U.S. flag.

You said a lot of things that made sense, but this wasn't one of them.

 

[mordechaianiliewicz]

Eleven Mike, I studied fascism.

Fascism is a very important topic to me personally, seeing as how fascist nations attempted to wipe out both sides of my family in the '30s and '40s. As such, I studied fascism, and tried to figure out it's true meaning (know your enemy).

A fascist state is a state in which corporations combine with the government in an attempt to expand the power of the state, and by extension, corporate profits. The pattern of Nazi Germany, and Italy bears that statement out. German corporations used government troops, funds, etc. to expand their production and consumer bases. In turn, the government used corporate taxes, shareholder taxes, and worker's income taxes to finance huge social engineering programs, welfare schemes, and government surveillance, as well as enormous offensive militaries, that even with these massive states still featured huge budget deficits.

China, and Singapore, amongst a handful of other nations in the world follow this fascist pattern. Right now, under a Republican administration, we have a huge budget deficit, and troops in a foreign land securing a resource to be used for profit by private corporate ventures. We have "Project Exile" we have "Project Safe Schools" we have the government advocating marriage, and not taking drugs, and "No child Left Behind" (massive social programs, and social engineering).

Don't get me wrong, these may be laudable goals, but they are the job of parents, and grandparents, not the job of the government. And if schools should be public at all, they should be very local, as in the state or county government, most definitely not federal, where there is no constitutional mandate.

I'm not saying the Democrats are this wonderful white horse riding adonis, I'm just saying, a little perspective is in order. The neo-conservative movement acts more fascist than anything else. And right now, they are holding the entire Republican Party except for basically the Liberty Caucus.

 

[Lobotomy Boy]

mordechaianiliewicz, thank you for that thoughtful, concise, and informative post. I've had a sense that the executive branch has devolved into fascism, but all the explanations I come up with simply indicate tyranny and not outright fascism. Your post clarifies my thinking.

 

[Kim]

I'm sorry but I disagree with your definition as you left out one important little tid bit. The Nazi Government was the one who used the corporations. If they did not comply with the Governments wishes they would be destroyed or Nationalized. The Goverment took power over the corporations not the other way around. It is like liberals who force business owners and Corporations to provide part of SS Taxes or ELSE. Or liberals that would like to force businesses to provide health care. Or the Liberals that tell me how much they are going to pay me for providing health care ie Medicare and Medicaide. And worse they are really wanting to NATIONALIZE the whole health care profession. You left out the part that makes NAZISM left wing. The POWER OF THE STATE was supreme not the private businesses or individal. You may have studied it but you must have studied left wing propaganda. Nazism, commumism and socialism are all of the left just different by small degress and they hate each other cause it is a power struggle.

 

[Lobotomy Boy]

The Nazi Government was the one who used the corporations.

Why do you say this? I researched this issue when I wrote a book about BMW motorcycles, and the relationship between BMW and the Nazis was most definitely symbiotic, much like the relationship between corporations like Haliburton, Enron, Merck, and Exxon-Mobile and the Bush administration. There were people within BMW who opposed Nazi policies, but they did so quietly because the corporate party line was that National Socialism was good for business, a fact that BMW most definitely used to its advantage.

 

[American By Blood]

Not to nitpick, but people far overstate the role of corporations in fascist ideology. This is largely due to class-struggle leftists defining the discussion of fascism and because of Mussolini's use of terms like "corporatism."

However, when Mussolini talked about the "corporate state" he was not explicitly referring to a state that worked hand-in-hand with private firms. This happened, but he was using the term "corporate" in the sense pertaining to a body. His social theory revolved around the idea that the state would come to encompass the entire corpus (ah ha!) of society. Hence "Our formula is this: Everything within the State, nothing outside of the State, nothing against the State." The state was to become the very body of the nation. The alliance between the industrialists and the Blackshirts had less to do with theory and more to do with a shared hatred for bolshevism.

Note that none of the above is meant to apply to national socialism. I'm of the opinion that the two need to be discussed as different ideologies.

 

[Lobotomy Boy]

Wouldn't this make oligarchism, which is our current situation, a sort of reverse-fascism?

 

[American By Blood]

Eh. I don't like to simplify that much. As the son of two attorneys, I'm a dyed in the wool hairsplitter.

And anyway, oligarchy is neither a theory nor an ideology--it's an adjective. All sorts of systems can be oligarchical if they allow for a non-democratic structure that doesn't empower an autocrat.

 

[mordechaianiliewicz]

Well, that's the thing. Italian fascism was much more socialist in nature than German fascism. As Lobotomy Boy so succinctly pointed out, BMW was in a symbiotic relationship with the Nazi Government. Of course, if any BMW board members, or employees were like "Hey, that kill the Jews, thing, and kill the Gypsies, and whoever else doesn't like us thing might be wrong" were stiffled, or silent.

Bayer, Mauser-Obendorff, Krupp AG, etc. they might have not had power really, (they didn't have firepower), but they were the tax base, and consumer base upon which the German state was based. Hitler knew, along with his economic advisors, that keeping a market (albeit heavily regulated and taxed) around was in Germany's best interest.

American Neo-Con fascism is most like the German fascism of the 30s and 40s.

As to anyone who is saying "You are looking at left propaganda," I would contend I'm for free markets. Creating a system where you give corporations advantages they could never have in a free market isn't laissez faire whatsoever, and stops the best thing about capitalism, competition.

 

[Wheeler]

Please explain to me what benefit labor unions serve now? 100+ years ago, they served a purpose and over time forced several laws to be enacted that benefit workers. What purpose do they serve now? It's a "pay to work" system with training and retirement held up as carrots.

Wheeler

 

[Kim]

My gripe with Unions is not employees trying to get the best pay, health care etc. It is that they are involved in lefty politics. Why does the NEA or AFT come out preaching aganist the war, for abortion, for gay marriage. What does that have to do with their employees. Same with the AFL--CIO. Same issues and you can throw in Gun Control in there too. If they would get rid of the Socialists leadership like they did the Commies and Mafia they might be better accepted in this country. Plus quit trying to get laws to take away my right to not be in their dang UNION. That is their Biggest Problem. I also refuse to join a group that uses Commie language I am not their Brother or Sister in solidarity. I would be a US citizen that joins with others voluntarily to get the best contract not because I am anti -capitalist.

 

[mordechaianiliewicz]

The problem with labour unions is the same thing I pointed out earlier. Simply because of illegal immigration, they should be screaming mad because of problems with lower wages caused by illegal immigrant entry. But the leftists being in union leadership positions have regularly done things that were not in the best interests of their members.

Think gun control, and abortion, things which most union members I've known don't support.

Look, human beings have a right to bargain their labour either individually or collectively, and when bargaining with massive corporations, it makes the most since to do so collectively.

Thing is, most Unions don't understand 2 things:

#1: You still have to consider what your business is making any given quarter and year.

#2: Americans are only concerned with a higher paycheck. Quit trying to foist a leftist agenda on them.

 

[Cosmoline]

If there's no conspiracy, why do European papers waste so much ink going on and on and on about the evils of "American Gun Culture" and the NRA?

 

[Cosmoline]

Name ONE gun-owning resident of NOLA who said "Molon Labe" or some such, and resisted actual confiscation.

A lot of folks held onto their iron. The rent-a-cops and NOPD criminals picked on poor folks in the low lying neighborhoods who had no lawyers and money to keep their guns.

 

[tellner]

Why yes....

1) "Leave No Child Behind" was a Bush Administration proposal from day one. Not Ted Kennedy. It's specifically designed to penalize Title I schools, i.e. public schools that are poor enough to receive that sort of Federal funding. Starving public schools and funnelling money to religious ones (which they are also doing through the *retch* Office of Faith Based Initiatives) is pure right wing dogma.

2) The prescription drug benefit is not designed to help seniors with medical expenses. It is a handout to Big Business pure and simple. Medicare is forbidden by law from using its buying power to reduce costs. The "donut" is specifically designed to make seniors pay the bulk of the costs. Co-insurance, which would allow the insurance industry to negotiate lower prices, is forbidden.

3) Immigration? Pure and simple Bush and his masters want cheap labor which doesn't have the rights of citizens. Recall that Saint Ronald the Faultless did exactly the same thing. "The jobs that Americans won't do" now include construction, truck driving and landscaping.

4) Homosexuals? The Right has always had a nicely closeted Queer streak from Roy Cohen and Gay Edgar Hoover to George Lincoln Rockwell, Billy Sol Hargis (so it is rumored) and the Cult of Masculinity in 1930s Germany and Italy. The only difference is the hypocrisy.

5) Tax cuts and tax rebates? It's Right Wing either way you look at it. If you're a fan of Norquist it's to shrink the government. If you're a wild-eyed Social Darwinite it's rewarding the productive rich at the expense of the inferior poor.

So yes, these are right-wing policies. So is the theocracy, the attempt to enshrine religious doctrine into law, the war against contraception and the rest.

 

[Cosmoline]

Many of those aren't right-wing policies. The Bush administration has simply been drifting further and further to the internationalist left. He's pappy's boy, after all. More at home with Arab oil princes than ordinary Americans.

 

[mordechaianiliewicz]

tellner, you misunderstand. Lower taxes do make for a smaller government if you also lower the budget. (which this administration strangely has not done)

As for defining a social welfare program (No child Left Behind) as right wing is laughable. It is designed to cover for the fault of government schools in educating the youth.

On the prescription drug benefit, it goes both ways. It is neither an entirely government handout thing, or an entirely help those poor old folks thing. It is a little of both, and ultimately destined to collapse, kinda like social security.

Hey, we are in total agreeance on the gay thing, and immigration.

That being said, Bush has tried to paint himself as a moderate from day one. His actions (largely religious right shoring up) and a media that see him as a right wing nut, have made him unsuccessful in painting this picture.

Whats more, the "Reagan Republicans" who put him in office don't like his stance on immigration, or social welfare compromises he has made, or raising the budget and lowering taxes in the middle of a war.

No wonder he isn't very popular.

In attempting to look moderate, and be pro-mega corporation, he managed to look like a baffoon to most Americans for a wide variety of issues.

And to think, Kerry is the flip-flopper.

I shudder to think what the next president will do to attract the non-existent middle ground.

Hey, atleast if they arew a Democrat, they can tick off the liberal base this time.

 

[cuchulainn]

The UN won the debate in this thread and didn't even need to show up.

Why? The (ahem) "debate" has devolved into whether the Democrats are better than the Republicans, whether the unions are good or bad, and whether the USA technically meets one of a number of definitions of fascism -- none of which helps us address the UN problem, much less defeat it.

Sadly, you've all ignored Barthomew Robert's excellent point:

2-3% of Americans would be about 6-9 million Americans.... the NRA has less than 4 million members and wields considerable political power. Facts are, if you had 2-3% of Americans who were so dedicated to a cause they were willing to give up everything they had and fight and die for it, we wouldn't have any problem protecting RKBA because politicians would be out of office for even suggesting it.

Got it folks? If we had a level of support that the Revolution had, we wouldn't need a revolution. Conversely, if we don't have enough support to defeat something politically and socially, talking about the much harder route of revolution is laughable and meaningless.

The real problem here is that no one seems to know what to do -- not me, not you, not the NRA, not the keyboard kommandos.

Anyone have any real suggestions about what can be done?

 

[Waitone]

Proof positive perfectly good thread given sufficient time will circle the crapper.

***Poof***

 

[mec]

A Modest and Generous Proposal

Read a piece the other day that says the UN building is in need of repairs/renovation. Why not an entirely new building?
This would be the perfect time for the United Nations to move to a more suitable location- Like Singapore or China. We could help. The UN is always complaining that the United States is not paying its dues or donating its fair share. They are even suggesting that the UN should begin levying taxes to support itself. Why not make a very large one-time donation to assist them in building a new facility elsewhere? we could up the ante considerably if they agreed to refrain from settling anywhere west of the Prime Meridian.

 

[Eleven Mike]

A fascist state is a state in which corporations combine with the government in an attempt to expand the power of the state, and by extension, corporate profits.

There is much more to fascism than that, and you should know it. You just want to use the term as a pejorative. People with money have more influence than the rest of us, always have, always will; and that is all that is occurring now. "Neo-cons" (speaking of bogey-men) are no more fascists than they are monarchists.

In turn, the government used corporate taxes, shareholder taxes, and worker's income taxes to finance huge social engineering programs, welfare schemes, and government surveillance, as well as enormous offensive militaries, that even with these massive states still featured huge budget deficits.

Again, having all of these things still wouldn't make this a fascist country, and our surveillance and military are nowhere near fascistic levels. In any case, we need a large military at this time.

Right now, under a Republican administration, we have a huge budget deficit, and troops in a foreign land securing a resource to be used for profit by private corporate ventures.

Tired nonsense.

We have "Project Exile" we have "Project Safe Schools" we have the government advocating marriage, and not taking drugs, and "No child Left Behind" (massive social programs, and social engineering).

I'll be honest, I don't know what Safe Schools is, but it hardly sounds like any part of fascism. But again, government schools, govt support of marriage, discouraging drug use - this is not fascism, whether the government does it or not.

And if schools should be public at all, they should be very local, as in the state or county government, most definitely not federal, where there is no constitutional mandate.

I agree.

Bush has tried to paint himself as a moderate from day one

Not at all. Bush is in many ways a moderate Republican, in that he favors amnesty for illegals and is content to increase social programs, etc. However, he has "painted himself" as a right-winger, in order to get elected.