mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Generalizations can be just as dangerous as assumptions. Much of the horrors committed by Nazis was based on generalizations. As a youth I was a liberal democrat and grew more conservative as I aged. I can assure you I was never a socialist or anything even close to being one. I'm fairly conservative now, but I've always been honest and trustworthy. The extremists on both ends of the political spectrum can be problematic, but as on the right, most folks who view themselves more towards the left are not on the fringes you seem to think they are. I've know lots of liberal democrats all my life and the overwhelming majority of them have no more love of socialism then you do.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

When I taught about the political spectrum instead of a straight line with left on one end and right on the other I drew it as a circle with a slight gap at the bottom and one side of the gap labeled left and the other right. Then I put the word "totalitarianism" below it with an arrow pointing to the gap. Then I crossed out left and right and wrote communist and fascist in their place.
I explained that the further out to the extreme you got the more people had to be forced to go along until you had a totalitarian police state.
And to those who became enemies of the state it didn't matter if you were arrested, imprisoned amd executed in the name of "the people" or "the state". You were still in prison or dead.

therwol Loc: USA

Very well said and true.

MauiMoto Loc: Hawaii

That's unfortunate, but it explains why the average adult today is so misinformed if teachers are twisting history this way. I thought the kkk was on the right also, turns out that is also a lie. In fact before the Civil War not a single republican owned a single slave. How can being more conservative, wanting more individual freedom and responsibility and less government power and control over the individual become fascist?
This guy explains things better than anyone, maybe it's his accent.
https://youtu.be/m6bSsaVL6gA

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Just what did I twist?
Remember I was talking about the ultimate extreme of the two sides of the political spectrum.
Here in the states 90%+ of the people, no matter how far to the right or left they seem are actually on the outer edges, or just a bit over the edges of the center 50% of beliefs - that is a left wing moderate or a right wing moderate. The really far left towards real communist and the far right towards the real fascists would scare the hell out of most of them if they got dropped in a place run by one of those extremes.

MauiMoto Loc: Hawaii

Obviously you didn't see the video, he explains exactly what you twisted better than I can. It's only a few minutes. You didn't twist it, I'm sure, but you were teaching it.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

It is too easy to use labels like fascism and socialism. There are people and groups that are accused of supporting one or the other that really aren't. As I said previously, generalizations can be dangerous, and using labels to generalize whole groups can be especially dangerous.

Since most people are not well enough educated, or do not take the time to understand exactly what these terms mean, they end up being nothing more than buzz words to describe perceived enemies. Thus the erroneous perception many people have that everyone leaning strongly towards the right is a fascist, and everyone leaning strongly towards the left is a socialist. There are many groups of people with very different ideas and beliefs who consider themselves conservative or right leaning. The exact same is true of those who consider themselves liberal or left leaning.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

OK, I watched it, I have seen it before and have a bunch of stuff by Dinesh D'Souza. I like him.

I was teaching 7,8,9,10,11,12th graders. They were only familiar with the popular "left is communist" and "right is fascist" as Dinesh points out most believe today. So I used the terms they or their parents were likely to know. It was a simplified generalization and took up only part of one period (about 5-10 minutes) of one school day.* I told them it was really much more complicated than that and in more advanced courses, like at college, they would learn about the advanced ideas instead of the simplified version I gave them.
Since fascists believe everything and everyone is subordinate to the state you can have fascists on the left or right - even if the idea came from the left. But to the public in general fascist means extreme right wing though here in the US today most of the fascist like groups are on the left (Antifa anyone - in action they use the tactics of Hitler and Mussolini but they claim to be anti-fascist.)

*The teacher's quick guide for 8th grade US History in LA ("Pumpkin Book"-it was orange) was an outline of 16 pages, single spaced. Each line being a different item or idea to cover in the class. The full guide book it was part of was just that, a book. It was nearly impossible to complete all those things in one school year unless you had a class of super students. So you had to pick and choose what to cover and what to leave out.

MauiMoto Loc: Hawaii

Agreed

MauiMoto Loc: Hawaii

He's one of my favorites, I have most of his movies.
I think it's the accent.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

He has something most commentators today lack. Common sense and he understands how economies and political systems work.

I have a memory of many years ago reading an article by him in which he talked about a relative who wanted him to sponsor him to immigrate to the US (remember when people actually did that). The relative owned a successful business in India. Big house, servants, kids could go to any college or university they wanted and could qualify for etc etc. He wrote that he asked the relative "Why?"
The relative replied "I want to live in a country where the poor people are fat."
I know that he and others use versions of that often and there are a lot of claims about where it first came from. But I like it and used to use it in class. I also used to show the students how rich, middle class, poor, poverty were relative and different in different countries. Then explained that people who are considered poor in the US would be middle class in many nations and even our poverty line was above average for many third world countries. Our poor own more "stuff" than most in the third world can even dream of owning.
As to "poor people are fat" - that implies that food is available and cheap enough the poor can afford to buy and eat it. Yeah the fact that being fat is largely a factor of poor choices of foods and being couch potatoes in front of the TV is a major part. But they can afford the food, and the couch and TV. They may be used and/or low end but they have them.

I also point out that the US has true poverty - homeless - the reservations etc. But those are solvable if the politicians would just get their act together. And that doesn't mean use a scoop shovel to throw money at the problem. It means develop a workable plan and spend what is needed, not a penny more. Also do a culling on the bureaucracy, keep their numbers down and their pay in line with the rest of us. Too often the government types are busy building an empire in the bureaucracy with the actual job being secondary. And of course many of them are idiots when it comes to spending that money. I recently saw an article about one program to help the homeless that was spending over $100,000 per homeless person when you added everything together. Among other things the program was going to build an apartment building for the homeless that would cost many millions of dollars yet house less than 100 people.

MauiMoto Loc: Hawaii

Hawaii has been controlled by the democrats for as long as I can remember, so I always thought they were the good guys. We followed California, we even have a partially finished, failed rail. What few local homeless we had were easily handled, by temporary shelters, first dorm like then as they learn to follow rules, get along with each other and learn some work skills they move to single family dwelling, then out on their own. But the west coast has been shipping professional hobos here for decades who just want free social services and nothing else out of life. A friend who works for the state told me 30 years ago that they come straight from the airport to his office and receive food stamps, money, medical and now even a free phone. Now the paperwork is done before they get here and they eat, sleep, shit and panhandle everywhere, no shame.
So they can keep raising our taxes, and they are not even our homeless. That's what I mean they are professionals they make careers of feeling sorry for them.
Another bureaucratic horror story, my neighbor had his cesspool cave in, and a simple 2 or 3 grand, one or two day fix, turned into a $20k nearly 2 year bureaucratic nightmare. Luckily he had another house that was empty and he owned outright. I know of others that lost their homes in similar situations. One friend got a bill for nearly a million, for fees, fines and inspections, no warning, for some trash dumped on her land before she owned it. If she couldn't afford a good attorney she would have lost the property. The government has been steadily confiscating or forcing locals to sell their land with high taxes.

Glenn Harve

Socialism always starts by promising everything to "the people", and always ends by stealing everything from the people. EVERY TIME. The astounding thing is how many idiots still fall for it.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Robert Heinlein once wrote that over 90% of the world's problems could be solved by taking less than 10% of the world's people out and shooting them.
There are days I begin to see his point and am tempted by the idea.

Almost all of them would be what Eric Hoffer called "True Believers".

Glenn Harve

That percentage is no doubt higher in california. ....and gettin higher by the day.