Posted Mar 10, 2012, 3:07 AM UTC
What I find incredibly amusing is that my strongly conservative (in the best way possible) father would say that those were the times the Democratic Party took its big steps toward its current liberalism.
Ah yes. . . When John Kerry was the most liberal member of the senate.
It was written in 2004.
FASCISM guys!
Does anybody have ANY fucking idea what fascism is? Can anybody name ONE fascist???
Moussolini
Oswald Mosely?
The idea that the US was more liberal in 1970 is hilarious to me. Try being black, gay, or a woman in 1970.
In other words:
Literally Hitler!
Stupid, sensationlist headline, but the underlying idea is accurate. We've moved to the left on some social stuff, gay rights and some womens' issues but overall there's been a ~35-year rightward trend. Historic electoral blowout notwithstanding, Uncle Barry had a lot to do with it.
Compare/contrast: Nixon started the EPA; Carter kicked off deregulation.
It's a lot more complicated than that, and depends on your definition of right/left.
There have been huge strides to the left in social issues, young women are doing about as well (and possibly better) than young men, gender equality is all but achieved for the youngest generations. You have to go pretty far out on the fringe to find someone who thinks sodomy should be illegal, and nationwide gay marriage is looking like it is inevitable. Black people are much better off today then they were in the 70s, you don't find too many black separatist movements these days. The severity of poverty has dropped dramatically (compare the South Bronx today to the South Bronx in the 70s, still shitty but not a dystopian nightmare), there are millions of factors that went into that, but certainly left-wing programs like food stamps (started in 1977) helped.
Economically there's the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is a huge welfare program (though the fact that it had to be marketed as a tax break for working families does show a rightward trend). The percentage of money spent on the military has gone down quite a bit since the 70s as well, many would consider that left-wing. Federal government spending as a % of GDP is higher than it was 35 years ago, but this is largely due to the recession and it was a bit lower beforehand, and taxes are lower today than they were back then.
I don't see the rightward trend, it looks like a huge leftward trend socially and mixed bag economically
Here in Canada, our Conservative party (big C) is more left than the US's Democratic party.
And while there isn't a sense of "fascism in the strictest sense" (hyperbole if I've ever seen it) there are elements of fascism creeping into Republican politics.
If some private-industry supergenius has it figured out, I don't see how empowering them to help is any different than drawing on something fundamentally socialist like the income tax the rest of the time. I'm open to either, but it certainly seems that the US has gone off to the right the last few decades. The problem with us is that we do it because George Bush fried chicken nachos Ron Paul pew pew pew Budweiser... brought to you by Budweiser!!!
As your run of the mill former-PC-punk-done-grown-up I'm getting rather frustrated with it all. Republicans suck really bad, Democrats suck moderately less, Americans Elect are a bunch of 1% neoliberal ratfuckers, and thus the Ron Paul people think my vote is theirs by default. We don't have a no confidence option, but at least I live in California and can ignore the Presidential vote and concentrate on downballet stuff.
"Fascism in the strictest sense." Well, shit's getting pretty ugly but I've yet to hear, "The gentleman from Shell Oil has the floor..." thus far, so I'm thinking we still have time.
What's with the NPR logo next to this submission on /r/politics? It gives the over-the-top title more credibility than it deserves. NPR isn't making this claim.
Error in the URL detection code.
That's right: fascist in the strictest sense.
This is fun because it was written in 2004 and is basically an anti-Bush piece, and here it is being trotted back out to support the claim that America is now more fascist than ever before.
It would only be fascist in the strictest sense if it were called the Fascist Party of America.
Why can't you understand that anybody that disagrees with me is a freedom-hating Nazi?
I disagree with you. Also, fuck freedom.