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Remember the days when tolerance and appreciating new perspectives and differences of opinion were considered a virtue?
Peppridge farms remembers.
@freemo NO BUT DON’T YOU SEE TOLERANCE IS A PARADOX SO YOU HAVE TO BE INTOLERANT
Intolerance is the only true tolerance, duh!
2 + 2 = 5 for sufficiently large values of two
Tolerance is absolutely a virtue for sufficiently intolerant definitions of tolerant.
I am not suggesting you should be tolerant of everything, No one needs to be tolerant of literal Nazis for example. But when everyone and everything that disagrees with you looks like a Nazi.....
@freemo @volkris I actually disagree with this, depending on what you mean.
When people say “tolerance”, they usually refer to either allowing people to speak, or not barring people from taking office.
Any ideology that bars people from speaking or holding office based on their beliefs alone will bleed into fascism given enough time and power.
Now to be clear, there’s a big difference between tolerance and acceptance. Listening to an idea doesn’t mean you should embrace it. But it’s possible to have enough discernment that you hear someone crazy say something crazy and say “that’s crazy” rather than “why isn’t he in jail yet”.
Don't you think a political system that doesn't bar people from holding office who hold fascist beliefs will become fascist faster?
Isn't it better to sacrifice some democracy to gain better protection against genocide and loss of liberty? Because I think life and liberty are definitely more important than democracy.
If such an exchange were actually possible, maybe.
In practice attempting to do so results in a loss of liberty and an increase in the risk. So such an equation does not exist in the world, even if hypothetically if such a thing could exist it sounds appealing.
Being able to choose a leader to force their (and by proxy, your) views on people is power, not liberty. Liberty is control over your own life, not the lives of others.
It is literally a violation of liberty by definition.
Liberty is defined as "the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views."
Therefore creating a government which by definition imposes restrictions on which political views can be agreed upon by a society and executed is, by its fundamental nature a violation of liberty.
Where in the definition of liberty say its limited to the ability to talk about things, rather than execute them?
I don't think that contradicts the general principle of liberty.
Likewise if a *political movement* decides that *your kind* should die or otherwise be oppressed.
> If I or someone else try to execute my view that you should die by attacking you, I think you are justified in self-defense, don't you?
I should be, yes, presuming I didnt try to kill them first.
> I don't think that contradicts the general principle of liberty.
When someone is charging at you with a knife shooting them in a facce would be a reasonable violation of liberty (choosing the lesser of two liberties to deny when both are mutually exclusive)
> Likewise if a *political movement* decides that *your kind* should die or otherwise be oppressed.
Thats not the definition of fascism. A political movement that wants a particular group dead may be fascism it may not, depending on if it has the other elements of fascism. A movement can be fascist and not have **any** group they want dead, likewise a movement can want a group dead and not be fascist.
So you arent going to advance your point for arguing for a completely unrelated point.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/fascism
fas·cism (făsh′ĭz′əm) n. 1a. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
(Emphasis mine)
I still don’t think having a perfect democracy is worth allowing that to happen.
To be clear, I’m not in favour of suppressing fascist beliefs. Just not allowing them to have power.
Use a better dictionary, the free dictionary is one of the worst... try mariam webster or one of the more respected one.. the definition is similar but its a bit off here. Fashism doesnt need to be a dictator, only autocratic, which is usually dictators but not limited to it.
Also notice the part you highlight is listed as "typically" .. meaning it is **not** a required element of fascism, but common to many forms.
I always find definitional arguments to be a bit uninteresting, but FWIW the professional, trained historian, academic friends of mine have mentioned that fascism is basically a useless word historically because it doesn't have a workable, agreed upon definition, so they sound like they would rather people just never use that word again unless maybe in reference to Mussolini specifically.
Your friend would not be within the norm for political science opinions.
> The ideological movements of Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) and Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) can be classified as paradigmatic instances of Fascism and National Socialism. There are enough similarities between these two schools of thought to justify calling it a single ideology, and one that contains a mélange of ideas that renders it unique in the history of thought.
>
> There are a number of headings under which this ideology (hereinafter simply referred to as Fascism) can beneficially be studied, and they include anti-liberalism and anti-Marxism, the veneration of the nation and state, the leadership principle, racism, the rejection of procedural and substantive justice, autarky (self-sufficiency), and corporativism.” — H.B. McCullough, Political Ideologies, Chapter 7, pg. 132
Notice that I used the plural 🙂
This is not merely one friend, but the prospective offered by many different working historians during their get togethers on, for example, the sidelines of conferences.
The fact that its more than one friend doesnt really change things. Our friends generally represent people of some similar character, and thus tend to agree and show patterns that do not reflect the general population.
The point is, Fascism is used quite often and found to be a valuable term among the overwhelming majority of political science experts. No doubt some may not like the term as well. I mean some electrical engineers hate using "j" for the imaginary number too :)
I think that's a good idea. Let's do that.
I mean, we certainly can't agree on a definition in this thread, nor (I've noticed) anywhere.
Actuallyt he definition both of us provided are pretty much in agreement. The big difference is rather small, yours said "dictator" when it should have said "autocratic" which includes dictators.
However, **they are still allowed to hold those opinions**, I just don't think they should be trusted with power.
I don't really care what you call it.
Right so you think they should be barred on their opinions, which is why I disagree with you. Obviously you should make dictators illegal in your constitution, which should be democratically free to be revoked and modified. But that is not the same as saying that you should bar a politician from office simply for WANTING to be a dictator. In that case we just shouldnt elect them.
Thought policing is about as fascist as you can get.. blocking people because of their **opinions** from the right to a fair and free election is just a horrible idea.
@Hyolobrika maybe the thing that you are missing is that in a system like the US they don't get that power merely because they get elected.
In the US it is fundamental to the system that no, we absolutely don't trust ANYONE with such power.
It doesn't matter if you get elected, it doesn't matter if you really really want the power, it doesn't matter if you think you have the power, you still don't have the power, because the US system was designed specifically to make sure you don't have that power.
That's a huge problem with this whole " democracy is on the ballot" nonsense. No, it's not, because the US system was designed specifically to make such a thing impossible.
So I would say that if the people want to elect somebody promising things that they wouldn't have the authority to do at all, then the people are wasting their votes and they're going to be disappointed, but that's really the long and short of it.
Might as well vote for the candidate that is promising to flap his arms and fly to the ceiling.
We should absolutely educate the public on civics so that they know those promises are unfulfillable, but if they want to vote for someone based on a promise that he can't keep, well...
Thats what im saying, im fine with a constitution amendment making dictators illegal, im not ok with a law/amendment that makes it illegal to hold office simply for your opinions on dictatorship.
@freemo Yeah, the way I figure if we elect someone to office who is really into dictatorship, well, that's really going to suck for them because they are going to spend every day in the Oval Office lamenting that they don't have dictatorial powers
We probably shouldn't elect such a person, but if we do, honestly that person is probably going to be the worst off from it.
Exactly, I dont think we should elect someone like that, but im not interested int hought policing either.
The key here is intent vs what they can do... like protecting the system from actual dictators 100%... preventhing someone who just thinks dictatorship is a cool idea, but otherwise cant actually become one... like sure thats sleezy but ok.
I wish my school had taught civics now.
@Hyolobrika Oh, it's one of the main areas I nerd out on, so I could talk about it all day 🙂
I also think it's fascinating to contrast the US system against the UK system, the role that the written Constitution plays in contrast to the British system of fundamental law.
If you're really interested I could suggest some readings, particularly from the federalist papers, a set of documents written by the people who wrote the US Constitution explaining exactly what they were thinking and how they imagined the US system functioning.
But yeah, in a sentence the US president has absolutely no authority that hasn't been granted to him by the Constitution plus the Congress. Any action he attempts to take that is not granted by both is illegal and anybody carrying out such orders would be carrying out illegal orders.
So it doesn't matter how much a president might want to be a dictator. The entire massive institution that is the federal government is structured such that dictatorial leanings would be smothered.
@Hyolobrika (ok fine I suppose I should correct my statement that there are some limited authorities that don't require Congress, but they are extremely limited :) )
Keep in mind there are checks and balances beyond just congress.
#1 should almost always be allowed for the sake of liberty (except possibly when it comes to genocide; but that's an aside). And regardless, #2 I think is acceptable to regulate because it's about the internals of the government.