Several of my family & friends were opining last night on the recent passage of the healthcare bill and a common theme seemed to be that although it was not perfect, that was what these people were elected to do, and also that despite what you might hear this is not fascism. Why? because fascism is what happens when Republicans go bad. So it can’t be Fascism.
Sigh. It bears repeating, and I must admit prior to a year ago I did not have the understanding that I do now because, I too, am the product of a public education.
Simply put, Left and Right are relative terms. The Left is always to the left of the Right and the Right is always to the right of the Left. So in a simplistic viewpoint it looks like this. Those two are far apart aren’t they? The problem is this viewpoint is at 300% zoom.
If you can wrap your mind around that, then you need to realize something else, The Left and Right can both be FAR to the left and they are still to the left and right of each other. If we zoom out of the above picture to about 150% zoom we can see the constitution quite a ways over to the right.
The politicians in this country have successfully confused many of us as to what the labels in politics mean. The first thing that you have to get over is that Democrats-Gone-Wild does not equal Socialism or Communism and that Republicans-Gone-Wild does not equal Fascism or Nazism. All of these –isms, get their roots from Marx and Engles, and Socialist Theory.
Socialism is the parent philosophy of Communism, Fascism, and Nazism. All three use the Marxist principles to raise up certain parts of the population against a perceived enemy to effect higher levels of Governmental control and loss of personal freedom and liberty. Communism extols the virtues of Class Struggle, “Worker’s of the World Unite”; incidently the USSR was the Union of Socialist Soviet (Workers) Republic. Fascism lifts up the State, “Everything from within the Nation, nothing from outside”; the word Fascism is from Fasciti which is a bundle of sticks symbolizing National Unity. Nazism demonizes certain races, Africans, Jews, whatever; and Nazi is the acronym for National Social German Workers Party. All of these end in Tyranny. At the turn of the twentieth century both of our political parties fell in love with Socialism. Democrats thought that Communism was the ideal situation, and Republicans believed that Mussolini was onto something. This is where the old wives' tale of Fascism arising from an out of control right wing party came from.
Our Founders believed in Personal Liberty, Freedom, and Self Determination based on Free Market principles. “That which Governs best, Governs least” it was a very radical idea, and it birthed the greatest nation this world has ever known. This political philosophy gives politicians and government very little power over individual rights and freedoms and is just not very much fun for politicians, who covet power and control. Beginning during the reconstruction period following the Civil War, some might say at the beginning of the Civil War, our Federal government began a slow steady march toward a strong central Government and really took off in the early 1900’s. We have lost our way. The real left or right is Total Government Control; be that a dictatorship, an oligarchy, socialism and its’ offspring, a theocracy, or a monarchy on the Left vs. Anarchy (which is an absence of government) on the Right. Our Constitution was designed to give us just enough control to maintain order while still allowing maximum personal freedom to realize our dreams. The other philosophies place power in the hands of a select few, end up subjugating the people, and crush Hope. If we zoom out to 100% zoom we see that this is closer to our reality now. The Blue vertical Line would be a Centrist position. The Goal should be somewhere closer to where the founders anchored us with the constitution.
Our politics have to be rooted to something solid and real because if our beliefs are not pegged to something stationary and solid, it leads to the arguments we currently have over left and right. These arguments are like two small children in the backseat fighting over who gets to sit on the left or on the right, which doesn’t really matter if the car is being driven over a cliff. We have to take control of the car.
There is a part two to this story, which I will share with you soon.
-KOOK
