What's so bad about fascism?

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I think that's more contributeable to those alphas abusing and perverting the philosophies to suit their personal needs; as such people establish those perverted-fascist regimes themselves, the result is Iran.
But, would the same issue occur with a clearly-thought, benevolent and firmly establish fascist power? Probably not - at least, considering the political workings of such a "benevolent-fascist" system.

Far from helpless. We are smart enough to construct machines to do what our bodies cannot. No progress was made in aviation until inventors gave up on flapping wings. Humans are simply not built to fly like birds. And we do something that birds can never do -- i.e. propel ourselves through the air using gaseous reaction machines (i.e. jets and rockets). That is why we can fly (with the aid of our machines) higher or faster than any bird.

The bottom line is that we are not completely bound by the natural limitations of our bodies. We are subject to natural laws (of course) but we our not complete slaves to our biological nature.

ruveyn

Whatever our mechanical expertise, I have yet to see an aviator zoom up from a standing position and perch on a tree branch or leap off a building and fly a hundred miles on the fuel he ate for breakfast. No doubt the expertise of birds may someday be accomplished but they are not to be sneered at for the amazing skills they exhibit and their complete interaction with the slightest nuances of the atmosphere with ease and deep understanding of the forces involved. Recently a good deal of experiment is being done to discover the fine mechanisms and reaction capabilities of birds but we are far from their accomplishments at this moment.

We are also far from having feather light (quite literally) skeletons. I have no doubt that we have a great deal to learn from birds and fish (who fly through the water). But we will never fly like birds in Earth normal gravity given our skeletal and muscular makeup.

Perhaps on another planet, or as Heinlein suggests, inside the Moon (1/6 Earth normal) we may be able to fly like birds. But not on Earth. We are the end product of two billion years of evolution. It is unlikely that we can alter our biological makeup and still remain human beings.

ruveyn

Although I probably won't live to see it the improvement of compact energy sources and the computer assisted control of aerodynamic surfaces might do the trick. A bird's whole body is constructed around its pectoral flight muscles which are huge when compared to the rest of the body or to human muscle configurations. This can be compensated for by powerful small motors powered by highly intense and compact power sources. It might require atomic powered motors which are beyond our current technology but not impossible. A variation of a hang glider pumped up with these additional capabilities might do the trick. If a glove on each hand could control flight surfaces exquisite control of flight would be possible.

Once large space environments become possible flying suits would also be useful in large open areas.

Also, two billion years is quite an exaggeration for human development time.

Not so. We still share genes with the sromatolites and other one celled organisms that flourished two billion years before present. We are kludges made up of already existing genes and mutated genes. We are cousins to the cabbage and the gorilla.

ruveyn

You're getting a bit mixed up with teleology there. On that basis humanity has roots connected to the big bang which goes back a bit further.

You mean seriously my opinion? No, I might consider fascism to be more viable than Marxism, but that is more due to my profound lack of respect for Marxism.

The official definition from the dictionary is this:
fas-cism (fashizm)n. 1. Often Fascism A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.

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Excerpted from American Heritage Talking Dictionary
Copyright © 1997 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

I would say that a more proper definition would deny the necessity of a dictator although promoting a view including centralization of power, as after all, the prototypical government of Sparta had 3 kings. I would also argue that racism is less necessary for the nature of fascism. The rest seems somewhat valid.

Study the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian Civil War. They had a *lot* going against them, and the Germans at least had a period of peace to develop their military at their leisure. The Nazis also had a number of wealthy sympathizers in other nations, including the US and Great Britain. Then, since the Soviets were Communist and everyone disliked Communism, they were economically isolated from the rest of the world for some time and had to become self-sufficient, not an easy task given the lack of developed infrastructure and the fact that what infrastructure they did have was mostly destroyed in various wars. The fascists took a relatively favorable situation for themselves and screwed it up, the Communists took a terrible situation and came out of it better than would have been expected.


Examples please?


The reason having been formerly a fascist hurts your ability to argue against it is that we know you are not honestly a fascist, and we know that you have in mind refutations for all your current fascist rhetoric. As far as your other previous views, the Republican party platform is just stupid, especially on the social conservatism front, and your current anarchist position is derived from simply a more extreme form of several minarchist ideals rather than rejecting all those principles outright. Anyways, I didn't say you having formerly been a fascist makes fascism less credible, but that it impinged on your ability to argue for it honestly. You are not a fascist.

Oh yes! But that does not mean that checks and balances of some form do not necessarily prevent the government from going to ANY length. As I stated, the Spartans, prototypical fascist state, invented checks and balances, but could still go to any length, and obviously *did*. The real heart of a fascist system is the culture driving it, as authority is a cultural phenomenon, and investing so much of it into a governmental structure is one of the defining traits of Fascism. Not only that, but I believe the Nazis relaxed some of the earlier gun laws. In any case, it hardly seems as if we cannot avoid some of the mistakes of past actions, after all, it is not as if every democratically oriented revolution was like the French revolution.

And the Great Depression was not a *lot*? I mean, they had to emerge victorious from that, and most of their time of peace was from that. As well, would wealthy sympathizers in economically damaged nations be *that* great? That situation for both was terrible, but the fascists did not suffer from an internal collapse, and that is an important difference.


You really do not know about that???? Will this work? http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spok/most-banned.html


I have all sorts of refutations for *any* position I have, and the acceptance of rejection of these reasons is not always for reasons of pure logic, and you know that. Certainly assuming that ideological change is driven purely by reasons of logic seems a very questionable assumption.

The Soviets had externally-funded resistance groups. They also managed to survive the worst the Nazis could ever deal out. Sympathizers in other nations prevented other nations from immediately acting against Nazi Germany, the way many groups immediately acted against Soviet Russia.


No, it really won't. There's no indication that those books were ever banned, only that occasionally some idiot parent wanted them not to be part of a school curriculum. I've read a number of those books during school assignments (in fact, I believe the majority of books I read in my public school district have shown up on these lists of allegedly banned books) so I don't really see how there has been any significant censorship actually occurring.


I never made such an assumption, and you know that.

Because of the freaking winter! Not only that, but I don't see how your point really establishes much.


Ok.


It is implicit to your logic.

I think the argument was simply that Nazi Germany's ability to appear powerful for maybe a decade wasn't really all that impressive as a demonstration of fascism's awesome glory, especially as the Soviets in comparison also faced a number of challenges and seemed better able to meet them, so a group we both agree has a faulty ideology still apparently outperforms the fascists.


Implicit logic? That seems rather useless. Besides, I believe I've explicitly stated that we can't apply rigorous mathematical proof to political philosophy, so that seems a pretty clear indication that I am not holding to a purely logic-driven approach to this discussion, especially since I defended my use of an ad hominem against fascists.

An issue I see regarding facism is the negative connotations towards it, that come from the point of view of those who won WWII, which makes that biased, therefore could be questionable about properly defining it?

On the other hand, immigration to america and europe from facist countries seems to indicate that these people didn't like how their government were and liked a lot better how countries such as the US were, that of democracy and freedom (however that is not so perfect, because that kinda pays a price, and that is of crime rates), not to mention the brutal punishment and the issue about human rights. Nevertheless, is facism that bad as it is claimed to be? I kinda wonder this due to issues regarding socialism, because people relate USSR comunism with Marx, but it has been stated from socialists that the USSR did it wrong, not to mention that americans have an exagerrated view towards it, so probably their views are very biased towards anything that have created conflict of interest to them, including Facism. That is enough to wonder about wether those views are questionable or not, biased, yes.

I wonder is there such a thing as "benevolent facism" or the 'benevolent' part would be questionable?