Again, using Liberal Fascism as my basis. The Soviets had no problem with Germany becoming Fascist. Their theory was First Brown Then Red.... in hopes that Germany would eventually become Communist. I'm certain its Chapter 3 in said book talks about Hitler's Germany... regardless it is the chapter after Mussolini is discussed. As Denny has pointed out, Naziism is really National Socialism Points to ponder; Why was the transition for what would become East Germany from Naziism to Communism so smooth? Why were the Stasi so feared?
2 Words: Reagan Democrats. Unless I'm off, the Democratic party is now trying lure Nascar Dad's back into the fold. It is the religious right and/or southern evangelicals that made the difference for W. The same group of people that probably won't touch Romney or McCain with a 10 ft pole or a 6 inch pencil.
I did not wear a lapel pin either. The lengths to which the "patriots" went is jingoistic much like Orrin Hatch's attempt @ a flag burning amedment. The GOP is really good at pandering to & confusing the lowest common denominator w/ emotional wedge issues.
http://www.theocracywatch.org/taking_over.htm 1991-1993: Religious Right Takes "Working Control" of the Republican Party -- Precinct by Precinct, State by State
As for Racism mentioned in post 53, what about the immigration issue and political correctness? Specifically, Those who are anti-no holds barred/free for all immigration are racists.
Just about every group of immigrants to America has been frowned upon, be they the Irish, the Chinese who built the railroads, &c. Pat Buchanan argues that unfettered immigration would mean we lose our national identity - a nationalist argument, or a traditionalist one? I've never heard him say he's against immigration of any ethnic group. In the Peoples' Republik of California, they're very much opposed to illegal immigration. Or so I've seen with my own two eyes.
I am using "that book" again. Back in the early 20th century, American progressives thought highly of religion and was a key part of their platform. The Dems are trying to court evangelicals after seeing the success the GOP has had. Isn't interesting how Obama is more religious than some candidates they've trotted out in the past? Getting back to the whole education thing (post 53), Woodrow Wilson was a career educator and hoped to use the school system to indoctinate kids. "That book" also said, we don't need stormtroopers like Germany in the 30's. Today, an elementary school teacher will a degree from a liberal arts college will do. Just look at how they don't keep score any more in some sports for kids in certain parts of the country. The touchy-feely, I'm okay you're okay, everyone's a winner mindset is all part of their subtle plan to make us dare I say compliant? Both parties IMO are guilty of becoming more populist. Hence a hybrid or should I say fascist-like government eventually.
Same with the moral majority. It was Billy Graham back in 1981 who said, "the hard right has no use for religion except to control it."
It's well publicized that we had "operation paperclip" - we basically kidnapped or enticed Nazi scientists to come work for us after the war was over. Why would we only be interested in the Nazi scientists? We weren't.
True on the historical perspective. I'm sure people in the past have used the same argument PB has. Specifically, I was thinking of Glenn Beck & Lou Dobbs who used to rant on & on about the need for a fence along the southern border.
I have heard that as well. I have also heard that Germany may have lost the war (WW2) but fascism won.
The Japanese may have won, as well. They bought a lot of things from us along the way that people were upset about. Like Columbia Pictures, Tri-Star Entertainment, and MGM as well as the Empire State Building.
Thoth, I thought you should know I now have a copy of the book. As soon as I opened it, it began almost exactly the same as I had when I started this thread. That hooked me. Then I flipped forward to the chapter on Eugenics. So far, it's been a fun read. I'm not yet convinced that being pro-choice is synonymous with fascism directly. Eugenics, as described in the book, are mostly a mandate, not a choice (forced sterilizations of a perceived "inferior" genetic strain, banned abortions for some women but not others, etc).
3 American capitalists influenced the Eugenics movement in Nazi Germany Carnegie today: http://www.ciw.edu/about Rockafeller Foundation: http://www.rockfound.org/about_us/about_us.shtml E.H. Harriman Edwin H. Harriman, railroad czar, was a nineteenth century turnaround specialist. He bought his first railroad at age 33, a foundering company that he reorganized and sold for a tidy profit. At the turn of the century he became Director of the Union Pacific, a property in receivership and near collapse. He resuscitated it and then acquired Central Pacific, which brought Southern Pacific with it.
^^^ I really should dig up my blog post about meritocracy. But first, why do you think there's such an emphasis on the left about how smart our leaders are?
Democrats have been calling republican presidents dumb for over a century. Bush is stupid! Reagan was, too. And Ike. All 2 term presidents, in spite of the claims. Clinton was the last Democratic president. His administration was filled with academics. Republicans tend to have people outside the academics establishment in their administrations. There is a historical root or precedence to why this is so. Do you know why?
OK, I'll answer http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_12_31/ai_58170294/pg_2?tag=artBody;col1 James Bryant Conant, the president of Harvard University and one of the most influential men of his day, wanted to replace this aristocracy of birth and wealth with what Thomas Jefferson called a "natural aristocracy" of the intellectually gifted from every walk of life, who would be educated to high standards and then be given the responsibility of governing society. The creation of what Conant called "Jefferson's ideal," a new intellectual elite selected strictly on the basis of talent, and dedicated to public service, would, he believed, make America a more democratic country. In 1933, he gave two Harvard administrators the job of developing a nationwide scholarship program for gifted students. The key to the administrators' work would be the creation of a single standard for evaluating the astonishing diversity of the country's high-school students. And the test Conant ultimately selected for that purpose--the newly developed Scholastic Aptitude Test--would become for many students a narrow path to the best opportunities--and richest rewards--in American society. ... Conant selected the SAT, which he believed to be a "mental" or intelligence test, over acheivement tests, created by the developer of the New York Regents exams, to measure a student's grasp of course content. Achievement tests, he argued, favored unexceptional rich boys (girls weren't part of Conant's meritocratic equation) whose parents could buy them top-flight high school instruction. But there was no national debate over Conant's drive to create an education-based meritocracy, or to make education "the official repository of opportunity in America" that it is today. Conant achieved his coup with the help of a handful of close colleagues. Ironically, they were all members of what Lemann neatly terms the Episcopacy, the social class whose defining institutions were the Protestant Episcopal Church, country clubs, New England boarding schools, Ivy League colleges, and, in their working lives, investment banks, major foundations, the foreign service, and university faculties--the very same crowd whose duller members Conant was trying to lock out of the garden. Key among them was Henry Chauncey, a square-jawed Harvard assistant dean and descendent of Puritan clergy who would later serve as the founding president of the Educational Testing Service, the giant testing company that Conant created to administer the SAT. Another was Devereaux Josephs, a classmate of Chauncey's at both the Groton School and Harvard who, as the President of the Carnegie Foundation, funded the creation of ETS for Conant. Together, they substantially redefined the nature of and route to success in America. Writes Lemann: "It was like a slow-motion, invisible constitutional convention whose result would determine the American social structure." ... To Lemann, Conant's meritocracy has been a decidedly mixed blessing. It has certainly produced opportunities for millions of gifted students who wouldn't have had them by dint of birth. He notes that among the very first group of ten Harvard National Scholars graduating in 1938 was James Tobin, the son of the sports-information director at the University of Illinois and a senior at Champaign High School, who would later win the Nobel Prize in Economics. In more recent years, Asian students have benefited tremendously from the SAT. But Conant's vision of a governing elite selected through a new, education-based system and devoted to public service in a largely classless society was hopelessly naive. Not surprisingly, the new educated aristocracy has embraced the trappings of its newfound social superiority. Today's educated elite are disproportionately lawyers, bankers, and doctors, not the dedicated, European-style civil servants that Conant had hoped for. As Lemann says, the American meritocracy has become largely "a means of handing out economic rewards to a fortunate few." Much more troubling is the perverse influence the SAT has had on the nation's elementary and secondary education system. Adapted by Carl Brigham, a Princeton psychology professor, from crude intelligence tests used to sort U.S. Army recruits in World War I, the SAT was first published in 1926. It was a multiple-choice exam emphasizing word recognition (as is the test's verbal section today; the math section measures students' ability to reason mathematically and requires knowledge of basic arithmetic, geometry and algebra). But Lemann reveals that as early as 1934 Brigham repudiated the basic premise that the tests measured solely native intelligence. "The test scores very definitely are a composite including schooling, family background, familiarity with English, and everything else, relevant and irrelevant," Brigham wrote in an unpublished manuscript which Lemann dug out of the ETS archives. ETS and the College Board, the organization of schools and colleges that sponsors the exam, acknowledged as much in 1994, when they finally changed the exam's name from Scholastic Aptitude Test to Scholastic Assessment Test.
um, you can be smart and not be in academics. Just a thought. Or you can choose Dan Quayle to be your running mate. Personally, I prefer intelligent people running the country because I prefer that there be a thoughtful analysis and decision-making process when new issues or conditions pop up. Others, however, prefer leaders that are "resolute." According to post-election polls, many people voted for President Bush because they wanted a leader with "convictions," even if they personally did not agree with them. I am the other way; I don't want a president with "convictions," I want a president with a generalized set of core beliefs that does not necessarily know the answers to all the nation's problems until he has a chance to ruminate at length on them. If the ultimate decision is not to my liking, I am far more accepting of it if I have faith in the decision-making process. I need to have faith that all the nuances of an issue and posible ways to address it have been fully fleshed out and explored. In some administrations, though, the impression is that decisions are first made, and then facts are used to support them. I disagree with virtually every one of Justice Scalia's positions, but allegedly he fills his clerk slots with people from very different backgrounds and positions, and lets them argue about issues while he just sits and listens. If that's true, he probably doesn't listen to them very much, because his judicial opinions are pretty consistent and predictable, but I respect the process. edit: but just to clarify, simply being smart does not qualify you for a leadership post. There are many different types of intelligence, and I know many very smart people that are ill-suited to a job high up in the government. I could go into a discussion of brain-typing here, but I've done that enough already in the past. Let's just say that some people can be brilliant but unable to make a decision, and do anything other than continually weigh options. You need people that can make a decision, be willing to take the heat for it, or be willing to advocate a particular position (if we're talking about aides). Not everyone can do that. However, within that framework, I prefer people taht will not prejudge an issue and take time to weigh all the evidence, even if it means changing their mind (which is generally perceived in our society as "flip-flopping" and a bad thing).
