[Too many cops?]

I honestly believe that a physical punishment along the lines of "lashes" as Saipan mentions is less severe than jail time (unless that jail time is only one day or so). I don't think such a punishment is inherently more statist. When the government imposes a punishment on you, it is infringing upon your rights, and it is granted power to do because you have committed a crime. Why is a week in jail indicative of a more statist government than a couple minutes of lashes?

Where do you get "a week in jail" versus "a couple of minutes of lashes?"

Violence has achieved a different level in public consciousness than it used to. (Incarcertion is, arguably, a form of violence, but I think we understand the implied distinction. I think your questions here are philosophically interesting ones, but I think there are serious differences.

Well, in a way it comes down to what is most affecting for the victim...I mean criminal, so I take your point that far. Most people would prefer a day in jail to public lashings (and why public? Another interesting topic, less to do with justice than sadism, I think....). As for longer jail terms; well, we aren't talking about lashings i lieu of prison for serious offenses...and I think most people would object to that based on the notion that the criminal is allowed immediate freedom, just as much as antipathy towards State violence.

At any rate, we've moved more and more away from state-sanctioned violence of criminals for several reasons; but one of them is that physical violence is not precise, and the consequences can too easily be disproportionate, accidentally or otherwise. The same is true for incarceration, yes, but I'm not seeing them as "as good as each other."

In regards to your back and forth with Saipan over the costs. It seems pretty obvious that all we would be changing would be the method of punishment. The legal costs and procedure would remain identical, and so would their costs. It is only the cost of the sentence that would be different. Putting someone in jail for a period of time costs money. Having a physical punishment administered for a few minutes would also costs money. However, I think a few minutes wage of a certified punishment application specialist would likely cost less than a week or few weeks of feeding and housing someone in a jail cell.

Yes, but because of the view of corporal punishment, you'd have an entire legal industry built up around exactly this matter, both prosecutorial and defense.

More to the point: think now of the increasing fixity with which police are scrutinized for too-violent and allegedly too-violent behaviour.

Multiply this by a hundred, and you'll see what sort of can of worms is opened here.

[Corporate tax cuts/breaks don't create jobs!]

Societies have existed and indeed prospered without government. The not so wild west and iceland during the middle ages are two examples of prosperous anarchistic societies.

Did they have competitive, "free market" courts of law?

I'm not convinced you've thought all this through.

[Corporate tax cuts/breaks don't create jobs!]

The government didn't build the sky scrapers, private industry did. So, the same guys who built them now. Corporations. Businesses. People trying to make an honest buck - not politicians trying to steal every dollar you make.

Which business is going to pay for the infrastructure? You want sky-high costs that almost no one can afford?

And what about our militry adventures, the ones in which the Superfriends flit about battling evil and protecting liberty?

Who's going to pay for that? Private industry?

Oh, wait:

Rather we should allow private competing courts to arbitrate disputes and have private security firms and insurance firms take over the few necessary functions of police. Anyone who has ever stood in a government court understands the miscarriages of justice that occur with a government monopoly on justice.

You don't think a market-based justice system, and competitive courts (how would that even work, by the way?) isn't going to be an abortion, completely soaked to the skin in miscarriages of justice?

Anarcho-capitalism is an idea dead in the water.

[Time to defund the CBC]

Translation: I don't like the facts so I'll ignore them and carry on as before.

Exactly. Debating whether or not some monolithic entity called "the Government...controls the CBC" or not is hardly semantics.

It's an argument based on a huge misunderstanding of what "the government" actually is...but it's not semantics.

What people often fail to understand is that public broadcasters generally are mandated, as a central premise, not to be beholden to government.

Can anyone really argue with a straight face that CBC news, radio or television, is more sycophantic and less combative than the private networks?

I'm just not seeing it.

And such a claim demands good evidence, not shouts about "the Government!"

(Analogously, many people think the Queen is a tyrannical part of Canadian government, when in fact one of the points is to avoid potential (and partisan) tyranny.)

I hasten to add that I'm making no claims specifically about the CBC itself; I'm only objecting to the idea that a public broadcaster is part of "the government," with the connotations that immediately arise in using that word.

[Thoughts Ten Years Later, September 11, 2001]

To say the US had it coming is absolutely Moronic, in fact damn right insensitive to our southern neighbours, and to those Canadian citizens who also died that day ....a day of remembrance no less....and judging by what a few posters that have based their opinions on what sounds like regurgitated propaganda spewed out by the left

Please. The entire "day of remembrance" was not some apolitical act of grieving; it was a politicized day inherently. "Political ritual" one writer has accurately termed it.

To give the actions of Bin Ladin and his merry crew or for that matter any terrorist group with an axe to grind any credence is just plain retarded...yes I said retarded ....Who gave anyone the right to take innocence lifes because they did not like anyones foreign policy

If you're going to tell me that the Western powers do not take innocent life because they don't like or agree with other countries' foreign (and domestic!) policies, then you certainly have lost any right to be condemning "propaganda."

Your comment is, in fact, entirely what I meant in my first point: your views on these matters are 100%, entirely as politicized as those you denigrate.

[The "Fascist" fallacy]

The only reason I mentioned Thomas Sowell was because of an earlier attempt at an appeal to authority from another poster. I never use the agreement of someone else to support my positions. Frankly, I don't care who does or doesn't agree with me. Now you're harping on the point, seemingly in an attempt to have a pissing contest over who can name more "scholars" who agree with my position or your position on the political orientation of fascism.

I don't care for the pissing contest myself; you claimed that "lots of scholars" agree with your points, which evidently you arrived at through your own intelligence.

First of all, no you certainly did not, as you echo the talking points of that contemporary right-wing sector of left-obssessives. Unless they have been cribbing from you all along, I cry foul.

Second, you remain unwilling to name the scholars, and maybe even offer us some quoted insights. As I did, for the sake of this debate.

I quoted them because they know more about the subject than you or I...especially more than you. They offer actual, substantive remarks against precisely some of the points you've been making.

Why not take them on, if it so "self-evident" that fascism is a leftist phenomenon?

And after all this time, nobody has even come close to explaining how fascism DOESN'T have much more in common with the contemporary left than the contemporary right.

Several posters have offered strong arguments...and the historians I linked to and quoted directly explain it quite specifically. I take it you didn't read any of their remarks. That's fine...but what's not fine is to ignore the pointed arguments that are made, and then claim they never existed!

And in fact, Dre and Jack Weber have offered a lot here, as well. Why pretend they haven't put forth arguments?

The fact is that the fascists--of Germany, of Italy, of Spain--despised the left. They couldn't stand them. They tended, in fact, to kill them.

[Time to defund the CBC]

First of all, keep in mind that for some of us whether CBC is 'biased' is not a major issue in this discussion... even if it were somehow totally unbiased, I would still be in favor of eliminating it for the same reason I explained before... it does not provide a function that other outlets are not able to provide. (I did in fact point out several incidences of bias. However, I also acknowledged that individual cases do not necessarily constitute an overall bias.)

Yes, I understand, and arguments against a public broadcaster are certainly different from the arguments agaisnt which I'm objecting.

Secondly, I can identify several problems with Chomsky's theories.

- Much of his work is likewise based on citing particular instances. (For example, in the Manufacturing Consent movie he discusses the New York Times discussion of East Timor.) However, that's cherry picking.... Him picking on the NYT for this one incidence is no different than someone pointing to a biased CBC story and saying "See?" In both cases an individual case does not indicate a systemic problem.

No, there's some crucial differences:

(And to get a simple matter out of the way, there is no whiff of a claim of "conservative bias" in the East Timor example, nor in most of the ones the authors use. (Not that you're making the claim; but I wished to clarify this point for those who believe MC is about "right-wing bias.")

The East Timor example isn't cherry-picking, for several reasons:

First, it's not about the NYTimes, but all the major media organs. They concentrated on the Times because it is (or at least was) the most influential mainstream newspaper in the world, the "paper of record," from which so many other news sources have drawn their example and acted as secondary agents of disseminating the news.

Second, the case of East Timor was not, in the book (nor quite in the inferior movie), solely about itself; they used it as a test case for a couple of matters, and it provided the perfect storm, a great confluence; simultaneous to the initial horrors unfolding in E. Timor were the horrors unfolding in Cambodia. And we can see, from the Times and elsewhere, that one was a horror-chamber (Cambodia and its enemy communists) and one was not even a story (E. Timor and its state terror perpetrated by our allies and with our material aid). So the reporting on the two was completely different, although the criminality and monstrosity were similar. Different agents of destruction is the only substantive difference.

To this day, people try to tell me that our "looking away" is not parallel to intentional slaughter...it's as if there's no eyewitnesses, and no declassified record which informs us exactly of what's going on. It's astonishing, frankly.

Further, the case of East Timor matters in a way that "leftist bias at the CBC" does not, because of the scale. (And CBC too was part of this bias, by the way.) We're talking one of the worst mass slaughters by percentage of population in the last half of the 20th century--and there's lots of competition. We can be horrified at Milosevic, without recognizing that the crimes with which we were intimately involved totally and utterly eclipse anything by the Serbian killers. (Since the East Timor slaughters went on so long, Chomsky and Herman had the opportunity to compare those two situations as well...an even more shameless media production, since at least Pol Pot's murders were on a similar scale to Suharto's, while Sebia's most certainly were not).

This is difficult for Westerners to wrap their brains around, thanks to the profundity of the doctrinal tendencies and the screaming depths of the propaganda, but consider it; how could we call that "cherry-picking," and compare it to some lame and dubious examples of CBC "leftist bias," when we're talking about state terrorism on a scale that vastly overshadows Hamas or any other rank amateurs; hundreds of thousands dead, innumerable others "disappeared", tortured, all the usual, awful stuff...and all done with the full, including material, support of some Western democracies, the US and UK leading the pack of miserable criminals by some measure?

No one "looked away," except the news media. This was not "allowing it to happen"; it happened precisely because of Western support for illegal invasions, state terror, and mass murder. It really happened. It's mind-boggling, but there it is.

In short, the news media failing to report (or reporting totally incorrectly) a crime of this magnitude cannot be passed off as "cherry-picking."

- Much of his theory is summed up by "profit motives=bias". However, it would be a mistake to assume the same bias will cause the entire media world to engage in the same bias. Companies will do what's best for themselves and their profits; in some cases it will mean a particular outlet will project a "right wing" bias. However, a media organization may also project a "left wing" bias if it feels it can profit from it.

Yes, and this has been noted. Pointed out are instances of "liberal bias," but almost always within narrow parameters. At any rate, "ownership" is only one of the "five filters" they posit, along with advertising, flak, sourcing (ie overwelmingly business and government spokespeaople, specifically trained in the art of Public Relations), and, yes, ideology. The original final point was "anti-communism," but they've since revised that to "official enemies," and even conceding that the orginial may have been too narrow in scope. Nevertheless, there is a confluence of influences (quite interrelated in most cases), not merely profit-motive.

I have no doubt that individual media outlets can and do have biases. But as a whole the media is neutral.

They are indeed, overall, "neutral," but again, only within relatively narrow parameters. In domestic politics, the field is much larger and more open to debate; in foreign subjects, particularly when we're involved in military action, the debate narrows immediately, with precious little theorizing about motives...a near-sacred cow. Canada is arguably worse than the US in this sphere. So we can argue about the wisdom of this or that war, and even the methods....but the essential, bottom-line morality of it is only even mentioned by "fringe" elements, "the wild men in the wings." This is true of media regardless of public opinion, in some part because professional journalists are part of the political class, hobnobbing and friendly...and crucially, dependent on good government graces for Sourcing.

In addition, there can be a financial advantage to "getting things right"... a news source that is biased to the point that it is "wrong" risks seeing their revenues drop as people go to more accurate sources.

This is not so clear. Did the major nerws organs, including the CBC, lose revenue for their piss-poor "reporting" on East Timor? For providing us with a propaganda video during the fall of Saddam's statue? (A few dozen Iraqis trucked in by the military, and then filmed to make it look like a large, spontaneous crowd)?

Hell, The Times, in a moment of actual journalistic lucidity, published an extensive, multi-part report on the Pentagon's propaganda offensive during the run-up to the Iraq War: the "independent analysts" present on every major network (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and FOX) were actually "message force multipliers" in the words of the Pentagon, briefed for talking points by high officials before vomiting these words back on the tv news, under the guise of "independent analysts."

To my knowledge, the networks lost no revenue over this.

But to be fair, they didn't report on the Times piece at all, so.....

-

He appears to be ignoring other factors that might serve as a counterbalance (even if some media owners wanted a 'shift to the right'.) Newspapers/TV stations/etc. have to be staffed, and I doubt it can be claimed that every available graduate from journalism schools is willing to toe the "right wing" line.

His argument isn't of right-wing bias. Most simply put, it is bias towards Power. Here, that involves the State (particularly the War State) and Big Business. In the Soviet Union, it would be the State, and whatever agencies of elements most favoured by Central authorities. But propaganda is a different animal in the two states: ours is much more sophisticated, full of many more half-truths. Which makes sense, sinc epropaganda as we know it is primarily a US/UK invention, beginning in earnest around WW1.

Lastly, not sure why its actually relevant. Are you claiming we need the CBC because its the only "unbiased source up against biased media"?

I'm not claiming anything; I'm arguing agaisnt the notion of some rampant "leftist bias," a hypothesis containing no institutional analysis whatsoever.

[The Ultra rich getting richer]

Wtf? I thought we aligned ourselves with communists to defeat fascism?

That's the idea normally proposed, yes. PErhaps von Mises agrees with that, as well...but feels, simultaneously, that fascism provided a useful tool against Communism.

I can't really say.

[The "Fascist" fallacy]

What I'm saying is clear, that fascism is not an extreme right-wing idelogy, but rather an extreme left-wing ideology. Most importantly, fascism has MUCH more in common with the contemporary left-wing in Western politics than with those of us on the right.

This is flatly untrue. And yes, what you're saying is "clear," perfectly so. Is that really your argument for your being correct?

I don't care what this or that scholar says. I am more than intelligent enough to come to my own conclusions.

Not at all. You've already claimed that lots of scholars agree with you, and you summoned the name of an intellectual who agrees with you...etc. And suddenly they don't matter...once you realize that others can actually cite multiple scholarly sources on the subject, rather than making bland claims about it as you have done.

Just because I was lied to in university and high school when fascism was placed on the far right end of the political spectrum doesn't make it so.

Yep, everyone's been lying to Bob, his whole life. Teachers and professors--not even mistaken, but lying to Bob.

This is pretty extreme paranoid delusion, and amounts to one of the more far-fetched conspiracy theories I've yet heard.

At the end of the day, and I've said this several times already, fascism has many more parallels with the contemporary left than the contemporary right.

I realize this is comforting for you--and allows you to assume that the political Right is utterly free of responsibility for any horrors (aside from the fact that they kowtow too much to this monolithic "Left"). Comforting, but not too wise.

[Tea Party Debate audience boos al-Qaeda facts]

it still works for me whatever his motive...if his national policies screw up the US internally is far less of a concern to me than his international agenda...and his international policies if followed will reduce the US debt considerably which also effects us...it's a win-win situation from my viewpoint, easing of world tension by withdrawing US military involvement everywhere, and easing out of the recession by getting the american debt under control...

Sure, and I wasn't trying to disparage the "strategic support" notion, or to imply that one must always vote for someone holding all the proper ideals for all the "correct" reasons.

That would give us all some difficulty in finding politicians to support, wouldn't it?

[Time to defund the CBC]

Want a couple of gorgeous 24 yr old twins for a debauched weekend along with a jet and yacht? Likely to get these before evidence pops up. But then again, we shall hear how left wing media is time and time again.

You're right, except I can foresee a few minor bits of decontextualized and selective "evidence," produced by these fine scholars who believe that'll make their case.

What I'm looking for is something expansive and coherent. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman made an excellent case: a coherent and testable hypothesis, and then reams of evidence.

But you're right, it'll be a long wait. As in forever.

[Constitutional Reform]

I apologize for making that comment in this thread. It was said in the context of another thread re revolutions happening when income and power gaps are extreme. My service went down and I couldn't erase it.

Though it may be relevant to the income and power gaps experienced by Aboriginal people in Canada, I am in no way suggesting that they would or should engage in violent revolution.

It's not always easy to admit to errors, so kudos.

[The Ultra rich getting richer]

dear bloodyminded, well said. I've never heard Mr Wonderful actually say "Mixing morality and Business is evil", but I totally believe it's part of his "philosophy".

It's amusing, isn't it? I've heard this from other supposed proponents of some mythical "free market": they get morally outraged and sanctimonious about any mention of morality and ethics in Business.

They want it both ways. Well, they can't have it.

... btw: what's "von Mises"?

The late Ludwig von Mises has been an important part of the intellectual-libertarian movement. A very sharp guy, no question. Once offered some defense of fascism as a temporary bulwark," an important "emergency makeshift" against Communism.

Not a terribly popular notion these days, so it's little wonder his adherents never mention it.

[Tea Party Debate audience boos al-Qaeda facts]

I wouldn't be too enthused. Ron Paul talks a good talk, but remember, it's easier to criticize and speak truth to power than it is when you actually are IN power. I think Obama found that one out pretty quick. Judging by the way the grey hair's coming in, the role of commander in chief removes all of ones illusions and takes its toll.

But still, we need people to criticize. Only saying, that's their role. If by some freak of nature Paul acquired supreme executive power, times would be interesting yes, but only for a short while.

I agree completely.

And this interesting cross-grain of support for Paul--from sectors of the Right and the Left--shouldn't obscure the fact (to his Leftist supporters) that Paul is not speaking from the usual left-progressive views on international relations, but rather from a conservative non-interventionist stance.

That doesn't mean one shouldn't support him, if that's what one wants to do; but they should be aware that it's an alliance of convenient convergence, not one of actual values and beliefs.

[Are Corporations Evil ?]

The ultimate answer to your question is that some people are evil. And some evil people happen to run corporations, or teach kids, or do lost of things. You're confusing the acts of individuals with their titles or the institutions they work for or beling to.

I think this pretty much ends this sophomoric thread.

No, you've got it exactly backwards. The problem isn't, or not usually, with a few "evil individuals" cackling wildly as they perform horrendous deeds. The vast majority of individuals working within corporations are as normal and decent as anyone else.

It's an institutional issue, in the same way that honest and intelligent journalists can pormote statist propaganda without quite seeing it this way.

[To Invoke Or Not To Invoke]

"Do it for Jack"????

Jeez-us, that's lame.

[Gap between rich and poor rising faster in Canada]

Exactly, and to be quite frank, I find it extremely offensive to hear those that make less than I pay in taxes, say I should pay more or that my wife and I dont earn our money……or that we are keeping the poor down.

What does their rate of income have to do with anything?

If they make so much less than you....you resent their opinions on such matters? What's one to do with the other?

So if someone makes roughly equal (or greater) income than you do...their opinions on the subject become more valid?

I wouldn’t go so far as to paint all those of a “left leaning” persuasion as “losers”……..I think they follow a misguided dogma, and many will “shift” towards the center as they age.

You paint with a rather wide brush, and in my mind, snipes such as that are no better then the chastising of the “rich” by them………

But I appreciate this, Derek, the sort of reasoned sentiment that seems to symbolize your style.

I don't mind being characterized as naive and misguided; of course I don't think it's the case, but I'm open to the possibility, always.

But the notion that there's some sort of deep moral corruption in me that allows for my views is a non-starter. It's absurd.

Wrong? Possibly. Sinister--or a (financial) "loser"? Those are just factually incorrect.

[Libya New Leader Calls for State Based on Islamic law]

Hmm..... not exactly what I thought Canada was fighting for in Libya. We don't expect a full fledged western style democracy, but not a State based on Sharia law which is usually run by religious hard liners. He says no extremists allowed. Wonder if there will be an election, and is body of law based on Sharia inherently threatening to the west ?

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/09/2011912214219388500.html

cont..

I don't see how Sharia elsewhere can be "inherently threatening to the West."

[Canadian Human Rights Commission]

Definitely, freedom of speech is the way to go in Canada. The HRTs have become a political tool for those interested in playing the game of minority/identity-politics. I hate it.

I agree, identity politics at their worst.

Harper's had the right idea: this is an intellectual Leftist publication, in which I have little doubt the editors and writers probably did not much like those cartoons. (I'm guessing, yes, but trust me, I know lefties.) And that's fine; you don't have to appreciate the cartoons. You can think they're not a great idea.

But you publish them anyway. Why? Because virtually no one would. If everyone was doing it, ok, there's no point, really.

But in publishing them, Harper's was taking a political stance, and a principled one.

Support the right of expression of ideas you don't like....or you don't support the right at all. Period. In North Korea, everyone has the "right to free speech." You can insist on Jong-ils magnificence to your heart's content.

[Do Canadians feel safer?]

Young Black males?

No...those most infamous for their hatred of young black males. "Curb-stomping" has long been a popular White Nationalist meme; more dank fantasy than reality, thankfully.

Just as it was used here by CPC.

[Time to defund the CBC]

It says a lot about Canadian political culture that criticism of the CBC and calls for its privatization seem to have only arisen in recent months with the arrival of Sun News. We're so far to the left in this country it's embarrassing, when state-media is no aggressively defended by so many as some sort of tempering force against the evil privately-owned corporate media (most of which is left-wing, anyways!).

I would love some expansive evidence of this massive left-wing media apparatus.

I have asked many times, and so far only Pliny has even attempted to debate the matter.

(He was wrong, of course, but I appreciated his interesting and intelligent attempt.)

So far, the Chomsky/Herman "Propaganda Model" remains light-years ahead of all opinions posited by the "leftist media" theorists.

Which begs the question: why, after 22 years, has no one--no one!--managed to summon a worthy response to Manufacturing Consent? (Trivial sniping at marginal matters aside.) What's the hold-up?

[Tea Party Debate audience boos al-Qaeda facts]

To me, the life of one Canadian soldier is worth more than the lives of everyone in Afghanistan. Now you know my point of departure when engaging in this subject matter.

I was already aware of this perverse view.

What about the other aspect of my response...where I bitch-slapped your preposterous idea that America (and, I assume, by extension Canada, the UK, France, et al) share zero responsibility for the horrible state of affairs that have occurred in many other countries?

I'm surprised anyone can actually believe such a thing.

[The "Fascist" fallacy]

I'm not advancing an original idea, here. I'm simply repeating the reality that is the lie of fascism being an "extreme right-wing" ideology. At the end of the day, it is the left that supports greater government control over the economy and culture, which is much more in-line with fascism than the contemporary right-wing. My position is not my own, but one from honest scholars and intellectuals. As I've already said, off the top of my head I remember this same idea being advanced by Thomas Sowell, who certainly has "intellectual" credentials.

Yes, you've named one. You could also name the John Birch Society and Lyndon LaRouche, though I'm not sure you'd appreciate their company.

I gave you several with "intellectual credentials" on a single page. You could find hundreds more, if you liked. I point this out only because your Appeal to Authority here has been rather outdone.

Fascism is a leftist ideology, despite the stupid spectrum you may or may not have studied in your Poli-Sci 101 class during your first year at university.

Actually, as you implicitly concede elsewhere, those arguing with you are adhering to the mainstream, consensus scholarly view...not the soundbites commonly dismissed as "101" this or that in these sorts of arguments.

You see, that derisive response itself implies that a serious scholar who spends more intensive time on the subject will arrive at a different view.

But the serious, intensive and expansive view is the one I have been proposing here, not you.

Actually, many scholars do agree with me.

Define "many," and who are they?

[The "Fascist" fallacy]

Fascism believes in mega-government control over all aspects of society - both business/economics and social/cultural behaviours. That is in-line with leftism, NOT those on the right.

Actually, it is in line with the right--by definition. You're taking the libertarian or pseudo-libertarian strains of conservatism and trying to force them into history; in other words, you're favouring theory (or, worse, bland claims about theory) over actual lived reality. The number of violently authoritarian right-wing governments have been legion. And you know that.

Liberals and Leftists were, and remain, fascism's primary enemy. It is precisely what fascists most rail against...that, and intellectualism. Contemporary fascists run the gamut between "White Nationalists" of the type we can uncomfortably browse on "Stormfront" (I have done so...and these are conservatives to the core), all the way to the more intellectualized adherents self-labelled "Falangists," who have abandoned racism, but remain typically fascistic otherwise (right-wing populism/authoritarianism peppered with a few Left-statist components).

As we can see, you also subscribe to this lie about fascism being a "far-right" or "extreme right" ideology

What I asserted was that fascism is an extreme-right ideology with strains of leftist ideology embedded within it.

In other words, the conventional scholarly consensus.

According to scolars of fascism, like Robert Paxton and Raul Hilberg (both conservatives, if that eases your mind, and the latter of whom is singularly responsible for the entire field of Holocaust Studies), the well--worn thesis you're here advocating is the product of ultraconservative ideological pseudo-history (notably the John Birch Society!!!!) popularized in the 1940s, now thoroughly discredited by every serious thinker on matters fascist.

Fascism defines itself against both liberalism and socialism--that is, fascism is inherntly in opposition to the political centre, the centre-lleft, and the far left.

That's because of its inherent (and inherently deep) right-wing impulses; these impulses are not its definition entire, but they are absolutely crucial and intractable.

I mentioned the ridiculous Jonah Goldberg because he, more than any contemporary writer, and in the vein of anti-historians like Ann Coulter, has been a key proponent of the resurgance of the simpleminded, polemical, discredited historicizing.

For a brief smack-down of Goldberg's ideas (which you are repeating practically verbatim), check out the following scholarly rebukes:

Matthew Feldman:

Yet even The Doctrine of Fascism would not be fascism in Goldberg's hands. For fascism is not fascism here. It is anything Goldberg wishes it to be; notably trends in modern American politics and culture that he clearly dislikes. The few references above make Goldberg's polemicist style evident; this is certainly not a book for anyone attempting a better understanding of fascist ideology, although it may be a useful barometer of the so-called "culture wars" in the contemporary United States. At points, Liberal Fascism even admits as much; for example, "one of the main reasons I've written the book [is] to puncture the smug self-confidence that simply by virtue of being liberal one is also virtuous" (317-8). Indeed, the book's first paragraph already sets out the real antagonists in Goldberg's account, namely "[a]ngry liberals" and "besieged conservatives." Regrettably, his hostility better characterizes the rhetoric of ideological rivals like fascism and communism – radical right-wing and radical left-wing, respectively, despite Goldberg's sleight of hand – rather than one end of a democratic spectrum. And you certainly wouldn't know that fascists and communists fought it out on the streets and battlefields for very different ideological doctrines. Instead, reading Liberal Fascism, you might think they rather liked one another.

Then again, this book is selective of facts and irresponsible of interpretation to the point historical obfuscation. This is in order to serve the underlying thesis, such as it is: "many of the ideas and impulses that inform what we call liberalism come to us through an intellectual tradition that led directly to fascism." (9) From this utterly fanciful suggestion follows, astonishingly, that "Woodrow Wilson was the twentieth century's first fascist dictator…. In Italy they were called Fascists. In Germany they were called National Socialists. In America we called them progressives." (80-1) Never mind that Mussolini founded the first fascist movement in 1919, just as Wilson was being outflanked by Congress on the Treaty of Versailles. And never mind that Mussolini was totalitarian precisely because he sought to abolish a constitutional order with checks and balances for an explicitly proclaimed revolution against liberal decadence. In fact, never mind that "he made up the word," (52) but that, in actuality, the term "totalitarianism" was coined earlier by an Italian anti-fascist liberal named Giovanni Amendola (and it is worth noting, killed for his opinions by Fascist Italy). And again, never mind that Gregor Strasser's quote advocating socialism was made in the mid-1920s (71) – a time when Nazism sought working-class support from Northern Germany via regional leaders like the Strasser brothers and Joseph Goebbels – a few years before just such "left-wing" views helped cost him all Nazi Party posts in late 1932, finally resulting in his murder during the "Night of the Long Knives."

Roger Griffin:

Such fascist ‘totalitarianism’ is rooted in a bid to create a social and anthropological revolution anathema to social or progressive liberalism since it means the suppression or destruction of autonomous liberal political and social institutions and the eradication of effective liberal humanist values and the civil society on which their survival and health depends. These are then replaced by a highly centralized state with no countervailing forces, a process promoted and theorized by all fascist ideologues and movements and extensively actualized in very different ways by Fascism, Nazism and the Ustasha State, the last two with genocidal consequences for the enemy.

....

The elision of fascism of totalitarianism with any movement towards government intervention in society or the economy within a democracy. This lies at the nub of the book’s wilful perversion of historical truth and political scientific theory evident in such passages. Significantly it occurs again without the word being used explicitly in the slightly modified short definition Goldberg gives in his interview for California Literary Review (http://calitreview.com/303): “an instinctual religious impulse – usually gussied-up [sic] as a secular or modern ideology – that seeks to impose uniformity in thought and action throughout the entire society. All oars in a fascistic society must pull together. The personal is political because everything goes together. Political correctness is one name we give to such efforts in civil society.”

Note the way that this definition is, even more obviously than the original one, not of fascism at all, but actually of totalitarianism, which is now stretched even to embrace the ‘PC’ culture of modern liberal democracy. Goldberg thus abandons any notion that totalitarianism involves state monopolizing or harnessing of political, economic, and cultural power to create a new order in which individual human rights, pluralism and diversity are severely compromised.

Michael Ledeen:

And he shies away from the revolutionary nature of fascism for another reason, too: because it shows that revolution is not just a leftist political phenomenon. Jonah wants to have us believe that fascism was “of the left.”

....

So while there were fascists with leftist tendencies, they were alienated from the regime, embittered by its reactionary nature, and eventually went elsewhere. If anything, their stories show how little “leftism” survived the twenty years of fascist rule.

There's lots more here, if you care to look.

And of course, any serious sources on fascism that you care to peruse is going to give you similar discreditaitons of what you're trying to assert.

http://hnn.us/articles/122245.html

[Tea Party Debate audience boos al-Qaeda facts]

Ron Paul was wrong to phrase things as he did. He seems to really believe that somehow the USA should extricate itself from the Middle East and allow the chips to fall where they may. Does he not realize how important that region is with respect to oil? Oil is still the lifeblood of every modern economy, and the Middle East is still, unfortunately, the home of about half (or more?) of the world's crude oil production.

His assertions that somehow these Arabs/Muslims have legitimate grievances with the USA clearly implies blame on American foreign policy for the dysfunction of the Middle East. It's as if it's America's fault that they are so sick, twisted, and barbaric. It is an inferior and savage society/culture on its own, full stop. America didn't make these people the way they are. Arab/Muslim society is broken and very diseased, and these problems are certainly not caused by American foreign policy. He is massively ignorant of that side of the world. Good for the audience for jeering at his idiocy.

I would agree that American foreign policy is highly flawed, but for different reasons. America isn't aggressive enough in its prosecution of war, a sick consequence of leftist politics that value the lives of "civilians" more than they deserve. Moreover, America is engaging in "nation building", literally paying, training, arming, and assisting the enemy. Every time I here about America building roads and schools and giving billions of dollars in "development aid" I want to vomit. Destroy the enemy and get out. Let them clean themselves up, it's their fault anyways.

Basically, America gets bogged down via leftist politics. Again.

This is a fairly dank and depraved post. Your bit about "civilians," complete with scare quotes and some vague determination that they don't deserve much value to their lives is especially grotesque.

And of course several nations, certainly including Western democracies, and obviously including the United States, shares profound and unquestionable culpability for many ills elsewhere. No, certainly, the West, much less America alone, is not solely responsible.

But that doesn't let us off the hook. Not for subverting democracies, for murdering people...and for outright support of terrorism on a grand scale.

It's cowardly to even write what you've written.