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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Interesting. The question merits a book for an answer, and fortunately Ayn Rand has written some on it. Thanks.
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  • Posted by $ AJAshinoff 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    You're entitled to, of course. Still, you must not ignore patriotism's allure. The seduction is in the fascists regime's promise that the state is in the best position to all for its people. I have ancestors from Italy under Mussolini and that, patriotism and the pride of country, not totalitarianism, was his appeal. That "appeal" delivered them to a totalitarian state. While I never met that branch of family the stories told about the promise of national greatness and the promise of prosperity through the managed state did reach me.

    Communism believes everything should be collectively owned and controlled. It starts out that way from it onset and the fist only tightens.

    My 2 bits.
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  • Posted by 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Nope, going to agree with ewv. Fascism is totalitarian from the outset. There is no guise of freedom there, no excuse for it's "seductive" nonsense. Though the fascists used the buzzword "industrial" or "science", that didn't make slave labor in the VW plant or institutionalized racism anything but the same mold-covered excrement. The formula has been the same for the past five millennia. Fascism is a new name for an old game and isn't anything beyond rape and murder.
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  • Posted by $ AJAshinoff 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Odd. A simple assessment of the initial appeal of fascism and where that appeal leads to gets a point taken.

    There is a difference between one offering the false hope of government creating management utopian environment to dupe a people and the other promising a vision of utopia that it has little intention to deliver (communism - no government everyone (theoretically) gets their portion according to their need).

    c est la vie
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  • Posted by ewv 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Specifically it is intended to terrorize the populace in general as its means of intimidation, as opposed to targeting the direct victims alone. That is the source of the name "terrorism". The scope of a "terrorist" crime is much broader than the act against the direct victim of the crime because it is aimed at everyone and aimed at forcing government policy and individual actions by imposing general fear.
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  • Posted by ewv 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Motive can be important in establishing intent to commit the crime, but does not change the criminal nature of the act. The crime is the initiation of force against others, not what you think.

    But the 'hate crime' movement in particular is reversing that, intending to criminalize what you think apart from actions, usually imposing criteria from invalid, tribalist notions based on their 'ethnicity' philosophies.

    They pull the wool over people's eyes in promoting this because the nature of law and crime itself has become statist and collectivist: The invalid collectivist notions of 'crimes' against the state and against 'The People' have replaced the concept of crimes as violations of the rights of the individual. When law is enforced for government control of individuals for collectivist purposes, the concept of law as protecting individual rights is destroyed and lost.

    Collectivism rejects not only unapproved individual actions, but fundamentally, independent thought itself. In contrast, a free society protecting the rights of the individual is based on the moral necessity of independent thought and action by individuals. And that is the source of the clash with the 'hate crime' movement.
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  • Posted by ewv 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    There are no innate ideas. Philosophical ideas are conceptual formulations originated by man and accepted explicitly, with or without validation, or absorbed uncritically from others. Correct abstract ideas and truth are not automatic. Formulating correct ideas, including the principles of ethics and rights of the individual, and validating them as true is an achievement that takes work.

    See Ayn Rand's Philosophy: Who Needs It, her essay "Philosophy and Sense of Life" in The Romantic Manifesto, and Leonard Peikoff's recorded lecture course on the history of western philosophy to see how the (mostly bad) ideas and their variants all around us developed and were propagated in various forms since the time of the Greeks.

    For the explanation of how we form concepts, and how and why higher level abstractions are formed and validated and their importance, see her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, which is her validation and explanation of man's conceptual reason.
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  • Posted by Dobrien 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Hate Is the basis for a majority of physical assaults and murders , it is an emotion. I don't argue that crime should not be categorized by a
    Subjective emotion.
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  • Posted by Dobrien 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    ter·ror·ism definition
    ˈterəˌrizəm/
    noun
    the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    This is interesting. I don't see any way we are not born with biological predispositions that developed from selective pressures.

    If you're right, we have to ask why we see so many bad philosophical ideas. Why didn't we see utopian societies that respected human rights cropping up, even some large scale ones? I think gov't respecting rights is the exception to the rule.
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  • Posted by ewv 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Soviet propaganda smeared capitalism as fascism and misrepresented fascism as fundamentally different than communism when the Hitler-Stalin pact broke up, long before the US entered WWII. Killing people deemed to be "unfit" is one form of the consequences of moral demands for sacrifice to collectivism, not a core tenet of socialism. Germany, Russia and Japan all practiced it.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    You have given examples but not defined it. From context clues, it seems like you're using the words to mean heinous crimes. I agree they're heinous.
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  • Posted by ewv 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    There are no biologically innate ideas and people in civilized societies are not "hunter gatherers". Kingdoms and communal ownership are not "natural". They result from bad philosophical ideas, not lack of "energy in the system".
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  • Posted by ewv 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    That is rationalized nonsense. They are both totalitarian collectivism. "Nationalism" is collectivism.
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  • Posted by ewv 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "...have you read How We Know?" Not yet so I can't comment on it. I have found in general that Ayn Rand's explanations, read and re-read, are far better than the followers' repetition and lack of originality and clarity. There is no one doing what Ayn Rand accomplished routinely, though Leonard Peikoff's explanations of Ayn Rand's works are excellent. But I can't comment on Harry Binswanger's book you are reading.

    "Regarding the original point,...": Ayn Rand wrote many articles and answered questions on the intellectual requirements to change the politics. It was all through the articles in her periodicals, now reprinted in various anthologies, and there are at least two books just on interviews with her and answers to questions at various appearances.
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  • Posted by 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Fascism is bad. Communism is bad. Socialism is not the middle ground, it is the dumping ground. I mean that.
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I was asserting the basic "us" vs "them" is the driving force behind BLM and and the nationalistic portion of fascism. The totalitarian portion is the insistence on laws "protecting" the "downtrodden", which amounts to 1984.
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  • Posted by 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "Hate crimes" can be addressed with criminal charges: Harassment, vandalism, and conspiracy to commit said crimes are legal definitions. The intent of the action and the action are separable in terms of charges, but both are relevant in determining motive.

    BLM has a ton of Marxist references against the "police state". It is interesting in the sense that it is a great example of how modern Marxist dogma is adapted to define a movement in terms of race (rather than socioeconomic status). Is this the reason you term BLM fascist rather than Marxist?
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  • Posted by 7 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I smell a Teaching Johnny to Think book campaign promoted by ARI. Distribution of that work to primary school teachers could do some good.
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