American Fascism?

PVW said:

nohero said:

"Swerving in that direction" will eventually turn the conversation to "fiat money" and "taxation is theft". It always does.

 Did you know that paying taxes is exactly the same as a Soviet gulag system?

 and a statewide vaccine program is just like Nazi Germany

meanwhile, check out this Schlichter guy.

Charlie Sykes may be missing the point.

Also, having just checked out that Schlichter guy’s Twitter account, I think he was telling everyone who he really is long before that thread.

DaveSchmidt said:

Charlie Sykes may be missing the point.

Also, having just checked out that Schlichter guy’s Twitter account, I think he was telling everyone who he really is long before that thread.

 the responses suggest the point is going over the heads of many people replying to Sykes.  And maybe I'm missing the point too, but I'm interpreting it as Schlichter turning a mirror to what he thinks "the left" is already doing in the U.S.  But his version of current reality is so far away from the reality the rest of us are living in that his point is probably lost on a lot of people.

Yeah, I was less interested with Syke's take than with the whackaloon stylings of Schlichter.

DaveSchmidt said:

I don’t think that’s giving the Stalin and Mao economic policies their due.

 To return to this for a moment -- looking at simply the economic policies here and not all the coercive apparatus that went along with them, would these have been possible in a state with democratic accountability? I highly doubt it. Democratic societies do all kinds of stupid things -- for example, a small island off the coast of Europe cutting itself off from its largest market -- but nothing on the scale of the Holodomor and the Great Leap Forward. Which feeds back again to my point -- it's the authoritarianism, not the "socialism" that's germane. If Republicans want to be the party of authoritarianism, then Democrats should seize the opportunity to be the party of democracy.

fwiw, there is a libertarian argument for vaccine mandates (so not all libertarians believe it's fascism to require vaccination).

A libertarian case for mandatory vaccination 

Jason Brennan

This paper argues that mandatory, government-enforced vaccination can be justified even within a libertarian political framework. If so, this implies that the case for mandatory vaccination is very strong indeed as it can be justified even within a framework that, at first glance, loads the philosophical dice against that conclusion. I argue that people who refuse vaccinations violate the ‘clean hands principle’, a (in this case, enforceable) moral principle that prohibits people from participating in the collective imposition of unjust harm or risk of harm. In a libertarian framework, individuals may be forced to accept certain vaccines not because they have an enforceable duty to serve the common, and not because cost–benefit analysis recommends it, but because anti-vaxxers are wrongfully imposing undue harm upon others.

which frankly seems obvious (at least to me).  I am not aware of any real libertarian thinkers who believe it's right for people to conduct themselves in a manner that exposes other people to risks they did not consent to.

PVW said:

STANV said:

What if Dems ran holocaust footage?

 Republicans would accuse them of exploiting the holocaust for political gain. And they'd be right.

Democrats called the Willie Horton ads racist and they were right.

What result?

STANV said:

Democrats called the Willie Horton ads racist and they were right.

What result?

 Personally, I'd think it wise to avoid being racist, and to avoid exploiting the holocaust. Perhaps political strategists would disagree.

"When they go low, we go high"

Michelle Obama (not a political strategist)

STANV said:

"When they go low, we go high"

Michelle Obama (not a political strategist)

 Bar's set pretty low if "avoid exploiting the holocaust" is the standard, no?

STANV said:

"When they go low, we go high"

Michelle Obama (not a political strategist)

 Michelle Obama was arguably one of the finest, most effective political strategists of the modern era. She managed 2 campaigns and a fractious party invisibly.