re: Excellent article in The Federalist: "We Need to Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives"

Go frick yourself. Little bitches like you are why no one wants to be called Republican.

Edit: I’ve been told you’re a liberal now. Explains a lot. It’s definitely people like you that are just evil.

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Go frick yourself. Little bitches like you are why no one wants to be called Republican.

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SFP is no Republican.

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sell me on you side, because the scariest authoritarians I've ever personally experienced were Religious/conservative ones.

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And you showed your cards.

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I still like what we have but it does need some repairs.

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What it mostly needs is enforcement

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Germany was Nazi dictatorship. Italy was Fascist.

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Germany was absolutely a Fascist state, as was Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Austria. The minute differences in the rise of German Fascism and Italian Fascism were in effect cultural, with German Fascism originating from Romantic Nationalism, ideas about the German volk, Imperial Germany's plan for expansion, and works from what is called the 'Conservative Revolution,' while Italian Fascism was based on a notion of a common Italian people formed from Roman heritage, and as Italians at the top of a hierarchy which featured all Mediterranean peoples, which again was a notion tied to Roman history. The main common features was that the State and people of that state became part of a common organism where nothing could exist outside the state.

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They both arose out of unrest and were rooted in a bit of populism and racism (especially on Germany’s side) but equating them because they were on the same side of WWII is being a tad lazy.

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I'm not equating them because they are on the same side of WWII. I'm equating them because they came from the same place, vaguely ethnonationalist ideas about 'peoples' and 'land' formed as a direct 'reaction' to both capitalism and communism, seeking a 'third-way' that sought to be anti-communist, anti-materialist, and broadly anti-conservative (as in the Church, the monarchy, and nobility). Both of those versions, and Fascism broadly, saw a shared history of a people as a struggle towards self-affirmation of the state where the people and the state became one.

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To say Italian Fascism and Nazi Germany just popped up in a vacuum without some illiberal precursors that lead to those movements is lunacy.

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But both started as movements within strictly 'conservative' political contexts, as the origins of each date back to when both countries were ruled by monarchs. The notion that they were a response to liberalism is anachronistic. They were competing with liberal democracy, which both saw as dangerous to the state because it could elevate minority voices and voices that did not see the people and the state as one. The idea that they were strictly reactionary to liberal democracy is just not accurate, as there were several competing ideologies in the 'fin de siecle' period of which WWI serves as a convenient end.

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You seem to be OK with the status quo authoritarianism, because "hey, it could be worse".

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No I'm not in support of any authoritarianism.

I just haven't given up belief/faith in the concepts of democracy and the electorate.

I believe once this era of polarity subsides (as they almost always do), rational and reasonable beliefs (both of policy and procedure) will start to dominate the pollical process again.

This isn't a binary choice like those stuck in polar thinking believe it to be, and your question presupposes that status.

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Eh. Where have you really experienced this? Catholic school?

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Catholics were always pretty cool/reasonable. The worst were Southern Baptist and non-denominational churches.

I didn't have much experience with Pentecostals at the time, but I've since been to some...distressing churches since my youth. Like the type of churches you're not sure if they have secret snake handling services for the true believers.

Those people are scarier than any blue hair I've come across personally. I'm sure some exist in the ether who could rival them, though.

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And you showed your cards.

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But if we are using history as a guide, it will absolutely be harmful to its adherents.

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Oh well, I guess we do nothing then. It's a good thing there's no history of leftist authoritarianism harming anyone, so we'll all be OK.

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Oh well, I guess we do nothing then. It's a good thing there's no history of leftist authoritarianism harming anyone, so we'll all be OK.

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Yeah, again, this false dichotomy isn't the actual choice we have. There are several choices, but what fundamentally people want is to justify their own authoritarian tendencies by saying 'the other side forced me to do it.' It's going to end terribly for everyone but I guess you'll have to see it to believe it.