What kind of citizen of a free society falls prey to the allure of fascist policies?

Question

I find it fascinating that some people in a society that values freedom actually work to usher in or support politicians that want things that are normally associated with fascism, such warmongering, enhanced exectutive powers and reduced legilstative or judicial powers, approval of torture, increased criticism of press that disagrees with government, the smearing of all sorts of dissenters as traitors, increased monitoring of citizens without cause, and last but not least...the convenient labeling of anyone and everyone who disagrees with your agenda on any one of a myriad of issues as being part of one group. Clearly any normal freedom loving person can see the dangers that all these policies bring, so my question is how does an honnest freedom loving pro democracy person go down the path where they agree with all this stuff?

Answer 1

People are sheep.

Fox News must be an attractive shepherd.

As Burke said, "No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”

Answer 2

You're right. I laugh at being called "un-American" and "traitor" by these fascists who seem to have forgotten that our Founders (and more recently Eisenhower) warned us against them! Laugh might not be the word, cringe with disbelief maybe.

People are strange when you're a stranger,
Faces look ugly when you're alone. - The Doors

I don't think there are any al Ciada,
And there ain't no Yanks,
Just corporate criminals,
Playing with tanks. - The Call (modified)

Answer 3

I love freedom, the United States, the Constitution, our culture, our langugage and everything our Founding Fathers handed down to us and fought so hard for.

In order to have freedom and keep the freedoms we hold dear we must defend ourselves and protect the things we cherish. This requires having a strong military, seeking out & killing terrorists before they kill us, having strong interrogation techniques that save American lives through gaining valuable information and engaging in proactive spying on our enemies.

Your inferring many things in your statement yet my own life experience, my eyes, the things I read and the people I talk with do not give any creadance to your statements. All I see are people criticizing the government at every turn, I don't see any silencing of anyone. I don't see people rounded up and put in prison like what happens in many other nations throughout the world. I don't see law abiding citizens getting harassed or "monitored" in any unjust way. I have heard of only one incident of the government locking someone up unjustly for 2 weeks and that person was paid a couple million dollars for the trouble. I see none of the items you point out.

Now, the things I do see and things that are truly dangerous to our nation are as follows:

1) High taxation rates, unfair taxation, immoral taxation and taxation that redistributes wealth. Government should only be raising enough taxes to fund essential government services, nothing more & nothing less. All taxes should be applied equally to everyone and there should not be people that do not pay any taxes while others pay more than their share as in the current system. Also, politicians such as Mrs. Bill Clinton that talks about taking "excessive" profits from a company or industry to fund her little pet projects is dangerous and goes against the very fabric of freedom. What is an excessive profit? There is no such thing. Government can not & should not be telling anyone what are acceptable profits. I think actors, politicians, news anchors and Starbucks makes too much money, should we put a special tax on them? It is simply ridiculous. It is nothing more than a power grab by government, unconstitutional, immoral and goes against capitalism and endorses socialism.

2) Too much government regulation which drives up the costs of almost every product & service we use.

3) Too much government interference in healthcare and the continued efforts by some politicians to try to take our healthcare decisions away from us and put them in the hands of some government agency. This is extremely dangerous. Government should be getting out of the way and letting people own their own healthcare policies and encourging private insurance to expand. If government controls your healthcare they will tel you what you can and can't do, what procedures you can & can't have and ration healthcare because that will be the only way the government can afford to do it. I don't want some government official deciding whether I live or die. I would much rather be able to deal with the doctors of my choice & the insurance companies of my choice.

4) Term limits are needed for Congress along with the abolishing of the current campaign finance laws which are nothing more than incumbant protection policies. Congress should be limited to 2 terms and there should be no restrictions on political donations. All political donations to a candidate should simply have to be fully disclosed via a government reporting method as well as a public posting.

5) Tort reform and reigning in activist judges needs to be addressed. Our judicial system has been abused. Judges need to rule on actual law & the intent of the law as well as the Constitution and not simply make up things. Too often judges are defining laws and creating law where there is none instead of simply ruling on the written law.

6) We need to more strictly enforce our immgration laws, build a wall / fence on our southern border and monitor who is coming & going. This is extremely important for our physical security as well as our economic security. There are murders all the time of innocent Americans by criminal illegal aliens. This must be stopped. Also, we must stop granting legal citizenship status to any child born on American soil. The Constitution is being misterpreted. Children born from non-U.S. citizens (either legal or illegal) should not automatical become U.S. citizens. This is a gross injustice to all Americans and a horrible intrepretation of our Constitution.

7) We must reduce the size of government, especially the federal government. The federal government has over reached in its' power and taken away rights & powers that should be left to the individual states per the Constitution. In the Constitution the powers granted to the federal government are very narrow & limited in scope. This was by design because the Founding Fathers were afraid of the central government becoming too strong. All rights not explicitly granted to the federal government were left to the individual states. We need to return to the original intent of our Founding Fathers and take back power from the federal government.

God grants powers & freedom to man. Man grants powers to government. Government grants nothing. This is an important concept, even if you do not believe in God.

Our government was setup to keep us safe & free and to handle a few tasks and that is it. Everything else is up to the states (ie, the people).

We have way too much government instusion into every aspect of our lives and it needs to be reversed. We should have limited & efficient government. Individuals are capable of and should be responsible for their own lives.

These are just a few really important things we should be focusing on. The items you listed in your intro simply have no merit and are not important in the overall outlook of our country.

God Bless America, capitalism, our military, the Constitution and our Founding Fathers.

Answer 4

The clueless sheep-herded American That's Who! Plus they are kept in financial stale-mate under Fascist Capitalism!

Answer 5

Simple its the same reason people fall down the path of socialism which can and often does lead to all the things you mentioned. Basically they are the same type of people , afraid!!

Answer 6

the kind of citizen that either doesn't know, or doesn't care enough to know what's going on in their own country, let alone the rest of the world.

Answer 7

A true spokesman from the party of Kafka. Doh!