Dear Fake-Patriots,

POSTED BY: STDOUBT
UPDATED: Wednesday, June 11, 2025 02:40
VIEWED: 17112
PAGE 6 of 13

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
The Germans who occupied the Rhineland in 1936 were told that if they should experience any resistance from France, that they should withdraw because Germany did not have the military power to hold the Rhineland. To a very large extent, I think the Rhineland was a test. The Germans, having essentially lost the First World War, were probably not committed in 1936 to an expansionistic offensive, until they were not removed from the Rhineland, at which point they began to build up their military force confident they could defeat countries that could not or would not oppose them. I think it relatively certain that if France and the UK (and I’ll throw the US in their as well,) had shown even a meager show of force by retaking the Rhineland, it might very well have forestalled the entire war. Of course we can’t really know what would have been, although what was, was certainly the worst of most possible scenarios.

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The Germans just kept testing the water, getting bolder and bolder, not just with the Rhineland, but the Anschluss with Austria and any number of infringements of the Versailles treaty. By the time the allies drew the line at Poland, it was all too late (and so many lines had been scrubbed out already the challenge probably wasn't taken seriously).

I guess there was a lot of guilt involved with the lack of military force in response to Hitler's foreign policy. Many felt Versailles had been to harsh on Germany (which is certainly an arguable point - made a scapegoat, maybe? ), and after the crash of 1933, all the regeneration in Germany went down the pan - mainly because it was largely based on US loans that were very hastily called in.

Hitler comes in and turns things round, in his radical fashion, making the rest of the world uneasy, but there's a feeling of, "well, it's partly our fault they're in that mess in the first place", so certain conditions slip, and then a few more, until you've got a runaway train. There's a theory that Hitler fully expected the allies to back down over Poland as well, and was not even 100% ready for war in 1939, because he'd got so carried away with the guilt card.

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Originally posted by citizen:

Unless your saying the American government is not a democracy, there's certainly arguments down that road.

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Actually it's a representative Republic and that's an important distinction. When trying to determine the political system used in the US Constitution the drafters looked at various existant, historic and theoretical political systems. True, or primative democracy was considered but it can end up becoming government by the Mob and such systems make it hard to enforce property rights. In the end a Republic with various fudges and checks and balences was agreed. In the US system the people are represented in the government but they do not themselves govern. The government uses power given by the people, it is not the power of the people.

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As far as I can tell, all that Geezer did was ask some critical questions of the original rant, as well as the test that it quotes

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Khyron- You're normally much smarter than this. WHAT "critical" (important, insightful, crucial) questions did Geezer ask?? Here are his points, in order

STDOUBT is a fascist, ad hominum “You've passed the test and your Fascista membership card is in the mail.. (OK, one could say that STDOUBT engaged in the same behavior- that doesn’t make in-kind response right either)

Trivialization, how to “score” the test Most symptom tests give a pass-fail number, i.e. "If you have more than 8 of the 14 symptoms, contact a doctor immediately". Is there a make/break for this test, or does meeting any one condition lead irrevocably to Fascism?

Innuendo, disguised as “equal time” I also wonder if there are similar tests for, say, Communism, Socialism, Liberal Democracy, etc., so we can spin their OK. That assumes that the cited article is spin, and only spin.

Ad hominem “Then I went looking for "Dr. Lawrence Britt"...and can't find a thing about him other than he writes for the Council for Secular Humanism and the Rochester City newspaper, and has written a book entitled "July 2004" which is #1,273,771 in the Amazon.com books sales ranking. No evidence anywhere he's a Doctor of anything.

Innuendo “Free Inquiry is apparently the house organ of the Council for Secular Humanism.” So???

Ad hominem"Looks like Mr. Britt's worldview falls right in with the "Bush is Evil" crowd here” FINN-PLEASE NOTE, HE IS REFERRING TO PEOPLE HERE, not just to Dr Britt.

Putting words in peoples mouths (straw man) “I'm surprised he hasn't been quoted here before, what with stuff such as an essay titled, "Resolved: George W. Bush Is the Worst President in American History".

All he had to do was google up the definition of fascism and he would have seen a big overlap between Britt’s points, and others. But he’s more interested in trivializing and diverting the topic than actually discussing it. But Geezer doesn’t HAVE any “points”. That’s the point. Geezer is a walking, one-man propaganda machine, full of innuendo, ad hominem, and straw man distractions.

So, how about talking about whether the USA is trending towards fascism, with the help of people who THINK they're being patriots?

---------------------------------
Free as in freedom, not beer.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
ie. "Trust the system." I'm not putting words in your mouth, just condensing your rhetoric. But in your world view, is there a role for the average person to get involved- even worked up- over politics? Or does the demos not belong in democracy?

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Actually more like "Use the system", or "Work the system". It's functioned pretty good for the past 200 years. Do all the things interest groups, be they the NRA or the Million Mom March do. Write letters, lobby, demonstrate, support candidates favorable to your position. If you're doing all this, then you're doing all you legally can. Maybe you'll just have to wait for things to get worse, as you expect, before you get the momentum needed to throw the bums out. Maybe things won't get worse. There's an election coming up in a couple of years and Bush clones don't look to have a good chance. Maybe it'll all go away. You can work on that, too.

If you want to overthrow the government, you can try, but then those of us who play by the rules really will try and stop you, instead of just disagreeing with you.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Originally posted by Khyron:
Citizen, I realise your post was (probably) in jest

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Partly yes, partly no.

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In theory, yes. In practice, impossible.

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No that's pretty much exactly what it does. Democracy may be choose your dictator for the next four years, but by the virtue of governments wanting to stay in power they have to listen to the 'whims' of the people.

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For instance, the war with Iraq was quite unpopular in America and hugely unpopular in Britain, and it still happened.

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So? Both Britain and America have had elections since the start of these unpopular wars, and both still have the same governments they had before the war. People re-elected them, if they disagreed with the war they had the opportunity to do something about it, they didn't. Whose fault and responsibility is that?

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The people are only important in election years.

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And if people don't use that influence that is THEIR responsibility.

People in a democracy share the responsibility of the decisions, they decide who makes the decisions, they let them continue to make those decisions.

To go back to the WW2 analogy most people, and I think I've seen comments by you to this end, believe the Germans living at the time of the Nazi's share responsibility for their actions, because they didn't stop them and they allowed Hitler to come to power. People in a democracy have more influence, at least more opportunity for influence than those in a totalitarian dictatorship. People in a democracy share more responsibility, not less.

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In my view, the government that comes closest to being a true democracy is Switzerland, which is a direct democracy, meaning that the people vote on every damn thing. But even this requires the populace to be politically aware of what they are voting for/against, and that isn't always the case. California also has a direct democracy, but there it seems like any proposal that Schwarzenegger supports is accepted or rejected according to how popular he is at that moment. So direct democracy isn't exactly an ideal form of government either.

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And who bears responsibility for the people’s apathy if not the people?

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More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
And as you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say.

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Fletch:

I like what you said in response to that comment by Citizen, much better than my reply to it.

SignyM:

Okay, this is long, but hopefully I'll manage to explain my position in the debate.

First I want to be clear on some things (before anybody jumps to conclusions): I'm neither on Geezer's side nor on anybody else's in this discussion, I think both sides have valid arguments. The reason why I came to Geezer's defence is because I was surprised at how antagonistic some people's comments against him were, and I don't feel he deserved it. I do think he raised some valid arguments.

I'll go through each of the points you raised and I'll tell you how I interpreted them when I originally read them. This is not to defend Geezer, but to explain why I think Geezer is receiving harsh treatment.

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STDOUBT is a fascist, ad hominum “You've passed the test and your Fascista membership card is in the mail.."

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The problem with humour on the internet is that one doesn't really know when a person is joking and when not, unless that person is using emoticons, but not everyone likes using them. This sentence I saw as sarcasm and didn't think too much about it.

In fact it's that post in which Geezer said this that I thought made his most important point: not because it was criticising STDoubt's post, I don't care about that aspect of it, but because it shows how easy it is for one side that critisises the other side about something (in this case, looking for enemies/scapegoats) to fall into the same trap. It's very easy to go down the same path and it's not always "the other side" that does it. The comment about the fascista card at the end to me was just a bit of easily-dismissed humour.

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Trivialization, how to “score” the test Most symptom tests give a pass-fail number, i.e. "If you have more than 8 of the 14 symptoms, contact a doctor immediately". Is there a make/break for this test, or does meeting any one condition lead irrevocably to Fascism?

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I think it's a good question that Geezer (maybe inadvertedly) raised. What defines fascism? Is there a set of guidelines (as set out in this test) that differentiates fascism from something that has similar traits but isn't fascism? I didn't see it as trivialising the test, but asking if such a test is really good measure of a political system, or, on the other hand, if such a test can be seen as the definition of a political system. It's something that I think could be argued in a thread of it's own: "Does a specific political system always obey exactly the same set of characteristics?". Maybe it's not what Geezer meant, but it's how I read it.

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Innuendo, disguised as “equal time” I also wonder if there are similar tests for, say, Communism, Socialism, Liberal Democracy, etc., so we can spin their OK. That assumes that the cited article is spin, and only spin.

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Same as my comment above. Although I don't agree with his use of the word 'spin'. Then again, theoretically it's possible for anybody to come up with a test like this and then use it to criticise some government or agency that that person doesn't like. I'm not saying that's what happened here, but one has to be aware that tests such as this could be used for that purpose, i.e. as 'spin'.

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Ad hominem “Then I went looking for "Dr. Lawrence Britt"...and can't find a thing about him other than he writes for the Council for Secular Humanism and the Rochester City newspaper, and has written a book entitled "July 2004" which is #1,273,771 in the Amazon.com books sales ranking. No evidence anywhere he's a Doctor of anything.

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It's always good to check up on the sources, but in this case I do get the impression that it was meant to trivialise the test (btw, I don't think it's ad hominem, but trivialisation). So while agree with Geezer trying to look up on Dr Britt, I guess he could have just said "I tried to find something about Dr Britt but couldn't find anything important. Ca

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Straw man

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If you want to overthrow the government, you can try, but then those of us who play by the rules really will try and stop you, instead of just disagreeing with you

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Tsk, tsk. You just CAN'T turn off the propaganda machine, can you Geezer? But enough of this waltzing around. You've got nothing interesting to say on the topic of the thread. Let me know when you decide to have a substantive discussion.

---------------------------------
Free as in freedom, not beer.

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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As far as I can tell, all that Geezer did was ask some critical questions of the original rant, as well as the test that it quotes

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Khyron- You're normally much smarter than this. WHAT "critical" (important, insightful, crucial) questions did Geezer ask??

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SignyM, if you're going to attack me, please do it to my face.

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Here are his points, in order

STDOUBT is a fascist, ad hominum “You've passed the test and your Fascista membership card is in the mail.. (OK, one could say that STDOUBT engaged in the same behavior- that doesn’t make in-kind response right either)

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But what better way to make it clear that the "warning signs of Fascism" could be applied to almost anybody, making them less than useful?

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Trivialization, how to “score” the test Most symptom tests give a pass-fail number, i.e. "If you have more than 8 of the 14 symptoms, contact a doctor immediately". Is there a make/break for this test, or does meeting any one condition lead irrevocably to Fascism?

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Hardly trivial to me. without some concrete criteria, almost any country could be labeled fascist or given a pass depending on how loosely or strictly the test is applied. Again, this makes the test less than useful.

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Innuendo, disguised as “equal time” I also wonder if there are similar tests for, say, Communism, Socialism, Liberal Democracy, etc., so we can spin their OK. That assumes that the cited article is spin, and only spin.

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Hardly innuendo. I come right out and say I consider the article spin. And I do.

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Ad hominem “Then I went looking for "Dr. Lawrence Britt"...and can't find a thing about him other than he writes for the Council for Secular Humanism and the Rochester City newspaper, and has written a book entitled "July 2004" which is #1,273,771 in the Amazon.com books sales ranking. No evidence anywhere he's a Doctor of anything.

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How ad hominim?
Come here, Webster's II:
Ad hominem - Appealing to personal prejudices or emotions rather than to reason
I report exactly what I found by Googling Mr. Britt's name. I was interested in the "Doctor" bit because an article authored by "Dr. Britt" would be assumed to be within his area of expertise, and therefore carry more weight.

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Innuendo “Free Inquiry is apparently the house organ of the Council for Secular Humanism.” So???

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Back to Webster's II:
"House Organ n. A periodical published by a business organization for its employees or clients."
No innuendo there either, Just noting who publishes "Free Enquiry". Sheesh.

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Ad hominem"Looks like Mr. Britt's worldview falls right in with the "Bush is Evil" crowd here” FINN-PLEASE NOTE, HE IS REFERRING TO PEOPLE HERE, not just to Dr Britt.

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So if I said your worldview seems to me to fall right in with Rue and Citizen, then that would be ad hominem? When I say "...crowd here." that's who I'm referring to...you guys on FFF.

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Putting words in peoples mouths (straw man) “I'm surprised he hasn't been quoted here before, what with stuff such as an essay titled, "Resolved: George W. Bush Is the Worst President in American History".

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Nope. Really am surprised. His stuff reads just like so much other stuff quoted here. I'm not sure how this could be considred putting words in anyone's mouth. If I'd said something like "SignyM obviously thinks "Dr." Britt is the only choice for World Dictator (in only the nicest Progressive way, of course)." that would be putting words in someone's mouth.

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All he had to do was google up the definition of fascism and he would have seen a big overlap between Britt’s points, and others.

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...and also found a zillion definitions of fascism.

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But he’s more interested in trivializing and diverting the topic than actually discussing it. But Geezer doesn’t HAVE any “points”. That’s th

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