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To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (21850)	12/1/1998 5:12:00 AM
From: Charles Hughes	Respond to of 24154

There are so many more issues and ideas than these labels convey. Then there is the matter of what people in these movements want, judging from their actions rather than their cant. Take rights. Early US/French notions of rights: The right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to own property (for adult white males, later for everyone.) Early communist ideas of rights: The right to a job, the right to a shelter, the right to food, the right to education and medical care. New rights: the right to privacy, to control your own body, to express your minority religion anywhere, anytime. What distinguishes facism from one or the other of these is less basic - mostly the totalitarian police state combined with a mildly socialistic economic model, mixed with both small business and big business capitalism. Absolute rights don't exist, neither does due process and so forth. Very efficient, for short periods, then it seems to invariably break down. Overweening ambition and corruption seem to set in. However, maybe not in periods of less change. Facism is not so far from monarchy as a model. If Russia gets another strong man it will then be a facist state, given the current economy. Some ex socialist states have this facist organizational model now - having failed to fullfil the human rights promised in communism/socialism, they have abandoned those yet do not have a Bill-of-Rights orientation to the individual. Companies rule the economy ( I won't say run it because they are not that organized), government serves as enforcer and emergency coordinator and military power. Note Iraq, serbia, China, and others. Then again, some ex facist states become democratic when external or internal pressures are relieved - Nicaragua, Haiti, Argentina, Chili, South Korea, Taiwan, others maybe. Liberalism as distinct from Libertarianism - in Libertarianism you have basically the protections from the state with no expectations of the state. In modern liberalism you have both the expectation of Bill of Rights type rights for the individual, the protections from the state, along with a cherry picking of the more socialistic rights - the idea that individuals are entitled to eat, to have a roof, to have a job, to have medical care. So liberals want everything possible for individual humans. Unfortunately this is hard to do, and some of the business and other interventions in the 1970's were of the 'we had to burn the village to save it' type of thinking. Libertarianism is not facism in it's pure form - no true libertarian wants a strong leader, which facism demands. However, the true behavior here is at odds with the theory. Libertarians seem to have an unhealthy interest in the bedroom affairs of others these days. And in religion in the schools, and other antithematic notions. They are not very good Libertarians. But Libertarians have the same problem as their cousins the Anarchists - they define themselves out of importance in any but a random solution, through refusal to be involved in the common union doing anything about general problems. To the extent that this is not true they are not Libertarians, but instead more liberal. Just some odd thoughts. Fire away. Chaz