Posting this for the links...all worth reading.
While Americans love to accuse their political opponents of being fascist, it is for the most part, pure hyperbole, a cheap shot taken with little (if any) thought behind what is being said. After all, the way the word gets thrown around these days, it's as if fascism is just a synonym for "whatever it is I don't like about my political opponent."
Fascism, however, is a very real and distinct social, economic, and political system. While each strain of fascism has it's own unique characteristics, all strains share a number of specific and discernible traits. So whether it's the Left accusing the Right of fascism, or the Right accusing the Left ... What if we removed our partisan blinders only to discover that both are partly correct?
What if Washington, DC, had been undertaking a bipartisan scheme of corporatism ( http://the-classic-liberal.com/nothing-free-about-corporatism/ ) over the last century, the very heart of the fascist system ( http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo85.html )?
What if a bipartisan effort to to accumulate power in the Executive Branch ( http://the-classic-liberal.com/america-imperial-presidency-problem/ ) allowed the president to escape the accountability of law ( http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/04/the-day-america-died/ )?
What if decade after decade, both Democratic and Republican administrations ran unbalanced budgets under a fiscal policy best described as "tax and tax, borrow and borrow, spend and spend" ( http://the-classic-liberal.com/tax-borrow-spend-kate-upton/ )?
What if militarism had become a bipartisan staple of government spending, patronage and graft ( http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1896 )?
What if America's system of money and credit was a government-protected cartel ( http://the-classic-liberal.com/federal-reserve-bank-explained/ )?
What if the nation that defeated fascism ( http://the-classic-liberal.com/how-theodore-roosevelt-changed-america/ ), had adopted fascism ( http://the-classic-liberal.com/american-fascism/ )itself?
What if no one ever noticed ... because we assumed we were free ( http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html )?
http://the-classic-liberal.com/mainstream-politics-killed-american-dream/
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