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[Pips40]

apparently HFCS causes pancreatic cancer, or at least thats what i gather from cola studies lately.

[LegoLord]

Lots of things can cause cancer.  The real question is how much of a carcinogen it is, and how often it is consumed.

[G-Flex]

Considering how much of that tends to be in soda, and how much soda some people tend to drink, I wouldn't be surprised. Of course, if you drink that much soda, you have other problems to worry about.

[greenwatering]

i don't want any part of this page, but one thing i do want to say.

communism/ socialism both have government run economy and usually media, at least the ones that were responsible for the previously mentioned atrocities.

under fascist hitler: both production and media were completely government run. if it wasn't always that fascism is conservative, i would thing that he was a socialist. specially since NAZI meant national socialist party.

for the most part (except for some of the  bizarre american ultra-right wing socially policies) conservatives are for minimal government influence.

i don't think fascism is on the right at all. i think it's just a renaming of communism, but with nationalist agendas instead of humanitarian ones like most forms of socialism.

by the way, i don't think that the fact that WWII era communists and fascists hated each other and each other's policies has anything to with anything.

[LegoLord]

i don't think fascism is on the right at all. i think it's just a renaming of communism, but with nationalist agendas instead of humanitarian ones like most forms of socialism.

Pretty much every history course I've taken that touched upon the two has taught the exact opposite.  They're just both extremes of their end of things.  Either side, right or left, gets pretty crazy once you hit the extremes.

[Aqizzar]

under fascist hitler: both production and media were completely government run. if it wasn't always that fascism is conservative, i would thing that he was a socialist. specially since NAZI meant national socialist party.

What groups call themselves really means nothing.  But if you want to talk words, you go to the creator of fascism, Benito Mussolini.  Infamously worn-out quote: "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."  Put simply, in Italy as well as Nazi Germany, it wasn't so much the government dictating terms to business and media, it was business and media dictating and organizing terms with the government, which was itself made up of tycoons and political celebrities.

Personally, I envision the continuum of political theory not as a line, but a circle.  If you go far enough left or right, you wind up in the same place, super-authoritarian crazytown, directly opposite stupefyingly-moderate democracyville.

by the way, i don't think that the fact that WWII era communists and fascists hated each other and each other's policies has anything to with anything.

This is the far more important sentiment though.  I think Godwin's Law should be extended to Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kruschev, Tojo, Churchill, and essentially every other famous politician in history.  I just wanted to throw in my opinion on the matter.

[Jackrabbit]

Well we seem to have a fairly good precedent for that all of a sudden.

[Jude]

Personally, I envision the continuum of political theory not as a line, but a circle.  If you go far enough left or right, you wind up in the same place, super-authoritarian crazytown, directly opposite stupefyingly-moderate democracyville.

Basically right, except that the opposite of super-authoritarian crazytown is uber-libertarian war-of-all-against-all-ville.

[Duke 2.0]

 I would imagine those two towns would be close together, not far apart.

 I would imagine if stupefyingly-moderate democracyville is north of super-authoritarian crazytown then even farther north would be the Wilds of Anarchy.

 We need to draw a road map of political cities across the great country of Ideology.

[Jude]

I would imagine those two towns would be close together, not far apart.

huh? Extreme authoritarianism is by definition the opposite of extreme libertarianism, which would mean LACK of all authority.

[Duke 2.0]

 Woops, sorry, somehow read that as Fundamentalism and my mind ignored any error checking after reading "war-of-all-against-all-ville."

[KaelGotDwarves]

communism/ socialism both have government run economy and usually media, at least the ones that were responsible for the previously mentioned atrocities.

under fascist hitler: both production and media were completely government run. if it wasn't always that fascism is conservative, i would thing that he was a socialist. specially since NAZI meant national socialist party.

for the most part (except for some of the  bizarre american ultra-right wing socially policies) conservatives are for minimal government influence.

i don't think fascism is on the right at all. i think it's just a renaming of communism, but with nationalist agendas instead of humanitarian ones like most forms of socialism.

Yeah, Nazis were as socialist as North Korea is the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" and China is the "People's Republic of China" - which are the official names of those countries. Thankfully, we appear to still be living in some sort of United States of America.

Too far-right, too far-left... doesn't matter. Past a certain point it becomes just plain crazy. The rest of us have to deal with those willing to kill indiscriminately to force their beliefs on others.

The name has nothing to do with what they actually are. Such as how Stalin and Mao may claim to be Marxists but when they pervert the ideals into a repressive killing state, the label no longer applies. It becomes meaningless.

Education aims to find the meaning behind such things, so we can understand them.

Oh by the way:
Rep. Bart Stupak - who got deals made that allowed the bill to pass the House, received a bunch of threatening phone calls from Teabaggers - some teabagger also cut gas lines to a Rep's house in "retaliation". I don't know whether it's funny, scary, sad, or hilariously all three.

Oh yeah, the funniest part is that they're yelling at him for supposedly reversing his "anti-abortion" stance, when he specifically made sure that no funding went to abortions in the bill. So they're absolutely delusional.

[Zironic]

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/03/24/dollar-bill-throw.html

It's time to round these guys up.

[dreiche2]

The thing with the fascism issue is that the political spectrum, as several of you have pointed out, isn't just one dimensional along a left/liberal - right/conservative axis. I think this way of thinking is to a degree a result of your two party system. A somewhat better description would for example be something like the Political Compass:

www.politicalcompass.org

Or here if you don't actually want to do the test and just see the explanation.

Hence:

for the most part (except for some of the  bizarre american ultra-right wing socially policies) conservatives are for minimal government influence.

Yes but only in terms of economy. American conservatives (not libertarians) are for a strong government when it comes to social aspects, how people should live their life (Christian values, critical of homosexuality, etc.), when it comes to police presence or military presence on the world stage.

i don't think fascism is on the right at all. i think it's just a renaming of communism, but with nationalist agendas instead of humanitarian ones like most forms of socialism.

But the underlying ideology and agendas are an important distinction. What fascism and communism had in common in history was that they were both totalitarian:

Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a political system where the state, usually under the control of a single political organization, faction, or class domination, recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible.[2] Totalitarianism is generally characterised by the coincidence of authoritarianism (i.e., where ordinary citizens have no significant share in state decision-making) and ideology (i.e., a pervasive scheme of values promulgated by institutional means to direct the most significant aspects of public and private life).

And to be 'right' can have different connotations, but it seems to me that usually and especially outside of the US it doesn't actually imply economic libertarianism, and refers to the social axis rather than the economic one. For example, 'far right' on wikipedia:

Far right, extreme right, hard right and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far right politics involves supremacism, believing that superiority and inferiority is an innate reality between individuals and groups and involves the complete rejection of the concept of social equality as a norm.[1] Far right politics supports segregation and separation of groups deemed to be superior from groups deemed to be inferior.[2] Far-right politics and political views commonly involve authoritarianism, demagoguery, homophobia, nativism, racism, sexism, and xenophobia.

[...]

The ideologies associated with the far right are fascism, Nazism, racial supremacists (especially neo-fascists and neo-Nazis group), religious extremists, and other ultra-nationalist or reactionary ideologies and movements.

Btw, I think that economic stances are so ideologically laden is something you only find in the US or communist countries, but not in most other first world countries. Maybe I'm wrong.

[Andir]

Well we seem to have a fairly good precedent for that all of a sudden.

And we only have such a precedent because of overly strict politics and regulation... (ie: forcing banks to give loans to people who can't afford them then wondering why AIG, et al. went "nuts up")