Is President Obama a Nice Guy?
in [Lisp]
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From: Tamas K Papp on 6 Dec 2009 16:12 On Sun, 06 Dec 2009 20:17:52 +0000, Dr. Brian Leverich wrote: > Fascist economics were characterized by things like virulent corporatism > and a belief that the existence of inequality and separate social > [...] > > But, perhaps more to the point, I'm not stupid. Only someone If you are not stupid, then why are you posting these things to comp.lang.lisp? Surely a non-stupid person would realize that this is off-topic. Tamas
From: MarkHaniford on 6 Dec 2009 19:44 Obama is a socialist fascist thug. It's more likely that you've been participating in socialist politics since Goldwater than Republican politics. You're leftist scum just like Obama.
From: Nick Keighley on 7 Dec 2009 05:25 On 5 Dec, 10:15, p...(a)informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon) wrote: > Alberto Riva <ar...(a)nospam.ufl.edu> writes: > > Alberto Riva wrote: > >> Naeem wrote: > >>> Is President Obama a Nice Guy? > >> You mean: > >> (nice-person-p 'president-obama) > >> ? > > > Or maybe > > > (member 'president-obama nice-persons) > > > ? > > > But I wonder what kind of :test argument one should use here... > > (defun nice-person-p (p) > (has-peace-nobel-price-p p)) ; :-) :-) :-) but: (nice-person-p 'henry-kissinger) => T
From: Kaz Kylheku on 7 Dec 2009 14:19 On 2009-12-06, Dr. Brian Leverich <leverich(a)askin-17.linkpendium.com> wrote: > On 2009-12-05, MarkHaniford(a)gmail.com <markhaniford(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> On Dec 5, 4:15 am, p...(a)informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon) >> wrote: >>> Alberto Riva <ar...(a)nospam.ufl.edu> writes: >>> > Alberto Riva wrote: >>> >> Naeem wrote: >>> >>> Is President Obama a Nice Guy? >> >> It depends if you think that fascists can be nice guys > > > Oh please, not more of Teh Stupid. > > Fascism is the totalitarian extreme of the right end of > the political spectrum. You could correctly accuse the > Bush/Cheney administration of fascist tendencies. > > Communism (in the Stalinist sense) is the totalitarian > left extreme. If you want to be stupid but at least not > 180 degrees wrong, you could accuse Obama of communist > tendencies. Both fascism and communism are extreme examples of state control. They are both driven by some vision of what society should be and how to shape the individual to fit that mould, with the underlying assumption being that the state has a right to determine the course of the life of the individual, essentially owning that life. I would assign both of these regimes to the extreme left. All state control is to the left. The right is about smaller governments: less state control. The ultimate far right is anarchy, not fascism. Right is about a market place which is more free, less government interference in business, smaller taxation on the business and individuals and so on, and more of a focus in the proper role of government: enforcing contracts, fighting crime and defending the nation. There is a mild left consisting of sycophants who gain the popularity of the naive, ignorant masses by increasing various handouts (but at the cost of increasing the stranglehold on others to make them pay the tab). They are not humanitarians: their only goal is the acquisition of power. If they can shift the landscape sufficiently far left, they will drop that pretense, it having served the political goal.
From: Raffael Cavallaro on 7 Dec 2009 16:24
On 2009-12-07 14:19:00 -0500, Kaz Kylheku <kkylheku(a)gmail.com> said: > Both fascism and communism are extreme examples of state control. They are > both driven by some vision of what society should be and how to shape the > individual to fit that mould, with the underlying assumption being that the > state has a right to determine the course of the life of the individual, > essentially owning that life. > > I would assign both of these regimes to the extreme left. The problem is that Fascism is a mix of features from both the "right" and "left," but mostly of the right. The terms "right" and "left" as labels on the political spectrum have a history going back to before the French Revolution. These labels have been in continuous use since that time, and their broad outlines have not changed. Thus, one is not free to redefine their usage (as you do) or one will simply not be understood by anyone who has studied politics (or european history). From the Wikipedia article on left–right politics: " "The Right" thus implied support for aristocratic, royal and clerical interests, while "The Left" implied support for republicanism, secularism and civil liberties." Fascism thus shows some features of both the left and right, but more of the right: left - pro-state intervention in economy right - anti-egalitarian (believing that only an elite is fit to rule), anti-civil-liberties, anti-socialist with regard to religion, fascists were nominally anti-clerical, but in reality they formed significant alliances with the dominant religion and persecuted minority religions. Because this mix of features shows more right features than left, fascism has historically been considered a predominantly right wing ideology. > The right is about smaller governments: less state control. The ultimate far > right is anarchy, not fascism. This is wrong. The right favors state control, but in ways that support their views, and not in ways that don't. For example, the right favors state intervention in a woman's reproductive decisions (something an anarchist or libertarian would not) because this sort of intervention is pro-religion. Both the right *and* the left favor government intervention on some issues, and oppose government intervention on other issues. They just differ on where those interventions should come. For example: left - intervene in economy, don't intervene to impose religion on reproductive choice right - intervene to impose religion on reproductive choice, don't intervene in the economy. The notion that the right is opposed to state intervention and favors small government is a view the american right has promoted, but 1. the facts don't bear it out at all 2. support for individual civil liberties and a reduction of state power over individuals is a feature of the *left* not the right. For example, in addition to favoring state intervention in private reproductive matters, the most recent government of the right (when the party of the right controlled both houses of congress and the white house) took the US from a balanced budget (or a small surplus) to the largest budget deficit in history. The largest budget deficit in history can hardly be called "small government." Finally, since the american revolution and the subsequent constitution were born of enlightenment ideas, they were anti-royalist, anti-aristocratic, pro-civil-liberties, and pro-secular. Thus, it was a fundamentally leftist revolution, founding a fundamentally leftist government. This explains why the right has been on the losing side of history on most every major political issue from slavery[1], to women's suffrage, to civil rights, and school prayer - the fundamental structure of american law and government are profoundly biased toward the left - thankfully. [1] antebellum justifications for slavery were typically religious (i.e, the bible accepted slavery) and anti-egalitarian (i.e., whites were "natural" masters), and thus, pro-slavery positions were of the "right." Similarly civil rights, and women's suffrage. School prayer is obviously a religious issue and hence, also of the right. -- Raffael Cavallaro |