On Oct 25, 6:08 pm, Alex Freed  wrote:
> mdj wrote:
>
> > *sigh* You'll find most dictators and tyrants obviously had political
> > agendas of some sort or another. I think if you look and see how many
> > leaders have demolished constitutions in the last 50 years, you'll be
> > quite surprised to find just how many of them claim to be libertarian.
>
> With all due respect could you please name a few? Dictatorship MUST be
> based on a very strong state control over everything. A libertarian
> should be opposed to that.

With all due respect, it's been pointed out to you by two people that
one of the examples you gave, Hitler, was a fascist. Here's a quote
from Hitler's friend Benito Mussolini:

"This is a century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a
Fascist century"

Your response to this? To declare that the terms left and right no
longer mean anything. I'll accept that, since it follows that your
correlation of the left with totalitarianism is therefore meaningless.

You'll find that often the labels that political parties use are a
part of their propaganda and bear only superficial resemblance to
their behaviour. See Hitler, Hussein. You might want to consider the
term "Libertarian Socialist" as contrast to the term "National
Socialist" (or for short, Nazi). I think you'll find that the
totalitarianism tends along the "National" axis, and that the tying of
the "left" to totalitarianism is nothing more than obsolete cold-war
propaganda.

> It's your "*sigh*" that got me in a flame mood. Please don't treat
> people voicing political opinions you disagree with like ... enough said.

I apologise if you find my tone unsettling. Personally, I use the
terms 'left-wing' and 'right-wing' to mean respectively "looking after
the interests of the working class" and "looking after the interests
of the establishment/aristocracy/investment class" or alternatively,
conservative. This is what they've meant since they were first used in
the French Revolution. In the Australian parliament just like in
France, the left/progressive party sit on the left, and the
conservative/right sit on the right. How does it work in the US?

Matt
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