Why do so many Republicans seem to have such a problem understanding communism vs fascism?

Great 'question', although its more like a discussion. Anyway, I think you failed to pinpoint another failing of communism: centralized power structure, ala a dictatorship. I like to view good systems of governance like the human brain, the individual components (neurons, aka people) are quite incapable and frankly dumb on their own, yet when combined they can do more. They are collectively intelligent, and individually incapable. Communism doesn't follow this philosophy, it has centralized power structure which I believe is the core of why it fails and always will. The weakest link in the chain is the leader, get a bad leader and it becomes a cancer. Our forefathers were wise to create a style of government where power was decentralized, although this has changed over time.

Capitalism is largely the internal maximum possession of the flexibility of production. in fact someone or business enterprise owns the factories and mines and buys hard paintings from human beings to paintings those. Socialism is whilst the flexibility of production, fairly of being interior the hands of a single person or business enterprise, could be controlled with the aid of the working classification itself. as an occasion all miners, with the aid of democracy, could administration the finished mining marketplace. Communism is the top portion of socialism the place social training, funds, or perhaps the state have been eradicated and cooperation is valued over opposition. Communism is an somewhat anti-state ideology. Fascism is the antithesis of this. Fascists have confidence that the state could desire to hold finished administration and in basic terms with the aid of government administration, ought to a rustic benefit independence and supremacy. Fascists have confidence social training are mandatory and tend to be very in the direction of minorities. Socialism and communism are the two left wing ideologies, at the same time as fascism has a tendency to steer greater to the superb wing.

By your rational, it's ok that nearly every square inch of Britain is monitored by surveillance cameras, something most people think only exists in Orwell's 1984, as long as they're happy, right? Communism is ok too. Because underneath the brutality, suppression, and general totalitarianism, is a loving government who only wants to coddle their civilians. By your argument Democratic Socialism is ok, even though your counterpoint to Fascism = Communism is that it's a form of Democratic Socialism rather than Communism, because there is more "equality". You know the kind of equality that only comes from greedy, lazy, low lives who would have you work hard for your money so everyone else can have it.

Am I missing something here people? I don't see many benefits of socialism, communism, fascism, whatever ism you want to call it.

When is the LEFT going to acknowledge the conservatives just wish to be left alone. They wish to be able to chose charity not have it extorted from them. We never have lived in a Utopia, we never will.

Being controlled by the left or the right is being controlled. When the Left control you it is usually by mandates while the Right manipulates you with taxbreaks.

My younger bother choses not to work & be a church addict instead of a drug addict. I get just as upset at having to support him as I do at having to support other welfare leaches. Most of the illegals try harder to carry themselves than the leaches. It is our fault that we have taught/alouded them to be leaches. We have handy capped them & their future. What will happen when Social Security goes cashflow negative & the energy crisis collide? Will there be any funds for other social programs?

One other item for all that hate corporations & the business world. In truth business pays no tax the customer pays it all! A business determines at what level of income it will work. If it doesn't make that amount it goes out of business. Business collects the taxes for the government.

Why anyone would want fascism OR communism is beyond me. Read "Animal Farm". It will be easier for you to read (it is not too many pages) than "Liberal Fascism" and it will show you (in simple terms that it seems you need in order to process thoughts) the negatives of communism.

I don't favor either extreme and would prefer to stay in the middle of the road, but that means we need to keep the Republicans from gaining full control again. Today's Republicans want to carry capitalism to its fascist extreme. The rich keep getting richer at the expense of the working poor, who often aren't paid a living wage and increasingly are being laid off to outsource labor to foreign sweatshops, adding to the ranks of the unemployed. The "trickle-down" theory has proven to be far more of a failure than communism, because unbridled greed has kept the poor from receiving even a trickle of the wealth being hoarded by the corporate CEOs. I don't know what the answer is, but rewarding these bloodsuckers with tax cuts and subsidies certainly isn't it. It's time for a change.

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DannyK, you just earned an F minus in history. Hitler's usage of the word "socialist" was false and misleading propaganda, just like the Republicans' claim that they want less government.

Thank you, neocons, for proving my point. I didn't say I favor Democrats; I said we a balance somewhere between the two extremes and you gave me thumbs down. That's what's wrong with today's Republican party; they want absolute power, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Furthermore, they seem incapable of recognizing that extreme conservatism and corporatism leads to fascism if it's not subject to any checks and balances. We desperatelly need to get that balance back.

I hate to tell you, but the bottomline is...they are not very good at looking at the facts of a situation and saying the truth about it.

Republicans are notorious for saying whatever they have to say so they can win an argument ..regardless of the facts. Hence democrats are communists, even though they are american and vote and tend to favor things that the great majority of the people want. You see to republicans...truly doing things that the great majority of the people want is communism. Now we all know that is not the case, but they say cause they hope that some weak minded non intellectual poorly informed person will buy into that notion. On the other hand, they ignore all the signs that point to the fact republicans are lights years closer to fascism than democrats are to even socialism.

If you examine the policies that the republicans advocate...perpetual war, govt being basically a tool of the elite, the rich and big business, secrecy in govt, govt being able to shred the constitutions as neeeded, torture, illegally wiretapping, hatred of unions...renditions to other countries for torture, establishing concentration camps in distant lands to keep their citizens in the dark as to what is happening there...etc...well those are all in the play book of Hitler's nazis. But they dont want to have that conversation. They would rather call democrats communists...but notice that when they do, they never lay out details and facts to support that accusation as I have just done above about fascism and republican ideology. But then again, what did we say? we said that facts are irrelevant to them. This is why that even in times of war, record budget deficits that they are out here saying we need to cut taxes even more for big business. They are ideological extremists....bent on an agenda of that is basically to destroy the middle class, impoverish most americans, make the rich richer all the while keeping us at war to distract the country and divert scarce resources away from things that the people really want.

>Why do so many Republicans seem to have such a problem understanding communism vs fascism?

Well, neocons generally seem to be rather uneducated, especially on important political terms like those ones. The reason they don't understand what is meant by 'communism' is mostly because in the 20th century, 'communism' has often (incorrectly) been used to describe systems that are actually forms of socialism. The reason they don't understand what is meant by 'fascism' is that fascism has historically had negative connotations, however as neocons these people often support fascism, so their brains try to redefine the term to mean something else in order to help validate their position. At least, this is what I've observed so far.

>under Capitalism, not everyone has a fair chance because the people in the higher ranks of society (with more capital) are, by virtue of the system, going to rule over the lower ones.

There's a difference between 'have more money than' and 'rule over'. It's true that capitalistic systems tend to produce both rich and poor sections of society. However, there is technically no necessity for the rich to have any particular control over the poor. That said, in most of its modern implementations, capitalism has created the possibility for the rich to have control over the poor, through immoral and economically destructive laws which allow people to privately own things like information and access to natural resources.

>pure communism is, in theory, based on human sharing

But in the real world, humans tend to avoid sharing whenever possible. This is why communism has historically failed.

>and the belief that human nature is based on human behavior in response to their surroundings.

No, that is incorrect. Anyone with any relevant knowledge of game theory can tell you that communism fails precisely BECAUSE it does NOT take into account how humans behave under such conditions.

>Yes, the USSR failed and all large other countries

that tried communism.

That is incorrect. No large country has ever implemented total communism. True communism has never been tried on a large scale.

That said, the large states that came close to communism did fail, often quite spectacularly.

>However, the countries that have tried it, yes all of them...have had a history for centuries of having internal strife and civil war, basically dooming the idea of getting everyone to work together right from the start.

Wrong. Whether or not such a history existed for any given country, that was not the reason that the communist-like systems failed. The reason they failed was that communism at its most basic level does not take game theory into account. I'll explain:

Imagine a country which contains a million people, and the government of which decides to implement true communism. What true communism means is that everything everyone produces is shared out equally to everyone. A short calculation will show that if an adult is eating rice, they will require about 676 grams of rice to fulfill their daily intake of 2000 calories. This comes to about 246.909 kilograms per year. There are about 36590 grains of rice in a kilogram of rice, so each person is eating about 9034400 (just over nine million) grains of rice eaten per person per year. Even in a relatively small population of only one million people, out of all the rice each person eats in a year, only nine grains are produced per person. Imagine that every one of those million people is working to produce these 9034400 grains of rice per person per year. Now imagine it from the point of view of one person who is working full-time to grow rice. If they stop working, completely, then instead of 9034400 grains of rice per year, they will only be able to eat 9034391 grains of rice per year. This is slightly less than a quarter of a milligram of rice per meal. And this is ALL the person has to give up in return for NOT WORKING AT ALL. Will the person do this? Of course! Sacrificing two thirds of a milligram of rice per day is totally insignificant. If you had two thirds of a milligram of food removed from what you eat every day, you wouldn't even notice. And this is the only price this communist has to pay in order to never work again for the rest of their lives. And this scales in reverse to the number of people in the country. With ten million people, the amount of rice sacrificed would be one tenth of what I stated above. If Russia during the Cold War had had a hundred million people, the quantity goes down to just over two micrograms per day- so little you might not even be able to see it with the naked eye.

And THAT is why communism on a large scale is doomed to fail. The communist sharing system doesn't account for people who aren't working. The capitalist system does. Capitalism gives people a huge incentive to work (they earn money with which to put food on their tables and roofs over their heads), while communism gives people a huge incentive NOT to work.

Get the idea?

Under Capitalism everyone has a fair chance to be the people in the higher ranks to begin with. Life is not fair or equal in any way. Under a capitalist society however, everyone has a chance. Example I can not throw a football as far or as hard as Donovan McNabb, but I also didn't grow up in the slums. As an individual you make life what you want it to be.

Why should we change our system. Granted it is not perfect, but this system has made us the strongest nation in the world. It has kept us there for 150 years. I think a few changes back would make this country even stronger. (end NAFTA, cut back on entitlments etc.)