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Correct me if I am wrong, but conservatism doesn't have the social programs that Hitler had. Conservatism doesn't send people to concentration camps and then ma

Correct me if I am wrong, but conservatism doesn't have the social programs that Hitler had. Conservatism doesn't send people to concentration camps and then mass murder them. I think this thread has reached a Godwin level. Both may be right-wing but: Hitler supported abortion, gun control, big government, and other things the conservatives claim to be against. To simply say conservatives = Hitler because both are right-wing is just as wrong as saying liberals = communists or anarchists because all are left-wing.

toyg 12y ago
> I think this thread has reached a Godwin level Well, it's hard not to mention Nazism in a thread about Mein Kampf... (sorry, I couldn't resist -- I do get what you are saying though).
lisper 12y ago
> Conservatism doesn't send people to concentration camps Doesn't it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...
- pdonis 12y ago
  Last I checked, none of those things were due to conservatives alone, nor have they been any better, on balance, when liberals control the government than when conservatives do. (Israel's methods of dealing with Gaza probably come closest to being "run by conservatives", but even there the same things tend to happen when more moderate Israeli governments are in power.)
  - rurban 12y ago
    There are liberals in the government? The last one was killed immediately, when he tried to stop the upcoming Vietnam theatre
  - lisper 12y ago
    Democrat != Liberal. Liberals have not controlled the government in the U.S. (or Israel) for a very long time.
    - pdonis 12y ago
      Well, everybody calls them liberals; they even call themselves liberals (when they're not calling themselves progressives, which is an even stronger code word for "left-wing"). If your argument is that they aren't "true" liberals, then who are the "true" liberals?
      - lisper 12y ago
        George McGovern. Walter Mondale. Lyndon Johnson. Franklin Roosevelt. William O. Douglas. Thurgood Marshall. There are liberals in the government today, but they are a minority and wield very little power. Here's an interesting historical perspective of the Supreme Court: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_leanings_of_U.S._Supreme_Court_justices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_leanings_of_U.S._Su... And a contemporary analysis of Congress: http://thatsmycongress.com/house/ http://thatsmycongress.com/house/ http://thatsmycongress.com/senate/ http://thatsmycongress.com/senate/ The extreme skewing towards conservatism is most evident at the extreme ends of the spectrum in the House: there are only 22 strong liberals vs 74 strong conservatives. There are two Congressmen with perfect 100 conservative scores and not a single one with a perfect liberal score.
        pdonis 12y ago
        I'm skeptical of anyone's "analysis" of the positions of political figures because the analyst's biases always color the analysis. That's obvious from both of the links you give: the "That's My Congress" link is obviously biased liberal just from their naming of the categories, and both of your links only analyze positions on a one-dimensional scale, which assumes that no other dimensions are relevant. That just increases the skepticism of someone (like me) who thinks both major parties in the US are seriously off the rails on some issues (for example, the war on drugs). As for your list of "true" liberals, McGovern is the only one who strikes me as consistently furthering "liberal" positions (by which I mean "liberal" by the definition you appear to be using--see below). Mondale didn't strike me as consistently furthering much of anything. Johnson got us deep into Vietnam. FDR got us into World War II (by which I don't just mean he was President when it started, I mean he consistently took actions, often covert ones, that were calculated to get us into the war). Douglas voted with the majority in Korematsu v. United States (his positions did change over time, so, for example, he wrote the majority opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut; but that just points up the fact that he wasn't always consistent). Marshall did win Brown v. Board of Education, but while education in the US is more integrated today than it was then, I question whether it is any more equal, unless it's in the sense that it's more equally bad. (To be fair, Marshall was pretty consistently liberal in his opinions as a Supreme Court Justice.) Of course, from your point of view, this just makes the case stronger that "true" liberals have very little power in the US. But from my point of view, it makes the case stronger that your definition of the word "liberal" is not a useful or historically accurate one.
  - girvo 12y ago
    I'm certainly not an American, but from where I've been standing I haven't seen a liberal in your administration since I've been alive?
    - pdonis 12y ago
      See my response to lisper.
- reitanqild 12y ago
  Last I checked Gaza were nothing like a concentration camp, and calling it that is an offense to anyone who experienced any real one. When did foreign journalists have access to ccs? When did ccs have markets in broad daylight? Where is forced labour? (I didn't mention starvation etc because those ones are contested but still.) I literally don't like to bring this up as it isually brings downvotes but letting people frame something this important, -no.
  - BugBrother 12y ago
    Let me add a couple of points re calling Gaza a concentration camp: 1. Gaza has among the highest population growths on the planet. Anyone implying organized murder is ... well, to not be impolite I also have to say: "is an offense to anyone who experienced any real [concentration camp]". 2. The borders were quite open to Israel, until the murders of Israeli civilians really started. It was common that people commuted to work in Israel and Israelis drove the car over to Gaza to have it fixed. Some problems are self generated.
  - lisper 12y ago
    You're right, Gaza is more like the Warsaw ghetto than a concentration camp. History never repeats itself exactly. But I should say that I didn't really want to emphasize the "conservative" aspect of what Orwell wrote about Hitler so much as that he was able to get away with a lot of what he did in the early days because the "property-owning classes" allowed him to. That is the part I found chilling.
  - vacri 12y ago
    Gaza is a bit like a concentration camp - an area where a group of people are contained and kept from moving freely. Generally concentration camps aren't big enough to support markets, but other concentration camps have allowed journalists, and forced labour is not a prerequisite for one either. It is better associated with the Warsaw ghetto, but your requirements for a concentration camp are not actually definitive of one.
Intermernet 12y ago
I agree with you that this argument has little to do with conservatism vs. liberalism, but to state "Conservatism doesn't send people to concentration camps" is ignoring some glaring realities, unless you want to be really selective about the definition of a concentration camp. Is Gitmo a concentration camp? How about Manus Island? Azouli Prison? These "detention centers" are full of people put there by both conservatives and self-labelled "liberals". Left / Right, Conservative / Liberal, etc. don't really matter if the people in charge are just aligning themselves with these ideologies for political gain. I think you'll find that the politically opposed leaders of the world have more in common with each-other than they do with the average members of the populations they represent.
- vixen99 12y ago
  You should detail the logical relationships between theses and people acting on them because -isms don't send anyone anywhere, people do. To say they do without offering a road map is loose thinking.
  - josephlord 12y ago
    Stalinism??? More seriously the claim was xxxism doesn't send people to concentration camps, this was responded to by counter examples. This is a perfectly reasonable response and disproof of the claim that xxxism doesn't send people to concentration camps. It was not a standalone claim that xxxism leads to concentration camps which may need to be supported as you wish. I know the ideology wasn't xxx but exactly what it is isn't important to the point I was making.
  - Intermernet 12y ago
    Yes, just like guns don't kill people, people do. Especially people who believe in -isms. People justify their actions with -isms and theses and society often accepts those justifications. You can always say the -ism isn't to blame, because the person would have probably found another suitable -ism to justify their actions anyway. The mistake a lot of people make is assuming that political leaders actually believe in ideologies (-isms), rather than assuming they just manipulate them for their own gain. Most politicians will flip-flop on any stance if their constituents demand it.
AimHere 12y ago
Firstly, Hitler liberalised German's gun laws slightly. He actually removed some of the restrictions and allowed Germans even to own some types of gun without a permit. Of course, Jews were banned from owning guns entirely, but in Nazi Germany, Jews were obviously a special case. The story that Hitler was a big supporter of gun control is just some bullshit propaganda by modern NRA types. Secondly, you're conflating modern American ideas of what a Conservative is with what it would have meant in the 1930s or earlier. In the 19th century, conservatives would have been the guys in favour of protectionism and big government intervention in business, compared to the liberals of the day who'd have been more in favour of laissez-faire economics. By the 1940s, laissez-faire had been discredited by the Great Depression and nobody was too enthusiastic about the free market. As for concentration camps, they were invented by the Conservative British government during the Boer war. (The six or seven death camps in Poland were an unprecedented phenomenon, so far unique to Nazi Germany, of course). Political ideas change over time. You're trying to impose modern political ideas inappropriately onto what happened in the past.
lisper 12y ago
Heh, this is timely. Just showed up on Reddit: http://www.vice.com/read/undercover-in-americas-privitised-prisons-alexander-reynolds-293?utm_source=vicefbus http://www.vice.com/read/undercover-in-americas-privitised-p... The money quote: "I didn’t believe that a “concentration camp” could exist in America until, in Phoenix, Arizona, I saw one with my own eyes."

toyg 12y ago

> I think this thread has reached a Godwin level Well, it's hard not to mention Nazism in a thread about Mein Kampf... (sorry, I couldn't resist -- I do get what you are saying though).

lisper 12y ago

> Conservatism doesn't send people to concentration camps Doesn't it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...

pdonis 12y ago
Last I checked, none of those things were due to conservatives alone, nor have they been any better, on balance, when liberals control the government than when conservatives do. (Israel's methods of dealing with Gaza probably come closest to being "run by conservatives", but even there the same things tend to happen when more moderate Israeli governments are in power.)
- rurban 12y ago
  There are liberals in the government? The last one was killed immediately, when he tried to stop the upcoming Vietnam theatre
- lisper 12y ago
  Democrat != Liberal. Liberals have not controlled the government in the U.S. (or Israel) for a very long time.
  - pdonis 12y ago
    Well, everybody calls them liberals; they even call themselves liberals (when they're not calling themselves progressives, which is an even stronger code word for "left-wing"). If your argument is that they aren't "true" liberals, then who are the "true" liberals?
    - lisper 12y ago
      George McGovern. Walter Mondale. Lyndon Johnson. Franklin Roosevelt. William O. Douglas. Thurgood Marshall. There are liberals in the government today, but they are a minority and wield very little power. Here's an interesting historical perspective of the Supreme Court: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_leanings_of_U.S._Supreme_Court_justices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_leanings_of_U.S._Su... And a contemporary analysis of Congress: http://thatsmycongress.com/house/ http://thatsmycongress.com/house/ http://thatsmycongress.com/senate/ http://thatsmycongress.com/senate/ The extreme skewing towards conservatism is most evident at the extreme ends of the spectrum in the House: there are only 22 strong liberals vs 74 strong conservatives. There are two Congressmen with perfect 100 conservative scores and not a single one with a perfect liberal score.
      - pdonis 12y ago
        I'm skeptical of anyone's "analysis" of the positions of political figures because the analyst's biases always color the analysis. That's obvious from both of the links you give: the "That's My Congress" link is obviously biased liberal just from their naming of the categories, and both of your links only analyze positions on a one-dimensional scale, which assumes that no other dimensions are relevant. That just increases the skepticism of someone (like me) who thinks both major parties in the US are seriously off the rails on some issues (for example, the war on drugs). As for your list of "true" liberals, McGovern is the only one who strikes me as consistently furthering "liberal" positions (by which I mean "liberal" by the definition you appear to be using--see below). Mondale didn't strike me as consistently furthering much of anything. Johnson got us deep into Vietnam. FDR got us into World War II (by which I don't just mean he was President when it started, I mean he consistently took actions, often covert ones, that were calculated to get us into the war). Douglas voted with the majority in Korematsu v. United States (his positions did change over time, so, for example, he wrote the majority opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut; but that just points up the fact that he wasn't always consistent). Marshall did win Brown v. Board of Education, but while education in the US is more integrated today than it was then, I question whether it is any more equal, unless it's in the sense that it's more equally bad. (To be fair, Marshall was pretty consistently liberal in his opinions as a Supreme Court Justice.) Of course, from your point of view, this just makes the case stronger that "true" liberals have very little power in the US. But from my point of view, it makes the case stronger that your definition of the word "liberal" is not a useful or historically accurate one.
- girvo 12y ago
  I'm certainly not an American, but from where I've been standing I haven't seen a liberal in your administration since I've been alive?
  - pdonis 12y ago
    See my response to lisper.
reitanqild 12y ago
Last I checked Gaza were nothing like a concentration camp, and calling it that is an offense to anyone who experienced any real one. When did foreign journalists have access to ccs? When did ccs have markets in broad daylight? Where is forced labour? (I didn't mention starvation etc because those ones are contested but still.) I literally don't like to bring this up as it isually brings downvotes but letting people frame something this important, -no.
- BugBrother 12y ago
  Let me add a couple of points re calling Gaza a concentration camp: 1. Gaza has among the highest population growths on the planet. Anyone implying organized murder is ... well, to not be impolite I also have to say: "is an offense to anyone who experienced any real [concentration camp]". 2. The borders were quite open to Israel, until the murders of Israeli civilians really started. It was common that people commuted to work in Israel and Israelis drove the car over to Gaza to have it fixed. Some problems are self generated.
- lisper 12y ago
  You're right, Gaza is more like the Warsaw ghetto than a concentration camp. History never repeats itself exactly. But I should say that I didn't really want to emphasize the "conservative" aspect of what Orwell wrote about Hitler so much as that he was able to get away with a lot of what he did in the early days because the "property-owning classes" allowed him to. That is the part I found chilling.
- vacri 12y ago
  Gaza is a bit like a concentration camp - an area where a group of people are contained and kept from moving freely. Generally concentration camps aren't big enough to support markets, but other concentration camps have allowed journalists, and forced labour is not a prerequisite for one either. It is better associated with the Warsaw ghetto, but your requirements for a concentration camp are not actually definitive of one.

Intermernet 12y ago

I agree with you that this argument has little to do with conservatism vs. liberalism, but to state "Conservatism doesn't send people to concentration camps" is ignoring some glaring realities, unless you want to be really selective about the definition of a concentration camp. Is Gitmo a concentration camp? How about Manus Island? Azouli Prison? These "detention centers" are full of people put there by both conservatives and self-labelled "liberals". Left / Right, Conservative / Liberal, etc. don't really matter if the people in charge are just aligning themselves with these ideologies for political gain. I think you'll find that the politically opposed leaders of the world have more in common with each-other than they do with the average members of the populations they represent.

vixen99 12y ago
You should detail the logical relationships between theses and people acting on them because -isms don't send anyone anywhere, people do. To say they do without offering a road map is loose thinking.
- josephlord 12y ago
  Stalinism??? More seriously the claim was xxxism doesn't send people to concentration camps, this was responded to by counter examples. This is a perfectly reasonable response and disproof of the claim that xxxism doesn't send people to concentration camps. It was not a standalone claim that xxxism leads to concentration camps which may need to be supported as you wish. I know the ideology wasn't xxx but exactly what it is isn't important to the point I was making.
- Intermernet 12y ago
  Yes, just like guns don't kill people, people do. Especially people who believe in -isms. People justify their actions with -isms and theses and society often accepts those justifications. You can always say the -ism isn't to blame, because the person would have probably found another suitable -ism to justify their actions anyway. The mistake a lot of people make is assuming that political leaders actually believe in ideologies (-isms), rather than assuming they just manipulate them for their own gain. Most politicians will flip-flop on any stance if their constituents demand it.

AimHere 12y ago

Firstly, Hitler liberalised German's gun laws slightly. He actually removed some of the restrictions and allowed Germans even to own some types of gun without a permit. Of course, Jews were banned from owning guns entirely, but in Nazi Germany, Jews were obviously a special case. The story that Hitler was a big supporter of gun control is just some bullshit propaganda by modern NRA types. Secondly, you're conflating modern American ideas of what a Conservative is with what it would have meant in the 1930s or earlier. In the 19th century, conservatives would have been the guys in favour of protectionism and big government intervention in business, compared to the liberals of the day who'd have been more in favour of laissez-faire economics. By the 1940s, laissez-faire had been discredited by the Great Depression and nobody was too enthusiastic about the free market. As for concentration camps, they were invented by the Conservative British government during the Boer war. (The six or seven death camps in Poland were an unprecedented phenomenon, so far unique to Nazi Germany, of course). Political ideas change over time. You're trying to impose modern political ideas inappropriately onto what happened in the past.

lisper 12y ago

Heh, this is timely. Just showed up on Reddit: http://www.vice.com/read/undercover-in-americas-privitised-prisons-alexander-reynolds-293?utm_source=vicefbus http://www.vice.com/read/undercover-in-americas-privitised-p... The money quote: "I didn’t believe that a “concentration camp” could exist in America until, in Phoenix, Arizona, I saw one with my own eyes."