from #296: “…the distinctions between collectivist totalitarianism based upon racial purity and collectivist totalitarianism based upon the elimination of class distinctions are substantial and real…”

The distinctions are real, but they are the farthest thing from substantial.

To hypothesize a political spectrum, and put communism at one end, and fascism at the other end, is… well, it’s a lot of things:

1. It’s arbitrary. What *essential* political principle is exhibited and anti-exhibited in this spectrum? Nothing. It’s like setting up a spectrum of the relative nutrition of various foods, and then arranging this spectrum by color, with tomatoes and cherry lollipos at one end (red) and bluberries and grape soda at thoe other end (violet).

2. It’s historically confusing. The philosphical influences, the methods, the victims… were essentially identical between Naziism and communism (it’s no coincidence that the Jews suffered disproportionately under both regimes — they were demonized by the same prior commonly-accepted views/ideas.)

3. It’s a false dichotomy. If someone approached you and insisted that there were essentially 2 ideas you could subscribe to: torturing kittens, or torturing puppies… and if you accepted this idea… where would this acceptance lead you, at best? Sort of “moderately” torturing a “moderate” amount of both?

4. It’s dangerous, intellectually and politically. If you accept the false dichotomy of communism vs. fascism, then presumably you’d also spend a lot of time and mental energy reifying trivial, unconnected doctrine kibbles, and demonizing the “enemy”, like the never-ending battles of Crips & Bloods, or Hatfields and McCoys, instead of conceiving of a substantive alternative. Which leads to the main reason I object to this “spectrum”:

5. It ignores freedom. The most important — the only important — variable of political systems is degree of freedom: does the government protect the rights of the individual (the United States’ founding principles), or is the government the primary threat to the rights of the individual (Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, theocratic Iran)? A “spectrum” which ignores this distinction, and fixates instead on the particular murder weapon, or the particular slur for the scapegoat du jour, is worse than merely irrelevant, it is a cognitive obstacle to contemplating the most fundamental issue of comparative political systems.

Pat Buchanan is Nancy Pelosi is Pat Robertson is Jesse Jackson.

Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand…