Salamantis @146,
Your analysis only adds up if you first accept the definitions of right and left given by Marxists and neo-Marxist Progressives (more concerned with race than Marx) and second allow some mixing of quantities “measured”

Your first sentence, that both systems are collectivist, nails the essential distinction with which I am concerned. I agree with you that they are collectivist totalitarian systems, although of radically different types. The distinction for me is that collectivism is a fundamental component of leftist systems, and anathema to the right. To accept the neo-Marxist canard that there is something equally fundamental to the right about a racist component is to forfeit any standing whatsoever for self-identifying as being on the right. Racism is on a separate axis, if you will, and you can certainly arrive at racist positions from the left or from the right, and it says nothing about the left/rightness of how you got there.

If we accept your implication that racism is fundamental to the right, then the right is always evil, and none of us have any business associating with the right. Surely this cannot be the case, and I do not think it is unreasonable to ascribe this to a definition provided by the left for the purpose of demonizing the right. Refuting that definition as flawed does not prevent those on the right or on the left from opposing racism of any political stripe—witness the great number of people on this blog who identify with the right, and who strongly condemn and oppose the racists so popular in certain circles these days.

I do not argue that racism is absent from the right—merely that it is *not* a fundamental property of the right—it is an unwelcome intruder to reasonable people on both sides. So I think it is fair to say that we have done away with racism as being structural to the right, unless we accept what the neo-Marxists have to say.

You claimed that private ownership and class-based identities were central to Fascism, whereas in Communism, individuals only held power so long as they were in government. But in Communist countries, there exists no less frimly entrenched class distinctions and hereditary power structures than in Fascism. They’re just advertised differently. Once again, if you accept the definitions offered by Marxists, and which we have all been educated to at some point in our lives, then Communism looks like a fair system. Yet we have seen that it is anything but just or fair, to the tune of tens of millions of lives *within* their respective utopiae.

You accept the flowery claims of the left-totalitarians, even while admitting that they are not valid, and compare those to the ugly realities of the right-totalitarians. This, several times over, is the structural flaw in your argument.

So the central point is this: is it reasonable to say that racism is the defining feature of the right, as you claim? Or is it permissible to claim that authoritarianism, usually via collectivism (you can’t redistribute without authority) is a defining feature of the left?
The corollary question then, is what *is* the defining feature of the right? You claim that it is racism. I say that it is de-centralization. Not anarchy, not mindless libertarianism, but healthy, de-centralized, limited government. Private ownership and self-determination depend government not having the authority to re-distribute that property, and with it, a person’s ability to determine his own destiny.

Let us admit that reasonable people can espouse collectivism, and therefore the left can be reasonable. Now let’s see you admit that the right can be reasonable, because I object *strongly*to your definition of me as a racist. For now, I’ll accept that it was inadvertent.