There are several things I could respond to but I'll pick three.
Originally posted by: piasabird
The part about President Jackson may be incorrect. This was something that had to do with John Quincy Adams, whose father was also a president. I was recalling a story where his opponents or an earlier president was putting people in jail for making statements against government policy.
It was his father, our second president, who is infamous for jailing critics under the Sedition law.
Beware of trying to define Fascism. It is the hardest definition to come up with. It involves one person or group trying to control or take over government. For instance one could argue that the liberal media is guilty of fascism by proxy. They try to use the media to control the goverment. Instead of being journalists in search of the truth they attempt to influence the people by providing them with a limited and sometimes warped sense of the truth to out and out lies. What the Media does not tell the public is just as dangerous as what the media does tell people.
First, while it's hard to define in one sense - there are some variances - it's pretty easy to define some common components. There are many famous quotes doing so, including an article by the founder of fascism, Italian leader Mussolini, who was well hung. It involves a very powerful state - the state pressures the engines of the economy, i.e., the corporations, into a partnership where their economic power helps keep the government in power; it involves nationalism, the state over the individual.
IMO, there's more close to fascism in the Bush administration than any other presidency I'm aware of, with such examples as the K Street project to use corporate money for power.
Some politicians seem to be fairweather politicians. "I voted for the war, so the President must have tricked me!". Do you think politicians are really this stupid? If they are then they all need to be voted out of office.
I am tired of wishy washy it is not my fault for voting for the war. . . If they voted for the war and are now against the war they have mental problems.
Listen carefully. George Bush, during the post-9/11 period where it was dangerous politically to challenge his response, carefully orchestrated (well, Karl Rove did) a political maneuver where the vote on the war in Iraq was set up as *NOT A VOTE FOR WAR*. That's a QUOTE from Bush himself! Yes, they knew that they were lying, but that the public wouldn't be able to tell that, and the democrats were pressured to give him the vote specifically to let him get the inspectors back in, not for war.
He lied. He was able to put the democrats in a bad position where they either voted for his sneaky bill, or they faced political losses in the next election for phony reason.
That's not something to blame them for so much as to blame Bush for. He simply lied.
It's a bit like how LBJ got Congress to vote for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution when it wasn't supposed to be for a large war, but that's how he used it. He misled them, they say.
You should understand the history of that bill and stop misrepresenting it as a simply bill for war, the history says otherwise.
Remember Bush: It is NOT a vote for war. Stop posting falsehoods.