COLONEL SAITO

Not to belabor a point (especially, since it's so far from your original point -- free speech in the U.S.?), it is, I think, a supernatural irrelevancy how many people died (I thought you were talking about America anyway) fighting 20th Century European political inventions. When the death toll reaches, let's say, more than 10, it's a national sacrifice, ironically, bestowed upon, as in this case, the creators of their own troubles. America does that a lot. Thank God.

Btw, if you think the McCarthy hearings or a movie star's personal and outspoken sense of patriotism amounts to an equivalent of democratically elected, national fascism, then we have nothing further to talk about. By the by, you ought to look at M. Stanton Evan's "Blacklisted by History" about the truth of the McCarthy hearings and the era in which they took place. To wit; they were popular (at first), needed, and effective. Very few people were unjustly damaged and, certainly, the hearings (and John Wayne's pronouncements) did not result in 20 million dead.

Or, perhaps, you have no idea what fascism is or means? It's a word which has been misused extensively, especially by liberals for their own political ends, for decades (Maybe that's what you're doing in your post?). I suggest you, also, take a look at Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" for an in-depth discussion of the subject and the term.

Re FDR's and Time's praise of Stalin -- they're always doing that(!) -- the liberals, that is. Can't get away from the commonality of that seductive Marxist imperative -- re-distribution of income -- essential to both ideologies. Remember, both Mussolini and Hitler were socialists first and foremost, and they, too, were praised by the same liberal intelligentsia -- 'til the bombs started falling. Then, of course, they conveniently forgot what they'd been saying up to then (see Thomas Sowell's "Intellectuals and Society").