Great rant PB!
We are moving closer and closer towards fascism! Call me a nut if you like but the hand writing is on the wall. Will a lot of us here see it fully instituted in our life time....maybe not, but if it isn't stopped our children and grandchildren surely will!
Fascism - Often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
2: A tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control.
Mussolini defined fascism as being a collectivistic ideology in opposition to socialism, liberalism, democracy and individualism. He wrote in The Doctrine of Fascism:
Anti-individualistic, the fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity.... The fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.... Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number.... We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a Fascist century. If the nineteenth century was the century of the individual we are free to believe that this is the 'collective' century, and therefore the century of the State.
A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions; 2. belief one’s group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint; 5. fear of foreign `contamination.
and we have so many darn pipe and cigar smokers...our own governator smokes cigars and yet every month or so it seams theres stricter and stricter smoking bans, the latest being public parks in many cities. :x
