DEMOCRACY:

The word Democracy comes from two Greek words: “demos”, (the people) and “kratos” (authority or power).

Thus Democracy means government by the people, not government by one person (the monarch, the dictator, the priest, the President) or government by a few (an oligarchy or aristocracy).

Constitutional Democracy refers to a government that regularly enforces recognized limits on those who govern, and allows the voice of the people to be regularly heard through fair and free elections.

Democracy today means Representative Democracy or, in Plato’s terms, a Republic, in which those who have governmental authority, get and retain authority, directly or indirectly, as the result of winning free elections, in which all adult citizens are allowed to participate.

Government By the People, by Burns, Peltason, Cronin, Magleby, 1993

THE ENLIGHTENMENT:

“A movement of thought and belief, developed from interrelated conceptions of God, Reason, Nature, and Man, to which there was wide assent in Europe during the 17^th and 18^th centuries. The dominant conviction was that right reasoning could find true knowledge and could lead mankind to felicity. The ancestral ideas of the enlightenment reach deep into ancient Greece. There the first philosophers discovered a regularity in the processes of nature, and concluded that the ordering principle was the intelligent mind…

Then came the Renaissance with its worldly outlook, and after it, the Protestant Reformation…

The great geniuses of the 17^th century, confirmed and amplified the concept of a world of calculable regularity, but more important, they seemingly proved that rigorous mathematical reasoning offered the means, independent of God’s revelation, of establishing truth. Hence, men as different as Descartes and Hobbes, Spinoza and Leibniz, wrote in the idiom of mathematical demonstration….

A first necessity was intellectual freedom, a hacking away of those shackles with which, for centuries, religious obscurantism and intolerance had crippled the human mind…”

Encyclopaedia Britannica

An 18^th century European philosophical movement which included rationalism, a positive attitude toward learning, with a new wave of skepticism toward Christianity and empiricism in political and social thought. The movement saw history as the record of man’s progress toward reason, and therefore perfection. The Enlightenment’s empiricism influenced the American Revolution and Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason,
Real Life Dictionary of American politics

LIBERALISM

“Liberalism is the creed, philosophy, and movement, which is committed to freedom as a method and policy in government, as an organizing principle in society, and as a way of life for the individual and community. As an idea and philosophy it predates its use as a term, and can be traced back to the Judeo-Christian-Greek intellectual world, along with the idea of liberty itself, with which it is closely linked.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica

“A political concept and attitude … developed in the 18^th and 19^th centuries as a bourgeois movement of the merchant class in quest of freedom from the vestiges of feudalism and control by the nobility and royalty. Features which continue today in the United States; include espousal of freedom of all kinds including basic civil liberties, advocacy of independence of the individual against a powerful body, advocacy against war and in favor of peaceful negotiation, and commitment to equality for all. Liberals usually favor openness to new ideas and honor human rights and needs…”
Real Life Dictionary of American Politics

LIBERAL

A person who subscribes to Liberalism, showing concern for human rights and needs, open to new ideas.

Real Life Dictionary of American Politics

LIBERAL MEANS FREE

Defined by Webster as deriving from the Latin; liberalis, or liber, meaning “free”

Webster’s New World Dictionary

Added; (an understandably threatening idea to Fascists everywhere)

LIBERAL DEMOCRACY

A governing philosophy (of)… (Liberalism) identified by de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill.
Real life Dictionary of American Politics

CONSERVATISM

“When French politicians and writers, were seeking for some name to describe their movement toward a social order which would reconcile the best in the old Europe with the necessities of the 19th century, they hit upon the concept of the “conservateur”, the guardian of the heritage of civilization, and of the principles of justice. Conservatism is a term commonly used in politics to denote a preference for the old and tried in the civil social order, rather than for the new and untried. Conservatism is, in brief, a body of convictions, but not an ideology. Though it is not an ideology, conservatism may be defined reasonably well by listing a number of basic opinions that most eminent conservatives have shared. The following first principles are best discerned in the theoretical and practical politics of British and U.S. conservatives; Natural Law, Continuity, Prescription, Prudence, Variety, Imperfectability.

Conservative movements also have tended to attract persons of strong religious feelings, particularly during the reaction against the “Age of Reason.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica

Conservatism is:

1) Historically: political thought based on belief in tradition, existing institutions, the status quo, private ownership of property and business and preservation of established authority with the spirit of “conserve the best of” principles.

2) U.S.: beliefs in these principles have led many conservatives to favor Nationalism, management of news, (information) and the arts, social conformity, supply side economics, limitations on environmental protection and solving international conflict with threats of force of arms instead of negotiating to preserve Democracy and American interests. They often favor imposing their views by force on other countries to convert them, rather than using the more feminine approaches of discussion and negotiation.
[Real Life Dictionary of American Politics]

FASCISM

Fascism is the name of a political attitude which puts the nation-state or the race, its power and growth, in the centre of life and history. It disregards the individual and his rights, as well as humanity, in the exclusive interest of the nation. The name Fascism was first used by the movement started by Benito Mussolini in March 1919. Later on it became the general name for similar movements in other countries, among which German National Socialism was the most prominent.

Fascism regards itself as a rejection, a complete and uncompromising denial of the principles of Liberalism and Democracy, as elaborated and realized in the British, American, and French revolutions, of the 17th and 18th centuries.

The liberty of the individual is denied in favor of the state, the inequality of men is proclaimed as immutable and beneficial. From the beginning Fascism acted as the implacable enemy of Democracy and of the Rights of Man.

Military discipline and blind obedience are to permeate the whole of civilian life. In many ways Fascism can be regarded as an exaggerated and even absolutized nationalism which entirely obliterates both individuality and humanity.

Though it is true that fascism finds a much better soil for its growth in the cultural and social traditions of certain nations, it represents a general attitude which can be found everywhere.

Fascism, however, was in such complete opposition to the trends of the 18^th and 19^th centuries that its emergence found Democracy completely unprepared for the heavy and decisive blows which its implacable enemy intended to deal it, through propaganda, terror, and war.
Encyclopaedia Britannica

A system of government characterized by rigid one party dictatorship, forcible suppression of the opposition (unions, other especially leftist, parties, minority groups, etc.), the retention of private ownership of the means of production under centralized government control, belligerent nationalism and racism, glorification of war, etc.
Webster’s New World Dictionary

FASCISM IS ANTI-DEMOCRATIC AND ANTI-LIBERAL

1.) Philosophy of the Fascist Party founded (1919) by Benito Mussolini to oppose, suppress and eventually eliminate any and all so-called radical movements in Italy. Its name comes from the Latin word fasces, a tied bundle of rods used as a symbol of authority in ancient Rome. Its “Black Shirts” (paramilitary toughs) invaded Rome in 1922, forcing Victor Emmanuel to name Mussolini premier. Mussolini took the title “Il Duce” (the leader) and established an actively anti-democratic dictatorship (1922-1943) which invaded Ethiopia, Albania, and Greece.

2.) generic name for a political philosophy advocating suppression or elimination of any opposition, achievement of one-party dictatorship, elimination of unions and activist violence against minorities and liberals.

It included Hitler’s German Nazis, Franco’s Spanish Falange, and most right wing dictatorships…people who hold extreme totalitarian beliefs, especially if the person uses verbal or physical violence to express or enforce his/her views.
Real Life Dictionary of American Politics

FASCISM’S 14 DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS:

Powerful and continuing Nationalism Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a unifying cause Supremacy of the Military Rampant Sexism Controlled Mass Media Obsession with National Security Religion and Government Intertwined Corporate Power is protected Labor Power is suppressed Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts Obsession with Crime and Punishment Rampant Cronyism and Corruption Fraudulent Elections
Dr. Lawrence Britt

FASCISM IS RELIGIOUS AND MORAL

“No action can be divorced from moral judgement; there is nothing in the world which can be deprived of the value which belongs to everything in it’s relation to moral ends. Life therefore, as conceived by the Fascist, is serious, austere, religious; the whole of it is poised in a world supported by the moral and responsible forces of the spirit.”