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From: gjk@talcott.UUCP (Greg Kuperberg)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Guns as Protection
Message-ID: <329@talcott.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 6-Mar-85 19:41:36 EST
Article-I.D.: talcott.329
Posted: Wed Mar  6 19:41:36 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 9-Mar-85 20:19:05 EST
References: <> <352@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> <859@topaz.ARPA> <322@talcott.UUCP> <885@topaz.ARPA>
Organization: Harvard
Lines: 39

> > > Right.  Because Chicago has a fascist gun control law, and the people
> > ...
> > > --JoSH
> > 
> > Yeah, almost as fascist as burning Jews.  Or to put it another way, clearly
> > this man is doesn't know what "fascist" means.
> > 			Greg Kuperberg
> 
> Greg is confusing "Fascist" with "Nazi" perhaps.  The Nazis killed (actually
> mostly by gassing) Jews.  The word Fascist, both in its particular
> application to a political party and in its historical roots, is Italian.
> (It comes from "fascia", the bundle of rods + axe that were the symbol
> of Roman magistrates.)  
> 
> Webster's says:  
> fascism, n: 1: a political philosophy ... that exalts nation and race 
> above the individual ... 2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of
> strong autocratic or dictatorial control.
> 
> I claim that this is *exactly* how I intended to characterize Chicago's
> gun laws.  Furthermore, I suspect that Greg (a) knows what I meant,
> (b) knows what "fascist" in common usage means, and therefore (c)
> was deliberately lying in claiming the opposite.
> 
> --JoSH

Brushing aside the insults, I maintain that your use of the word was a
grotesque exaggeration.  In common usage, the word fascist has come to mean
a philisophy as diabolical and in the same vein as the views that the
Axis leaders held (which was pretty close to Webster's).  Calling a
gun-control law fascist is like calling a ten-year-old juvenile
delinquent an anarchist.  Yeah, I know what you meant, and I don't like
such overstatements.  (Don't think that I'm a BHL because of this.  I
also cringe when people say this about Reagan.)
---
			Greg Kuperberg
		     harvard!talcott!gjk

"2*x^5-10*x+5=0 is not solvable by radicals." -Evariste Galois.