Facism

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I hear the word Fascism tossed around a lot, but as we are a society which places little value on history, I feel that most people lack an understanding of what it truly means.  The Cambridge English Dictionary defines it as: 

“a political system based on a very powerful leader, state control of social and economic life, and extreme pride in country and race, with no expression of political disagreement allowed”

That seems pretty broad and I see elements of both political parties in that definition, which may be why members of both American political parties use the word to describe the extremists on either side. 
One can argue that nearly every president over the past 100 years can be described as a very powerful leader, depending on who you ask.  In the past decade, the current president and the past president are both described as the best and the worst, again depending on who you are talking to.  So, while a powerful leader is not enough to define the word, it sets up the idea of what it means because a powerful leader is needed to sway the masses to the ideology desired.  Powerful is also perceived by the person viewing that leader, depending on if that leader is strong in the ideals the viewer believes in.  

Control of Social and Economic life.  This is a little more detail and can easily be backed by citations one way or another.  Again, depending on who you ask, your answer will be different.  Social issues have become one of the most flaunted yet unresolved topics at every election period.  In a nutshell, “we need Social Justice, but we aren’t brave enough to legislate it, let’s just leave it up to the courts to decide”, is sometimes discussed by people who follow politics.  On the left, their party advocates social issues where the government mandates how you think, one must accept sexual orientation (despite your religious beliefs), one must accept their definition of gender, one must accept people of a certain religion but not any others, one must not advocate religion in politics.  On the right, one does not have the right to end unwanted pregnancies despite it being your own body, One must be patriotic or be outcast, One must accept a certain religion but not others, one often relates religion and politics.  All of these ideas are easily cited via news articles over the past several years and it would be hard to argue against. 

Economics might be a little harder to pull in to the definition, for me at least, because it isn’t my strong suit.  However, the basic ideologies of the two parties pretty much dictate their positions on state control of economic life.  The left is often described as a tax and spend ideology which believes in wealth distribution and social welfare.  The right tends to be more fiscally conservative, less government involvement in your wallet and opposes social welfare programs.  So, in this case, in my opinion, one side leans towards the fascist definition more than the other, slightly, but still a lean. 

Extreme pride in one’s country and race.  Hands down, the right wins as they tend to promote patriotism as a valued characteristic.  However, racial pride is a bit more complicated, mostly reserved for the fringe extremists on either side such as the white supremacists, Black Lives Matters and La Raza.    All are seen advocating extremist racial views and try to align that with a certain political alignment.        

Finally, with no expression of political disagreement allowed, is an important quality of Fascism.  The suppression of free speech has been in the media and social media for the past year.  Left wing extremism and Academia both being accused of being intolerant of Conservative values expressed by certain speakers or candidates.  Often disrupting town hall meetings, candidate rallies/speeches, governmental meetings, left wing extremists have painted the picture of intolerance to oppositional points of view.  At the same time, one can argue that the right’s “Fake News” campaign can be likened to state controlled propaganda.  However the perceived left bias of most news media contradicts that assertion and in the previous administration was also viewed as state controlled propaganda. 
So, in reality, neither right or left wing entities fully meet the definition of Fascism.  They each meet some element of it, but as a whole, the use of the word to exemplify one of the two American political ideologies is false. 

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica,
“…fascist parties and movements differed significantly from each other, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.”

This seems to be a more detailed definition, which has connotations that lead to an implication that Fascism still has elements embraced by either or both political ideologies.  The right for extreme nationalism, elitism and contempt for liberalism, the Left for contempt for our electoral process (electoral college), elitism and the creation of a people’s community. 

So which side is fascist? 

Want to take a DNA Test? Think twice before spitting.

My two cents about the popular DNA tests on the market today; only use them if you are mentally prepared to accept whatever family secrets they reveal.  Seriously, they can open up some dark closets. 

All my life, I have lived knowing that I am one hundred percent Polish / Eastern European, that was an identity I was proud of and grew up believing.  I’m not going to say I was raised Polish, I don’t speak the language and don’t know much about the culture.  I had a very heavy Hispanic influence during most of my childhood and teen years.  But I was proud of my heritage and spent a lot of time researching what I could about my family.  I learned a lot over the years, but also hit some dead ends, mostly because of the scarcity of records in Poland due to the Great Wars. 

I thought I would take a DNA test, it was on sale and I thought it would be fun.  I chose the National Geographic GENO 2.0 project.  The data would benefit an actual scientific project and it offered more on the deep ancestry than the recent ancestry.  I knew I was Eastern European, but I wanted to learn more on the deeper aspects, migration patterns and deeper roots.  I knew it would come back Polish, but where did we come from before Eastern Europe. 

I was fifty percent right.  The results came back, and with them, a huge shock.  I was Eastern European, but only fifty percent.  What came next was the shocker, nineteen percent Native American was what hit my eyes.  Basically, it translated to twenty-five percent Spanish (Western and Southern European) and 25 percent Indigenous North and South American.  Immediately, I started thinking about my step father who was around since I was a baby.  My mom and “dad” divorced somewhere in 1969 and she remarried in 1971.  Now I knew he was around early on, I saw pictures of my mom and step-dad from 1969, but the kicker was, I looked nothing like him or anyone in his family.   So I turned to him after a couple months of mulling about on the results. 

His response was even more of a shock.  Your DNA is probably right, but it wasn’t me.  It seems he didn’t meet my mom until December of 1968, I was born in May of 69, the math doesn’t add up.  He did tell me that my mom was seeing another Colombian guy prior to meeting him, who was not such a nice guy, but from a good family.  He told me his name, but that was a dead end.  The man who I thought was my dad, I always knew, was an alcoholic and he owned a bar which he spent a lot of time running.  That is what eventually killed him, but everyone always told me how much I looked like him, same hair, similar build, same looks.  So this is intriguing.  I turned to my last surviving Uncle.

He was not able to shed much light on the subject, whatever my mom was doing,  she was very skilled at keeping it hidden.  But, he did say, it was the 60s!  Yeah, I get that and I don’t fault my mom for any of it, she was in a bad marriage and needed something else.  What I was upset with was she knew that she was doing that, but never thought to mention any of it to me as an adult.   I suppose because I looked so much like my “father”.  So, I started looking at error rates of DNA testing and found that there is a high error rate, but for medical condition testing.  In the realm of ancestry testing, there are variations in test results, meaning percentages of one region over another moving by several percentage points based on that company’s foundational data, but not a lot recorded about errors where there are massive regional shifts, say from Eastern Europe to the New World.  So all the people telling me my results have to be wrong, sadly, I cant say that is the case. 

In the end, some deep secrets were revealed about my mom and my genetic make-up.  I learned that I am half Hispanic and I have a name of someone who might have been my genetic father, though any more than that, I will never know.  At 49 years old, most people in my life who knew anything have since passed. 

The reality, my DNA doesn’t change who I am.  I am the product of my life’s experiences.  I didn’t know much of my Mom’s family, the Kijanka’s.  Most died when I was young and the rest moved away.  Her mom passed when I was in High School and I hand not seen my Grand Mother for years by that time because we moved to Arizona and she was in Michigan.  Much of the influences in my younger life were my Aunt (“father’s” sister), my mom and my step father.  So I had a huge Hispanic influence in my younger years anyway, but my Aunt ensured I knew I was Polish too.  When we moved to Arizona and my mom and step-dad divorced, My best friend’s family, a wonderful Mexican family, was a big influence in my life.  Again, a heavy Hispanic influence as well.

I never learned Polish, I never mastered Spanish and I think I speak English fairly well and can get around in Japanese too, since I lived there for several years – the Asian Influence.  That is another story.  After spending my life thinking I was one thing, it turns out I am something else, which is the point I wanted to make. 

Don’t take one of those tests, unless you are absolutely certain you are mentally prepared to accept the dark secrets which they may reveal.  I was certain I was 100 percent eastern European, guess what … I am not.  That result drove me to some deeper secrets, which in the end, I wish I never learned. 

Overall, I am an American.  Born here, raised here and the genetics, a melting pot of influence, confirms that I am part of the Human Brotherhood.   I am still me, nothing changes that.  A DNA test doesn’t define who I am and it opens up some interesting learning experiences, like I need to research which casino I can apply to get stock in and I get to check the Hispanic box on applications (ha ha … im being sarcastic, laugh).  I can live with the deep secrets revealed, but it took 4 months to process and come to terms with.  Keep all that in mind before spitting in that test tube. 

Shall Not Be Infringed, My View on 2A

Due to recent events, I have been asked as a right of center advocate, if my view on guns has changed.  My response was, it has, but not how you think.  In my case it solidified my advocacy of our second amendment and has caused me to consider nationwide constitutional carry and concealed carry as an option.  But in conversation, people just don’t get why.  You see, I don’t need guns for hunting or sport shooting, those are fun uses for guns, to ensure education and proficiency, but my right to bear arms has other meanings for me.    

In our Declaration of Independence, it is written,

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Henceforth, we abolished the British colonial government and rule of the monarchy of Britain to establish our own Federal Republic with a Constitution that affords us a number of rights as citizens.  That Declaration, along with the Preamble of our Constitution afford us “certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”.  Because of that, the Federal Republic is tasked to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” As citizens, it is also our civic duty to vote, because the government derives their just powers from the people who allow them to serve.

Those two documents were meant to protect this republic from despotism, which is a form of government in which a single entity rules with absolute power.  The entity can take different forms such as an individual, the despot or dictator, or an entity which puts the power into the hands of small or elite group.  The intent of the two documents working together allow for a check and balance between the state and the constituency, similar to the Checks and Balances existing between the branches of government as established in the Constitution.  Whereas it is the right of the people to alter or abolish a government, should it no longer fit within the due bounds of those documents, but that right is not to be exercised lightly. 

To do that, the constituency has the right to hold office and to vote.  To elect representatives to work on behalf of that constituency in order to provide all that is established in the documents which created our nation.  If you don’t like something, you in essence vote against it, vote out the representative out who supported it or run for office to actively work to change it yourself. 

Why?  Because that is in the rules, so to speak.  “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes”, so to deal with the normal every day matters of our nation, we have that check, our elections.  It is the normal way in which we do business with a well-established government which holds up its end of the bargain as written in those documents. 

But what is the balance?  We know that the Constitution establishes justice and provides for the common defense.  This alludes to the creation of laws, law enforcement and armed forces, all giving that government power and authority.  We also know that with great power comes great responsibility, but that power also has the ability to corrupt.  We see this all too often in the world today.  1930s Germany, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela are some examples of how well established governments became corrupted by power.  In some cases, the line blurred or disappeared between establishing Justice and defense.  Those two powers assimilated to become one and the same.  But, “there’s a reason you separate the military and the police.  One fights the enemies of the State and the other serves and protects the people.  When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”  The same can be true in modern society when the police become militarized and they look at everyday “civilians” with suspect and fear.  The evolution could lead to the usurpation of power from the people and placed into the hands of a despotism.  The result is a government, no longer adhering to the tenets of our sacred documents, no longer keeping its end of the bargain and no longer able to be altered by normal means. 

So what is that balance?  Our founding fathers saw what existed in the British Empire of the time and wanted to ensure that it would not happen in the New World.  To ensure that balance, they established the Second Amendment which allows for “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. 

A Militia?  Doesn’t that just mean Army?  No. 

According to Oxford, a militia can be “A military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency.” But it can also mean, “A military force that engages in rebel or terrorist activities in opposition to a regular army.” Finally, it can also mean, “all able-bodied civilians eligible by law for military service”.

We need to consider that the Constitution was written in 1789 and the amendment in 1791, We also know that the Regular Continental Army was small and it needed regiments of men who were armed civilians to gather for some light training and to supplement the continental army against our enemy of the time.  In this case, the meaning of militia met all three definitions.  It was all abled bodied Colonial civilian men who were raised from the population to supplement the Continental Army by engaging in rebellious activities in opposition to the Regular Army of the existing well established government of the British Empire.

Why? to abolish that despotic government, and to institute the new Colonial American Government.  Thus the balance was written in to the Constitution of the United States, to protect the constituency of the colonies, and their posterity, should the established government ever become corrupted and no longer hold up its end of the agreement.  The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed was created so that the posterity of the colonists would never have to worry about despotism and should it happen, they were given the means to abolish it.  But that is also not the only reason.

Our nation is under attack and the police are like the Continental Army, overwhelmed, understaffed and in many cases, have their hands tied by over-regulation.  We are faced with radical Islamic terrorism, gang violence (domestic terrorism) and radical political extremism in our lives.  All with the propensity for violence, as noted in recent events.  As part of a well regulated militia (able bodied American veteran able to serve and supplement) I can assist in providing for the defense of my property and family against those that wish to do harm.  As noted by Fox News on the 6^th of June, armed home owners were able to subdue, alive, two notorious and dangerous escaped prisoners in Tennessee, the right to bear arms can have a positive impact if that right is wielded responsibly. 

Of Course there are those who will not wield that power responsibly, but taking that right away will not stop the “bad guys” from doing harm as has also been noted in recent events.  The use of Cars, explosives, trucks and knives as weapons of terror or radical extremism has been noted in the news over the past year.  We also know that illegal and clandestinely obtained firearms are always available to those who will not abide by that “well regulated” aspect of the amendment.  These exceptions will always have to be dealt with, not matter how much we restrict any right by regulation.  There are those who believe regulations just to not apply to them. 

We need to be responsible and we do need to have some forms of regulation to abide by the “well regulated” stipulation on our right, but I also believe that our right must not be limited or removed so that it is not afforded in accordance with the intent of the amendment, which means, it shall not be infringed.  In closing, my belief has not changed, my resolve has been made stronger in my belief that the second amendment is needed now more than ever before.  I also hope that we can preserve that right, as did our forefathers, so that our posterity can enjoy those same rights and freedoms that our checks and balances provide to us as a Federal Republic with a Constitution written by the people and for the people.