Paul’s appeal is almost entirely to young men. Look at his supporters. The Neo Nazi, anti-Semitic, conspiracy minded stuff is eaten up by his young male followers. Check out who posts supporting the Ronulan, or shows up at his rallies.

Now a quick look at the 2000 Census shows that the young male crowd is not very big. About 7% of the population.

Slashdot has tons of posts, and lots of traffic. It’s one of the most heavily trafficked sites. BUT … if you went by what was posted, everyone would be running Linux.

Fascists were dangerous because the center, the broad appeal to middle class people, were ceded by the Weimar Republic’s very poor politicos. Same with the Italian Republic’s very poor service for middle class people. Fortunately the Republican Party mostly crowds out the lunatic fringe.

Paul’s appeal is almost entirely to young men. Look at his supporters. The Neo Nazi, anti-Semitic, conspiracy minded stuff is eaten up by his young male followers. Check out who posts supporting the Ronulan, or shows up at his rallies.

Now a quick look at the 2000 Census shows that the young male crowd is not very big. About 7% of the population.

Slashdot has tons of posts, and lots of traffic. It’s one of the most heavily trafficked sites. BUT … if you went by what was posted, everyone would be running Linux.

Fascists were dangerous because the center, the broad appeal to middle class people, were ceded by the Weimar Republic’s very poor politicos. Same with the Italian Republic’s very poor service for middle class people. Fortunately the Republican Party mostly crowds out the lunatic fringe.

Don’t forget the Democrats. One of the fascinating things about Ron Paul is that he seems to attract a fair number from the left side of the political spectrum. Interesting times.

Also, the Paulies are not a mass movement by any stretch of the imagination. Basically, if you belong to the political niche that believes the Republicans should embrace an America First foreign policy, he’s the only brand in town. It’s a small group, and all the money these people have raised for him doesn’t seem to have done much to expand this group, particularly with the situation in Iraq stabilizing.

For a while I’ve been thinking that “Brave New World” was more prophetic than “1984″, and that Huxley saw the big picture more accurately than Orwell. Or maybe times have changed since the collapse of the traditional totalitarian states and we are now faced with the more insidious variety that sell pleasure instead of strife and striving.

See also former Senate Majority leader Trent Lott and “Conscience of the Senate” Bob Byrd…

I agree with him that there are substantial similarities and common roots in the left and fascism, but there are also some important differences, which Aldous Huxley captures well in the following passage:

“In the field of politics the equivalent of a theorem is a perfectly disciplined army; of a sonnet or picture, a police state under a dictatorship. The Marxist calls himself scientific and to this claim the Fascist adds another: he is the poet–the scientific poet–of a new mythology. Both are justified in their pretensions; for each applies to human situations the procedures which have proved effective in the laboratory and the ivory tower. They simplify, they abstract, they eliminate all that, for their purposes, is irrelevant and ignore whatever they choose to regard an inessential; they impose a style, they compel the facts to verify a favorite hypothesis, they consign to the waste paper basket all that, to their mind, falls short of perfection…the dream of Order begets tyranny, the dream of Beauty, monsters and violence.”

(from Ape & Essence, 1948)

Does that mean they’re doing the same with Dennis? Or, possibly, do they see both Ron and Dennis as No-Chance candidates and ignore them in favor of the more likely froods?

At which point they’d rip him to shreds. He’s a candidate that the Democratic nominee could defeat in the general election.

Err, the Democrats seem likely to cream ANY Republican candidate, with the possible exception of McCain (assuming that the Religious Right will hold their nose and vote for someone that might have a chance of winning).

If Rudy, Fred, Romney or Huck get the nod, there is a vanishingly small chance that the GOP will be anything other that a minority party for at least the next four years… maybe longer.

I like the sound of that.

For one thing the ronulan fleet immediately decloaks in battle formation just by the mere mention of his name.

Maybe we should avoid the fleet by refering to him as the one who shall not be mentioned