Fascism Is Good

Argument 1: Pro makes Ancient Rome sound glorious, and links this with fascism yet what ever glories might have been delivered to Ancient Rome are outweighed by the harms. Ancient Rome was not a nice place to live if you were not nobility, especially if you were a slave. http://www.roman-colosseum.info... "Potestas" referred to a master's power over his slave and also a man's power over wife and kids. If you had "Potestas" over a person you could do what ever you wanted to them, including murder and no charges could be brought against you. Civilization has come a long way and slavery has thankfully been relegated to the past. Fascism would risk taking us back to that terrible past. Let's leave fascism and slavery in the past where they belong. What ever wealth the nation had did not benefit the slaves who had nothing. Furthermore, each war that expanded its borders would inevitably lead to a loss of life and destruction of goods and services. Even if it would enrich the economy of Rome it would do so at the expense of the global economy. It is better for a nation to seek greater wealth through its trade relations than by costly wars. Argument 2: Pro says that Ancient Rome's language, Latin is the building block of all western languages. This is blatantly false. It is the building block of the Romance languages only. Many western languages, including the one we are using to conduct this debate are not derived from Latin. English, German, and Dutch are Romance languages. Argument 3: Germany may not have called itself "fascist" but Italy was undeniably fascist and did have discriminatory policies against Jews. http://en.wikipedia.org... Argument 4: Pro says if true fascism was established all classes would be abolished. That isn't even what fascism does. http://en.wikipedia.org... "Fascism affirms the irremediable, fruitful and beneficent inequality of men."-Benito Mussolini Fascism is not about eliminating class hierarchies, but about preserving them. The concept of "class collaboration" in fascism was a reaction against communism's concept of "class struggle" and communism's goal of abolishing social classes. Argument 5: Pro's first rebuttal is an argument from force. He is basically saying white people took the land from the Indians by force therefore it is ours. That's analogous to a schoolyard bully claiming he has a moral right to all the lunch money he took because after all he put in the effort and fought for it. Pro says our culture is that of western European nations and not other cultures. America's culture has many influences that make it what it is today. Most popular genres of music today have African influences. Science, entertainment, technology all have diverse influences. But the main point of American culture, the common ground is that our nation was founded in a struggle for liberty. Far from being beholden to the old ways of western Europe American revolutionaries decided that our nation would be different back during a time when western Europe was characterized by monarchies, nobility, and serfdom. If anything by contrast to that time America has had more influence on Western Europe than Western Europe has had on America given that they have all either abandoned monarchy or reduced theirs to figureheads. Pro says we should protect our heritage before it dies. I agree, but to protect our heritage we must focus on liberty since it is the central characteristic of America. Fascism whose purpose is to preserve national identity would be a contradiction if tried in America. To even start fascism it would require us to distort our own nation's origins and characteristics, essentially destroying what it means to be American in favor of a falsehood. Argument 6: Pro is missing the point. America has some of the most severe punishments in the developed world, but still has one of the highest crime rates compared to Finland which has one of the lowest and less severe punishments. Pro claims that fascism guarantees that people think it is worth it to break the law because of the increased punishments. Considering that we already have worse punishments but still have a high crime rate the claim that increasing punishments will make people think breaking the law isn't worth it is dubious at best. People commit crimes when they think they will get away with it, and when people think they can get away with it they won't care even if the penalty is execution because they don't expect to get caught. Furthermore, criminals in prisons harden with their exposure to other criminals or from bitterness at the harshness of their sentence which can lead to reoffending. It may be that the reason Finland's crime rate is so low is because it is lenient in punishment and focuses on actually rehabilitating offenders. Argument 7: Pro claims when fascism is in power the people will trust their leaders. But you can't guarantee that. People might lose trust for their leaders. A lot of people did not trust Francisco Franco in Spain, and Spain had a Civil War. Argument 8: Fascism is likely to censor any information in the educational system that looks unflattering to those in power. Let's say the dictator decides evolutionary theory offends Christianity and so all kids get taught the Creation story and not evolution. Our nation's scientific progress would be destroyed. "In Conclusion" No conclusions yet, we still have 2 rounds to go.