Imagine for a moment that you own a business (if you already do then it will require less work on your part). You enjoy the privilege of making all the management decisions and you accept the responsibility for those decisions no matter how they work out. Your main job is to satisfy your customers for without them you don't have a business. You provide a service or commodity they want at a price they are willing to pay. You do your best to keep expenses down and income high for the difference between the two - profit or loss - is what you need to survive in our modern world.
Now imagine that one day a police officer shows up and says that a few customers, or persons who thought they might want to be customers except they disagree with the way you run your business, have complained. You tell the officer that these folks are not forced to do business with you and they are free to go to your competition if it makes them happier. The officer informs you that he will start making all management decisions about your business from now on and if you fail to comply he will place you under arrest for "disobeying a police officer." You resign yourself to your fate and hope for the best.
The officer knows nothing about running your business or how to satisfy your customers and seems to make most of his decisions based more on who he can cozy up to at your expense than on any particular management style. Eventually he runs off all your regular customers and leaves you with a new batch that make out better on each deal with your business than your business does. In the end you have to give up. You let all your employees go and as you close the place down and turn off the lights you tell the officer that this is all his fault. He shrugs his shoulders and says it was your business so its your fault. He suggests that you should have done a better job of managing it. This is Fascism.
When the government takes over the management of private businesses, either through passing laws or by investing regulatory bodies with the power to rule by self-manifested decrees, and do not accept the consequences for poor management skill and leave profit and, more likely, loss to be absorbed by the owners then we have Fascism. With Minimum Wage Laws, Gas Mileage requirements for automakers, Smoking Bans, and assorted other rules and regulations setting standards for all sorts of services and items available on the market, the U.S. government has been experimenting with Fascism for some time now and will probably continue to do so long into the future.
Now some people, most notably the occasionally humorous political commentator Bill Maher, believe that Fascism is when the corporations (read "Big Business") run the government and they are to a very small degree potentially correct. Some very large corporations can "hire" politicians (oh say it isn't so...) who will write regulatory laws that control the industries these corporations are involved in. The large corporations will publicly make some complaints about government interference in their business but will easily comply with the new regulations since their legal team is usually the group who wrote them. Smaller competitors will not be able to absorb the cost of compliance and will have to go out of business leaving the large corporations with a monopoly on their portion of the market. This could be considered the dark side of capitalism but it still isn't possible without the powerful entity of government to make it happen.
Fascism is one of the more oppressive forms of government and is another case of a minority living at the expense of the majority. The best synonym would be "theft" and to end this form of criminal enterprise we have to get rid of its number one weapon: the force of government. Man serves himself and his neighbor best when he is free to make all his own decisions...
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