{"id":497,"date":"2024-10-19T06:51:13","date_gmt":"2024-10-19T06:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2024\/10\/19\/are-maga-republicans-fascists\/"},"modified":"2024-10-19T06:51:13","modified_gmt":"2024-10-19T06:51:13","slug":"are-maga-republicans-fascists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2024\/10\/19\/are-maga-republicans-fascists\/","title":{"rendered":"Are MAGA Republicans Fascists?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 14pt;\">The Left&#39;s favorite &#39;F&#39; word is &#39;fascist.&#39; But of course leftists won&#39;t define it, the better to use it as a verbal cudgel.&#0160; We know, however, that responsible discussion of a topic begins with a definition of terms.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 14pt;\">What is a fascist? More to the point, what is fascism? The term expresses what philosophers call a &#39;thick&#39; concept. Such concepts combine evaluative and descriptive content.&#0160; Examples include&#0160;<em>cruel<\/em>&#0160;and&#0160;<em>cowardly<\/em>. If I describe an action as cowardly, I am both describing it and expressing a negative moral evaluation of it.&#0160;<em>Right<\/em>&#0160;and&#0160;<em>wrong<\/em>, by contrast, are &#39;thin&#39; concepts inasmuch as they contain no descriptive content.&#0160; If I commend you for doing the right thing, my commendation includes no descriptive content.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 14pt;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/williamfvallicella.substack.com\/p\/what-is-fascism?r=f3tzc&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;triedRedirect=true\">Read the rest<\/a> at <em>Substack<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 14pt;\">UPDATE (10\/21): <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/opinion\/the-fascist-meme-returns-donald-trump-election-voters-5e513359?mod=WTRN_pos1&amp;cx_testId=3&amp;cx_testVariant=cx_160&amp;cx_artPos=0\">The &#39;Fascist&#39; Meme Returns<\/a>. (WSJ)&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Left&#39;s favorite &#39;F&#39; word is &#39;fascist.&#39; But of course leftists won&#39;t define it, the better to use it as a verbal cudgel.&#0160; We know, however, that responsible discussion of a topic begins with a definition of terms. What is a fascist? More to the point, what is fascism? The term expresses what philosophers call &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2024\/10\/19\/are-maga-republicans-fascists\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Are MAGA Republicans Fascists?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[319,43,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fascism","category-political-language","category-social-and-political-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}