The main point is not about nuclear power or food safety but rather holding leftists responsible for the consequences of the bad policies they advocate. Leftists like to advance the idea that they be judged only on their intention and not the consequences, even the easily foreseen consequences, of their actions. Instead, they need to be accountable by the same standards as the rest of us.

Perhaps more importantly, this episode shows how leftists let politics overwhelm there scientific or technical understanding of issues. The anti-nuclear power movement wasn’t grounded in the idea that nuclear power was dangerous, rather, it was grounded in the idea that crippling civilian nuclear power would eventually cripple America’s nuclear deterrence which would then trigger the world wide abandonment of nuclear weapons. The fabricated arguments about nuclear power being dangerous began as nothing more than propaganda its proponents knew to be false. They merely believed they had the moral obligation to lie in the service of a greater good. We see the exact same behavior today in environmental arguments were leftists argue they must exaggerate evidence and threats in order to accomplish their environmental goals.

As to convincing people by not insulting them, I say look in a mirror first. Leftists insult non-leftist continually and casually accuse them of horrible crimes up to and including mass murder. It might be novel for you personally to have even a milder version of that thrown back in your face but objectively you can’t say you haven’t ask for it.

If you can’t even distinguish between fascism and socialism (which, let’s be clear, are basically polar opposites on the political spectrum), …

No, the polar opposite of both fascism and communism is a diverse multicultural, liberal-democracy, with rule of law and a limited state. The only reason that anyone can make the argument that fascism and communism are polar opposites is that both fascist and communist claim they are opposites in their marketing material. Just because Mussolini, Hitler or Stalin claimed they were opposites does not mean they actually were because, and I hate to break this to you, mass murdering, sociopaths lie a lot.

Again, were talking about philosophies that are so close together in their actually real-world functioning that they must make a great deal of noise about being vastly different.

One of the systematic cognitive failures of leftists is the belief that rhetoric is reality. Mussolini says he’s not a socialist? Well, then that seals it for you. For non-lefitsts, words mean little and actions mean everything. For non-lefitsts, Mussolini and other Fascist are classified as socialist because they acted like socialist in all respects. Their policies were socialist in all respects including the disruption of the existing class structure in favor of a more egalitarian one driven by political “merit” instead of birth.

You would have us believe that the Fascist are evil and socialist are good because they each make speeches claiming to be the opposite of the others. I argue they are the same because they behave the same. I naive observer who nothing about labels or symbols would have been hard pressed to find any differences in the functioning of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. They have the the same hostility to individualism, same hostility to democracy, the same hostility to the rule of law, the same hostility to social diversity, the same hostility to traditional religion, the economic policies, the same militarism and most importantly, the conception as the state as the absolute center of society.

Contrary your echoing of Stalin, fascism was not created by capitalist or the general business class. It was not a middle class reaction to red socialism. Instead, it was nothing more than the abandonment of the red socialist cross-cultural philosophy in favor of socialist philosophy centered on a single ethnic group. Beyond that, the practical and functional differences are non-existant.

If I’m wrong, then you should be able to list, say, 10 real-world functional differences between fascist states a communist states. Of course, you can’t because they don’t exist save in the self serving rhetoric of their leaders.

Further, as proven by Stalin, Mao et al, all communist eventually abandon their cross-cultural philosophy in favor of one centered on a single ethnic group. In other words, all communist eventually evolve into something functionally indistinguishable from fascism.

Currently, onions, potatoes, wheat, flour, whole wheat flour, and whole or ground spices and dehydrated seasonings are approved for irradiation and sale in Canada.

Health Canada is proposing regulatory changes which would expand the list of irradiated food permitted to be sold in Canada. The proposed additions are: fresh and frozen ground beef, fresh and frozen poultry, prepackaged fresh, frozen, prepared and dried shrimp and prawns, and mangoes. Permitting irradiation on these foods will assist the food industry in enhancing the safety and quality of these products, while providing consumers with a product with a longer durable life.

The political spectrum is not linear, it is circular. Fascism and communism are one and the same, or at least right next to one another on the spectrum.

I’m sure wiki has some stuff you could cut-and-paste…

Don’t you Wiki me!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statism

“Economic Statism in practice

Definition: concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of government often extending to state ownership of industry.

Statism reached its highest point in the centrally planned fascist and Stalinist countries, but exists in varying degrees in every country in the world.”

Simply put, Fascism is the concerted effort of the State to control Beliefs, Business and Behavior

Certainly this is more of an exemplar of a contemporary lefty system but can apply to the right, as well. Mostly it’s anti-libertarian from end to end.

You know, you could work this all out with google, but here, I’ll help.

Wikipedia article on Mussolini, specifically detailing his rejection of socialism and the development of its counterpoint, fascism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini

Or, for a more academic approach, see the Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions academic journal, specifically page 111:
http://www.nationalism.org/library/science/ideology/lukacs/Lukacs-TMPR-2002.pdf

Short version: Mussolini, by the time of his ascent into office in Italy, had long since disavowed socialism in favor of fascism, which is not merely a philosophic outcropping of socialism but its wholesale rejection. Furthermore, fascism was a distinctly Italian phenomenon; the National Socialism you refer to was (presumably) German, though national socialist movements occurred throughout Europe.

This isn’t merely academic. If you can’t even distinguish between fascism and socialism (which, let’s be clear, are basically polar opposites on the political spectrum), you’re probably not in a position to evaluate the relationship between political movements and rationality.

If your argument is that the conservative position is somehow rooted in reason…

Conservatism is rooted in empiricism usually of the trial and error kind. They stick with what works.

Reason is a dubious tool at best. Garbage into reason gives garbage out of reason. If reason alone was enough to guide us we would never require scientific experimentation. We could just sit on a stump and unravel the secrets of the entire universe. Instead, we must constantly test our ideas in the real world.

..while liberalism, in all its hoity-toity ignorance, believes anything that sounds good… you’ve wandered completely off the farm

Then explain Marxism, Freudianism or any of the dozens of other wacky, unproven and ultimately falsified ideas that leftists have embraced over the last century or more. Most leftists ideas are in fact based on nothing more than “it sounds good” or more accurately, “it looks good on paper.” Leftist actively shun the idea of implementing ideas on a small scale, testing them and then growing them progressively in scale testing all the while. Instead, they like to impose sweeping ideas on the whole of society based on nothing more than cleverly phrased arguments.

And Ben:

Hate to break it to you, but fascism is a rightist doctrine

Any examples of the “rightist” nature of fascism?

As I read it, the argument was that the conservative position is rooted, not in reason per se, but in evidence. Reason alone is what gets the oh-so-intelligent members of the far left so often disconnected with reality.

To the commenter above and anyone else who might frequent farmer’s market:

I strongly urge you to conduct a small experiment with these markets in your town. Get up early. I mean like 3 am kinda early, pack your bike and head down first to the Sysco, Alliant or U.S. Foodservice retail/wholesale warehouse. In moderate sized cities there are usually a set of big distribution centers outside of town and a retail/wholesale warehouse in a downtown/light industrial area. Spend from about 4 am to about an hour before your market opens just hanging around. Maybe get your bike out and cruise the blocks around or just stake it out. Watch who goes in and out loading up on produce. Make note of the names on the trucks and look for those dressed like the “farmers” at your market. Ignore the guy’s in Chefwear and the guys in trucking uniforms.

Now you can go to your farmer’s market and have your eyes open, or at least start to identify those few who are really farmers and who are just guys running a stall in a market, buying from one wholesaler and then scamming you with it. Farmer’s markets rarely have COOL audits (Country of Origin Labeling) and it’s just too easy for anyone to rent a stall and load up a small truck with cases of boxed produce from anywhere.

For best results visit early twice. Once to the wholesaler and once to the market. Many times you’ll see Wholesaler trucks delivering to the farmers right there at the market site. Best take your bike for this one, because the market usually has some control of the surrounding streets in the hours before market opens providing for access for the farmers and any other trucks that drop off.

Most (but certainly not all) Co-op’s or bulk delivery services are similarly corrupt.

But don’t take my word for it, investigate for yourself. Please.

Simply put, Fascism is the concerted effort of the State to control Beliefs, Business and Behavior

Certainly more of a contemporary lefty system but can apply to the right as well. Mostly it’s anti-libertarian from end to end.

Hate to break it to you, but fascism is a rightist doctrine.

The idea that fascism is a rightwing version of communism is an invention of Joseph Stalin and generations of leftists have echoed Stalin ever since. Fascism and Communism are branches on the same socialist tree. Once a person had decided that totalitarian socialism was the way to go, they then had to choose which flavor of socialism to adopt. They could choose the international class-based socialism of Communism under Stalin or they could choose the ethic-based socialism of Fascism. Many people jumped effortlessly back and forth between the two. Many Fascist, such as Mussolini, were ex-communist and vice versa. Stalin desperately needed to differentiate Communism from Fascism so he invented the argument that Fascism was a rightwing phenomena that represented the end state of capitalism in the evolution all all human societies as predicted by Marx. Communist and fellow travelers propagated this marketing idea and it is now revealed wisdom on the left.

Communist and Fascist are always at each other throats not because they are polar opposites but because they are so similar that each can bleed off support from the other. They have to differentiate themselves in the market place of ideas so they claim to be opposites. It’s just like a private company. A computer companies major competitors are those companies that produce products the most similar. PC clone manufactures compete against each other first and Apple second. No computer company spends any thought to competing against abacus makers.

There are far, far more points of agreement between Fascist and contemporary leftist than there are points of agreement between Fascist and contemporary rightist. Fascist hated free-markets, free-trade and held the commercial classes in contempt. Sound familiar? They believed the government had the right and duty to intervene at will in any economic function or to override any economic or property right for the greater good. Sound familiar? The held traditional morality and social order in contempt and wanted to use the power of the state to recondition the people to behaviors they chose. Sound familiar? These similarities force modern leftist to continually scream that they are utterly and completely different from Fascist lest people start to notice.

Yeah, that’s the BUSH administration they’re referring to.

(1) Scientist have a long history of exaggerating scientific knowledge in the political arena. Remember eugenics? For nearly 50 years it was considered established mainstream science and widely adopted in the political sphere. Remember the energy crisis when all the scientist said we were out of oil? (2) The left is every bit as bad about politicizing science and I think actually worse because they so often rely on psuedo-science to justify their flights of theory over experience. You should read Holder’s (Obama’s science advisors) writings from the 70′s. He confidently predicted several catastrophes (ice age, over population, resource depletion etc) that never occurred but which , by utter coincidence, could be avoided by radical socialization. And of course we have things like Freudianism and even Marxism sold as “science”. 30 years ago leftist claimed to have scientifically proven that all human behavior was learned and that genetics played no role. As late as the early 1980′s, I was called a fascist for asserting homosexuality in males had biological origins. Now they’ve done a 180 even though the evidence hasn’t changed.

I would notice that you didn’t actually refute my main point i.e. that unscientific anti-nuclear hysteria on the left has actually killed people, wasted resources and damaged the environment. Frankly, I don’t think that a “the right is just as stupid as we are” is as compelling an argument for your views you seem to think it is.

But you didn’t actually read anything before you wrote this, did ya?

The history of science and the sociology of science is one of my areas of specialization. I have read hundreds of books on the subject. As a libertarian/classical-liberal, I have a special interest in the use of science as a justification for state power. I can guarantee that I know far, far, far more about the subject than you ever will.

Just listened to a little Glenn Beck…

I’ve never listened to or watched Glenn Beck. Beyond the fact he claimed to scalps in the Obama administration, I know nothing about him. I don’t watch or listen to any kind of broadcast news on a regular basis.

That’s some good journalism there.

I am not a journalist and I am given to understand that Beck is just an editorialist. Not sure what your point was.

I’ll say, though, that if that is your position, I would encourage you to reconsider; it’s a brutal world that rejects all collective authority. The social contract is a wonderful thing; its alternative isn’t freedom from government but tyranny imposed by your fellow men.

Fascism and Communism as practiced are both statist philosophies so both in my book qualify as the same. Simply because Fascism was created to counter communism does not make it rightist. As the late great Robert Heinlein wrote: Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.

It also would increase the quality of food. Right now a lot of produce is picked earlier before its peak ripening, esp. if you are importing it from south american when it’s winter in the north. Then they gas it to make it look right. This leads to rather bland produce, less sweet fruit, white chicken. The only place to get such fresh food now is a farmer’s market or move to the country. With irradiation, we could let food ripen on the vine and pick it, meaning farm fresh produce for people thousands of miles away.

Technology would make our lives much easier and better if so many luddites weren’t out there trying to control it and us.

Actually, no. Liberalize Latin American economies by promoting free markets. There is no connection between economic freedom and death squads except in the imaginations of ignorant leftists such as you.