--- On Thu, 7/3/08, Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com> wrote:
> Carrol writes:
>
> > It is really stupid and dangerous to throw the word
> "Fascist" around.
>
> So what's the word that Wojtek is looking for here?
>
> I think he's probably leaning toward Nanny State.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanny_state
> ___________________________________
>
[WS:] Not at all. Authoritarian state - perhaps, This is the opposite of the "nanny state" which I presume is a state that spends a good chunk of money on social services (say 25 - 30% of the GDP, which is the EU norm nowadays). An authoritarian state (like the US) does not spend much on social services, but spends quite a bit on the military, the police, prisons, and corporate handouts and bailouts.
But there is another important element in what I am looking for, namely, popular support for such an authoritarian state. Despite their claim to rugged individualism and hatred of "government," a majority of Amerikans love authoritarian state and its attributes: its military (the most trusted instituion in the US), its police, its practice of having the highest in the world per capita prison population, its death penalty, its lack of services for "undeserving" poor, and its arrogant rich and powerful who dictate public policy. That is why I used the word "fascism" rather than "authoritarian state."
Fascism is authoritarian state + popular support of that state. Authoritarian state without such support is just a dictatorship.
Wojtek