Fascism discussion of this form of government - Essay Example

Fascism – discussion of this form of government Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian dominating nationalism. Such philosophies were prominent during the middle periods of the 19th century in Europe. The fascist governments looked to unify a country through a state of totalitarian that promotes the mass draft of the national communities. Such principles and policies are usually quite hostile to the liberal democracy, communism and even socialism. There have been quite a few fascist movements over the years and all the movements tend to have some similar features such as the devotion of strong groups of followers towards a certain leader, veneration of the state and major emphasis on the militarism, ultra-nationalism and ethnocentrism. The people who follow fascism actually believe that the war, political violence actually etc mean towards the attainment of the national rejuvenation. The fascist ideology consistently believes in invoking the primacy. Leaders like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were actually the believers of the fascist principles and thus claimed undisputable power in Italy and Germany. Fascism also borrowed theory from socialism but it applied them as a more of a conflict between races and nations. Nationalism happens to be the main base of the fascism. The fascists believed that a nation is a single organic entity that binds the people together by the natural unifying force of the people. Fascism looks to solve the economic, social and political problems through the achievement of the national rebirth and promoting the cults. The European fascist movements support the racist conception that the non Europeans are actually inferior to the Europeans. Historically most of the Fascist leaders promoted the concept of the imperialism but there were some movements that seemed to be totally uninterested in the chase of the imperial ambitions. Fascism also promoted the development of a totalitarian state. The doctrine of the Fascism states that the fascism commencement of the state is about embracing; outside of this no human or spiritual values can even actually exist. Fascism is totalitarian and a state that follows the role of the fascism is actually a synthesis of all the values. The fascist state actually interprets and develops the total life of the people. Nazi Political theorist Cal Schmitt said that a strong state would always guarantee the totality of the political unity (Griffin 225). However there have been a lot of criticisms of Fascism. One of the most common criticisms happens to be fact that Fascism is actually form of tyranny. Fascism has been always regarded as non democratic. The original version of fascism i.e. the Italian Fascism has often been regarded as the unprincipled opportunism. Fascism has also been criticized for the ideological dishonesty. The American government – Its Principles The constitution is built upon six basic ideologies. Popular Sovereignty In the United States, all the political power rest on the people of the country. The people happen to be the only source for the power. The principle of the popular sovereignty is declared in the introduction of the declaration of independence where the people establish the constitution for the United States of America. Government draws the power from the people as the people are sovereign. As a matter of fact, the government can only govern under the consent of the people. Limited Government The principle of the limited government is to explain that the government is not powerful at all. However the limited government means a lot more to mention that the government can govern what the people would allow to govern. Limited government makes absolutely perfect sense because if the people are sovereign then the government cannot be powerful. The concept of the limited government can be expressed in terms of law also. The government should obey the law. Sometimes it is also referred to as constitutionalism. This refers to the fact that the law is above the government and not around it. Sometimes this is also referred to as the rule of the law (Spulber 305). Separation of powers In a government that is presidential in nature like the US government, all the power is distributed among the branches which include the executive, judicial and the legislative. This is also referred to as the separation of the power. The constitution discusses about the separation of powers among the congress, President and even the Supreme Court. Article I, II, II talks about the separation of the powers among the three branches. The separation of powers was developed not to take away the power from the government, but to spread this out evenly among the parts of the system. Checks and Balances The US government is divided into three branches as mentioned above such as the judicial, executive and legislative. These three branches cannot be completely separated and yet not totally independent. There exist one relationship among these three in the form o the system checks and the balances. This refers to the fact that the each and every branch is subjected to the checks of the two branches (Atkinson 337). Judicial Review The power of the judicial review refers to the power of the courts to determine whether the government has violated the laws of the constitution or not. In other words the judicial review is power to declare something that is unconstitutional in nature. The Supreme Court has used the power of the judicial review in many cases. Federalism The United States government is federal in nature. There exists a central government and other smaller governments underneath. This is referred to federalism. This concept came from the Framer’s knowledge and the experiences about the government. The effort was to establish not only a central government but also to identify the powers and the states and hence the federalism happened to be the solution to the problem (Atkinson 337). The government’s role in the economy The producers and the consumers make most of the decisions that shape the economy. However the government activities tend to have a powerful effect on the overall economy of the country. Stabilization and growth would most certainly be the most important of all of them. The federal government guides the overall pace of the economic activities of the country and looks to maintain steady growth and high level of employment. By adjusting the overall fiscal policy and also by controlling the money supply and the use of the credit, i.e. the monetary policy. For quite a few years after the great depression of the 1930 along the period of recession the lead slow economic growth along with high level of unemployment were looked upon as one of the major threats to the economy. When the threat of the recession became most serious, the governments look to make the economy stronger by spending heavily or cutting the taxes (Harris 339). In the year 1970 the major price boosts in the domain of energy developed a state of inflation leading to overall increase of price. As a result the government leaders looked to focus a lot more on controlling the inflation rather than combating the recession. In the 1960’s the government had great faith on the fiscal policies. The government also tried to manipulate the public revenues to influence the economy of the nation. Since the taxes and the spending are controlled by the congress and the President, the elected officials play a leading role in maintaining the overall pace of the economy. The period of high unemployment rate and high inflation dented the confidence in fiscal policy as a tool to regulate the pace. On the contrary the monetary policy was being preferred as a tool in maintaining the economic growth. The monetary policy is mainly directed by the Central bank of the country (Brooks 191). Many Americans feel that the efforts made by the federal government in Washington in case of increasing the employment rate is just not good enough. However, the employment figures may actually beg to differ. There has been significant growth as far as government employment is concerned. However most of such growths have come at state or local levels. There have also been cutbacks at the federal level as the federal labor force had dropped to 2.7 million. The privatizations of the public services still continue to be controversial. Advocates insist that this would reduce the costs and increase the level of productivity. On the other hand others argue over the fact that private contractors may need to make asserting and profit that may not be more productivity. Sometimes, also threatened by privatization the workers tend to become but more efficient. However, amidst the debates over economic stability and the rate of employment, the roles of the government in the overall economic performance of the country remain to be hot topic for debate (McKay 299). The new Federal government – what are the issues facing it After becoming the first President of the United States of America in the year 1789, the major accomplishments of the Washington government was to develop a strong national government that would be recognized by all the people of America. The plan included the setting up the bank of the United States to stabilize the financial system and setting up a uniform system of tariffs and taxes to pay the debt and develop a strong financial infrastructure. To support this programs Hamilton developed a new political party- known as the Federalist Party. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson led the opposition party called the Republican Party. Both Washington and Hamilton presented the country with the Jay treaty in the year 1794 to ensure good relationship with the Great Britain. The Whiskey Rebellion in the year 1794 during which the western settlers agitated against the federal tax on liquor happened to be the first serious barrier for the federal government. Washington was called the as state militia and it led an army as the insurgent fed away. In this way, the power of the national government was established. John Adams defeated Jefferson in the year 1796. Possibility of war with France loomed and the federalists seized the opportunity to beat the Republicans with the Alien and Sedition acts. But the Federalists became divided, once Adams was able to end the Quasi War on 1798 by successfully sending a peace mission to France. Jefferson defeated Adams for the presidency election of 1800. The constitution included a Supreme Court but the functions of it were quite vague. This was until John Marshall who was the chief justice defined the power to overturn acts of the Congress that violated the constitution. The Louisiana Purchase in the year 1803 removed the presence of the French from the western borders of the United States and provided U.S. a vast opportunity for the potential expansion in the west (Munroe 301). As a strong opponent of the war them the federalists decided to hold a convention better known as the Hartford convention in the year 1814. This hinted towards the disunion. National euphoria after the victory at the New Orleans damaged the prestige of the Federalists and the federalists were not playing a significant role in the U.S. politics. President Madison along with most of the republicans understood that there has been a mistake to let the bank of the United States to close down as the absence of this would lead to hindrance in the financing of the war and hence another Bank of United States was established in 1816. The republicans imposed taxes to keep the infant industries safe. As the Federalist Party collapsed, the adoption of James Monroe as the President came into play. Monroe put forwards two terms in the form of downplaying the partisanship as the country entered the era of the good feelings. Monroe in 1823through the Monroe doctrine claimed that the European nations should no longer continue to follow the policy of interference and colonizing. This turned out to be a defining policy for the United States of America (Moschandreas 221). Government policies and their impact on unequal distribution of wealth and income Various researches have indicated that the growing income inequality is just not a matter of being unpleasant. The problem of income in equality is a serious one and is hurting the economy of the country. Economists are still trying to figure out the way the damage is done. Inequality is a price that the country has to pay for having a dynamic and efficient economy. The economists also feel that as long as the bottom and the middle half of the social pyramids are moving, there is not much to worry even if the top half of the society is moving up faster. It has been pointed out that in the recent years the rising tide in the nation’s economy may to be helpful to raise all the ships. The congressional budget office very recently stated that the between 1980 and 2010 the top one percent of the households doubled the share of the pretax income. But the share fell by almost of eighty percent. Economists including Mr. David Moss mentioned that the last time the income inequality reached such heights was during the 1920s before the financial downturn. In 2010 Moss decided to plot income inequality and the failures of the banks since 1864 and there happened to serious similarities among the two and hence this actually implies to a strong cause affect relationship. Economists have been tracking such chains of causality for quite a sometime now. People who make the list actually are the ones that consume majority of the income. According Mr. Brown, a prominent economist income inequality can actually lead to significant impact on the demand of products. In a democracy, the public and the politicians are highly unlikely to accept the depressed the spending power (Arnold, 51). The people may try to compensate by making the credit standards simple, encouraging the non rich to sustain the buying power by the help of borrowing. Also policies can be created to allow banks to write flimsy home mortgages. In this way the consumers would be encouraged to seek the home. However, in this way the economy would be on dodgy credit and would be highly vulnerable to economic shocks. This happened to be quite true as it can be easily seen that when the recession came the economy took a double hot and the credit fueled consumer spending collapsed. The already instable economy got worsened by the fact that the rich people of America needed liquid investments to invest the additional wealth. Therefore, as the income inequality grew the government started spending by promoting the concept of the easy credit for relatively less wealthy people of the country. But when the recession struck, the financial sector complexity and gigantism helped to turn something that might have been acted as a brush fire into the meltdown (Ranciere 101). Works cited Arnold, Roger. Macroeconomics. Cengage Learning: USA, 2008. Print. Atkinson, Robert. The Past And Future Of America's Economy: Long Waves Of Innovation That Power Cycles Of Growth. Edward Elgar Publishing: UK, 2004. Print. Brooks, Stephen. Understanding American Politics. University of Toronto Press: CAN, 2009. Print. Griffin, Roger. Fascism. Oxford University Press: UK, 1995. Print. Harris, Seymour. American Economic History. Beard Books: USA, 2002. Print. McKay, David. American Politics and Society. John Wiley & Sons: USA, 2013. Print. Moschandreas, Maria. Business Economics. Cengage Learning: USA, 2000. Print. Munroe, Trevor. An Introduction to Politics: Lectures for First Year Students. McGraw Hills: USA, 2002. Print. Ranciere, Jacques. Politics of Literature. Polity: USA, 2011. Print. Spulber, Nicolas. The American Economy: The Struggle for Supremacy in the 21st Century. Cambridge University Press: UK. 1997. Print. Read More