From the Atlantic: Is it Fascism? Is it Socialism?

For this week's written assignment.

An article about what words mean.

- Click here for it. 

I think this is the key part: 

Yes, I know, there’s a lot to argue with here, but these basics should remind us that “governments that trade with the United States” are not necessarily democracies, and that the guy proposing a higher capital-gains tax is not necessarily a socialist. More importantly, precision helps you to frame responses. If everything you don’t like is fascism or socialism, if you think democracy is always getting your way, then you will think every democracy is a failure—or worse.

And this is what’s happening. Too many Americans think they’re living under “socialism” and “fascism” and most of them have no clue what those words mean. (I have regularly challenged people who come to my public-speaking engagements to define those terms and then tell me why they think they apply to America. Inevitably, the answer is: “Well, I just don’t like a lot of things Biden/Trump/Obama/whoever is doing.”)

The term I wish more people would think about—and this is why I wrote a book about it—is illiberal democracy, because that’s where we’re headed. This is what happens when everything about liberal democracy—tolerance, trust, secular government, the rule of law, political equality—gets hollowed out and all people remember is the word democracy.

And of course, once you dump all that other stuff, democracy means “absolute rule by 50.01 percent of the voters.”

This is what we’re seeing now in Turkey, Hungary, Brazil, India, and many other places—including the United States. All that matters is elections, and all that matters is winning them in order to claim the right to untrammeled power. This isn't “fascism” or “socialism” - yet. It is people fighting to win elections—real elections—and then spending their time in power trying to extinguish the rights of others and head off future challenges from their political opponents.