All About the Isms
Understanding the words everyone uses but few define
The United States of America is a Democratic Republic, which simply means power comes from the people, but it is exercised through elected representatives. That is the ideal and everything else gets compared to it.
Here, The Porch Genie simplifies all the isms. All Americans are patriots or should be, so we will start with the obvious first.
Patriotism
Pride in your country
without needing control over others
Capitalism
Private ownership
profit drives the system
Marxism
A way of looking at who has power
and who does the work
Socialism
Sharing resources more broadly
so fewer people get left behind
Communism
Everything owned together
works in theory, depends in practice
Nationalism
Loyalty to nation above all else
sometimes at the expense of others
Authoritarianism
Power concentrated at the top
little room for dissent
Fascism
Power demands loyalty
and controls institutions that support it
Nazism
Fascism pushed to its extreme
where control and ideology become absolute
Some ideas can fit within those ideals, some drift away from them, and some reject them entirely. If you don’t know the difference you won’t see the shift when it happens.
—Sweeney the Genie
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