Interesting response. Hard to decipher its meaning however. Is it arrogance? (I have no need of knowing all that old boring stuff) Is it ignorance? (Everybody knows that communism was just made up to scare people) Or apathy? (I don't care about that stuff, who cares anyway? Where's my bong?) Or stupidity? (Somebody just said a bunch of words I didn't understand. Better act like a smart person and insult him!) Or D, All of the Above? Looks like D.
i'll say one thing about your first post, the comparison of making fun of communism to nazis does not compute. if you wrote "facists" that would been have better, but then you wouldn't have had such a strong point. also, even though you say people don't make fun of nazis, au contraire, ever heard of "hogan's heros". you've never seen goose steppin made fun of on television. hell, you even have comedians now making light of bin laden, which is shocking since he's still supposedly on the run.
Yes, that is the problem. Shame we don't teach the murderous history of Christianity as well. Or, maybe we should recognize the difference between a philosophy/religion and evil things done in their name.
I'm sorry. I knew by your response that you were arrogant, but I had assumed that there was enough semblance of intelligence there to ferret out a response that was anything but obtusely direct. So if I have to spell it out for you, my point is that people can disagree with you and it could just be because they disagree with you. In other words, your implication that if people don't agree with you they are stupid and uneducated is both arrogant in terms of how you view yourself and incredibly condescending in how you view everybody else. You aren't a genus. Everybody who holds a view different from you isn't a moron. I hate to have to be the one to break it to you, but there it is. Is that clear enough for you?
Communism has been implemented across a variety of societies, and every time, it led to a murderous dictatorship. Maybe communism doesn't equal murderous dictatorships, but the evidence strongly supports the hypothesis that communism begets murderous dictatorships.
I had no idea that there were so many communism supporters out there. I guess that's why Obama is so popular. Everyone is coming out of the commie closet. Good for them. I'm looking forward to more parades. <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/V-jBsxonZok&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/V-jBsxonZok&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> VIVA CHE! VIVA OBAMA! VIVA PEACE!! Barack Obama has a thing for Marxists. He befriends them, listens to their counsel, and he even hires them to work in his campaign. And they seem to feel the warmth. President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, who led a revolution there in 1979, says Barack Obama's presidential bid is a "revolutionary" phenomenon, and Americans are "laying the foundations for a revolutionary change." A captured computer revealed that an unknown person chatted with Marxist FARC guerillas on Obama's behalf (they believed), stating he would be the next President and US policy towards Columbia would change. Frank Marshall Davis, a dear Obama friend and mentor was as a member of the Communist Party USA. Barack Obama just seems to attract Marxists. If the people he surrounds himself with are any indication of his core beliefs, a higher capital gains tax to punish the rich, even if it diminishes actual tax revenue, may be only the beginning. Obama's Official campaign blogger, Sam Graham-Felsen, a former writer for the leftist Nation magazine and a contributor to the Socialist Viewpoint, is certainly a believer in class warfare. The capitalist ruling class of the United States exercises a virtual dictatorship not only over American society, but also over the entire world. This capitalist class rule is the basic cause of the poverty, wars and the degradation of the natural environment. Sam Graham-Felsen, hired to run Obama's blog, writes about Noam Chomsky in a Marxist publications that openly calls for revolution against the American government. This is a Presidential candidate's choice to run the on-line portion of his campaign. That speaks volumes of his character and worldview. Contradicting what he says in public, Obama is surrounding himself with poeple who never seem to learn that their absurd ideologies end in misery and ruin. Sam is young and has much to learn, so we can forgive his silly hagiographies, the ones about Chomsky and the ones about Obama. His hero worship is eager and emotional and completely without substance, much as Obama's campaign promises are without substance. Obama is a community organizer in the Saul Alinsky mold, and knows where to get people like Sam who have energy and drive. His staff is nothing if not energetic. He even cut his activist teeth in Chicago, the stomping grounds of Alinsky and so many others in the "progressive" community. One wonders why the windy city still has a murder rate higher than Baghdad, after so many years of enlightened activism. The adults in the Obama campaign expect us to believe that a campaign staff filled with Marxists and radicals does not reflect the candidate. We are supposed to believe that ideologues who distain America and Americans can improve the system that has brought humanity more prosperity and well-being than any nation before it. Speaking out of both sides of their mouths, they tell us we are great, and then insist we must change because we are responsible for all the bad things that happen in the world. That alone should anger the electorate enough to defeat them. The change Obama will bring will not be the change America needs or expects. We continue to have an optimistic outlook about the revolutionary potential of the world working class to rule society in its own name-socialism. We are optimistic that the working class, united across borders, and acting in its own class interests can solve the devastating crises of war, poverty, oppression, and environmental destruction that capitalism is responsible for. - The Socialist Viewpoint
The copy-and-paste kid strikes again! - Why doesn't the kid add links to paragraphs he got from other websites ? - I don't know. That's part of the mystery, I guess.
Wow. I guess I was not intelligent enough to ferret anything of value from your previous response, and yes, I am pretty sure I do need a response that is 'obtusely direct' (which is rather like describing a line as 'horizontally perpendicular', but no matter). So thank you for clarifying your position - that people who 'disagree' with facts simply 'because they disagree' are engaging in perfectly reasonable behavior... as though facts are synonymous with opinions. I am sorry that you have confused the concept of statements of fact about the history of communism with the concept of mere opinion about communism. But it has absolutely nothing to do with 'agreeing with me', and everything to do with either knowing history or not knowing it. In any case, people ought to be responsible for their own opinions, and that means having something to base them on other than 'just because'. Like I said, there is an easy place to start - just look up Project Venona. Arguing with people does not interest me, but opening doors for people does. If people don't want to at least look, then that's on them.
Umm, no. The comparison is exactly as I intended. Nothing carries the stigma of nazi-ism. Nothing. There are not sweeping draconian laws across Europe to criminalize denying fascism. The Holocaust and nazi-ism are forever linked, and for good reason. People may have occasionally made some humor about the nazis (Hogan's Heroes, The Producers, To Be or Not To Be, etc) but I was referring to the general attitude today, especially among the younger generations, that communism is something to take lightly, unlike nazi-ism. You see 'mainstream' t-shirts with 'che' on them, you'll see the occasional hammer-and-sickle, but none with swastikas. And as bad as nazi-ism was, and as many atrocities as were done through it, it still pales in comparison to the evils communism has produced.
And you clearly don't know your history as well as you pretend. Quick, off the top of your head, name three leaders of the Commune of Paris, and explain ultimately why the Commune fell. Off the top of your head, which of the final 4 Tsars was most responsible for oppressive radicalization of the Russian people? Off the top of your head, how do Metternich and the revolts of 1848 inform your opinion on Communism? TIA.
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The commune of paris was a minor blip in history, nothing more. It fell because it was a failed revolution, no different than any other failed revolution. Besides, many of the 'ideas' of of the CoP (touted loudly by Marx) had little to do with actual communism as an ideology, and more to do with simple generally progressive ideas - more libertarian in tone than communistic anyway. So its relevance in a discussion about the scores of millions killed and starved by communist russia (and knowingly covered up by a sympathetic and supposed 'great reporter') is questionable. Yes, the late 1800's in western and eastern Europe was a time of massive turmoil and change, the old social orders were necessarily changing, and radicalism and socialism were new ideas filled with promises, but they were promises which would always be empty. The tsars and tsarinas were inbred and disinterested rulers, inept in the worst possible ways, allowing the rise of rasputin and fertilizing the ground which would lead russia to communism and unspeakable horror. Again, how exactly is that germaine to the fact that we fail to properly teach our children how horrific communism has been in reality? There are no rationalisms, no excuses, no 'if only's' where communism WOULD have worked. It is a failed ideology, a childish fantasy, and it never leads anywhere but disaster. You talk about times of turmoil in Europe in the mid to late 19th century, and yes, it was a time of rapid and violent change, both socially and economically. In the 1880's, the world's economy would crash so badly that it made the 1920's look like a walk in the park. At that time, radicalism was an agent of change. Most of old-guard Europe probably would not have changed without it. But that does not make it better, or even good, it is just agitative. Communism was one of several new ideas gaining traction among the perpetually-lower-classes, and no one yet knew that it was doomed to failure as an ideology. That is the tragedy of our failure to accurately teach history today. We have the luxury of the evidence of history to conclusively show that not only is communism a failure, it is the deadliest of poisons. But instead we fill our childrens' heads with political-correctness, and ignore the things which would prepare them to be able to look at a t-shirt with a murdering piece of garbage on it and see it for the filth that it is. Is there maybe something in the 1700's you want to toss out as well? It won't matter - you are talking about pre-communist history and I am talking about post-.
Not even close. Nazi-ism was far more concentrated and intent on carrying out it's evil. On the contrary much of what was done under the name of communism has to do with the same authoritarian rule that was part of the problem with the Nazis. Furthermore some of the same prejudices that allowed Nazis to come to power also fueled many of the atrocities under Communism. Communism itself does not call on any type of master race or genocide. It's quite the opposite. The tenants of Nazis did.
This is great. An article that in no way indicates Obama is in anyway communist but yet tries to paint that picture. The anti-communism propaganda strikes again. I think that is one reason people laugh at the accusations of communism. It's because for years we were fed false propaganda of how bad communism and communists were, only to discover later that the exaggerations were huge, and it wasn't the supposed threat we told it was by the likes of McCarthy and others for years. So now when people try use the communism label to scare others, it doesn't really get a big reaction, nor should it. That is especially true when they try and pin the label on someone who is in no way a communist such as Obama.
Don't quit your day job to join a debating team, guy. Your 'You're It! No touch-backs! I win!' debating style is not a very good one. I answered your tangential questions with all the effort they deserved. And, since I have not insulted you, I also have not apologized to you. How about you tell your thoughts on Project Venona? Or is that too much work for you?
