Karl: How in the Deity's name did YOU get into law school? Me:I sent in some applications and several of the finest educational institutions in the world told me they'd be happy to have me. Karlid they accept applicants who had no idea what analogies and comparisons are? Me:Judging by my LSAT score, I suspect (and would wager) that my ability to use and identify analogies and comparisons properly are certainly no worse than yours. Karl:Here ya go. Try really hard not to move your lips when you read. The United States has a government. Communist states have/had governments. Our government runs ONE detention camp to imprison enemies. THEIR governments ran/run hundreds if not thousands of internment camps to imprison "enemies." Our government has detained just a few hundred goverment enemies in our camp. THEIR governments detained MILLIONS in their camps. Our government allows detainiees to continue worshiping according to their religion. THEIR governements could have cared less Our government feeds these detainees three square meals a day. THEIR governments starved their detainees. Our liberals scream bloody murder, go apoplectic, and have their heads explode because we have a few hundred detainees. THEIR liberals had to keep their mouths shut because if they opened them up, THEY would be thrown into the camp. Really, how hard IS THIS? Me: So we're all agreed that these things are bad. Super! Now, since we agree on that, why is the US doing them? We shouldn't be. Here's an instructive comparison for you - what you're arguing is equivalent to suggesting that murderers who've only killed one person should go free, since other murderers have killed a LOT of people. Karl: For a "lawyer" like you, apparently, quite hard. Me: I don't think you understand the proper use of quotes. Furthermore, a consultant insulting a lawyer is the height of irony. Please pardon the odd syntax - proper posting is quite difficult on a blackberry, and since I'm on vacation, I don't feel like finding an internet cafe.
1. I used "communism" as short hand for "governments run on a Communist ideal", or something to that effect. If you prefer, I'm happy to define "communism" in my post as "any government derivative of single party Leninism-Stalinism", which is self repetitive, to be honest, but makes it clearer. 2. Marx wasn't a communist - he said so. Furthermore, the evils that we assign to communism are mostly those of Lenin and his successors' creation. For all his theories on global class conflict, Marx was a professional philosopher/historian/economist who was funded by a capitalist. He never incited anyone to violence. Lenin, meanwhile, was a professional revolutionary funded by German intelligence services and bank robberies. Reading the Communist Manifesto won't help. 3. None of the people you mention (certainly not Shurik) are communists. They're socialists at best, and socialists are not discredited for good reasons. Sweden, for instance, seems to work pretty well. Mel might be a communist, for all I know, but I'm not going to guess.
Shurik grew up under communism, and chose to leave, so I suspect that's not the case. Where did ratdog admit to it? JoePak is prone to his own rhetorical flourishes at times, but I've got a hard time imagining him agreeing with a one party state.
I had some long, long debates around 2001 with Shurik about communism. He may have left the SU but if you remember he said everything about Russia was better than everything about the U.S. As for Ratdog and Mel, well, you might think they are communist (I do) but they are certainly communist apologists: https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-270197.html
You must be new here, and don't realize that this is the fascist echo chamber Archer is our Adolf, aloof but ruthlessly efficient
that is pretty scary since I wandered around here since it had the most threads in the guestbooks! oh well... thats why bush is in power..
No, Bush is in power because the Dems ran a couple of dildoes against him. All you need to do is look at the libs in the poli forum to understand how they could do that.
so bush is in power cuz of the democrats fault... I like that line... its like a republican coming to terms
kerry was the worst candidate I have ever seen.... too many mistakes... but lets not forget himler(karl rove) ran his spin dept
I'm willing to bet Shurik was screwing with you, while the link you posted to doesn't actually suggest JoePak's a communist apologist. He was just trying to distinguish communism and socialism from Stalinism.
Not that they liked Kerry, but they are deranged. Probably would have gone with someone even less competetive. And they were totally oblivious, reduced to complaining about the Swift Boat bunch. But you libs can rejoice, Bush has destroyed the GOP and they are now par with the Dems on the derangement scale. Hillary even has a fighting chance, although my money says she crashes and burns by the first few primaries.
JoePak's a whitewasher all right. That's like trying to distinguish Hitlerism from National Socialism. These apologists are forever finding ways to think that the next commie will be different from all of the previous ones. They'll never reach the point where you say that maybe the whole thing is horribly misguided. But now that communism is pretty well discredited as a political movement, they have to satisfy themselves by finding equivalence between Islamofascists and the Christian right. They've become so adept at pretzel logic that they have to find some use for it.
This must be lawyer talk. It's the kind of thing I'd expect from Bojendyk. Look, Ratdog has taken every single chance to defend communism (as does Mel) everytime it comes up. Hell, Ratdog even defends Castro. He once said people who bash Castro are usually the least informed on the topic and then proceeded to argue with Alberto, a Cuban who lived there before Castro Anyway in the case of "Are Mel and Joe Communist apologists?" My opening argument (I'm saving the best stuff for round 2 if you still persist on denial) I call this Exhibit A (Exhibit A is not the smoking gun): Examples: https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-93475.html Attacking Minded: joseph, Do you consider communism an worthy ideal that can't be atained in practice or would you point to a positive example? Joe: "Can you show me a "communist" country, period? Can you show me a country trying to build communism that has not been immediately attacked and beseiged by its capitalist neighbors? See, that's the problem with the whole "Communism must equal Stalinism and nothing but Stalinism and therefore socialism can never exist" argument. You're basically the guy telling the Wright Brothers that just beause all previous attempts at heavier than air flight have ended in disaster that they should just give up and stick to bicycles because if God had wanted man to fly, he'd have given him wings. Not only that, but let me in turn ask you this: Can you show me a capitalist system not dependent on horribly oppressive colonialisms of various forms? I would not have wanted to live in the DDR. Then again, I wouldn't want to have lived in Samoza's Nicaragua (or anywhere in Latin America, for that matter), Pinochet's Chile, Suharto's Indonesia, Marcos's Philippines, the Shah's Iran, Saddam's Iraq, etc. etc. etc. either. In fact, I still wouldn't want to live anywhere in the third world. Anyway, this is the 108th time I've had this exact same convo here. You conservatives keep repeating the same refuted arguments and I keep slapping them down with the same refutations. Please either get a new argument or admit that you don't care about logic and experience and you just want to argue for the sake of arguing. Edited to thank Mike for his excellent point. Why is it that the same people here who try to "refute" socialism by claiming it is unworkable are usually (but not always) also the advocates of Christianity despite its 2,000 years of failure to make human society better in areas in which it has held sway? AM, I assume that you are an atheist given the failure of ALL religions to make humanity "better"." later "To answer your question - I believe that there's no bioneurological genetic reason why humanity can't construct a democratic socialist social system that brings the strong form of democracy to the means of production as well as into what are now thought of as the "political" institutions of society. FWIW, I don't believe in revolution, if that's any help. I believe in evolution, one brain at a time. Yeah, it's slow and I believe there's a better chance I'll live to see fascism in the USA before I see socialism here, but I think eventually we'll have to adopt co-operative, communalist, and democratic (ie., "socialist") modes of society on a global scale or we'll destroy ourselves." https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-81638.html Mel: "just 'cause those movements called themselves Communist doesn;t mean history should. If Communism is a withering away of the state, how can wholly centralized state power be "communist?" and "In my definition, communism cannot be "implemented." It simply happens as mankind grows up"
But we do make progress, little by little. Almost nobody tries to claim Alger Hiss is innocent anymore. Well, there still are a few red-diaper doper babies at NYU who try.... http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/home.html
C'mon - joepak is CLEARLY not defending communism as a political system here. He's defending socialism. His last point is about theoretical Star Trek like communism. (Star Trek is, incidentally, completely communist.) That's a far cry from defending communist regimes. I don't agree with you on this at all.
You mean to tell me that JoePak isn't like every other comsymp you knew at Berkeley? I can recite their cliche's by heart, and Joepak is just like them. And if there was another Stalin, he would refuse to face the truth about him until about 10 years after everyone else in the world did. How many times does this have to repeat itself before you see a pattern with these guys?
I don't think you give joepak enough credit. I can't stand knee-jerk liberalism either, but joepak's not one of those guys, even if I often don't agree with him.
There are certain posters who I can predict will post in a certain thread and I can predict what they will say. So Nicephoras you want to put some money down on that one? I bet I can get two people to defend Castro by the end of the day and I can tell you who those two are. Actually make that three people. Those same three just happen to defend Chomsky even when he has been verifiably proven wrong on some issues. No matter, they will still defend him. I'll even give you odds.