[quote]smh_23 wrote:
(A lot has been written about the political consequences of imprecision in language and terminology. If you don’t think this stuff matters, that’s your problem.)[/quote]
You just said words don’t matter though… Only actions do.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
I’m saying that my dad’s political beliefs are not evidence of mine. Don’t you come from a family of Lefties? Don’t you know this already?[/quote]
I’m also pretty vocal about my rejection of that indoctrination, not writing books praising it. [/quote]
Obama praised communism in his books?
And, either way, yet again, none of the people in my family evidence my political beliefs, no matter how many nice things I say about them. This particular point is weak and I won’t be arguing it again.
[quote]
[quote]
Obamacare, riddled with shit as it is, is not communist by any stretch of the imagination. If anyone thinks it is, he either doesn’t know what the ACA is or doesn’t know what communism is.[/quote]
Certainly is. Start with the socialization of cost, end with the governmental interference with the entire HR function of any business in America with an employee.
Thing is your taking a start/stop, toss the frog in the boiling water view of collectivism as it comes to America. You have to see it as, put the frog in the cool pan, and slowly turn up the heat. [/quote]
So you don’t know what communism is. Socialization of cost – you mean like how the United States of America has operated for half a century (longer, actually)?
Or were John Chafee, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Bob Dole, and Dick Lugar communists?
You are confusing communism with liberalism.
[quote]
It isn’t a declaration of anything. It’s a soundbite, harped on – just like “I like to fire people” – by partisan hacks. Both points were obvious, banal, correct, and badly worded. Neither point meant what the fools in the media pretended it meant.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
(A lot has been written about the political consequences of imprecision in language and terminology. If you don’t think this stuff matters, that’s your problem.)[/quote]
You just said words don’t matter though… Only actions do. [/quote]
Words matter less than actions – they do – and soundbites (which, while being stupidly worded, didn’t mean what the idiots on the Left and Right pretended they meant) mean even less.
Words do matter, particularly when they are employed as part of a strategy. Like Obama not saying Islamic – which I despise – and the Right calling him a communist – which accusation is of rectal origin – again and again and again.
Edited.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Obama praised communism in his books?
And, either way, yet again, none of the people in my family evidence my political beliefs, no matter how many nice things I say about them. This particular point is weak and I won’t be arguing it again.[/quote]
Now you’re being flippant and trying to avoid the inevitable.
You know what I’m saying, what I’m implying and how his entire life shaped his world view, including the people he was not only surrounded by as a youth, but chose to surround himself by afterward.
The point isn’t weak, it just isn’t in your favor. That’s why you won’t argue it further.
[quote]
So you don’t know what communism is.[/quote]
Sigh… It’s like I’ve never posted in PWI before, and this rhetoric is actually meaningful.
Yes. The government mandated spending of privately earned dollars by private citizens with privately held institutions. So that the government can force (dictate the market) these private institutions to provide a service they otherwise couldn’t because the market won’t support it.
IE: forcing “society” to pay for those that otherwise couldn’t. From each according to their ability to each according to their need. The word FORCE being the issue here.
Do tell in what other places does the federal government force you to spend money with a third party, for the express purpose of paying for other people.
[quote]Or were John Chafee, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Bob Dole, and Dick Lugar communists?
You are confusing communism with liberalism.[/quote]
You’re confusing me with someone who doesn’t know you’re being lazy as shit in this back and forth.
[quote]
It isn’t a declaration of anything. [/quote]
What?
As someone who does (or did) write for a living, I expected… More.
Dude… “You didn’t build that” means just what it says. The man isn’t who you want him to be. It’s okay, we can be honest here.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Words do matter, particularly when they are employed as part of a strategy. [/quote]
And you foolishly don’t think “you didn’t build that” is part of one…
That, is the whole point.
You’ve fallen for it. It’s okay. I did too.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Obama praised communism in his books?
And, either way, yet again, none of the people in my family evidence my political beliefs, no matter how many nice things I say about them. This particular point is weak and I won’t be arguing it again.[/quote]
Now you’re being flippant and trying to avoid the inevitable.
You know what I’m saying, what I’m implying and how his entire life shaped his world view, including the people he was not only surrounded by as a youth, but chose to surround himself by afterward.
The point isn’t weak, it just isn’t in your favor. That’s why you won’t argue it further. [/quote]
No: nothing but Barack Obama’s being a communist can evidence Barack Obama’s being a communist. Not his dad, not his mom, not his guardian angel. This is debate 101.
[quote]
Yes. The government mandated spending of privately earned dollars by private citizens with privately held institutions. So that the government can force (dictate the market) these private institutions to provide a service they otherwise couldn’t because the market won’t support it.
IE: forcing “society” to pay for those that otherwise couldn’t. From each according to their ability to each according to their need. The word FORCE being the issue here.
Do tell in what other places does the federal government force you to spend money with a third party, for the express purpose of paying for other people. [/quote]
In other places, the government just takes the money and gives it to the other people. And has been doing so for a long, long time.
I am as against the forcing of people to buy from a third party as you are. It is ludicrous. (And, because the third party is often a private business, a fucked-up hybrid of liberalism and crony capitalism). But it’s not more communist than my being forced to buy food for people who live a few blocks over.
Communism is a specific ideology with specific tenets. None of what you’re trying to get at here is coming close to hitting the mark.
[quote]
[quote]Or were John Chafee, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Bob Dole, and Dick Lugar communists?
You are confusing communism with liberalism.[/quote]
You’re confusing me with someone who doesn’t know you’re being lazy as shit in this back and forth. [/quote]
Not an answer to the question. Is the current president pro-tem of the senate a communist? Yes or no?
It means, as was clear to anybody with his head not in his ass, that private business can’t exist as it does in the U.S. today without outside influence, even if that influence is only at the level of infrastructure and law & order. This was explicitly clear.
And it’s a point I often make – in a more extreme way, given the context – when NickViar starts talking about his utopia. Without the state, you don’t have contracts, you don’t have streets free of Chinese and Russian tanks: You don’t have capitalism…
Again, badly worded, just like “I like to fire people,” and, also just like “I like to fire people,” not what the partisan hacks pretended it was. No way around it.
Edited for clarity.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Words do matter, particularly when they are employed as part of a strategy. [/quote]
And you foolishly don’t think “you didn’t build that” is part of one…
That, is the whole point.
You’ve fallen for it. It’s okay. I did too. [/quote]
You certainly fell for something.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
…But I do believe what I’m saying: that Obama isn’t a communist…
[/quote]
But you know he was raised in Marxism and that he espoused it in his college years and that he leans that way still. You KNOW this.
[/quote]
His childhood and college don’t concern me. At all. I believed stupid shit at 19. I no longer do.
Today he is a run-of-the-mill Democrat. He is socialist insofar as any liberal is today. He isn’t a communist because the word communist actually does mean something, contrary to what people hereabouts seem to think.
^ *“I like being able to fire people”
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
No: nothing but Barack Obama’s being a communist can evidence Barack Obama’s being a communist. Not his dad, not his mom, not his guardian angel. This is debate 101.[/quote]
No. You’re trying to play literalist, because it’s the only way you can “win”.
[quote]
In other places, the government just takes the money and gives it to the other people. And has been doing so for a long, long time.[/quote]
And?
You dismiss the influence of a person’s chosen mentors on world view, but use this as some sort of rebuttal?
[quote] But it’s not more communist than my being forced to buy food for people who live a few blocks over.
Communism is a specific ideology with specific tenets. None of what you’re trying to get at here is coming close to hitting the mark.[/quote]
Holy fuck. Again with the literalist bullshit.
You’re sucking any fun out of this today.
[quote]
Not an answer to the question. [/quote]
Coming from the guy ignoring large chunks of my rebuttals…
[quote]
It means, as was clear to anybody with his head not in his ass, that private business can’t exist as it does in the U.S. today without outside influence, even if that influence is only at the level of infrastructure and law & order. This was explicitly clear.[/quote]
Explicitly clear is that you may want to jump on down from that high horse and take a look around from a different point of view.
None of the lapdog, water carrying, Vox style revisionist bullshit you are presenting here about that line is remotely as romantic and benign as you want it to be.
This is literally like reading Slate or Vox right now.
Romney has dick all to do with this, and it is telling you won’t let it go.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
^ *“I like being able to fire people”[/quote]
Romney is not the leader of the free world.
And what is lost in this is, Romney has built successful businesses that provide jobs. Sometimes you gotta fire people, hell I enjoy it when I get to fire an asshole from our company.
Also, what business has Obama started, or even worked for…for that matter.
Bobby: I’m going to set up self defined, predetermined absolutes as to what constitutes X. A very strict and obvious miniscule set of evidence can possibly be used to prove these absolutes, and none of them can possibly be obtained from inferring, general observation or anything remotely close to opinion, unless it agrees with my opinion. Therefore what I say is true, and anything you say makes you an imbecilic head in rectum.
Everyone else: Dude, ah… Dude’s a douche, and pretty obviously a collectivist, and ironically enough the same cronyism capitalist he hates are the only reason he has to govern like he does, because without them, neither he nor his party is going anywhere.
Bobby: You’re wrong, and without proof of action it is all just worthless opinion. Words only matter when I say they do.
This entire page now ^
There is literally not a single line of substance for me to respond to in that post. And I haven’t ignored a word of yours. Each of my answers is specifically a counter-argument to your arguments. The above is pablum of nothing. “Trying to play literalist” by saying that only Obama’s politics can logically evidence Obama’s politics? No. Being “literalist” again when I say that my being forced to buy others’ health insurance is not more “communist” than my being forced to buy others’ food and housing? Nope.
Seriously, though, is the current president pro-tem of the Senate a communist? Yes or no?
[quote]UtahLama wrote:
And what is lost in this is, Romney has built successful businesses that provide jobs. Sometimes you gotta fire people
[/quote]
Yes, I know.
That’s exactly what I’m saying: it’s an obvious and banal point that his campaign advisers would have told him to word differently because he was running for office in a country full of hacks and fools playing marco polo in the shallow end. It’s soundbite politics and it’s nonsense.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
There is literally not a single line of substance for me to respond to in that post. And I haven’t ignored a word of yours. Each of my answers is specifically a counter-argument to your arguments. The above is pablum of nothing. “Trying to play literalist” by saying that only Obama’s politics can logically evidence Obama’s politics? No. Being “literalist” again when I say that my being forced to buy others’ health insurance is not more “communist” than my being forced to buy others’ food and housing? Nope.
[/quote]
Yes, you win… He is the champion of individualism, private ownership and independent thought and operation.
All HAIL the king of Freedom!
Obama
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
Bobby: I’m going to set up self defined, predetermined absolutes as to what constitutes X. A very strict and obvious miniscule set of evidence can possibly be used to prove these absolutes[/quote]
“He can be called a communist if you have evidence that he’s a communist” = “A very strict and obvious miniscule set of evidence can possibly be used to prove these absolutes”?
No. The word “communist” is an actual word, with an actual political and historical meaning.
And yes, words mean less than conduct. Obviously. That you don’t have conduct to point to is not my problem.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
There is literally not a single line of substance for me to respond to in that post. And I haven’t ignored a word of yours. Each of my answers is specifically a counter-argument to your arguments. The above is pablum of nothing. “Trying to play literalist” by saying that only Obama’s politics can logically evidence Obama’s politics? No. Being “literalist” again when I say that my being forced to buy others’ health insurance is not more “communist” than my being forced to buy others’ food and housing? Nope.
[/quote]
Yes, you win… He is the champion of individualism, private ownership and independent thought and operation.
All HAIL the king of Freedom!
Obama
[/quote]
Plainly fallacious argumentation. I guess that concludes this.