[quote]reddog6376 wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Clark Call is right. Communism is evil and should be resisted.
The level of resistance should be based on the level of the threat.
You can argue assassination is not the best solution to get rid of communists, but as soon as you start arguing the merits of communism you lose all credibility.
I’d like to suggest you pro-communist idealists read “The Sword & the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive” by Christopher Andrew & Vasili Mitrokhin. It highlights some of the delightful USSR foriegn policy.
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I’m not sure if it’s still up, but the CIA’s webpage used to have an archive of declassified documents. I suggest you pro-US idealists read it, it highlights some of the delightful US foreign policy. To the rest of the world, you were BOTH evil. It was just a matter of choosing the lesser evil, and there was a lot of disagreement on which one that was.
[quote]Aleksandr wrote:
…Zap, communism is a system where the goal of production is to satisfy human need rather than to generate wealth. There is nothing inherently evil (or “good” for that matter) about it. It is an economic system, not a political one.
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This is a very important point you have wrong.
The only way to enforce the economic system is through totalitarianism.
Under communism If I want to produce a product and sell it I have to get permission from the government and sell it through government approved channels at the governments price structure. I will have to meet a government quota that is dreamed up by a bureaucrat trying to predict 5 years in the future, not driven by market needs. There is no freedom here.
Under capitalism I am free to produce the product and sell it for what the market will bear. If I produce something no one wants, or try to sell it for too much I can keep on doing it until I run out of money. My choice.
Better yet if I produce the right product at the right price I enrich society and myself.
Not only is capitalism far more efficient than communism it is based on freedom of the individual and individual choices, not subservience to the state.
I understand the need for limited government involvement for things like law enforcement, environmental protection, etc, but for the greater majority of things capitalism is the better way to go.
Capitalism = less government control = freedom.
Communism = more government control = subservience.
I for one am glad the US and our allies have stood up to the various communist regimes that have tried to spread their poison.
Aleksandr, so what your saying is that those millions of people stalin and mao(both communists) and even castro to a much lesser degree have killed are all a lie? Did the holocaust happen Alek or is that all western propaganda too?
Raving, murderous, freedom loving fascist: calling me bolshevik? Yeah, being a member of the majority sucks… Don’t give me a book to read, I want the primary source. I know the numbers are BS, because this is not the first time I’ve had this argument. To save a lot of time, I’ll just say it now. The numbers are an exageration. Just like the hippies exagerate the number of civilian casualties in the current war, and the bush-lovers play it down. I know it’s hard to understand, but sometimes people have a bias, and that bias makes them skew their work to reflect what they want. If you spent as much time reading pro-USSR propaganda as you spent reading anti-USSR propaganda, you’d be singing a different tune. Read both, the truth is in between. Ultimately, there isn’t much you can say. My mother has lived under Stalin, and I have lived under Castro. At times like this, you should listen rather than talk.
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Is that what you call some one that kicked your ass, raving, murderous, freedom loving fascist? Sorry comrade, I am not a fascist, much to your dismay. I don’t believe in any form of totalitarian government, I beleive in federalism and traditional American Judeo-Christian values. I believe in strong individualism and personal incentive, these characteristics provide for a strong population and a moderate government. Not a godless, amoral existence akin to what the USSR had imposed upon you and your anscestors.
You know you have lost when I give you a direct source and you say, “Don’t give me a book to read, I want a direct source” Well, in case your aren’t familiar with acadaemia, a book is considered a “direct source”, I could give you page numbers, but you are so daft that you probably couldn’t find them. So that leaves us with the exaggeration argument, the numbers were gleaned from Soviet archives and census figures. Along, with the over 60 million chinese that were killed during Mao TseTung’s reign, these were estimated from analysis of the popluation through world organizations like the UN.
Talk all you want about Pro-USSR propaganda, once again, smoke and mirrors. You know that the Soviets took nine years and lost 55,000 men in Afghanistan, a country they bordered and knew well. They still couldn’t conquer the place. The propaganda told the Soviet people that the Red Army was winning the war easily. The people started getting a little suspicious at about the three year mark, when bodybag after bodybag was secretly sent home. The US took two weeks, lost 15 men during official combat operations, the country was under our thumb. What a paper tiger.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
orion wrote:
…
If that someone is a fascist, a communist or a fanatic muslim really doesn?t matter to me.
…
It matters to me. All of these ideologies are evil. All should be resisted.
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It?s even worse, they are stupid. I just don?t believe in fighting ideas by hunting down the people that hold those ideas and everyone that does, is a far greater threat than anyone who dreams of communism, without even having read the communist manifesto.
There is a saying in german that goes something like this: If you are not a communist at 20, you have no heart, if you are still on at 30 you have no brain. Most “communists” eventually grow up, this set of ideas is dead anyway.
[quote]snipeout wrote:
Aleksandr, so what your saying is that those millions of people stalin and mao(both communists) and even castro to a much lesser degree have killed are all a lie? Did the holocaust happen Alek or is that all western propaganda too?[/quote]
None of those people were communist. They all lead capitalist countries, albeit in a totalitarian way.
Who killed how many is not relevant to this conversation. Bush is responsible for thousands of deaths, although many of you feel it is perfectly justifiable.
Determining if Stalin was justified in what he did, or why he felt he had to do what he did requires information I don’t have access to. All I know is Stalin was not hated and feared, at least not by everyone. Again, all I have to go on is my family’s experience, and although we lost millions of dollars in property to the government, my grandparents still thought highly of him. In my mother’s hometown, people wept in the streets when Stalin’s deathwas announced.
The autrocities of Stalin didn’t become publicly known until Kruschev came to power. It should be noted that many people feel he was racist against non-russians, and it was his government that is the primary source to just about every number thrown around. It’s like trusting the figures given by the hippies about the civilian death count in Iraq. You wouldn’t accept those without serious reservations, would you?
The US has done it’s fair share of dirt, both inside and outside the country. Pointing the finger at another country is hypocritical at best.
I am willing to bet if I presented you with anti-US propaganda, you would strongly question it. Does that make YOU a holocaust denier? When I was a kid, watching TV, there were no commercials, there was propaganda. We all knew what we were being told was half-truths. Interestingly enough, here in North America, no one seems to think their government puts out propaganda, and most people seem to believe whatever they are told. It really is sad.
Communism = more government control = subservience.
I for one am glad the US and our allies have stood up to the various communist regimes that have tried to spread their poison.[/quote]
Zap, that is incorrect. Communism has nothing to do with political structure. It is an economic system. You give an example of selling a product; in a communist system, there is no currency. Seriously, what you are thinking of is state capitalism, not communism. I don’t blame you, text books have been making that mistake for decades.
[quote]orion wrote:
There is a saying in german that goes something like this: If you are not a communist at 20, you have no heart, if you are still on at 30 you have no brain. Most “communists” eventually grow up, this set of ideas is dead anyway.
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The quote is from Winston Churchill: “Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.”
Is that what you call some one that kicked your ass, raving, murderous, freedom loving fascist? Sorry comrade, I am not a fascist, much to your dismay. I don’t believe in any form of totalitarian government, I beleive in federalism and traditional American Judeo-Christian values. I believe in strong individualism and personal incentive, these characteristics provide for a strong population and a moderate government. Not a godless, amoral existence akin to what the USSR had imposed upon you and your anscestors.
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I know this is difficult, but there are cultures out there besides yours. And just because you weren’t born into them doesn’t make them inferior. I also dislike totalitarian governments, but I am not christian. Does that make me a heathen? Am I amoral for not having the same culture and religion as you? Maybe you should set up a training camp, and you can teach people how to use rifles, make bombs, and take out subways. But when a person thinks like you, but is from another culture, you call them a terrorist.
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You know you have lost when I give you a direct source and you say, “Don’t give me a book to read, I want a direct source” Well, in case your aren’t familiar with acadaemia, a book is considered a “direct source”, I could give you page numbers, but you are so daft that you probably couldn’t find them. So that leaves us with the exaggeration argument, the numbers were gleaned from Soviet archives and census figures. [/quote]
The “direct source” is the “primary source”. The book you mentioned is what’s called a “secondary source” and is useless in this kind of an argument, due to how easy it is to skew things. For instance, if you say “X million people died under Stalin’s rule”, this number could easily include WWII casualties, making it useless to the current arguments. Fortunately, you have included the primary source for the numbers just now (soviet archives). Look to my prevous post as to why it’s not wise to trust this number.
I have never mentioned Mao, and I’m not sure why you would. What he said/did is even further from communism than what the USSR did (if that’s even possible). It was no accident China and the USSR weren’t friendly.
Again, I don’t see the relevance. But to clear things up, the USSR controlled every major road within days. Trying to control the wilder areas is what did them in. Let’s not forget that the US was backing the terrorists in afghanistan at the time, making things much more complicated than what you are trying to present. Additionally, the Northern Alliance did much of the fighting this time, not the US, so you really can’t make the comparison. And FYI, the northern alliance’s victory has resulted in afghanistan becoming one of the top opium producers again.
Why don’t you compare the USSR in Afghanistan to, say, the US in Vietnam instead?
None of those people were communist. They all lead capitalist countries, albeit in a totalitarian way.[/quote]
Communism is a form of government as is democracy. Socialism is an economic system, as is capitalism. The USSR was a communist government with a socialist economy.[quote]
Who killed how many is not relevant to this conversation. Bush is responsible for thousands of deaths, although many of you feel it is perfectly justifiable. [/quote]
Stalin is responsible for 25 million deaths. How is that not relevent? Bush isn’t responsible for any deaths. Had Saddam upheld his end of the treaty he signed, nobody would have died, therfore the responsibility lies with Saddam, not Bush. Moral relativism at it’s worst. [quote]
Determining if Stalin was justified in what he did, or why he felt he had to do what he did requires information I don’t have access to. All I know is Stalin was not hated and feared, at least not by everyone. Again, all I have to go on is my family’s experience, and although we lost millions of dollars in property to the government, my grandparents still thought highly of him. In my mother’s hometown, people wept in the streets when Stalin’s deathwas announced.[/quote]
I’m sure your right, what’s 25 million lives give or take, as long as your mother admired him. [quote]
The autrocities of Stalin didn’t become publicly known until Kruschev came to power. It should be noted that many people feel he was racist against non-russians, and it was his government that is the primary source to just about every number thrown around. It’s like trusting the figures given by the hippies about the civilian death count in Iraq. You wouldn’t accept those without serious reservations, would you?
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Read “The Black Book of Communism”, it’s very well researched.[quote]
The US has done it’s fair share of dirt, both inside and outside the country. Pointing the finger at another country is hypocritical at best. [/quote]
I’m sure they have, most of it was in order to counter USSR meddling in other countries affairs. Read “the Sword & the Shield” it is taken from actual KGB files smuggled out of USSR in 1996, and most of it in KGB’s own words. Very enlightening.[quote]
I am willing to bet if I presented you with anti-US propaganda, you would strongly question it. Does that make YOU a holocaust denier? When I was a kid, watching TV, there were no commercials, there was propaganda. We all knew what we were being told was half-truths. Interestingly enough, here in North America, no one seems to think their government puts out propaganda, and most people seem to believe whatever they are told. It really is sad.[/quote]
The difference is we have freedom of the press. You can go on-line & find data & opinions from virtually any point of view. Could you do that in Cuba? Face it, communism sucks, & that is why it is never succesful in the long run.
[quote]reddog6376 wrote:
orion wrote:
There is a saying in german that goes something like this: If you are not a communist at 20, you have no heart, if you are still on at 30 you have no brain. Most “communists” eventually grow up, this set of ideas is dead anyway.
The quote is from Winston Churchill: “Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.”
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Ah, yes, thank you. I can understand why I heard that in a “communist” version, because the german word liberal has a different meaning than in english. It?s more like libertarian, but not quite.
[quote]orion wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
orion wrote:
…
If that someone is a fascist, a communist or a fanatic muslim really doesn?t matter to me.
…
It matters to me. All of these ideologies are evil. All should be resisted.
It?s even worse, they are stupid. I just don?t believe in fighting ideas by hunting down the people that hold those ideas and everyone that does, is a far greater threat than anyone who dreams of communism, without even having read the communist manifesto.
There is a saying in german that goes something like this: If you are not a communist at 20, you have no heart, if you are still on at 30 you have no brain. Most “communists” eventually grow up, this set of ideas is dead anyway.
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A young conservative is heartless, an old liberal is a fool.
We have the same saying.
I do not propose killing people that post pro-communsit tripe on the internet.
I just like to point it out for the tripe it is.
When the communists or islamists pick up guns, we must do the same.
Communism = more government control = subservience.
I for one am glad the US and our allies have stood up to the various communist regimes that have tried to spread their poison.
Zap, that is incorrect. Communism has nothing to do with political structure. It is an economic system. You give an example of selling a product; in a communist system, there is no currency. Seriously, what you are thinking of is state capitalism, not communism. I don’t blame you, text books have been making that mistake for decades.[/quote]
Alexandr, you think of Communism as the nonexistant utopia. It is against all our natural urges. It does not work when people exhibit free will.
I understand communism is an ECONOMIC system. The only way people can be forced into such a horrible thing is through a totalitarian government.
Totalitarian and communism go hand in hand. It can be no other way.
So now what you are proposing alek is that the USSR never had a currency? You also want to argue that the US was supporting the afghanistan rebels, I’ll give you that. How about the soviet backed NVA? My grandparents fled the soviet union, the only reason people loved stalin was out of fear. If you proclaimed dislike for him you were thrown in siberian relocation camps never to be heard from again. You would call state run bread lines a successful country?
As for your cuban argument, if the country is so great why do people try and flee to miami on closet doors more than half of them dying at sea as opposed to staying? why can’t the general population leave freely? Why do cuban baseball players(i.e. Orlando Hernandez) defect while stateside? More questions than answers. your literacy rate may be 99% but you can’t leave the country of your own free will. When was the last time a US citizen defected?
I think aleksander is speaking about Ideal Communism. Ideally communism is not bad. Just as Ideally a Democracy or a Republic would be superior to what we have today
None of those people were communist. They all lead capitalist countries, albeit in a totalitarian way.
Communism is a form of government as is democracy. Socialism is an economic system, as is capitalism. The USSR was a communist government with a socialist economy.
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That’s just plain wrong. Socialist and Communist are interchangable most times, the exception is top-down socialism (eg Canada), which is quite different. The USSR was a Totalitarian dictatorship with a state capitalist economy. You could argue that state capitalism is a form of top-down socialism, but that is neither here nor there.
Like I said before, the context of those deaths is disputable, and I don’t have the answers. It could be he loved killing, it could be that there was a covert civil war. Maybe that figure includes deaths resulting from medical and nutritional problems attributed to him (the validity of the attribution would be in question), or maybe they include civilian deaths from WWII (which would take the number past the 20 million mark).
You say Bush wouldn’t have waged war if Hussein had obeyed the treaty. What if Stalin only had people killed because they were violating national law and trying to overthrow his government? You don’t know, I don’t know; why discuss it?
My mother’s hometown was the capital of the state. Public opinion of him there was quite high. My mother is actually rather indifferent to him, she just told me what she saw. Many people loved him.
You just don’t seem to get it. You could, if you wanted, find books supporting the USSR and condeming the US. You aren’t interested in that, and I don’t blame you. That would be BS. Likewise, books condeming the USSR and praising the US are BS. I’m not saying horrible things didn’t happen, I’m just saying don’t be a hypocrite about it.
Small children, it has been found, do not have the ability to consider another persons point of view. They think everyone perceives the world as they do. Unless you are a small child, you have no excuse. You feel the US involvment was to counter the USSR. The USSR felt they had to counter US involvment. They were both right. Both countries did horrible, horrible things, and because of that most of the world hated them. KGB files? I’ve seen declassified CIA files, and they were every bit as shoking as anything fromt he KGB could be, and they were sanitized. Seriously, check out the CIA’s page and see if they still have the archives up.
You can, but you don’t. If you did, you wouldn’t have such a narrow view of the world. Yes, in cuba there was a “free press”, even though it was underground and illegal. Yes, we regularly got the other side of things. We also recognize that those responsible for the free press had vested interests, and what they said,like what the government said, was only the half truth. If you surrounded yourself with people that were pro-USSR, and read nothing but anti-US propaganda, I guarantee you’d have the opposite point of view. Like I said, read both, the truth is in the middle.