shakran

Well, it's unfortunate yes, but I don't think it's a bad idea to enhance security. Before 9/11 I had the freedom to roam airports at will. I wandered through an international airport with a box knife one day (I'd forgotten I had it). The security guard just made me give him the blade (there were 5 more in the handle). While waiting for my pickup to get there I drank some coffee while sitting across from a door leading to the innards of the airport - Watched employees punch in the combo to open the door until I had it memorized. Would have been VERY easy to get in there. From there, how hard would it be to plant a bomb in some luggage, or steal a maintainence uniform and get onto a plane to place a bomb? Now I no longer have the freedom to wander the airport at will, but I really don't mind.

I no longer have the freedom to carry a 3 inch knife on a plane like I did before 9/11, but I don't mind that either.

Where it gets worrisome is when they start restricting freedoms that have nothing to do with the security of the country, yet they say it does. That's a frightening precedent that we should be howling in protest over.

Well then how about we take it to the REAL terrorist states? Saudi Arabia comes to mind - they're much more active than Iraq was.

gibingus

that observation is not accurate. every law does not take away freedom.

many laws protect vital freedoms. the bill of rights offers ten fine examples.

it's when people start trying to pass laws that tell us what we can't or shouldn't do that we should question why those laws are important.

prohibition is a great example of why we shouldn't pass laws that make moral decisions for people. these attempts to control or repress are always mistakes in hindsight.

just a side note... i've only recently started reading your posts. why do you use a photograph of TR as your avatar? your posts are highly inconsistent with his later views, which one would assume - given the wealth of experience in the man's life - best exemplify his learned philosophy. you are aware that he underwent a major transformation of perspective in his later years, having become a preservationist and pacifist who was completely disenchanted with party politics, right? i merely ask since i am profoundly inspired by the man's dynamic nature.

__________________
if everyone is thinking alike, chances are no one is thinking.

Hanabal

one thing i dont understand is why people say communism is bad because of stalin/lenin/mao. they were not communists.

these people were power hungry retards. a capitalist society can have power hungry retards in charge as well. then it would look the same. Communism has nothing to do with it.

China was capitalist for a while, but had power hungry retards in charge. then mao took over and for a while china was the best it ever was because it was communism, nothing else, just pure communism. then mao became a power hungry retard and fucked it.

Communism had nothing to do with it

__________________
I am Hanabal, Phear my elephants

Ustwo

No, all laws take away freedom from someone, even if it is the freedom to exploit you. The Bill of Rights deals mostly with what the government can't do to you, but again, that is freedom lost for the government and the people who would support such actions.


Ummm he volunteered for combat duty in WWI (Wilson turned him down), spoke in favor of the war and helped raise money for it in the US up to the end of the war even after the death of a son behind German lines. He died the year after the war ended. You know little about me or my views, so I think you should mind your own business and stick to current events.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Ustwo

Two things for you.

Communists have killed more of their own people then any other form of government. Perhaps you can claim they were not communist, but then its obvious that communistic governments are so ready for coruption that they are not viable. Either way communism has failed and failed on a scale of mass murder so vast it must NEVER been attempted again.

The other thing is where did you get your history books talking about how great mao was to start?

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

gibingus

that would be the accountant's perspective: all debits must be balanced with a credit. Buddah's too, for that matter, if you prefer yin and yang.

however, most political scientists and sophists might join with me in contending that my right not to be killed supercedes your right to kill me, since exercising your freedom to killl me takes away my freedom to live, yet my freedom to live does not take anything away from you - that's the first example given in the classic defense of the argument you present. as you can see in the example, there is an imbalance in allowing the killer the freedom to kill. that imbalance exists in any law that tries to take away natural or civil rights from anyone.

i first learned it in eighth grade government class, the same class that tought me the united states was greater than the soviet union because any citizen could walk into the white house (the people's house, mind you) and the kremlin was under armed guard and forbade entry to its own citizens.

that is not the case today, and now that i live in washington dc and walk by the white house every day, it makes me very, very sad.

all true, no one can fault his courage and sense of justice. i simply find his correspondence to be of a radically different tone after he lost his son. to each their own interpretation, i suppose. it is a great credit to his legacy that he could ecompass such a wide range of perspectives (and balance them) serving as an example for so many differing views in later years. perhaps he resembles abraham (father of religions, not lincoln) in that way.

your last line is harsh, man. sorry if i'm rankling you, but please know that i value your perspective and contributions to the debate. i'm getting to know you through your views as you state them here. live and let live sez i.

__________________
if everyone is thinking alike, chances are no one is thinking.

gibingus

oh yeah, in this country, WE are the government. at least, we're supposed to be according to the constitution.

the government we elect to represent us is not supposed to have freedoms, it is supposed to protect the freedoms of the citizens who elect it. we empower it to do so, but it does not have any legitmate freedom of its own, per se, since its very nature is servient of the people.

__________________
if everyone is thinking alike, chances are no one is thinking.

gibingus

and another thing...

i'm anything but a fan of communism as it has been practiced, but you've got to acknowledge some relative scale and perspective in that absolutist argument.

there's no way to back this up with any statistics (not that statistics in this type of argument are accurate or indicative of anything), but i expect that the roman empire, with a smaller overall population and a much longer term of existence, killed far more of its own citizens than either communist china or the soviet union, strictly by proportion. that would be because the latifundia agriconomy was slave based and political expansion of both the republic and later empire was conquest based. Same applies to the expansion of the Dar-al-Islam.

if you were to consider both the genocide of the native american population from the time of columbian contact and also factor in the overwhelming casulaties of the african slave trade, i think you would be looking at some equally harsh numbers - in relative perspective - to what you put out for those communist regimes.

those regimes also command/ed larger populations and geographical expanses than the other forms of government included, which should also be given at least passing acknowledgement in this discussion. also that those nations became communist originally to balance their economic strata at least a little bit better than they were under their previous totalitarian governments.

Communism (as a philosophy) is actually necessary for populations that have exceded their boundaries and available natural resources, if the citizenry at large is to enjoy any quality of life what so ever. at the most purile level of consideration, theorists posit that Communism is the only recourse available to populations that have allowed unchecked capitalization of resources without economic balance in the market and sustainable replacement growth.

one should note that even communist nations compete in the world market, which is capitalistic by virtue of entropy. capitalist nations should rightfully compete with communist nations, and one would expect that they would be more successful. this makes the trade imbalance with china and the united states particularly disturbing.

__________________
if everyone is thinking alike, chances are no one is thinking.

Hanabal

id admit that the communist states as they are, are very easily corruptable. so they need to kill their own people to stop uprisings to the corruption. but marx stated that communism was the last stage. every country needs to go through capitalsm first, gain emormous wealth, enough to share evenly, then become communist. if that is done then everyone will be happy. the problem lies in the countrys are becoming communist too early. then the governments cant afford to share with everyone and keep them alive, so they concentrate on a few and hope the rest dont notice.

given time it should work

__________________
I am Hanabal, Phear my elephants

Lebell

I'll simply say what I've said before.

Communism is a great system....if you're an ant.

Communism as envisioned by Marx will never succeed. Even if it starts pure, it will quickly become corrupted.

As evidence I point to a dozen or so communist governments, all of which are failures or are moving towards a capitalist compromise.

__________________
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

The ONLY sponsors we have are YOU!

Please Donate!

ARTelevision

Lebell, you are, of course, correct.
The failure of idealists to learn from history is a tragic waste of intelligence and good intentions.

__________________
create evolution

Ustwo

And sometimes lives.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

mml

So, I am in high school, and I am reading Marx and find it fascinating. Low and behold I get selected to serve as a Student Ambassador. Where am I going? Asia, including China. I am so excited to see a communist country first hand, to actually live with a family, work on their farm and travel the country.

Result was a fabulous cultural experience and the realization that if the long term result of communism is extreme poverty, censorship, curfews and tanks in the streets at night then Thank God (whether or not I believe in god or not, cause I get to choose here) I live in a democracy.

The next year I served as an ambassador to the Soviet Union and it was yet another lesson in human nature. Communism is a wonderful idea, but it has little place in the real world. Someone earlier said it would require at huge "cultural revolution" (thank you Mao) for communism to work, and that may be true, but it will be in the very distant future.

Now, why do we hate communism. Because our government told us to - and you know what, they were right.


This post was brought to you by a Democrat and devout capitalist. So to those of you who equate Dem with Com please refrain from doing so in the future.

__________________
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
-Douglas Adams

gibingus

thanks for the first hand perspective, mml. great contribution. i too lived in the soviet union in 1986 for a time, every average citizen i encountered was begging for capitalization.

communism as it has been practiced relies upon repression of individuality to survive.

__________________
if everyone is thinking alike, chances are no one is thinking.

mml

Bingo.

jjjjjj

whoa....thats really weird. i agree with you on it too. it was this government who said "there should be limits on freedom"

Rodney

Good qualifier: because "communism as it's been practiced" is not communism. It's much closer to life inside a modern corporation: a vast hierarchy run by an elite class of bureaucrats, with little except lip service paid to quality of life for the flunkies. Except in corporate life you get to go home, while under communism you're under the thumb 24/7.

The closest thing you're going to see to true communism anywhere in the near future is Star Trek: TNG, Voyager, and so on. There's enough for everybody; you need something, you punch a couple of buttons and pull it out of the wall. Everybody's got health care and education and a place to live and a job to do.

I think that if technology progresses in a constructive way and if its benefits are shared equally, eventually we will end up at something like communism. Nobody'll call it that, and it may not be a class-free society. But when we get to a point where food, lodging, health care, education, communication, transportation, and many common luxuries are free or very cheap, then I think nobody'll be able to tell the difference.

For an interesting sci-fi take on communism in a society of plenty, and what form that society might take, take a look at the novel "Voyage from Yesteryear," by James Hogan; came out about 20-25 years ago. Not the greatest writing in the world, but is an interesting take on how a society might work if everything material was free for the asking, the stoop labor was mainly done by machines, and there was no money. How would society organize itself? Would this be a classless society, or would there be a hierarchy? And if there was, would you recognize it if you saw it?

fuzyfuzer

i am sure that my opinion is not the best regarded becaue i am still in high school but communism stoped working because we pushed there decrepent econoic system and they were coming out with masive social reforms especially in the expansion of schools this increased the amount of people with an opinion and those people saw that they were competative and didn't want to be the same as everyone else capitalsim fed this desire and communism was too weak to suppres it

but that is just the opinion of a lowly high school student

__________________
"The difference between commiment and involvment is like a ham and egg breakfast the chicken was involved but the pig was commited"

"Thrice happy is the nation that has a glorious history. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt

mml

No such thing as a "lowly high school student". Your ideas are essentially correct, in regards to the Soviet Union and are becoming more and more of a reality in China. Welcome to the discussion.

Only one suggestion, check your spelling and grammar.

HunterDevourer

Also the reformist policies by the government included shifts away from some of the previous pillars of the soviet system. The 'openness' idea put forward by Gorbachev and his party, helped swing the country away from communism. There were a number of other policies I believe that helped this shift to a capitalist system as well, that aimed at changing the system for the benefit of the Russian/Soviet people. He also allowed the satellite states to become independent without violent reprisals of the past.

So, I believe that what you said was partially correct fuzy, but Gorbachev was just as important in causing the movement towards capitalism in the former Soviet Union.

__________________
Viva La Muerte

Jizz-Fritter

That's what I was about to say. Communism is a vague combination of economic and political arrangements, and by now that word has been warped enough that it doesn't really mean anything at all.

Saddam's Iraq was a democracy, yes he killed political opponents and put a gun to your head as you marked your ballot, but people still voted. After looking at his "body count," would you conclude that democracy is wrong? Or in Dubya's words, evil?

gibingus & ustwo: Teddy was also a flaming racist, but no body really cares, do they?