[Lightman]

liberty ends with thunderous applause.

Stop it. You do not get to quote the Star Wars prequels to pretend you sound insightful.

[Iron Ant]

I'm not trying to be insightful, but thoughtful and truthful.

And i see you focus on the Star Wars quote and not the Benjamin Franklin one.

They are both very true statements, even if the latter half comes from a work of fiction.

And they do mesh very well together.

Remember, at the risk of using a Godwin, Hitler was elected and with thunderous applause.

I don't know about Stalin though. I don't think he was elected, but he is counted as a hero for many millions of people around the globe. So is Che Guerva, Pol pot, etc etc...

Consider this phrase:

One man's hero is another man's villain .

George Washington and the founding fathers would be counted as terrorists by toay's standards and probably be Renditioned and declared to be unlawful combatants with their constitutional rights stripped away.

And those powers that be would be applauded for it.

Such is the shameful state of America today.

[The Immortal Goon]

Hitler was elected and with thunderous applause.

Do you mean Paul von Hindenburg?

If you mean the '33 election, where Hitler had to suppress all socialist and communist votes to get 43% of the vote and then build a coalition with all non-socialist parties in order to get Hindenburg to reluctantly accept the Enabling Act, then I suppose we get a good view of what an anti-communist government can be like.

I don't know about Stalin though.

This is clear.

George Washington and the founding fathers would be counted as terrorists by toay's standards and probably be Renditioned and declared to be unlawful combatants with their constitutional rights stripped away.

They were by their day's standards too.

Such is the shameful state of America today.

Indeed. From your post I gather that Marxists should be the new Founding Fathers and eradicate all non-communists that might try to become another Hitler.

[Iron Ant]

I do not support communism in any capacity.

However, I don't much like capitalism either, but it is a better system.

It doesn't matter how Hitler manipulated the vote, he was still voted in and the people accepted him as Chancellor and he was considered a hero by many.

What I want is a small unobtrusive government in which people have real representation and a real voice. Maximum liberty, minimal regulations.

That is such an alien concept to many people though. including many groups here in the United states.

Right now I'm not entirely sure that we have one because of people like Obama eroding our constitution and the heavy influence of money in our government.

And i do know more about Stalin than you might think.

I'm unclear on how he got into office and into power though.

So I guess you consider him a hero.

[The Immortal Goon]

I do not support communism in any capacity.

You at least seem to agree with Marx that Lincoln was a badass, and by extension, support the only administration to have a correspondence with Marx:

Sir:

We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery.

From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class. The contest for the territories which opened the dire epopee, was it not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the labor of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of the slave driver?

When an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to inscribe, for the first time in the annals of the world, "slavery" on the banner of Armed Revolt, when on the very spots where hardly a century ago the idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to the European revolution of the eighteenth century; when on those very spots counterrevolution, with systematic thoroughness, gloried in rescinding "the ideas entertained at the time of the formation of the old constitution", and maintained slavery to be "a beneficent institution", indeed, the old solution of the great problem of "the relation of capital to labor", and cynically proclaimed property in man "the cornerstone of the new edifice" — then the working classes of Europe understood at once, even before the fanatic partisanship of the upper classes for the Confederate gentry had given its dismal warning, that the slaveholders' rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general holy crusade of property against labor, and that for the men of labor, with their hopes for the future, even their past conquests were at stake in that tremendous conflict on the other side of the Atlantic. Everywhere they bore therefore patiently the hardships imposed upon them by the cotton crisis, opposed enthusiastically the proslavery intervention of their betters — and, from most parts of Europe, contributed their quota of blood to the good cause.

While the workingmen, the true political powers of the North, allowed slavery to defile their own republic, while before the Negro, mastered and sold without his concurrence, they boasted it the highest prerogative of the white-skinned laborer to sell himself and choose his own master, they were unable to attain the true freedom of labor, or to support their European brethren in their struggle for emancipation; but this barrier to progress has been swept off by the red sea of civil war.

The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.

It doesn't matter how Hitler manipulated the vote, he was still voted in and the people accepted him as Chancellor and he was considered a hero by many.

He was appointed Chancellor. And it does matter that he wasn't greeted by, "thunderous applause," as the thesis of your statement was that the Star Wars Prequels were correct in stating that:

The last act of ANY Democracy is to elect a dictator, and liberty ends with thunderous applause.

Thus the election from the first part is wrong, as is the thunderous applause. The entire premise of your argument falls to the side.

What I want is a small unobtrusive government in which people have real representation and a real voice. Maximum liberty, minimal regulations.

Exactly as the communists want. We just have a plan.

That is such an alien concept to many people though. including many groups here in the United states.

It's sad. People have been taught to love their oppressors, the wealthy, and that any struggle against their masters is evil. Or that it would magically end up in the same way a peasant uprising a century ago in a totally different country would end up. They've even been taught that the Founders all loved capitalism. Which, of course, is crap. But materialism exists because material does; and so long as material reality exists there is a dialectic and we can make things better and put the red flag up.

Right now I'm not entirely sure that we have one because of people like Obama eroding our constitution and the heavy influence of money in our government.

Indeed. The influence of money must be fought. And we know how:

What measures have you taken to fight the bourgeois executioners, the Scheidernanns and Co.; have councils of workers and servants been formed in the different sections of the city; have the workers been armed; have the bourgeoisie been disarmed; has use been made of the stocks of clothing and other items for immediate and extensive aid to the workers, and especially to the farm labourers and small peasants; have the capitalist factories and wealth in Munich and the capitalist farms in its environs been confiscated; have mortgage and rent payments by small peasants been cancelled; have the wages of farm labourers and unskilled workers been doubled or trebled; have all paper stocks and all printing-presses been confis-cated so as to enable popular leaflets and newspapers to be printed for the masses; has the six-hour working day with two or three-hour instruction in state administration been introduced; have the bourgeoisie in Munich been made to give up surplus housing so that workers may be immediately moved into comfortable flats; have you taken over all the banks; have you taken hostages from the ranks of the bourgeoisie; have you introduced higher rations for the workers than for the bourgeoisie; have all the workers been mobilised for defence and for ideological propaganda in the neighbouring villages? The most urgent and most extensive implementation of these and similar measures, coupled with the initiative of workers’, farm labourers’ and— ;acting apart from them— ;small peasants’ councils, should strengthen your position. An emergency tax must be levied on the bourgeoisie, and an actual improvement effected in the condition of the workers, farm labourers and small peasants at once and at all costs.

And i do know more about Stalin than you might think.

I was merely quoting your own words.

So I guess you consider him a hero.

You may have guessed wrong.

[Iron Ant]

If you think the communists want a small unobtrusive government, you are sadly mistaken.

And you do not understand communism.

It is not a communist ideal. It is actually the classical American liberal ideal.

[mikema63]

You didn't read the provided links and reading material did you?

[Iron Ant]

When people say things like communism is a beneficial system, i consider that a lie and will not take a look at those links.

[mikema63]

That is a good way to never have to consider the possibility that you're just wrong I suppose. Must be nice to consider yourself omniscient and perfect.

[The Immortal Goon]

When people say things like communism is a beneficial system, i consider that a lie and will not take a look at those links.

You, rightfully, fear the elites involved with government and manipulation of the government.

Yet, when asked to read a narrative that involves the idea that elites are involved with government and manipulation of the government, you refuse to do so.

The reason? Elites involved with government and manipulation of the government told you not to read a narrative that explains the system that they use.

You win by doing what you're told by the powers that you claim to oppose?

[Iron Ant]

No. i have a strong distrust of all radicals and elites.

Because they all lie and use dirty rotten tricks of any sort to manipulate me, and everyone else.

For they are an ends justify the means people, and the ends is to attain all power and control over everything. They are just arguing among themselves who gets to have the whole pie. The only thing they care about is their own interests.

And I sometimes wonder if the mentality of the ends justify the means is actually an evil in and of itself because it does cause a lot of harm.

Because, they don't care who they hurt, and only me and everyone else as a tool to be used, and they are finished, will just throw the tool away.

On short, it's being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

[The Immortal Goon]

Oh, we're not radicals.

For our demands most moderate are,
We only want the earth.

[SolarCross]

That is a good way to never have to consider the possibility that you're just wrong I suppose. Must be nice to consider yourself omniscient and perfect.

Funny, a Jehovah's Witness once said exactly the same thing to me as I slammed the door shut on his foot.

[Iron Ant]

I have an open and i try to objective, but not so open that my brain falls out.

But when someone proves to be a liar, that completely shuts it.

I also want objective and unbiased sources that can be even handed and level headed and do not have an agenda.

I will not read sources from a biased point of view. Pro or con, pro or anti.

There is no objectivity there.

But remember, in this society you can never admit you're wrong in any capacity, they will not respect you, and they will only punish you any way they can.

[Dagoth Ur]

Every source is biased. "Objectivity" itself is an entirely subjective concept.

[Andrea_Chenier]

Especially now, when the bourgeois pseudo-left is caught in a hypocritical struggle between opposing islamophobia and sexism, I have a lot of nostalgia for the old left. Enver Hoxha, who had forseen the social democratic corruption of the western european communist parties long ago, once said that "[the] entire Party and country should wake up, throw into the flames and twist the neck of any one who tramples underfoot the sacred law of the Party in defense of the rights of women and girls." I still have problems with him for being so harsh on my religion but I respect his determination for real leftist values without any hypocrisy very much.

[Truth To Power]

Enver Hoxha, who had forseen the social democratic corruption of the western european communist parties long ago, once said that "[the] entire Party and country should wake up, throw into the flames and twist the neck of any one who tramples underfoot the sacred law of the Party in defense of the rights of women and girls." I still have problems with him for being so harsh on my religion but I respect his determination for real leftist values without any hypocrisy very much.

I never thought I'd live long enough to see the execrable Hoxha rehabilitated...