Stalin, Communism and the left wing

[PaintMyHouse]

The US is a democratic representative Republic which - at present - is strongly influenced by both its business and populist factions.

So.... this is a polite way of saying democracy is almost dead or totally dead?

We never were, aren't, and never will be a democracy.

That is correct. The Founders hated it, for good reason, you guys in this case.

 

[Roadrunner]

It is a constitutional republic.

You are nitpicking and know exactly what i mean.

Nations that have a democratic system of power - electorate - legislature - change of power through civic means by the people and government for the people.

I see how you want to believe it exists.

In the USSR they had voting. You voted at one level, then the people who were voted went to the next level and voted for people who went to the next level and so on.

The US Senate, you vote based on state, not on size of population. Wyoming with 500,000 people has the same say as California with 38 million. 121,000 people voted for Mike Enzi of Wyoming to sit in the Senate. 7.7 million voted for Diane Feinstein in California 2 years previously. The loser in that race got 38 times more votes than the winner in Wyoming.

Is this Democracy?

In the House you have Gerrymandering going on all over the place. One Democrat has had to move house THREE times because every time he moves the Republicans Gerrymander his district and move his house out of his district.
In 2012 the Democrats got 48.9% of the votes compared to 47.7% for the Republicans but had 33 seats less.

Is this Democracy?

For president it's more or less the same.

The worst is, people feel unable to vote for smaller parties. 127 million people vote for dem or rep, and about 2 million voted elsewhere. Is this democracy where people feel they can't vote smaller parties?

The amount of money spent, $7 billion on elections, all spent on advertising paid for by big business in a large part, in order to do the bidding of big business.

I'd say there is the appearance of democracy, just as you could make out the appearance of democracy in the USSR, but I'd say in both Democracy was/is well and truly DEAD.

The bicameral Congress is a compromise, so yes, it is democratic.

Both sides gerrymander, you don't bitch when districts are created for blacks, so no sense going there.

 

[Roadrunner]

The US is a democratic representative Republic which - at present - is strongly influenced by both its business and populist factions.

So.... this is a polite way of saying democracy is almost dead or totally dead?

We never were, aren't, and never will be a democracy.

That is correct. The Founders hated it, for good reason, you guys in this case.

What are you babbling about?

 

[PaintMyHouse]

It is a constitutional republic.

You are nitpicking and know exactly what i mean.

Nations that have a democratic system of power - electorate - legislature - change of power through civic means by the people and government for the people.

I see how you want to believe it exists.

In the USSR they had voting. You voted at one level, then the people who were voted went to the next level and voted for people who went to the next level and so on.

The US Senate, you vote based on state, not on size of population. Wyoming with 500,000 people has the same say as California with 38 million. 121,000 people voted for Mike Enzi of Wyoming to sit in the Senate. 7.7 million voted for Diane Feinstein in California 2 years previously. The loser in that race got 38 times more votes than the winner in Wyoming.

Is this Democracy?

In the House you have Gerrymandering going on all over the place. One Democrat has had to move house THREE times because every time he moves the Republicans Gerrymander his district and move his house out of his district.
In 2012 the Democrats got 48.9% of the votes compared to 47.7% for the Republicans but had 33 seats less.

Is this Democracy?

For president it's more or less the same.

The worst is, people feel unable to vote for smaller parties. 127 million people vote for dem or rep, and about 2 million voted elsewhere. Is this democracy where people feel they can't vote smaller parties?

The amount of money spent, $7 billion on elections, all spent on advertising paid for by big business in a large part, in order to do the bidding of big business.

I'd say there is the appearance of democracy, just as you could make out the appearance of democracy in the USSR, but I'd say in both Democracy was/is well and truly DEAD.

The bicameral Congress is a compromise, so yes, it is democratic.

Both sides gerrymander, you don't bitch when districts are created for blacks, so no sense going there.

The only fix for that is a grid system or nonpartisan mapping, which is long overdue.

 

[PaintMyHouse]

The US is a democratic representative Republic which - at present - is strongly influenced by both its business and populist factions.

So.... this is a polite way of saying democracy is almost dead or totally dead?

We never were, aren't, and never will be a democracy.

That is correct. The Founders hated it, for good reason, you guys in this case.

What are you babbling about?

I'm not. I'm reminding you why the Founders didn't want a democracy, because they didn't want people like you voting, you always fuck things up.

 

[frigidweirdo]

The bicameral Congress is a compromise, so yes, it is democratic.

Both sides gerrymander, you don't bitch when districts are created for blacks, so no sense going there.

The point is gerrymangering happens. Also, the bicameral Congress is a compromise, but it doesn't exactly lend itself to the voice of the people, does it?
It listens to business and does what business wants and nothing much more.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Right now the American left the progressive are hell bent on taking away the rights of All Americans
The right to work the right to make their own choices for their own lives. My opinion is that no one should be allowed to have that much power over individuals. So stop comparing Stalin to the good guys in America, the left progressives have more in common with Stalin than the right does. Just look at all the murder caused by progressive gun laws.

The right to work? Please explain...

The right to make choices for their own lives? Do you mean like a woman to have the choice to decide what she wants to do with her uterus?

Stalin was a huge believer in Darwinism...survival of the fittest...that is EXACTLY what were hear every day from conservatives in America...

progressive agenda of taxes have killed many jobs in America taking away jobs ( killing a persons right to work) forcing them on the government plantation.

What a pile of horseshit. The progressive tax code on nominal income Obama proposed means if you make $250,001, you pay ONE NICKEL more in taxes. The conservative agenda on taxes has cost this country more than just jobs...the conservative 'borrow and spend' policy has created MASSIVE DEBT.


"The debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."
David Stockman - Director of the Office of Management and Budget for U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

"Grover Norquist has no plan to pay this debt down. His plan says you continue to add to the debt..."
Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.)

I don't care if you think it's a pile of horse shit. it's true. Why should a company stay here and pay out of the ass in taxes when they can go else where and make a profit by not paying a high tax?

Or, paying illiterate unskilled labor an unrealistic minimum wage.

Or those union wages.

 

[elektra]

Stalin, Communism, Socialism, Liberals, Democrats, and the National Socialists German Workers Party (NAZI's).


Yes, the American Socialists, the Democrats are no different than Stalin or other socialists, such as Hitler.

Socialists literally destroy the World, from famine to extreme pollution, Socialism is the disease.

Socialism needs to be eradicated, destroyed, like a weed, like a disease.

Have you got your anger out of your system now?

This, however, is a debate board and not an anger management program.

I figured I would at least put all these different terms for the same kind of people together, it serves a purpose, it identifies those like yourself, who will not discuss the facts, and instead begin with an attack.

So what offends you so much, that Socialists are known throughout history as those who hate and destroy and that the Democrats are very much of the same ilk.

 

[Saigon]

Stalin, Communism, Socialism, Liberals, Democrats, and the National Socialists German Workers Party (NAZI's).


Yes, the American Socialists, the Democrats are no different than Stalin or other socialists, such as Hitler.

Socialists literally destroy the World, from famine to extreme pollution, Socialism is the disease.

Socialism needs to be eradicated, destroyed, like a weed, like a disease.

I understand liberals also killed Luke Skywalker. They must be stopped!

 

[Saigon]

I figured I would at least put all these different terms for the same kind of people together, it serves a purpose, it identifies those like yourself, who will not discuss the facts, and instead begin with an attack.

So what offends you so much, that Socialists are known throughout history as those who hate and destroy and that the Democrats are very much of the same ilk.

What offends me is your level of education.

At the point you cannot tell left from right (and you can't) and cannot tell moderate from extreme, what you end up with is a picture where the world is simply black or white.

Your political views are basically "Everything I don't agree with this is Poisoning the World!"

That is how a five-year-old might think, but most adults can tell the difference between Reagan and Hitler, and between Obama and Stalin. I suggest you ask yourself why you can't see colours.

 

[westwall]

You guys are all funny. Let's take a look at what the Progressives of the era had to say about Hitler and Stalin. As you can see, progressives felt the same about BOTH fascism, and Soviet style socialism...

• H. G. Wells, one of the most influential progressives of the 20th century, said in 1932 that progressives must become “liberal fascists” and “enlightened Nazis.” Regarding totalitarianism, he stated: “I have never been able to escape altogether from its relentless logic.” Calling for a “‘Phoenix Rebirth’ of Liberalism” under the umbrella of “Liberal Fascism,” Wells said: “I am asking for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis.”

• The poet Wallace Stevens pronounced himself “pro-Mussolini personally.”

• The eminent historian Charles Beard wrote of Mussolini’s efforts: “Beyond question, an amazing experiment is being made [in Italy], an experiment in reconciling individualism and socialism.”

• Muckraking journalists almost universally admired Mussolini. Lincoln Steffens, for one, said that Italian fascism made Western democracy, by comparison, look like a system run by “petty persons with petty purposes.” Mussolini, Steffens proclaimed reverently, had been “formed” by God “out of the rib of Italy.”

• McClure’s Magazine founder Samuel McClure, an important figure in the muckraking movement, described Italian fascism as “a great step forward and the first new ideal in government since the founding of the American Republic.”

• After having vistited Italy and interviewed Mussolini in 1926, the American humorist Will Rogers, who was informally dubbed “Ambassador-at-Large of the United States” by the National Press Club, said of the fascist dictator: “I’m pretty high on that bird.” “Dictator form of government is the greatest form of government,” Rogers wrote, “that is, if you have the right dictator.”

• Reporter Ida Tarbell was deeply impressed by Mussolini's attitudes regarding labor, affectionately dubbing him “a despot with a dimple.”

• NAACP co-founder W. E. B. DuBois saw National Socialism as a worthy model for economic organization. The establishment of the Nazi dictatorship in Germany, he wrote, had been “absolutely necessary to get the state in order.” In 1937 DuBois stated: “there is today, in some respects, more democracy in Germany than there has been in years past.”

• FDR adviser Rexford Guy Tugwell said of Italian fascism: “It's the cleanest, neatest, most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen. It makes me envious.”

• New Republic editor George Soule, who avidly supported FDR, noted approvingly that the Roosevelt administration was “trying out the economics of fascism.”

• Playwright George Bernard Shaw hailed Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini as the world’s great “progressive” leaders because they “did things,” unlike the leaders of those “putrefying corpses” called parliamentary democracies.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1223


Progressives generally greeted the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia with great enthusiasm, embracing it as a worthy effort to create a socialist utopia. In the 1920s and 1930s, a host of credulous progressive journalists traveled to Russia to chronicle the the revolution's afterglow, so as to inform Americans about the historic significance of what was transpiring there. According to author Jonah Goldberg: “Most liberals saw the Bolsheviks as a popular and progressive movement.... Nearly the entire liberal elite, including much of FDR's Brain Trust, made the pilgrimage to Moscow to take admiring notes on the Soviet experiment.”

One key contributor to this pro-Bolshevik genre was the communist journalist John Reed, author of Ten Days that Shook the World. Reed dismissed concerns about the Red Terror and the mass murder of non-Bolshevists by praising the killers of “this treacherous gang.” Said Reed: “To the wall with them! I say I have learned one mighty expressive word: ‘raztrellyat’ [sic] (execute by shooting).”

Similarly, the intellectual E.A. Ross excused the Bolsheviks' violent campaign of terror on the theory that they did not kill all that many people. (Estimates of the number of deaths by execution range from 50,000 to 200,000.)

Some journalists, like Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Duranty of The New York Times, engaged in deliberate lies to conceal the harsh realities of post-revolution Soviet life. In 1933, for instance, at the height of the Ukrainian famine (engineered by Stalin) during which millions starved to death, Duranty wrote that “village markets [were] flowing with eggs, fruit, poultry, vegetables, milk and butter.... A child can see this is not famine but abundance.”

A British journalist writing in the progressive periodical New Republic declared that the Bolsheviks “stand for rationalism, for an intelligent system of cultivation, for education, for an active ideal of cooperation and social service.”

Most leaders in the American labor movement – including Sidney Hillman and John L. Lewis – expressed deep admiration for “Soviet pragmatism,” Stalin’s “experiment,” and the “heroism” of the Bolsheviks.

Upon returning from Russia in 1921, the muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens announced: “I've seen the future, and it works.”


http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1222

 

[TemplarKormac]

Does anyone see anything at all positive in left-wing extremism?

No.

As with all extremism, it never works out well for anyone. If it's bad on the right hand, it's bad on the left as well. It's like trying to put out a candle with a fire hose, the more aggressive and extreme approach isn't the wisest one. In the end, all you would do is get everyone wet, when all you had to do was blow the candle out with a mere breath.

 

[TemplarKormac]

The progressive tax code on nominal income Obama proposed means if you make $250,001, you pay ONE NICKEL more in taxes.

Obama has a net worth close to $13 million, but we don't hear one peep out of you. But lets to try to stay on topic.

 

[TemplarKormac]

Stalin, Communist dictator, but a right winger

Mao, Communist dictator, but another darn right winger

Hitler, Fascist dictator and, another darn right winger

Americas Founding fathers favored individual liberty and knowing how those darn right wing dictators were, a Constitutionally limited government.

OK, when can I stop standing on my head?

So was the Declaration of Independence a left or right wing document?

Neither. It was basically a gigantic "SCREW YOU!" to the King of England.

 

[TemplarKormac]

Do you mean like a woman to have the choice to decide what she wants to do with her uterus?

Which has what to do with this thread?

 

[TemplarKormac]

To be quite honest, I can see elements of both parties manipulating Americans. No one party or the other is using government to their own ends. The debate about who is worse than the other is quite pointless. When will people see that this my-team-your-team thing is all a ruse?

 

[frigidweirdo]

Stalin, Communism, Socialism, Liberals, Democrats, and the National Socialists German Workers Party (NAZI's).


Yes, the American Socialists, the Democrats are no different than Stalin or other socialists, such as Hitler.

Socialists literally destroy the World, from famine to extreme pollution, Socialism is the disease.

Socialism needs to be eradicated, destroyed, like a weed, like a disease.

Have you got your anger out of your system now?

This, however, is a debate board and not an anger management program.

I figured I would at least put all these different terms for the same kind of people together, it serves a purpose, it identifies those like yourself, who will not discuss the facts, and instead begin with an attack.

So what offends you so much, that Socialists are known throughout history as those who hate and destroy and that the Democrats are very much of the same ilk.

You think you're using facts huh?

The East Germans were Socialists. They didn't have a famine, the Polish were Socialist, they didn't have a famine, the Hungarians were Socialist, they didn't have a famine. They didn't destroy the world, they didn't do anything.

You don't like Socialism. Nor do I.

However you talk about polluting the world

CO2 emissions per capita. The US is number 12 in the world although 2 of those 11 previous aren't actually countries.

Per capita greenhouse emissions

The US is 7th.

Damn those Socialists the Americans and their pollution.

Also the fact that you keep trying to equate the Nazis with Socialism when the only evidence presented was flimsy at best is incredible.

 

[frigidweirdo]

You guys are all funny. Let's take a look at what the Progressives of the era had to say about Hitler and Stalin. As you can see, progressives felt the same about BOTH fascism, and Soviet style socialism...

• H. G. Wells, one of the most influential progressives of the 20th century, said in 1932 that progressives must become “liberal fascists” and “enlightened Nazis.” Regarding totalitarianism, he stated: “I have never been able to escape altogether from its relentless logic.” Calling for a “‘Phoenix Rebirth’ of Liberalism” under the umbrella of “Liberal Fascism,” Wells said: “I am asking for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis.”

• The poet Wallace Stevens pronounced himself “pro-Mussolini personally.”

• The eminent historian Charles Beard wrote of Mussolini’s efforts: “Beyond question, an amazing experiment is being made [in Italy], an experiment in reconciling individualism and socialism.”

• Muckraking journalists almost universally admired Mussolini. Lincoln Steffens, for one, said that Italian fascism made Western democracy, by comparison, look like a system run by “petty persons with petty purposes.” Mussolini, Steffens proclaimed reverently, had been “formed” by God “out of the rib of Italy.”

• McClure’s Magazine founder Samuel McClure, an important figure in the muckraking movement, described Italian fascism as “a great step forward and the first new ideal in government since the founding of the American Republic.”

• After having vistited Italy and interviewed Mussolini in 1926, the American humorist Will Rogers, who was informally dubbed “Ambassador-at-Large of the United States” by the National Press Club, said of the fascist dictator: “I’m pretty high on that bird.” “Dictator form of government is the greatest form of government,” Rogers wrote, “that is, if you have the right dictator.”

• Reporter Ida Tarbell was deeply impressed by Mussolini's attitudes regarding labor, affectionately dubbing him “a despot with a dimple.”

• NAACP co-founder W. E. B. DuBois saw National Socialism as a worthy model for economic organization. The establishment of the Nazi dictatorship in Germany, he wrote, had been “absolutely necessary to get the state in order.” In 1937 DuBois stated: “there is today, in some respects, more democracy in Germany than there has been in years past.”

• FDR adviser Rexford Guy Tugwell said of Italian fascism: “It's the cleanest, neatest, most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen. It makes me envious.”

• New Republic editor George Soule, who avidly supported FDR, noted approvingly that the Roosevelt administration was “trying out the economics of fascism.”

• Playwright George Bernard Shaw hailed Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini as the world’s great “progressive” leaders because they “did things,” unlike the leaders of those “putrefying corpses” called parliamentary democracies.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1223


Progressives generally greeted the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia with great enthusiasm, embracing it as a worthy effort to create a socialist utopia. In the 1920s and 1930s, a host of credulous progressive journalists traveled to Russia to chronicle the the revolution's afterglow, so as to inform Americans about the historic significance of what was transpiring there. According to author Jonah Goldberg: “Most liberals saw the Bolsheviks as a popular and progressive movement.... Nearly the entire liberal elite, including much of FDR's Brain Trust, made the pilgrimage to Moscow to take admiring notes on the Soviet experiment.”

One key contributor to this pro-Bolshevik genre was the communist journalist John Reed, author of Ten Days that Shook the World. Reed dismissed concerns about the Red Terror and the mass murder of non-Bolshevists by praising the killers of “this treacherous gang.” Said Reed: “To the wall with them! I say I have learned one mighty expressive word: ‘raztrellyat’ [sic] (execute by shooting).”

Similarly, the intellectual E.A. Ross excused the Bolsheviks' violent campaign of terror on the theory that they did not kill all that many people. (Estimates of the number of deaths by execution range from 50,000 to 200,000.)

Some journalists, like Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Duranty of The New York Times, engaged in deliberate lies to conceal the harsh realities of post-revolution Soviet life. In 1933, for instance, at the height of the Ukrainian famine (engineered by Stalin) during which millions starved to death, Duranty wrote that “village markets [were] flowing with eggs, fruit, poultry, vegetables, milk and butter.... A child can see this is not famine but abundance.”

A British journalist writing in the progressive periodical New Republic declared that the Bolsheviks “stand for rationalism, for an intelligent system of cultivation, for education, for an active ideal of cooperation and social service.”

Most leaders in the American labor movement – including Sidney Hillman and John L. Lewis – expressed deep admiration for “Soviet pragmatism,” Stalin’s “experiment,” and the “heroism” of the Bolsheviks.

Upon returning from Russia in 1921, the muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens announced: “I've seen the future, and it works.”


http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1222

What you have to remember about this time, nearly 100 years ago, is that information was on the low side.

Nowadays we have the internet, and still people believe a lot of the rubbish they're told to believe when they could easily go out there and figure things out for themselves, but they don't.

Back in the day information coming out of Russia was probably coming from one or two sources. Manipulation from govts, if it happened would probably have been total. People who wanted to believe back then could easily just believe, there was no real way to disprove anything that was going on or not.

Nobody knew the consequences of extremism. They were probably happy to see the old guard disappear, and would accept anything that came along.

This sort of thing still happens today. UKIP in the UK's main policy is to not have any policies and just criticise the elite. Loads of people talk about how they're such a great party, but couldn't name anything they have done. They're just happy they aren't full of fraudsters and liars (only they are, but people are willing to ignore this) but they see UKIP as a way of getting rid of the main two or three parties and changing things.

There are still people who won't hear a bad word against the USSR or Stalin. I've met some of them, some in Russia, some elsewhere. Delusion isn't just for Communists though, there are plenty of people, probably more than half of all people, who are completely deluded about their politics.

Democracy runs with these people.

 

[Moonglow]

Stalin and the USSR was loved by the Koch family.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Stalin and the USSR was loved by the Koch family.

The US supported Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussain, Osama bin Laden among many of the dictators and bad people in the world.