OK, I probably shouldn't get involved in this, especially so late in this, but...
Free healthcare and education isn't socialist.
Yes it is, it's not privately run but controlled by the state nor do taxes mean people pay proportionally to what they use. This is at the very least nationalism with a tendency towards socialism rather than free-market capitalism.
Here we have the problem of where arbitrarily defined words meets negative connotations, brought about by a Pavlovian propoganda campaign. (To Shades's credit, he was apparently using "Socialism" in a neutral connotation, but in America, "Socialism", and "Europe" are the words by which Right-wing pundits slander virtually anything they oppose, no matter how similar to the things they support.)
Think about this one carefully: If taxpayer-funded public education is "Socialism", then the only nations in the world that AREN'T Socialist are the utterly failed states, like Somalia, where the whole nation has essentially devolved down to "every family for themselves". At such a point, if Socialism has any meaning leftover whatsoever, it could only be considered a positive thing.
As for the "political philosophy" (using that term as loosely as possible) of Nazis, it's actually much easier to find how a Nazi would react to a given social problem than most people think: The Neo-Nazi movement still exists in America and Europe. In spite of an effort on the part of Right-Wing pundits to try to portray Hitler as a Leftist because it is more convenient for them to paint someone who is synonymous with "evil" as having all the same views as those who are their own political opponents, the Neo-Nazis (who are quite often brothers-in-arms with the KKK in the US) are quite clearly a part of the furthest fringes of the Right. Their political philosophy is best described in terms of a Pavlovian response to conditioned keywords than it is to a set of given principles. Militarism, Religion and/or Mysticism and/or some other Cult of Personality upon which one can swear total allegiance, Traditionalism, and one's own race are the common "happy" connotation words, while other races being mobilized and more powerful politically, a particular pet "evil" form of government or religion or otherwise foreign cultural element, and change or anything that makes people fear for a lack of control are the catchphrases that bring about the "grrrrrrr" response.
While there is nothing expressly written into the political philosophy of Nazism that actually says it must oppose Communism, the Nazi Party that Hitler rose to control formed as a fearful reaction against a growing tide of Communism (due to the essential failure of , which was taking root among some of the Bohemian and labor-related aspects of Germany, and was feared to be a Foreign, Russian Plot to take over Their Country!
Before Hitler went after the Jews, he first destroyed the labor unions and built the concentration camps to put the Communists (and any other political dissenters) in. (He also went after the gays and the insane before he went after the Jews...)
Going back to the Neo-Nazis of the current day, they actually quite love the military, and many of the Neo-Nazi or KKK-related (the KKK is currently fractured into dozens of groups all claiming to be the "real" KKK) groups deliberately fashion themselves upon military life, to the point of wearing army fatigues at all times, and many of them being former enlisted men. They love authority. They just hate the authorities. Like I said, it's not much of a political philosohpy.
As for
Bungler... no.
In this, I am reminded of Michael Chriton's "Rising Sun", in the part where the
Sensei character (who is the authorial sockpuppet demonstrating the "wise" reasons to be mistrustful of the Japanese corporate juggernaught of the 80's) denounces the simply blatantly racist cop by saying "There are many good reasons not to like the Japanese. He does not know any of them." (This of course being a way for the author to attempt to differentiate the views he was expressing against the Japanese corporate culture and simple racism. YMMV.)
When you base your arguments upon pretty obviously untrue conspiracy theories, you are wrong, even if, by accident, you happen to be right. Even if a broken clock is right twice a day, that doesn't mean the clock isn't still broken when it's right.
It is also worth keeping in mind that many of the evils that Democracies have produced were produced because people allowed the extremists to hold reality-warping beliefs without saying anything, because they believed that it could help their own side of the argument. (And to that extent, Devek, you aren't helping the argument any by leaping to Glenn Beck several posts in a row. Fighting every political argument like a shouting match against a Beckkerhead only makes you opposed to them, it doesn't make you right.)
Also,
The only downside is that we have too many rights, some rights don't make sense when it comes to what is best for the country and all who live in it. For example, in China you can't flat out lie about the government or tell people to do things in the name of god lol. I think that is awesome.
I think you need to revist your Social Studies textbooks from Elementary school, and figure out what "rights" are and why they are there.
How can you decry the way in which Right-Wing pundits use propoganda or lie about the government, and then say that we should adopt a system by which we oppress those who "lie about government"? Who gets to determine what's a lie or not? Whoever happens to be in power at the moment? So whoever happens to have power at the moment gets to just declare everyone else dissenters, and haul them off to the gulags?
This is what rights are all about: Some things are just more powerful than Democracy. If there were a democratic vote upon the matter, Blacks would never have been given civil rights in the 60's. Roughly 90% of the military was opposed to desegragation of the military when Truman gave his Executive Order to do it anyway.
And yes, this means that we have to allow people to say stupid, crazy shit, because stupid, crazy people have rights, too, and that is a small price to pay for the assurance that our own rights will still exist whenever the pendulum of political popularity swings in the other side's favor. (Not that we can't berate and mock them for their stupid, crazy rants.)
Maybe you are opposing the worst of the Right-Wing conspiracy nuts, but by adopting many of the same logical fallacies and fully emotional knee-jerk reactions that the worst of the right adopts, you only make yourself similarly wrong even if you take dissimilar views, and also make a very poor representative of both Liberalism and of America in general to those posters abroad.
While Hitler is associated with extreme right and Stalin with extreme left, its true that practical differences was cosmetic. Both systems was totalitarian and evil.
There are actually plenty of differences that play out more at a "ways they dealt with Cognitive Dissonance" level, but I think the best way to illustrate this is with models of political axis differentiating the scale of progressive/conservative with the scale of libertarian/totalitarian, and noting that both were extreme totalitarianists to the point that it was the most salient aspect of their governance, even if they were different in terms of left/right.
The primary goal of each major party is only to dethrone the other. Only a minority of politicians stand for ideals, and most of them fade into obscurity. The whole shabang is more of "Red Team vs. Blue Team" or "Elephants vs. Donkeys" than politics. It's not about what you think is best for the country, it's about whether you get reelected or not.
While it is indeed easy to become disgusted with such a thing, there is still the problem of making a false equivalency too soon.
To illustrate this, most recently, a jobs bill was going to be passed by Congress that would enable tax breaks and lending for small businesses to help the economy. It was something that not only enjoyed bipartisan support, the co-author of the bill was Olimpia Snowe, Maine Republican famous for occasionally not voting in lockstep conformity with every single other Republican. It was then declared, however, by Mitch McConnel, that this jobs bill would be something that Democrats could campaign on, especially since it could potentially help the economy recover. As such, all Republicans unanimously voted against it, with Snowe (who helped write the bill) claiming that "Democrats would not let enough amendments be passed by Republicans"... when all of these amendments were completely unrelated bills designed simply to stall the process.
(News articles related, for the purposes of citation:
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=conservatives+fillibuster+30+billion+loan+small+businesses&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 (This is a determinedly "centrist" account, by which it means they try to show both sides in a falsely equal bad light no matter what.)
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/07/say-what-republicans-filibuster-tax-cutting-jobs-bill.php (An obviously liberal-leaning report)
http://www.redstate.com/moe_lane/2010/06/25/gop-shuts-down-deficit-increasing-jobs-bill/ (And just so it can't be said that only one side of the argument is being made, a right-wing blog, as well.)
Yes, both parties engage in politics, (obviously), but to simply say both sides are equally corrupt without investigating that claim, and give up and expect corruption, rather than punish it, is capitulating in your duties as a citizen. Even worse, it makes it a viable strategy to purposefully depress voter turnout because those people more intent on gaming the system than helping the nation know that the ideologically-driven single-issue voters will always vote and always vote for the same party, no matter what, and that if all other voters stop voting, they can rule the nation even if their coalition consists of only 12% of the public.
If communism was easy to code, it'd be easy to implement in real life. Since, you know..."planned economy" really does have the "plan" (or "programme", as in "programming", as in "coding", as in "code") as its central piece.
Not really. You can program a computer AI to utterly ignore all sense of rational self-interest or even self-preservation. (Heck, DF does quite a good job of that with it's simulated "burning socks are EXTRA valuable!" code.) Real-life Communism fails because, in a system where there is essentially no reward for working harder, and no real fear of losing one's job if one slacks, there is no reason not to do just the most minimum effort it takes to keep one's job. In computer simulation land, every little drone works its hardest at all times for essentially no hope of any fair proportionate reward because that's what it's programmed to do.
A program can model something that could never work in real life very, very easily, because you can simply change all the laws of physics or rationality whenever you need to in order to force the model to work.
Not to start a huge argument here, but if capitalism is the "best" system imaginable and communism/socialism is of the devil or however you want to put it... then why is it that pretty much all through Europe and North America, the so-called advanced countries, a significant amount of the populace is living among inhumane circumstances, barely able to earn enough to support themselves and their families? Why is it that the streets are full of the homeless and that people resort to loans with ridiculously high rates in a desperate attempt to go on living?
OOOH! OOH! I KNOW THIS ONE!
It's because, in the example of the homeless (at least, for the US), most homeless people are the veterans of wars who have completely untreated Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that renders them unwilling, not unable to find steady jobs or even desire to participate in society in any way, due to political wrangling and the whims of an electorate that enjoy thinking of themselves as "Supporting The Troops" when it comes to wasting trillions of dollars on Osprey planes that never work, but are too stingy to actually give the veterans of wars the medical attention they need.
Or, more broadly, it's because Democracy is a flawed system in that, in order to become a perfect system, it would require that at least a majority of the voting public be willing to suffer short-term loses for long-term gains, to respect the rights even of unpopular minorities because it is moral and just rather than going with their emotional reactions of disgust and revulsion, and to be educated and well-informed enough to understand the issues of the day, when many bills are so complex and labarynthine that even most Congresspeople in the current system don't even understand the bills they are voting on if it didn't come from their own comittee.
By the way, it might be interesting to note that while the basis of capitalism is a free market, prices driven purely by supply and demand, this has actually been upset recently quite a few times. Just think of the bailout of the auto industry in the USA (among others); that's something pure capitalism would not allow and is actually a step towards a more planned economy. In fact, a lot of areas of life are driven by socialist ideals; take for example the fact that healthcare is free or highly supported by the state, making it available to almost everyone, rather than just the rich. CT scans are not cheap, if sick people had to pay for all of that (as they should in a pure capitalism), I imagine life expectancy would be a lot lower.
Actually, you might want to take some of the Supply-Siders' own handiwork, as well. The American market for Flood Insurance, for example, is sold by private insurance companies that keep all the profit they make by selling insurance, but TAXPAYERS pay the actual claims upon those insurance policies. This is because flood insurance simply isn't profitable if you want to run it as a business, but at the same time, the Supply-Sider's get upset if you allow a "Government Takeover" of a service that is necessary for the public good, but will allow Government to actually run something akin to a business. As such, we have the "best" of both worlds - massive profits for the rich friends of the Supply-Siders, and a massive government money sinkhole that helps prove that "Government can't do anything right" because they purposefully stack the deck against it, helping them politically as well.
IS IT NOT NIFTY?
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Topic: Is dwarf fortress communist? (Read 26472 times)