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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 87 responses total. |
gelinas
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response 25 of 87:
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Jul 16 05:45 UTC 2003 |
Except that "Communist" and "Russian" and "Soviet" and "Enemy of the United
States" were all seen as pretty much the same thing from the 1940s on.
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bru
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response 26 of 87:
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Jul 16 13:37 UTC 2003 |
There is a communist party in the United States. If you are a US citizen,
you can join in their political process.
That does not mean we have to let Communists from other countries come in and
attempt to overthrow our government.
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gull
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response 27 of 87:
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Jul 16 13:52 UTC 2003 |
So the goal is to prevent people with "undesirable" opinions from
becoming voters?
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janc
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response 28 of 87:
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Jul 16 14:55 UTC 2003 |
How fragile is our government anyway? How many dedicated communists would
we have to let in before our way of government was in danger of being
overthrown?
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bru
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response 29 of 87:
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Jul 16 16:15 UTC 2003 |
I don't know? How many mexicans is it going to take to turn the southwest
into a mexican state?
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other
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response 30 of 87:
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Jul 16 16:59 UTC 2003 |
re #28: It isn't fragile, but it is highly malleable. The threat is not
overthrow, but mutation. Those in power have recognized this and acted
upon the knowledge by both instituting their own program of reshaping and
creating barriers to the implementation of anyone else's plans emplying
the same methodology to differing ends.
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sj2
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response 31 of 87:
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Jul 16 18:32 UTC 2003 |
Reminds me of "Children of the Revolution". A bunch of fanatics can
ooverthrow the US governemnt?? Heh, tell me more about it.
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jmsaul
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response 32 of 87:
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Jul 16 22:55 UTC 2003 |
Re #26: How about letting them come here and become good capitalists, which
is what they actually want to do?
Re #29: I've never been tempted to call you a racist before, but I am now.
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janc
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response 33 of 87:
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Jul 17 03:50 UTC 2003 |
Jeez. We managed to absorb the Irish, how hard can Communists and Mexicans
be?
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russ
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response 34 of 87:
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Jul 17 11:57 UTC 2003 |
After the Soviet Union imploded and its various archives were
opened to researchers it was found that American communists were
indeed being used to advance Soviet policy, including attempts to
undermine and damage the USA. You can consider the starvation of
a few million kulaks to be an "internal matter", but it appears
that the folks who called US communists traitors were hardly wrong.
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janc
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response 35 of 87:
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Jul 17 13:21 UTC 2003 |
The United States paid Russians to do stuff too. The fact that some members
of the American Communist Party were in the pay of the Soviets doesn't mean
all were. And they weren't astonishingly effective either, were they?
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gull
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response 36 of 87:
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Jul 17 13:40 UTC 2003 |
This is just part of the right's current attempt to brainwash us all
into thinking McCarthy was a good guy and his tactics were justified.
Ann Coulter has nothing but praise for the guy.
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tod
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response 37 of 87:
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Jul 17 17:38 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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twenex
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response 38 of 87:
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Jul 17 21:44 UTC 2003 |
McCarthy a good guy? His tactics justified? Ha! Next they'll be trying to
convince us that there is a god, that the free market is a panacaea, and that
the "D" in "WMD" stands for "Destruction", not "Disappearance"!
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twenex
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response 39 of 87:
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Jul 17 21:46 UTC 2003 |
Hang on a minute...
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tod
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response 40 of 87:
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Jul 17 21:47 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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jmsaul
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response 41 of 87:
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Jul 17 22:22 UTC 2003 |
Re #34: They were if they generalized it to all Communists.
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bru
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response 42 of 87:
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Jul 18 01:49 UTC 2003 |
Sorry Joe. Came from reading a report about a woman who encourages mexicans
to come for the sole purpose of makeing the southwest a mexican state. It
is her agenda, I don't think most mexicans even know who or what she is or
wants.
But there is a group interested in just that.
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russ
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response 43 of 87:
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Jul 18 02:01 UTC 2003 |
Re #35: Effective or not doesn't matter; mens rea is the crime.
Re #41: The people who innocently went along were appropriately dubbed
"useful idiots" by the Soviet leadership.
Re #36: Ahem. Consider the possibility that *both* McCarthy and the
American Communist Party were enemies of the Constitution and the
people of the USA. Just because they were enemies does not mean that
one was wrong and the other was right; McCarthy's use of the issue
for witch-hunts and self-aggrandizement would have made him an enemy
of liberty no matter what cause he got behind. For other examples of
such opponents, see the Spanish civil war and Nazi Germany vs. USSR.
(I remember issues of "Soviet Life" floating around the Michigan
Union. I suppose that someone could have been misled up to the
40's, but by 1970 anyone who could ignore "The Gulag Archipelago"
and the extensive documentation of Soviet human-rights crimes
could not possibly have any brain cells functioning.)
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jmsaul
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response 44 of 87:
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Jul 18 03:52 UTC 2003 |
Re #42: She's a fringe nut. Her views shouldn't be generalized. Most
Mexicans who come here do it explicitly because we *aren't* a
Mexican state. Why would they want to fuck that up?
Re #43: Who cares what the Soviet leadership called them? You didn't have
to be a traitor to have been a member of the Communist Party in the
30s. Some people joined because they hated Fascism (they later got
nailed for hating Fascism before it was official US policy to do so;
"premature Anti-Fascists," McCarthy's boys called them). Others
joined because it seemed interesting at the time, and drifted away
later.
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janc
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response 45 of 87:
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Jul 18 04:45 UTC 2003 |
It's important to remember that there are (or were) two Communisms. The
theoretical one that Marx proposed has never been implemented on a larger
scale than a commune. It may be impossible to do so, though I wouldn't
consider that a proven point. Nobody has really made an honest attempt.
This Communism is not in any obvious way incompatible with the US
Constitution, as the constitution does not declare a right to private
ownership of capital. It is more notably an economic system than a political
system. It would not be "unconstitutional". It might well be "unworkable".
This is certainly what all the 1930's communists were talking about. They
didn't want to overthrow the government, just Standard Oil.
The Soviet Union was a totalitarian state with a partially communist
economic system. This combination is what tends to come to mind when
talking about communisism. Creating such a thing, with it's limitations
on free speech and such would certainly be unconstitutional. I'd be
surprised if this was what was being officially advocated by the American
Communist Party at any point in history.
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jmsaul
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response 46 of 87:
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Jul 18 12:27 UTC 2003 |
Good point.
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gull
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response 47 of 87:
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Jul 18 13:50 UTC 2003 |
Re #42: At this point, I think I'd be in favor of giving them Texas
back. I think the Texans would be happier as part of Mexico anyway;
they'd finally have the freedom from environmental laws that they've
wanted for so long. ;>
Re #43: My opinion is that McCarthy did far more damage than the Commies
were ever likely to accomplish. Communism is a philosophy with some
dedicated followers but with very little appeal to the average American.
I don't see that communists are any more likely to influence our
government than anarchists are, and no one considers the anarchists a
serious threat.
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other
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response 48 of 87:
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Jul 18 15:37 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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other
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response 49 of 87:
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Jul 18 15:39 UTC 2003 |
It is probably fair to say that, more than those of any other individual
person, McCarthy's efforts brought about the rebellious culture embodied
by the middle to late 1960's.
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