43 replies to this topic

[Big_T]

Hell, last century, 80 million or so people died at the feet of one governing philosophy, one which is still prevalent today.

You mean government? 'Politicians' more specifically.

[Big_Willie_Styles]

You mean government? 'Politicians' more specifically.

(Communism as a governing philosophy.)

[Big_T]

(Communism as a governing philosophy.)

Most first-world-countries have "republic - aristocratic" governments, that are 'marketed' as democracies. They are not traditional democracies.

Similar to how dictatorships are classed as democratic republics. Eg, DPRK (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea) - North Korea, or, USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) - Russia 1922 - 1991, etc.

 

If you're referring to the Holocaust / s and other war related deaths, WWI and WWII + Vietnam + Russian, African and other civil wars, cold war, etc, as being at the hands of communism (resulting in those 80 million deaths), that's pretty correct 

Quote: What I just wrote ^^

 

If I may ...

Adolf Hitler's dictatorial power came about and was basically assured by 'The Enabling Act of 1933'. It gave Hitler (who was a chancellor, and not Germany's leader/president) authority to enact these powers without legal obligation (referendum, parliament, or court order). This Act, although voted in (which sounds good for my argument), was done so at the hands of Nazi troops threats to political parties. Only one party voted against it. Nazi's, we're a political party, the NSDAP.

 

Basically I'm just trying to underline the fact that most governments leading party (and it's opposing party) are pretty much communist, in the way of "doing what they want to get what they want .... but making it look like they're only doing what the people want". Everything from political propaganda, bullshit campaign lies, to just passing laws without consulting the people it affects.

 

I couldn't remember all of this stuff so had to wiki a couple things haha. Bed time.

[Big_Willie_Styles]

Yeah, direct democracy has problems.  John Locke solved most of those with the idea that the Founders/Framers eventually put into place:  a constitutional republic.

 

Communism as a governing philosophy, much like socialism, is dependent on contradictions that tend to lead to authoritarianism.  (Authoritarianism on a mass scale is generally colloquially known as fascism.)

 

The 80 million dead was under, mostly, Stalin and Mao.  But you can also throw in Che, Castro, Pol Pot, and a few others.

[Calvary]

There has been no country in the last two thousand years that has governed through communism. It's an oxymoron in itself.

 

Social and economic equality, as well as shared ownership isn't possible on a large scale in human society under any of the international conditions we have experienced as a race since we moved out of caves and into cities.

 

I don't even know why I bother at this point, because it's exhausting, but every nation is capable of inherently nasty things. The British diverted food imports away from India in its worst famine under the British Raj, the Chinese government under Mao killed off about 60,000,000 people. The Americans systematically upset almost every central and South American democratically elected government to preserve the price of bananas. Japan engaged in a fell swoop across continental Asia setting up prefectures that pushed the existing populace into a secondary class that constituted the majority of the ruled.

 

This isn't, however, a topic to get a fucking hard-on about the pros and cons of democracy vs communism or to try desperately to present your vast, unending and all encompassing, perfect knowledge of economics.

 

It's a thread discussing a heinous and distressing war-crime. To use it as leverage to conduct an argument is a fucking insult to the thousands who died.

[Big_Willie_Styles]

Several try and when they do, mass death through political prisoners, executions, torture, rape chambers, and famine seems to follow.  Basic liberties Americans take for granted are curtailed.  Freedom of the press is a wet fart.  Freedom of speech is laughable.  Freedom of religion is a joke.  (And that's just the First Amendment!)

 

Because property rights are a thing, Gol~.  Community ownership of something vs. individual ownership.  Individualism wins.  Our general over-riding sense of self-interest means true altruism does not really exist.  (Hell, an intro to psychology course taught me that the first time.  Very enlightening stuff, honestly.)

 

Yes, but categorically, some are worse than others.  It's the ones that don't want to figure out what is worse or better, the moral relativism folks, that bother me.  Learned a lot in my intro to sociology course about them.  Moral relativism is the opposite of exceptionalism.  I am an American exceptionalist.

 

The pros and cons of something is important.  For all its warts, America is still better due to our liberties structure.  We have the best foundation of rights.

 

This forum gets off-topic all the time.  Exempting some topics from that common behavior and then making an appeal to emotion as the argument in favor of such an exemption is an insult to logic.

[Bowsette]

We could also talk about the fact that political/religious topics tend to get heated and angry, hence why they get shut down so people can cool off and stop waving their e-cocks about the place.

 

So I might need to do that.

[Big_Willie_Styles]

We could also talk about the fact that political/religious topics tend to get heated and angry, hence why they get shut down so people can cool off and stop waving their e-cocks about the place.

 

So I might need to do that.

I know.  Because everybody's politics don't dovetail with everyone else's.

 

But I love political discussion.  It flexes the philosophical brain muscles in my mind labyrinth.

[Bowsette]

Even so, tone it down a little. It may well be interesting to you, but I imagine most people who'd open this thread are looking for posts to do with the titular massacre, as opposed to the finer points of democracy versus communism.

[Big_Willie_Styles]

Even so, tone it down a little. It may well be interesting to you, but I imagine most people who'd open this thread are looking for posts to do with the titular massacre, as opposed to the finer points of democracy versus communism.

The real discussion I was trying to have is John Locke + Adam Smith vs. Karl Marx + Max Weber, but that's more complicated than people probably want it.  Which is why I didn't point those four out, except John Locke.  He's awesome like that.

[Big_T]

I want to input ... but at the same time I want to watch this thread unfold in it's off-topic madness.

This has been so entertaining.

Honestly, I want to stop it, but I won't.  (not that I could but whatever)

[Big_Willie_Styles]

I want to input ... but at the same time I want to watch this thread unfold in it's off-topic madness.

This has been so entertaining.

Honestly, I want to stop it, but I won't.  (not that I could but whatever)

It's what I do.  My best friend in college and I would have hours-long philosophical discussions that ping-ponged from topic to topic like it weren't no thang.

[Calvary]

That's so whacky and unusual.

[Big_Willie_Styles]

That's so whacky and unusual.

Considering I went to one of the most highly ranked party schools in the country, it actually is.

 

We got drunk on knowledge, not booze.  And occasionally booze.

[Calvary]

The ill-placed pretentiousness continues.

[Big_T]

I just like getting drunk on booze.

Knowledge is good stuff, of course.

It's nice to take a break every so often, providing that priorities etc are sorted.

[Mister Sympa]

I'm gonna be an arse here but it's a bit of a pet peeve. It's Nanjing. Nanking is what it was called before the Pinyin reform. I.e. by colonials. 

 

Perhaps that's why that guy on the DotA table wrote his name as NanJing.

For the record, I actually debated which to use for this topic. So I was aware, I just wasn't certain which to choose.

[Big_Willie_Styles]

The ill-placed pretentiousness continues.

It's like you want me to hate you.  I won't, obviously, because you're not James Cameron's Avatar, but you can stop with the personal insults.

[Calvary]

It's an observation.

[Big_Willie_Styles]

It's an observation.

I'm a fairly happy-go-lucky person. But personal insults set me off. That was a personal insult. Please avoid them in the future.

 

Attacking the messenger and not the message itself is generally bad form.