The Communist Party in Russia has its knickers in a collective twist over the new Indiana Jones film, where the Reds are the baddies.Given their part in the committing the worst campaigns of mass murder in history while enslaving a sixth of the world's population and bringing us all to the brink of nuclear annihilation to further their own sick ends of universal conquest, one would think the heirs of Marx and Lenin would just thank whatever lack of deity they worship that they aren't being hounded the way the Nazis were and just exit history quietly.
10 comments:
For a second, I though you were "dissing" the Russians there, Dave. Fine, communists are fair game, but the Russkies are alright.
And how can You prove it ? Have they ever killed a single American or Englishman during peacetime ?
The only kill record that I know of is that of an astonishing number of Nazis so that You would have less problems bombing Nazi factories.
Churchill is the one that first mentioned 'slaughtering' and 'wrong pig' some year or two after ww2.
Don't try to pull off the humiliation of Soviets by making them feel guilty.
...But in no way associate what I said with the above comment. Nazis are evil, probably communists also evil.
(Although I'm less informed about the Communist side of things, so I'm less sure about things there. And of course Socialism =/= Communism and isn't evil, I think.)
It's a shame to read a comment like that second one there, particularly on Memorial Day.
But that's what it was all about, all those men and women died on the field of battle so you could have the right and freedom to say something like that, distasteful to those that appreciate freedom and scorn totalitarianism as it may be.
Indeed! I'm glad I live in a society where people have the right to say things that little or no people agree with (especially if no-one agrees with the thing). Any other way would result in a worse-off society, is what I think. (Although it must always go hand in hand with the right to think that those conservative fundie wingnuts/pinko lefty moonbats are stupid idiots. This is a Good Thing*)
Anyway, it's memorial day? Must be an American thing, haven't heard anything about it over here in Britain.
*In my opinion, both extremes are dumb.
It's me again. As for the cold war, I consider the Soviet union equally responsible as the NATO countries. There were two sides competing, and one of them prevailed.
If You are hurt by the fact that I am writing this on Memorial Day, I apologise if it is possible.
The reason why I wrote all this is that I got slightly irritated by Mr. Szondy exaggerating Soviet deeds. All I can say is that American companies invading other countries can throughly spoil one's life in different ways. You shouldn't consider Yourselves angels of mercy (if You guys are from the USA). Destroyers would be more appropriate.
I was born in the USSR and grew up in the USA. You will not see me waving any red flags, just as I think that Che shirts are a clueless-American thing to wear, not a Cuban-American one.
The USSR and USA avoided direct military confrontation during the Cold War, but had plenty of indirect contact. All the while, each was making plans for the big apocalyptic war that would certainly break out as soon as one side or the other fell behind sufficiently in military technology. As it happened, the USSR collapsed economically, so fortunately, this war never took place.
Yes, each side maneuvered around the other, and each side fought its proxies against those of the other. Each side did morally ambiguous things (one, I would say in spite of its principles, the other because of them). Was one side more or less evil than the other? I think that the answer is, if and only if there is such a thing as absolute good or evil.
None of you America-is-just-as-bad or USSR-was-great types would have wanted to live under Stalin, I think. None of you would enjoy participating in a Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution. Wear your Che shirts if you like, especially if you live in a country where you can do this, but do not expect anything more than an eye-roll (if you're young) or contempt (if you're older than undergrads) from me.
wunderbear: I'm with you, there's no good in extremism on either swing of the pendulum.
Setting one's default stance on freedom rather than oppression somehow gets you tagged as right wing but I don't believe it. It's just common sense to realize that nothing can be harmed through discussion and free expression of ideas and concepts.
Rather than left and right, it has always seemed to me that there are people that are fine being told what to do and those that prefer to be left alone and to leave others alone. I'm in the latter camp.
Well, Neil, I tend to be fairly varied in my ideas. Some lean to the left, some to the right; I think that evidence for Anthropological Global Warming is there, and that there's a substantial chance of us having a major effect; I don't agree with the die-hard greenies, however, in placing extreme restrictions on our activities. That's just an example, though, not trying to introduce an argument about that.
Similarly, I oppose a lot of the proposals of our current "leading" party (New Labour, the bunch of idiots); however, if it came to a choice between them and the far-right BNP (whose racism and bigoted small-mindedness is almost comical, if they weren't serious), I would probably vote Labour.
Still. That's just me. I agree with your principal of "leave alone and leave others alone"; that's actually quite an effective philosophy, and I wish a party was out there that followed it.
Wunderbear: Supposedly we have just such a party here; the Libertarians. Sadly they get so embroiled in purity of party line that they never make any progress.
I'd like to form a Social Freeist party, it allows government to blow money on anything they want as long as they only get the funds from consumption taxes.
Services would be well funded, but the people could reign in the spending of government with their own buying habits and abilities.
And I would say I'm like you, I don't do a complete right or left, I take it an issue at a time.
They used to call it common sense! LOL
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