What has America become?

(Then I sleep. I promise.)

I'm not continuing here, as it seems that my presence has dragged the conversation off of its course and into the realm of...

Well, I'd rather not go _there_, so I'm not going to go ^ there.

I hope that Gilthalion will have better luck explaining things. Perhaps he won't have to resort to pointing out the mistakes in juntel's reversal that I would have had to to continue my argument.

I had a conversation with a friend four or five days ago. It was right after I had gotten into a political discussion (about Communism, no less) with a few other friends, when I noticed that he wasn't joining in like he usually did.

After the discussion ended, I eventually asked him why he didn't get involved...

Basically, he had grown tired of it all. He had "been down that road before".

And tiredness sums up my feelings right now.

So, good night. Shall I return? I don't know.

Up to your same old tricks, hey JL?

That doesn't work in real life, you know...

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

(*Bold text emphasised by me.)


Looks like the same old ends-justifies-the-means argument that despotic demogogues have used through the centuries, dressed up in justifications of economic equality.

The Communist believer understands that despotism is the only means to reach the ends he desires, and has never flinched to use them. So much so, that Twentieth Century Communism has seen the slaughter and starvation of many more millions of people than all other beliefs combined throughout history.

Any system of beliefs whose implementation necessitates despotism is, in my opinion, evil.

Communism is not simply a set of economic principles. It is the utter domination of the People by the Ruling Class by despotic means, for Communism cannot exist otherwise, as Marx himself admits in the direct quotes of his own Manifesto.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie , to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

(*bold emphasis redone by me, where I though they should be)


"Looks like the same old ends-justifies-the-means argument that despotic demogogues have used through the centuries, dressed up in justifications of economic equality."

Trying to replace despotism with despotism... The Communists may have been wrong to think that, of course.
They thought their way was the lesser of two evils...
But then there are other pitiful demagogues who think the Communist way was the only evil...

I think that neither is evil... This use of the word "evil" is one of those pitiful demagogic way of talking about things.


"that Twentieth Century Communism has seen the slaughter and starvation of many more millions of people than all other beliefs combined throughout history"

Numbers? Numbers should be the measure of how bad a system should be?
Ridiculous, since the 20th century is one of the most populated century of all...
The burnt, flayed, tortured, dismembered women and men by the different churches, should be no less despised actions than any Stalin of the world.

But each ideology, wheter it be christianity, and other religions, and the ones from those who inspired communism ideals and Communism, have at hearth the desire to liberate the slave from an oppressor.
Too bad that the political representations of all these ideologies have been flawed by human greed, human violence, human corruption. And not one of them has been more than the other: they just have been. Human nature, one could argue.


"Any system of beliefs whose implementation necessitates despotism is, in my opinion, evil"

In a state of deep emergency, the US and Canadian government can call upon some "War Measure Act" (don't know the name in US) that will effectively put the government in a despotic role. That isn't evil; it can be out of necessity.
The Communist revolutionaries did believe that to crush the ways of the present despotism in Russia, they had to begin with despotic measures themselves.
Is this wrong? Maybe, probably; I do think it's wrong myself.
But, is it evil? I don't think so. It was a belief that arose under circumstances that made them believe it was necessary, and maybe it was the only way at that time (I don't think so, but then I wasn't in tsarist Russia myself, was I?!)

Using the word "evil" is just another demagogue way of demonizing an opposite point of view, to polarize a debate, so that if someone happens to agree with that opposite view, he/she is immediately put in the "evil" camp, the "evil" side.



"Communism is (...) the utter domination of the People by the Ruling Class by despotic means."

Er... but as you quoted above, the Rulling Class that was talked about in the manifesto is the proletariat.

Proletariat
1.working class: the class of wage-earning workers in society

2.class of industrial wage-earners: in Marxist theory, the class of industrial workers whose only asset is the labor they sell to an employer

So it's domination of the People, by the People?
Where did I hear that?


So, again, I think that Communism is a wrong choice for our societies. The right to private property for example is a fundamental of human existence.
But branding it "evil"???
By branding it "evil", in the present or the past, demagogues who are for a profound inequality between people of different social classes try to force others to avoid altogether to go see if there could be any bits and pieces of good ideas in socialism, communism, or other ideologies.
It's not because an ideology is wrong and/or has failed that it is altogether wrong. These ideologies were trying to right a wrong, a real wrong, that existed in its times.

Keep your mind open.
Keep your mind off superstitions.
But never stop dreaming...

Good & Evil are real. I will not debate that. This is self-evident and it is sophistry or worse to deny it.

Communism declares itself evil with it's own words, as I demonstrated. It declares itself evil with its history. I am continually amazed at how people think it is somehow an Olympian measure of fair-mindedness to refuse to recognize this. That's not being openminded. It's just plain folly.

Communism is not merely WRONG. It is not simply a mistake or an incorrect philosophy. It is indeed, eye-wide-open evil. It contemplates Despostism and justifies it as the means to a Workers' Paradise.

The War Powers of otherwise Democratic nations & the Despotism advocated (and practiced) by Communists are NOT morally equivilant. (See first statement.) It is repugnant for you to suggest it.

Likewise, to suggest moral equivilancy between Christianity and Communism, leaves me speechless. The argument is morally bankrupt and based upon the unjust verdict of the very atheistic revisionism that Communism has wrought in the pliant minds of the Left.

juntel, you have used precisely the arguments the Left has used since the Bolshevic Revolution to minimize the horror and evil that Communism has predictably invoked. While claiming an "open mind," you speak against policies that recognize and deal with an obviously evil worldview, minimizing its wickedness as simply being "wrong," and pigeonholing those who would stand against its depradations as demogogues.

Ronald Reagan was vilified as a demogogue for calling the USSR "The Evil Empire."

I guess I'm in good company.

What is clearly repugnant is your continual demonization of anything that is not of your opinion.

Equally repugnant is your continual paranoid and delusional attitude, spread over oh! so many threads.

You do not demonstrate: you impose.

You are not only in the company of Reagan, but also of McCarthy and the like.

You still live in a Cold War Era in your mind.

And that, without doubt, is pitifull.

OK, let's not forget that everyone here has a right/reason to post their own views, whether they be mainstream, "a lot of propaganda," or "paranoid & delusional."

as for communism being evil - expect my post on this when i'm less tired.

aryne *

I'm not denying any of his rights.

It's just that I expect him not to say that I said things which I really didn't say, nor meant, nor even considered.

I do look forward to hear your views, arynetrek

Darn!
I reread myself, try to see whatever idiocy I might have written...

I did write:

"It's not because an ideology is wrong and/or has failed that it is altogether wrong. These ideologies were trying to right a wrong, a real wrong, that existed in its times."

Is that so subversive? So wrong? So "lefty"?

I'm trying to understand, Gilthalion, to understand what you saw so bad?
I do try to understand the "Right", believe me.

Geez... So far away, so close... that's how I feel sometimes...

I actually do not consider the Cold War to be "over" in the sense that Liberty has triumphed FINALLY over Communism.

I'm not sure that Left and Right will ever really understand each other. (I wonder if there may even be some genetic propensity, a different "wiring" for this historic polarization of political thought.)

The Left is motivated by a desire to use Government to redress the wrongs of society.

The Right fears empowering Government to ANY great extent, since such power is inevitably corrupting and is inevitably misused.

The Middle is fortunate to be able to steer a course between extremes, but often must choose between diametrically opposed extremes. If the "Golden Mean" cannot be maintained, the best course is oscillation.

The Left tends to Communism and the Right tends to Fascism. Neither offers hope, but both promise Utopia and can only deliver Tyranny in the end.

The Left's desire to protect Civil Rights can, and often has, become an effective cover and protection for the depredations of Communism.

The Right's desire to protect Liberty can, and often has, destroyed the very liberties it seeks to protect.

The Left earns no friends by defending the Communists.

The Right earns none through overzealous vigilance.

By replacing "Left" and "Right" with "some of the Left" and "some of the Right", respectively, in appropriate places in your above post, I agree with you Gilthalion (except for the genetic suggestion ).

Left and the Right in our societies mostly seek to protect liberties, although not agreeing on way to do it, or way to ensure them.

Finally, speaking for myself, I explicitely did not defend Communism (as stated in one of my previous post).

Yep!

Strange...
All of you act as if you knew everything about Russia's history, yet you don't know that the "communism" that Russia employed was much closer to socialism than to communism, and that the original theory of communism was twisted in order to make it work for Russia; with disastrous results.
Now you might say that socialism is evil.
Socialism is basically what Sweden and those northern European countries have, and Sweden is voted as the best country in the world to live in.

What was twisted in the original proncipal of communism for Russia, you ask?
Well, in the original theory, the country had to be deep into a nationalist system (the way America is right now) before it could switch to communism safely.
Because in nationalism, the average middle-class Joe gets a lot more income than a peasant in a monarchy system.
Thus, if you're deep into nationalism when you switch to communism, the middle class retains it's original wealth, but has it distributed evenly between people.
If you switch to communism from a monarchy, then the average person stays poor because most of the money was in the hands of the monarch. That's roughly what happened in Russia.
Really, though, what a lot of satires like Animal Farm get wrong about Russia is how it really fell apart.
Sure, every person was not living in their own house, but it was manageable. What brought the system crashing down was that the Russian people used the system to their advantage. For instance, if some guy who does nothing all day gets paid the same price as someone who works very hard, that hard-working person might think "this isn't really fair" and follow the other person's example since he'll get paid the same anyway. In this way, many products deteriorated in quality.
The other way was that people from factories didn't repair them, etc. and paid government agents to report that everything was alright.
In this way, the government was blind to the state that the country was in.

BTW: If you were one of the homeless people in New York, you'd favour communism/socialism all the way...



In real communism there's no currency...

Gilthalion:

I'd like for you to rant about how socialism (which is right next to communism) is also evil, even though northern Europe uses it quite succesfully.
Socialism is what Russia had, with a bit of communism inserted. Why they chose to call it communism? I have no idea.

As I mentioned in my previous message, Russia did not carry out the theory of communism correctly, and it had gone wrong.
All of "communist's evil history" that you speak of had been inspired by Russia's twisted theory (none of it was communist either).
Therefore, none of you have ever seen true communism.
Who are you to judge something that you have not experienced?

Oh, yes, Gilthalion:

Russia's corrupted system brought hundreds of homeless people into houses. By the very definition of it's meaning, anything that does any tiny thing of good cannot be called evil. Therefore, Russia's twisted communism is not evil.

"Too bad that the political representations of all these ideologies have been flawed by human greed, human violence, human corruption"

Does Sweden have an immigrant problem? The USA does!

Old Soviet Proverb: They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.

For what it's worth, my grandmother on my father's side was whisked away from Russia when my great-grandfather sold himself and his family into indentured servitude on a Hawaian pineapple plantation.

They jumped ship on one of the other islands!

Lenin seized power and the rest is brutal history.

Still, the call of the Motherland was strong. Great-grandfather always wanted to return, and saved his money in a case that he buried in a secret place. Great-grandmother opposed this, and on the day when he had enough money saved and was going to buy the tickets for their return to Mother Russia, the case was missing.

Which is why I am able to write to you today!

My point about Communism is clear enough. Challenge that if you like. The fact is that it CANNOT work and WILL be corrupted.

The same goes for Socialism and for Capitalism. (As juntel noted above.) These are not OVERTLY wicked, as Communism declares itself to be.

You still have not answered this...

If Socialism is wicked, then why does Sweden and the rest of north Europe use it wuite successfully?
I've met people who live there.
The taxes are high, but everyone gets free health care. (my challenge to you: the US health system is corrupted)

The reason that the US gets so many immigrants is not because its system is better. It's because that people fantasize that if you go to magical "America", you'll end up a millionaire. More likely, you'll end up on the street (ever seen America's poverty rate?).

From here on, I have two things to comment on.

First of all, this:
If people stopped coming to America, you guys will crack worse than Russia did.
The reason for this is that the American educational sytem is really, really bad. If you ever go into computer work in America, chances are that most of the people working there are immigrants. There are very few real Americans coming into fields that require a lot of knowledge.
That's why America is prospering; most of the brains from the schools of other countries are coming there.
If they stopped coming for whatever reason, the economy would either completely halt, or fall apart.

The second thing: When people see how little money Russian people are receiving, they see it as a big flaw. They forget several things however; that everything in Russia also costs much less than in the US, and that people below poverty level usually simply don't need that much money because they still live the old-fashioned way, growing their own food. Unless they live in cities, of course.

My point about Communism is clear enough. Challenge that if you like. The fact is that it CANNOT work and WILL be corrupted.

That depends on the honesty of the people. Challenge me if you like, but I have seen that some cultures in general are far more honest, obedient, etc. , than others. The Russian people, for instance, can be generalized to being able to take advantage of situations much better than some other cultures.
All of you should be familiar with this type of look at cultures since Tolkien used it quite a bit.
As I was saying, communism would work better with some cultures than with others.

Which is why I am able to write to you today!

World War 2 was not Russia's fault. And people in Russia have Internet access, if you didn't know.

Another question for you:

Is monarchy evil? Is monarchy more or less evil than communism?
It all depends on who the monarch is, doesn't it? Think about that...

Hoo boy! Plenty of grist for the mill:

I'd like for you to rant about how socialism (which is right next to communism) is also evil,

Socialism, is not evil, just misguided. Socialists do not wish to use the tools of despotism to achieve their ends.


even though northern Europe uses it quite succ

That remains to be seen. Many would disagree.


Socialism is what Russia had, with a bit of communism inserted. Why they chose to call it communism? I have no idea.

Why not? Communism/Marxism/Leninism/Stalinism. Whatever. They could have called it "Despotism." A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.


As I mentioned in my previous message, Russia did not carry out the theory of communism correctly, and it had gone wrong. All of "communist's evil history" that you speak of had been inspired by Russia's twisted theory (none of it was communist either). Therefore, none of you have ever seen true communism. Who are you to judge something that you have not experienced?

'True Communism' is impossible, has never been articulated, and has only inspired the most wicked regimes of all humanity's bloody history. And even if it were possible, to get from here (or anywhere) to there, would require means that no ends can justify. Communism is more than a theory. It is a revolution. It's corruption is inevitable, more so since it starts out justifying Despotism by promising Utopia.


Russia's corrupted system brought hundreds of homeless people into houses. By the very definition of it's meaning, anything that does any tiny thing of good cannot be called evil. Therefore, Russia's twisted communism is not evil.

That's just nuts. Adolf Hitler was nice to his dog. American slavers let their slaves celebrate Christmas and go to church. Big deal. Are you justifying millions upon millions of lives lost and billions of lives made worse because Stalin crammed people that he made homeless into cold, overcrowded, substandard housing?


If Socialism is wicked, then why does Sweden and the rest of north Europe use it wuite successfully? I've met people who live there. The taxes are high, but everyone gets free health care. (my challenge to you: the US health system is corrupted)

As I've maintained, Socialism is not wicked, just deluded about the perfectability of Mankind.

Our health system, the finest in the world, is less than what it could be because of the imposition of the welfare state and nanny state regulations. R&D is impossibly expensive, but we do it. Medicare fraud is rampant, but we pay it. We don't make terminally ill folk die waiting in line like socialized medicine does.

In a perfect world, we would take care of the needy out of personal charity for friends and relatives and no one would be friendless. That's a sweet thought, and here and there we still have communities that are much like that. Still, the world is not perfect and no ideology will make it so. Hence, our imperfect compromise whereby we still provide the best healthcare in the world. No one is turned away. Few wait unduly for the standard care they need. No socialist system works nearly as well, or costs as little. Pound for pound, our medical industry is faster, smarter, better, and cheaper. Of course we can't give cutting edge care to everyone for free. Grow up. No one else does either.


The reason that the US gets so many immigrants is not because its system is better. It's because that people fantasize that if you go to magical "America", you'll end up a millionaire. More likely, you'll end up on the street (ever seen America's poverty rate?).

Like there are millionaires on every street corner anywhere else? There are here. Of course, a million dollars ain't what it used to be. Still, that's only the top percentages of the economic scale so what do you expect?

More likely than ending up "on the street," you will end up in the American Middleclass with 4.2 children, a 401K retirement plan, two or three weeks of vacation and decent health insurance. And as for America's poverty rate, poverty is a relative thing. The Mrs and I spent several years beneath the American poverty line. We had 2 TV/VCRs, a computer, a car, a house, a cat, plenty of food, clothes, power, fuel. I had to work up to 5 part time jobs a week. I built an electric bicycle from s**** just to get to work. We had no health insurance. I had to buy more than $120 prescription drugs for the Mrs every month, etc. We occassionally even had money left over at the end of the month. In short, the impoverished American is still better off than the middleclass most anywhere else! America also offers an option not available in many places around the world: YOU CAN WORK YOUR WAY OUT OF POVERTY! Socialism just spreads it around. Communism enforces it.

By the way, don't believe that America is overrun with homeless people. We aren't. I used to volunteer in the shelters and rescue missions. You would see a lot of the same people over and over again. These are usually middleaged male alcoholics who prefer to panhandle and otherwise live without obligations of family and employment. We made sure they had someplace warm when the weather turned cold, or a hurricane came. We fed them when they were hungry. We gave them clothes. We found them work when they wanted it. We even provided education and job training. Some take us up on it. Others don't. That's just how they want to live.


If people stopped coming to America, you guys will crack worse than Russia did. The reason for this is that the American educational sytem is really, really bad. If you ever go into computer work in America, chances are that most of the people working there are immigrants. There are very few real Americans coming into fields that require a lot of knowledge.

True enough, the inner city government schools are pretty sorry. But this is not a function of our system of government and economy. This is a function of a departure to the Left away from DISCIPLINE in education, finance, and morality. A return to Discipline Based Education would change this in a generation. Nevertheless, we have many private schools, parochial schools, and home schools, and plenty of good public schools, too. Try not to worry too much.


That's why America is prospering; most of the brains from the schools of other countries are coming there. If they stopped coming for whatever reason, the economy would either completely halt, or fall apart.

Perhaps the brains from the schools of other countries are coming here BECAUSE we are prospering! And perhaps America prospers because we offer FREEDOM and relatively low taxation! NO NATION HAS EVER TAXED ITSELF INTO PROSPERITY!


When people see how little money Russian people are receiving, they see it as a big flaw. They forget several things however; that everything in Russia also costs much less than in the US, and that people below poverty level usually simply don't need that much money because they still live the old-fashioned way, growing their own food. Unless they live in cities, of course.

Actually, the same thing applies to Alabama. Our property taxes and wages are lower, but so is the cost of living. One of my hobbies is Urban Agriculture. One day, I hope to write a book to help poor folk in the cities to use Mother Nature to improve their standard of living.


My point about Communism is clear enough. Challenge that if you like. The fact is that it CANNOT work and WILL be corrupted.

That depends on the honesty of the people. Challenge me if you like, but I have seen that some cultures in general are far more honest, obedient, etc. , than others. The Russian people, for instance, can be generalized to being able to take advantage of situations much better than some other cultures.
All of you should be familiar with this type of look at cultures since Tolkien used it quite a bit.
As I was saying, communism would work better with some cultures than with others.

And slavery works better with some cultures than with others, too. By your logic, we need to reinstitute the curses of Communism and Slavery. While we're at it, since Islamic cultures are well adapted to enslaving women, why don't we all try that?

You put your finger on it when you say that the success of Communism depends upon the honesty of the people. That's true of every form of government. If we were perfect people, we would need no government whatsoever. Government is necessary because people are not perfect and we must have a social contract to stipulate how to use Power to rectify the dishonesty of the People. But the more Power you give government, the greater the opportunity that when dishonesty EVENTUALLY AND INEVITABLY acquires the reins of Power, the greater the abuses of that Power. The American Way (in brief) is to limit that Power as much as humanly possible. We do so by separating the Powers of Government and institutionalizing checks and balances to those Powers. Our system DEPENDS upon human dishonesty and corruption to fight itself to a standstill when pitted against itself.

There is no such hope in Communism.


Which [my ancestors fleeing Russia] is why I am able to write to you today!

World War 2 was not Russia's fault. And people in Russia have Internet access, if you didn't know.

??????? Actually, Great-grandfather was in the WW1/Communist Revolution generation not WW2. What's the internet have to do with anything? Anyway, no one can fault the valor and fortitude of the Russian People in the war against Hitler.


Is monarchy evil? Is monarchy more or less evil than communism? It all depends on who the monarch is, doesn't it? Think about that...

It also depends upon how the monarch comes to power, doesn't it? Despotism is despotism.

If Tyranny is exercised by a King, by a Chairman, by a Prime Minister, by a President, by a Governor, by a Commissar, by a Mayor, by a Magistrate, by an oligarchy, by a majority, or by a school yard bully, it is still Tyranny and unjustifiable.

The only possible perfect form of government is a Divine Monarchy, personally ruled by God.

So be patient! I'm expecting that before too many more years pass, but until then, the American Way is the best that humanity has devised.

Wow, I actually agree with Gil on something. Communism is evil, and will not and cannot work, as you said. I agree with pretty much everything you said.

About the education, most of America does have pretty bad schools. Especially in the Inner City area and poor neighborhoods. But in the suburbs where there are many middle class people, the schools can range from poor to excelent. The high school I go to can be considered very good. It ranked 76 (or something like that) in the state of NJ, which is pretty good. So that means that there's about 75 schools in the state which are even better than us, so thats tens of thousands a students getting a great education in NJ alone. Then combine that with other states, and we have a pretty good number of well-educated people in this country. We might not have the best education in the world, which we obviosly don't, but our educational system is definately not really, really bad.

That remains to be seen. Many would disagree.

Not the people living there.

Why not? Communism/Marxism/Leninism/Stalinism. Whatever. They could have called it "Despotism." A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

You missed my whole point. I meant to say with that that what Russia had was not communism, therefor do not judge communism by Russia's history.

'True Communism' is impossible, has never been articulated, and has only inspired the most wicked regimes of all humanity's bloody history.

What you are talking about is not communism. How many times will I have to tell you this before you choose to accept it, Gil? Stalin did not follow the correct procedures for switching to communism. That was NOT communism.
Communism has never been tried the way it was supposed to be (though northern Europe is getting closer).

And even if it were possible, to get from here (or anywhere) to there, would require means that no ends can justify.

Well, noboby's ever tried to follow the philosopher's (the one who thought up communism, Marx) "guidebook" for safely switching you system to communism. No one's ever tried. No one.

Communism is more than a theory. It is a revolution. It's corruption is inevitable, more so since it starts out justifying Despotism by promising Utopia.

Well, we don't know if its corruption is inevitable until someone really tries it, do we?

That's just nuts. Adolf Hitler was nice to his dog. American slavers let their slaves celebrate Christmas and go to church. Big deal.

There you go. That means that neither Adolf Hitler nor American slavers were evil. Evil means "wholly bad". If Hitler did at least one nice thing in his lifetime, he was not evil.

Are you justifying millions upon millions of lives lost and billions of lives made worse because Stalin crammed people that he made homeless into cold, overcrowded, substandard housing?

"cold"; Who says? "overcrowded"; At least they had their own private rooms; "substandard"; les substandard than living on the street.

As I've maintained, Socialism is not wicked, just deluded about the perfectability of Mankind.

That depends on which "Mankind" you're talking about; not all the varieties are the same.

Our health system, the finest in the world, is less than what it could be because of the imposition of the welfare state and nanny state regulations. R&D is impossibly expensive, but we do it. Medicare fraud is rampant, but we pay it. We don't make terminally ill folk die waiting in line like socialized medicine does.

Well, there's someone who's been brainwashed by American propaganda (no offense intended). Take a trip to Sweden, walk into several hospitals, then comment about American health care (which doesn't justify any methods except its own for healing, which is mostly pills) being the best in the world.

No socialist system works nearly as well, or costs as little.

Visit Sweden.

Pound for pound, our medical industry is faster, smarter, better, and cheaper.

"faster"; if you have a health card. "smarter"; sure: ignoring every method that has been proven to work in other countries and making your own cure which works worse than that other one is very smart... "better"; no comment. "cheaper"; for the government, you mean, not for the person.

Of course we can't give cutting edge care to everyone for free. Grow up. No one else does either.

Try visiting Sweden.

Grow up.

How? I thought growth rate was something that cannot directly be controled by you. oh, let me guess; they made a new pill for it which has a side effect of making you have headaches.

Like there are millionaires on every street corner anywhere else? There are here. Of course, a million dollars ain't what it used to be. Still, that's only the top percentages of the economic scale so what do you expect?

"millionaires on every street corner"? Hah! More like "a poor person at every 5th street corner, and one rich person for every 50 square miles" (except in the main cities, where there are a lot more of both).

In short, the impoverished American is still better off than the middleclass most anywhere else!

There are different levels of "impoverished American"; you and the Mrs were near the top.

These are usually middleaged male alcoholics who prefer to panhandle and otherwise live without obligations of family and employment. We made sure they had someplace warm when the weather turned cold, or a hurricane came. We fed them when they were hungry. We gave them clothes. We found them work when they wanted it. We even provided education and job training. Some take us up on it. Others don't. That's just how they want to live.

Well, now that they've made that decision there's little you can do about it, right? The point is to stop them from becoming alcoholics and making that decision (how do you think a lot of them got that way?).

America also offers an option not available in many places around the world: YOU CAN WORK YOUR WAY OUT OF POVERTY!

That option is available in many countries around the world; most in fact.

Socialism just spreads it around. Communism enforces it.

It only spreads it around if the country's original wealth says it must.

speech about the school system

I have nothing to say about this...

Perhaps the brains from the schools of other countries are coming here BECAUSE we are prospering!

Not arguing with you there.

And perhaps America prospers because we offer FREEDOM and relatively low taxation!

No, many other countries offer the same thing. I'd say that America started prospering because in the very beginning, people came there to start a new life. It prospered because so many people came. And more people come because it keeps prospering. And it keeps on prospering because all these people are coming. But- if these people stop coming then the circle breaks and America crashes in one way or another.

NO NATION HAS EVER TAXED ITSELF INTO PROSPERITY!

Sweden has, in a way.

And slavery works better with some cultures than with others, too. By your logic, we need to reinstitute the curses of Communism and Slavery. While we're at it, since Islamic cultures are well adapted to enslaving women, why don't we all try that?

COMMUNISM AND SLAVERY ARE NOT THE SAME THING!
Succession of communism depends on honesty, succession of slavery depends on obedience and physical strength.

But the more Power you give government, the greater the opportunity that when dishonesty EVENTUALLY AND INEVITABLY acquires the reins of Power, the greater the abuses of that Power.

And yet if a long time passes before that power is abused, the people will get a chance to know what is right and what isn't, and will oppose it when the power starts to be abused.

If Tyranny is exercised by a King, by a Chairman, by a Prime Minister, by a President, by a Governor, by a Commissar, by a Mayor, by a Magistrate, by an oligarchy, by a majority, or by a school yard bully, it is still Tyranny and unjustifiable.

Yes, but under some of these positions, is is very hard to excercise tyranny without support of the people...

the American Way is the best that humanity has devised.

How many other "Ways" have you seen with your own two eyes for a considerable amount of time?
It seems that everything "American" is the best, isn't it?
Even capitalized the first letters of "American Way", as though it were ultimatly superior to everything else.
Just shows how American propaganda is no better than Russia's was.

Go on now, respond to this...