106 replies to this topic

[Korhend]

Yes there is. The minority I'm talking about is the loser of an election. There's little or no connection between that and how many people have which skin tone.

Doesn't communism teach class divides people more then nationality?

[Alakhriveion]

Doesn't communism teach class divides people more then nationality?

Yeah. I've never denied that the minority of wealthy persons should not only lose enfranchisment, but be taken out and shot. Yes, that includes me.

[Husse]

You're wealthy?

[Ditto McCloaker]

Yeah. I've never denied that the minority of wealthy persons should not only lose enfranchisment, but be taken out and shot. Yes, that includes me.

Yeah, we Republicans, we're just chock full of prejudice. I wish we were as compassionate and caring as you socialists. XD

I agree with you, Aluk, up to a point.

...well, more like... AFTER a point.

Believe me, Aluk. I await the communist uprising as eagerly as you.

*cocks gun*

:bowser:

[thabto81]

Yes there is. The minority I'm talking about is the loser of an election. There's little or no connection between that and how many people have which skin tone.

Yeah. I've never denied that the minority of wealthy persons should not only lose enfranchisment, but be taken out and shot. Yes, that includes me.

Yeah, we Republicans, we're just chock full of prejudice. I wish we were as compassionate and caring as you socialists. XD

I agree with you, Aluk, up to a point.

...well, more like... AFTER a point.

Believe me, Aluk. I await the communist uprising as eagerly as you.  

*cocks gun*

I always felt that it was this useless labelling of each other that separated us.

Honestly, guys, if we can't stop this pointless name calling of "liberal" and "conservative" or "republican" and "democrat" then how are we ever going to see eye to eye on anything?

[Ditto McCloaker]

It wasn't niceness that set me straight about my own liberalism. It took some very clever people who were honest and upfront who showed me the error of my ways. I'm trying to pass on the favor.

Believe me, my basic goal is to convert as many leftists over to the good side as possible before they actually cause any harm and have to be dealt with more harshly.

[Oberon Storm]

Oh. You're really showing me the error of my ways. I want to go out and make ass out of myself too.

[Ditto McCloaker]

Diversity can be a good thing, but not EVERYTHING is a good idea.

Were we lucky to have the Nazis? The Soviets? The Fascists? Tell me what Aluk just proposes (and the central thesis of which, I swear to you, is to be found at the heart of all liberalism) isn't exactly the same thing.

I'm sick of these socialists trying to distance themselves from the Nazis. The Nazi party was founded as the Nationalist Socialist Worker's Movement. Hitler rallied his supporters with socialist dialogue.

He was preaching hatred, paranoia, and prejudice against the successful, the property owners, only he directed it against a specific ethnicity (nothing at all like Certain People's bitterness, blame, and paranoia against wealthy white males, is it?). His allies?

It's true. Hitler didn't actually keep his promises to the socialists (not all of them, anyway). This was, of course, because he wasn't stupid enough to actually believe it himself. He wanted to keep his state solvent so it could follow through on his conquest.

Oh yes, Hitler confiscated businesses, and then 'nationalized' them. The Volkswagen was invented as the Nazi "People's Car." It was to become the standard that everyone would be entitled to. The autobahn was built as a Government Jobs program.

How did the Germans deal with the oppression of the Jews? A lot of people these days like to think they just lacked compassion, like they were arrogant and felt certain people could be victimized. Nope. They did it because they believed the JEWS were the arrogant ones, the ones victimizing them. They believed the Jews were all part of a vast conspiracy to steal all the money and subjugate everyone else.

Gee, does THAT sound familiar?

Listen to some of Hitler's speeches translated. He wasn't the VICTIMIZER. He was leading a Heroic Revolt because the Victims weren't going to be Subjugated Any Longer. And the German people went along with it because that paranoia, that jealously, that bile had been an undercurrent in the nation for years prior. Those Greedy Jews. They had it Coming To Them.

The Nazis remained fiscally solvent because Hitler didn't actually believe in that garbage himself. Germany paid it's tabs by looting the people they killed (sorry, "liberating" it) in Germany, than in other lands. This is the basic principle of Nationalism. They were also not so stupid that they didn't secretly turn the most important businesses over to private ownership again after publicly 'reclaiming' them, to keep quality goods flowing.

But Certain People don't like hearing this. To them, it's automatically All Lies because... because... because it's not the Way Things Are. It doesn't fit their Enlightened World View.

Nobody ever talks about the Soviet death camps, because Everybody Knows only Nazis were the only ones to ever lock people up in death camps. Sure, the Soviets didn't kill far more millions of people than the Nazis ever did. That's not the Way Things Were. The Soviets didn't Mean Any Harm. They were just a Different Ideology, fighting for Justice, and were unfairly made the scapegoats of all of America's problems. No, people sent to Gulags weren't made to eat human feces and freeze to death. No, surely it didn't all happen because the people guarding them had the attitude that Now It Is Your Time To Suffer. No, Kruschev never said "We will bury you." America's the bad guys cuz they're all big and successful, and only Evil People are big and successful, and that's always the basic principle under which Socialism is justified, spoken or not.

You want racism? People who fear outsiders? Violence? Look in your unions.

I'm a conservative, and a capitalist, and my minority friends would be confused to hear me called a racist. And don't hand me this 'white man holding everyone back' garbage. I'm white, and I wasn't born on a golden throne. I'm earning my degree alongside people of all races, ethnicities, and religions.

Liberalism IS like a disease. It's predicated on elitism, paranoia, and prejudice (it just goes unnoticed as a 'reverse' prejudice. It's a brilliant system. Accuse the people you hate of being prejudiced. It's just beautiful.)

Free market capitalism, democracy, and individualism are the only philosophies in the world that are not predicated on prejudice, paranoia, or an assumption of people being incapable of making most rational decisions on their own.

It took me a long time to see this. It wasn't pretty.

[Selena]

All this 'liberals are a disease' or 'conservatives are a plague' thing coming from either side gets you people nowhere fast. You COULD try to work together to find a solution to a problem that best fits everyone, not just a certain point of view, instead of just sitting on your political borders and calling one another moronic fools who haven't the slightest clue of what they're talking about. But no, that apparently doesn't happen very often.

I've been a republican. I'm now, technically, a democrat (I switched over four years ago)... but I'm not a very left one. I'm in the middle. Maybe it's my Libran nature to stay in the middle and try to referee either side (as I tend to do in debates among my more... passionate peers), or maybe I just got sick of people not being willing to listen to the other side. Extreme beliefs in ANYTHING is seldom a good thing. Conservative, Liberal... it doesn't matter. I, although slightly favoring the left side of the spectrum, still get pissed off when people of my own party don't listen to the other side.

Liberalism is not a disease. Not unless being conservative is equally viewed as such. Stop labelling yourselves as things. Labels get you absolutely nowhere. It's pointless to even debate when you think of things like that. If you do... you always get back to this. People shouting that either side is idiotic and blind. People dwelling more on the general stereotype of a party rather than actually doing something productive.

I've never... ever understood why people do this. It's wasteful.

[DarkJuno]

Labels, if anything, give a very rough estimate of where an individual stands on issues - and even then, there are usually exceptions. Problem is, people use the label to automatically vote on the party line or whatnot, which is really the easy way out. I may well be all but Republican, since I refuse to be outright called that and associated with them as a whole, but at the same time, I don't just blindly agree with the general line. Yes, I do look at each individual issue or race and decide thigns for myself - obviously, most of the time I'll agree after researching, but not always. Hell, in March I actually sided with the Democrats on one of the Propositions we had to vote on. It still won since...hey, this is Texas, but I truly believed that proposition was wrong despite the party I almost always side with backing it.

Whatever the case, in the end, nothing changes in terms of a person's beliefs - the Politics Section of "Real Life VS. The Internet" the Red vs Blue guys did, sadly, seems to display how the yelling is even in real life now.

Whatever.

-runs from Contro-

[Husse]

I don't think everyone's right on all things, let's face it.

If I think abortion is wrong, it's hard to see "eye to eye," with someone who believes it's all fine and dandy. You're forgetting something important. A lot of it isn't about politics, it's about morals.

[inuyashafanR]

none of them will screw up this countri...the evil demons that control then...THATS who is going to cause us all to die...and I'm just kidding...mostly...for me its the lesser of two evils

[Dryth]

Liberalism IS like a disease. It's predicated on elitism, paranoia, and prejudice (it just goes unnoticed as a 'reverse' prejudice. It's a brilliant system. Accuse the people you hate of being prejudiced. It's just beautiful.)

No, modern Liberalism as encountered in North America was born out of the consequences of industrialization, not out of the circumstances you describe with the rise of Nazism in Germany. Liberalism was a natural response to the fact that society needed to change to compensate for the growing urban population, and the fact that urban poverty was not a matter of choice, but rather an eventuality for the majority of the population in a society where one cannot be self-sustained on will alone.

It doesn't deny individuals free will and the capacity ot make their own decisions. It exists because pure capitalism is social darwinism, and survival of the fittest is not dictated by strength of will.

I love how you talk of changing liberals for the better, but do it through insults, prejudice, misinterpretation of liberalism itself and false analogy. I'd venture that you'd be more successful if you were a bit more socratic.

[Selena]

I don't think everyone's right on all things, let's face it.

If I think abortion is wrong, it's hard to see "eye to eye," with someone who believes it's all fine and dandy. You're forgetting something important. A lot of it isn't about politics, it's about morals.

But that's where you have to find common and fair ground, be it due to morals or politics. You do have to be willing to sacrifice something, if you're on either side. For example, allowing abortions to victims of rape or if the female is underage, not allowing for abortions to be have as a means of birth control (which is a though I'm strongly against).

Then again, this isn't an abortion debate. So I'll shush. x.x

Now, of course not everyone's going to be right on something. If someone says 'Let's drop a bomb on this schoolbus full of children', well, that's.... kinda out of the question. But for many social controversies, I think a common ground can be reached.

[Alakhriveion]

That's just fucking great. I don't like where this is now, or where it's headed. I take full responsibility. Topic closed.