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Post by dradtke on May 31, 2015 8:39:47 GMT -5
You've convinced me, Bruce. I'm voting for him.
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Post by millring on May 31, 2015 8:59:32 GMT -5
The accepted analysis of the past twenty years is that -- given the influence of such phenomena as the Tea Party -- it is the Republican Party that has been moved to an extreme end of the political spectrum, and that the Democratic Party somehow represents the center of that spectrum. We have been treated to a never ending number of articles, speeches, opinion pieces, and ridicule screeds from the ridiculers-in-chief that tell us the same -- that the Democratic Party is the reasonable middle and if only the Republicans would adopt the Democratic platform, they could then win elections (and the hearts of their fellow Americans) again.
Meanwhile, a Socialist is running for president from the Democratic Party. And the defense is that he's not a Communist. And most of the left here will vote for him if, by some strange circumstance Hillary drops out of the race.
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Post by fauxmaha on May 31, 2015 9:06:51 GMT -5
A shopper in a Venezuelan supermarket enjoys the simplicity that results when dumb free markets are prohibited from polluting stores with too many choices at the expense of the hungry:
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Post by brucemacneill on May 31, 2015 9:38:36 GMT -5
You've convinced me, Bruce. I'm voting for him. There was never a question in my mind about that. Listen to what Bernie says. You don't have to carry a card to be a communist any more than you need to belong to a church to be a Christian. You just have to believe what they believe. Bernie is a believer in Communism. He also changes his stripes (name anyway) as the political winds change. There are few native Vermonters left in Vermont since the invasion of New Yorkers in the '70s. Most of the Vermonters I knew live in Maine now. If you want the government to provide you with your choice of one kind of shoes or no shoes, vote for Bernie.
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Post by dickt on May 31, 2015 9:51:46 GMT -5
Shoes for industry! Shoes for the dead!
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Post by Russell Letson on May 31, 2015 11:48:25 GMT -5
Meanwhile, a Socialist is running for president from the Democratic Party. And the defense is that he's not a Communist. And most of the left here will vote for him if, by some strange circumstance Hillary drops out of the race. It's not a "defense" to deny that Sanders is a Communist--it's a correction of an untruth*. Unless, of course, one follows the Brucean taxonomic system in which "any A that reminds me of B is actually B, despite any non-B traits it might possess." (This is the system that asserts that cats are really dogs because they both have four legs, sharp teeth, and a taste for meat. And hawks are dogs, too, because they're predators and carnivores.) As for who on "the left" would vote for him absent a Hillary candidacy, that would depend on the precise circumstances. I mean, if the Democrats were to run Bernie, maybe the Republicans would run one of the Log Cabin guys. (I was going to suggest Andrew Sullivan, but he's not native-born.) That would be a fun campaign. * Unless, of course, he is actually a member of the Party but in best 1950s style keeps it a secret so's he can report back to Moscow via dead-drop.
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Post by brucemacneill on May 31, 2015 11:58:01 GMT -5
Russell, you can do better than that. The dog=cat argument is pretty weak in that dogs and cats are completely different politically. Dogs are very social animals whereas cats are very me-me-me almost capitalists.
Bernie's more like "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and acts like a duck, it's a duck". Some Socialist said something like that on 60 minutes once.
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Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
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Post by Dub on May 31, 2015 12:11:12 GMT -5
Bernard “Bernie” Sanders was born in Brooklyn, New York on September 8, 1941, to Polish immigrants of Jewish descent. After attending Brooklyn College for one year, he transferred to the University of Chicago (UC) and earned a bachelor's degree in political science in 1964. At UC, Sanders joined the Young Peoples Socialist League (youth wing of the Socialist Party USA) as well as the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Peace Union. He also was an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, worked briefly for the communist-led United Packinghouse Workers Union, and participated in an American Friends Service Committee project at a California psychiatric hospital. After college, Sanders lived briefly on an Israeli kibbutz, then moved to Vermont where he worked variously as a carpenter, filmmaker, writer, and researcher. In 1971 he joined the anti-war Liberty Union Party (LUP), on whose ticket he made unsuccessful runs for the U.S. Senate in 1972 and 1974, and for Governor of Vermont in 1976. Sanders's LUP platform called for the nationalization of all U.S. banks, public ownership of all utiliies, and the establishment of a worker-controlled federal government. Sanders resigned from LUP in 1979 and became a political Independent. Two years later he was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont, a post he held until 1989. Sanders created some controversy when he hung a Soviet flag in his mayoral office, in honor of Burlington's Soviet sister city Yaroslav. Thanks, Bruce. He definitely sounds like my guy. I used to hang at the University of Chicago Student Government office in Ida Noyes Hall in those days. Maybe I ran into Bernie there. I don't remember many of the people anymore.
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Post by billhammond on May 31, 2015 12:14:07 GMT -5
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2015 12:22:18 GMT -5
Eek! Will nobody think of the hedge fund managers?!!
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Post by coachdoc on May 31, 2015 12:22:46 GMT -5
I was new to New England about the time Bernie won election as Mayor of Burlington. It was great, and the local news papers all crowed that Burlington was the only US city to have a Communist as mayor. There was no denial coming from the Bernie camp in those early days. Does that make him a Communist? I don't know, but there was a lot of quacking back then. And yes, if he is on the ticket I will vote for him. I am Christian in my values. Although I actually prefer Elizabeth Warren. She has knocked down more plutocrats than Bernie. I love her rampages against Wall Street.
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Post by Doug on May 31, 2015 12:28:27 GMT -5
Bruce still thinks there is a difference between the right and the left.
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Post by coachdoc on May 31, 2015 12:30:27 GMT -5
I know you wouldn't be able to vote either Bernie or Warren, Doug. Even if the Bushes and Clintons were the alternative. B and W are gun control activists.
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Post by Doug on May 31, 2015 12:45:37 GMT -5
I know you wouldn't be able to vote either Bernie or Warren, Doug. Even if the Bushes and Clintons were the alternative. B and W are gun control activists. If the Bushbeans or Hillofshit were the alternative and I couldn't vote for anyone else I"d vote for either. But I'd write in Fred Flintstone if I could before I'd vote for any of that 4. But there could be nothing worse for the country than Bushbeans or Hillofshit.
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Post by Russell Letson on May 31, 2015 13:00:49 GMT -5
This is not rocket science. "Joe is a Communist" (to leave Bernie out of it for the moment) has a limited range of meanings. The most solid and incontrovertible would be "Joe is a member of the Communist Party [insert local branch here, e.g., CPUSA]." Or Joe might not be a member in good standing ("card-carrying," as we used to say, though you'd have to be nuts to do so in the 1950s) but goes to meetings, contributes to Party-approved causes, votes Communist when the ticket permits (that would be Europe). Or he might be identified as an ally (by the CP) or a fellow traveler or a comsymp (by, say, Hoover's FBI or the John Birch Society). Note that the last set of senses are actually labels applied by someone else on the basis on their notion of what it means to be a Communist.
I am personally acquainted with any number of left-leaning people--even socialists and, um, avowed Marxists--who are not now and never have been members of the Communist Party, do not sympathize much with CPUSA, let alone Soviet-style Marxism or even non-Soviet Communist parties (e.g., in Italy). It seems to me to be sloppy and imprecise to the point of falsification to refuse to acknowledge the degrees of difference across the left end of the political spectrum, just as it is sloppy and ignorant to label every conservative a fascist.
Is that stuffy and humorless enough for everyone?
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Post by brucemacneill on May 31, 2015 13:15:20 GMT -5
"Is that stuffy and humorless enough for everyone?"
Probably but it doesn't say that5 Bernie isn't a Communist. Communism is a philosophy, as is Atheism. Neither requires club membership. just an acceptance of the philosophy.
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Post by Doug on May 31, 2015 13:17:59 GMT -5
Right Russell, no difference, they are all anti individual and pro government control of the individual.
Show me a candidate (congress, president, dog catcher, or what ever) that runs on a "repeal laws" ticket and I vote for him/her. Last count I heard was that the US had over 70 million laws. That's just stupid.
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Post by Doug on May 31, 2015 13:19:06 GMT -5
"Is that stuffy and humorless enough for everyone?" Probably but it doesn't say that5 Bernie isn't a Communist. Communism is a philosophy, as is Atheism. Neither requires club membership. just an acceptance of the philosophy. Yep just like Republicanism it's pro government and anti individual. No difference just who gets to be the boss.
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Post by dradtke on May 31, 2015 13:29:06 GMT -5
I notice that even Bruce defines capitalists as "me-me-me."
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Post by Russell Letson on May 31, 2015 13:35:52 GMT -5
OK, more humorless, stuffy, and increasingly impatient distinctions:
1) Capital-C Communism is a political organization or set of allied organizations. Thus the capital C.
2) Lower-case communism is a group of historically-determined socio-economic-political positions and programs. They are distinct from other "left" positions such as socialism and anarcho-syndicalism and from the positions and programs of other "left" organized political parties, e.g., various "social democrat" and "Christian socialist" flavors.
3) Atheism (which is not a proper noun and thus should not be capitalized) is not a philosophy but a position on a particular question about the existence of deity. Taking the atheist position affects one's overall philosophical position but is not an exhaustive description.
4) Socialism, communism, and capitalism are not monolithic systems, which means that slapping on a label without some kind of modifier and/or historical-context data does not even rise to the level of applying a bumper sticker or wearing tee shirt. (Either of which can be funny but is just as often a yawp.)
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