Could you be friends with a Nazi??

[kentuck]

Of course not!

Because their beliefs are anathema to your own.

But, could you be friends with someone that votes to keep other American citizens from exercising their right to vote? In other words, could you be friends with someone that wants to exempt some of our citizens from voting and agrees with those that create long lines and obstacles to prevent them from voting?

Could you be friends with someone that supports racist policies? Could you be friends with someone that refuses to compromise on anything, even something that might prevent Americans from being killed, such as control and registration of assault weapons?

Could you be friends with someone that has so little respect for working poor and the needy of this country?

Is it really about "bi-partisanship"? Is it really just "politics" and should have no bearing on whether we are friends with a person or not??

[snooper2]

1. all I know is you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose

but you can't pick.......

[Warpy]

4. You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose

but you can't wipe your friends off on the furniture.

You have to tolerate such people in the workplace but not on your own time.

So far.

[kairos12]

6. So far is the operative phrase

[gateley]

2. Hell, I have trouble being friends with "Christians" who don't want to help those "takers".

[burnsei sensei]

7. Such people are not Christians.

The proper name for them is hypocrites.

[gateley]

9. This is not news to me.

[Deep13]

3. Friends might be asking if they can be friends with someone...

...who thinks as I do. We have no real power over anything, so as a practical matter, what political views my friends hold are about as important as their religious beliefs.

[kentuck]

5. So if your friend is a Nazi?

No problem?

[snooper2]

8. NAZI LOVER!

LOL, the intertubes crack me up

[WilliamPitt]

10. Jesus, man.

Big one.

[Deep13]

14. None is. nt

[patrice]

80. "no real power", IMO, the problem isn't that there are "ir-reconcilable" "differences" but that for

at least some of those who think there are, that assessment is based upon an absolute that they ever so co-incidentally happen to own and that's despite the fact that they may be missing some essential information (and that they reject any recognition of that possibility) and, therefore, COULD be in error and those mistakes could be extremely costly (and I don't mean just money).

Right! I accept the fact that I cannot, MUST NOT, coerce anyone, no matter how right I think I might be, because I could be wrong; there is at least some minor possibility that I am wrong AND THAT MATTERS anyway. I have "no real power" over others that they don't, in one way or another, willingly yield to me, or I to them.

BUT - That doesn't mean that I cannot, that is I SHOULD NOT, require of them the same allegiance to reality that I am willing to pay myself and that is, no matter how "right" you think you are, it is NECESSARY to admit (because of the nature of what is referred to as "proof&quot that you COULD be wrong and being wrong matters just as much as being right does.

Right, short of hands-on-throats, or weapons pointed point blank at one another, we have "no real power", but, if reality really does matter, that does not mean that I have no responsibility to call others to the same allegiance to truth that I am trying to live by myself, instead of pretending that they OWN somekind of absolute and, because we have "no real power", everyone else be damned.

Differences are expected AND NECESSARY, even good in many situations, the real questions are about how we process them, or do we abdicate ALL power to the strongest fascists amongst us.

[Bay Boy]

11. It kind of depends...

...is she cute?

[Blue_In_AK]

12. No.

I'm having a hard enough time being friends with Republicans. I don't understand their mindset AT ALL.

[Corgigal]

36. Ha, I was just going to post that

and living in South Carolina it seems that is all I run into. Thankfully I have family or I would be banging my head against a wall. I don't understand them at all.

[kentuck]

13. Do not people have certain responsibilities as a human being?

Even those that call themselves Republicans?

[no_hypocrisy]

15. Pissed at me, my father once asked me what would I think of him

if he were a Nazi.

I responded that I didn't think they took Jews.

Relentless, he continued. Then, what would I think of him if he joined the Ku Klux Klan.

I replied:
Number One: You'll always be my father.
Number Two (with a sigh): And I'll always be your daughter.
Number Three: Don't expect me to help you burn a cross.

That stopped the conversation cold.

[kentuck]

16. I guess what I was trying to say...

...is that sometimes perhaps people do not deserve your friendship? Politics is not just about elections. It is about how we choose to live our lives.

[no_hypocrisy]

19. A bit of background.

The conversation was part of a "family crisis". My brother was getting married and had revealed to our father at the rehearsal dinner that he had converted from Judaism to Islam. I was fine with it and our father was livid. He wanted me to make my brother a family pariah -- at his own wedding.

The conversation was a contortion of logic as my father was trying to "justify" his hostility. I was trying to sidestep the issue and wanted my father to know that even if (theoretically) he was associated with a group I despised, I would still recognize him.

[patrice]

81. They may not deserve your friendship, but your responsibility for reality requires that you call

them to that ongoing effort to be real, if not for them, if not for you, at least for others, whether any one of us succeeds in that call and response or not.

[MADem]

56. I want you to know that I really, REALLY appreciate your sense of humor!!!

I would have loved to be a (laughing) fly on the wall at that exchange!

[no_hypocrisy]

71. Thank you. Once of my better moments in repartee.

Not to totally denigrate my father, but he just sets himself up for this stuff.

Before my sister's wedding, he tried to piss off our mom that morning. He asked her if he should shave (for the ceremony). I flatly replied, "No Dad, your legs look great . . . . "

[MADem]

72. Hee hee!

He probably learned to not take it too far with you!

I'm betting your family loves having you around anytime a fight's a-brewing!

[no_hypocrisy]

75. My family's general attitude to my taking a deep breath and letting it go:

You remember the control booth for the producition of the soap opera in the movie Tootsie when Dorothy would go rogue on the script? Same thing: Uh-oh . . . . . .

[Canuckistanian]

17. As long as it isn't an Illinois Nazi

[JaneyVee]

18. No. I would cringe every time they opened their mouth.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

20. Imagine the same question concerning communists

Their body count reaches into the hundreds of millions. They're just as brutal and intolerant. They also use violence to impose their will and they also have a history of racism and sexism. Yet, far too many people give the C-word a pass while only focusing on the N-word.

[HiPointDem]

21. extermination of undesirables was an avowed policy of the nazis. it is not an avowed policy

of communists.

if you want to go down that route, exactly the same thing can be said of the US government. Its body count is very high; it shows itself to be brutal and intolerant, uses violence to impose its will and has a history of racism and sexism.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

22. Your claiming Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, et al

are to be excused based on whether or not their policy was avowed? That's quite the nuance to apologize for the murder of hundreds of millions via state policy (which some might consider the same as being "avowed&quot .

And please tell us which US president is their literal equivalent.

[HiPointDem]

28. Nazi policy was explicitly exterminationist in the case of Jews, Gypsies, the handicapped, and

Last edited Fri Feb 15, 2013, 09:52 AM - Edit history (1)

political enemies (especially communists).

1. Stalin and Mao had no such explicitly exterminationist policies; the closest you come is stalin's purges, which were mostly of fellow-communists.
2. Most of the deaths attributed to 'communism' in the case of China and Russia were civil war, war, and famine deaths.
3. Not even the most extreme accountings attribute "hundreds of millions" of deaths to Stalin or Mao.
4. There is no single estimate of deaths that is generally accepted for either regime, and there is a big chunk of propaganda content in most such accountings.

http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm

5. No US president held power as long as either stalin or mao, and deaths attributable to the US as an entity are primarily non-american, but include obviously the genocide of native americans and african slaves, as well as millions of deaths resulting from its policies overseas, including its sponsorship of dictators and corporate endeavors which included the extermination of native peoples.

and which, incidentally, continue into the present day.

oh, and PS: nothing i have written in any way constitutes an apologia for the crimes of stalin or mao, though that is what persons like yourself like to pretend.

unlike yourself, i don't deny the crimes of power.

[kimbutgar]

69. Thanks for these thoughtful points

When I hear right wingers scream that President Obama is worst then Mao and Stalin I want to scream. Now I have some good comebacks. Unfortunately, logic and sense doesn't seem to penetrate their bubble but you can make some good pin pricks.

[EastKYLiberal]

24. Or capitalists.

Although their murder is more indirect, how many have capitalists killed?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

25. Capitalists, by the defintion of capitalism, are not the state

Communists and fascists are. If Wal-Mart gets a person killed the state can prosecute them and anyone with cause can sue them. In the US citizens can also sue the state. When was the last time suing a communist regime didn't end up getting the plaintiff shot or shipped off?

[HiPointDem]

31. if capitalists are not the state, who or what is? given that the majority of state policies benefit

capital and are written to protect capital; that most wars have been waged for the same reasons; and that representatives of big capital fund the politicians' campaigns and have intimate access to them, as well as acting as politicians and bureacrats themselves in a revolving door arrangement...

corporations kill people regularly, but they rarely get prosecuted and never get the death penalty for their crimes.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

32. "most wars have been waged for the same reasons"

Every war waged by communists was for control of the means of production as an avowed policy. As was every extra-judicial execution and internment in the gulags. So too their kidnapping of ambassadors and shooting-up airports.

Wal-Mart and Target can influence policy with lobbying; but then again, so can the UAW and Organizing for America. But neither of them has a standing army or secret police force. Communists do.

If you're trying to convince me the 100 million corpses your idols stacked-up over the last century are less morally loathesome than the 12 million Jews and Gypsies the Nazis murdered save your fingertips. Communists are just as heinous as the Nazis and for the exact same reasons.

[HiPointDem]

33. walmart and target don't have spies? are you *kidding*? they have spies all over the place.

they don't call them spies, but spying is what they do.

few wars have been waged by communists, and most wars waged by communists began as wars of ethnic or national liberation.

wars waged by capitalists (which includes the nazis) have been many.

here is just one dustspeck of information from the ongoing capitalist war that kills thousands on a daily basis:

Violence earlier this month in northwest Peru left more than 30 dead and more than 50 wounded, according to reports. Indian rights advocates put the number of dead and missing higher, with some groups saying more than 100 were killed or missing.

The controversial laws were part of numerous decrees that Garcia passed through special powers awarded to him by Congress last year with the goal of having Peru meet rules set in a free trade agreement with the United States.

The decrees made it easier for companies to gain concessions for oil drilling, mining and logging, including on indigenous lands. The forestry law, in particular, removed some 45 million hectares (more than 170,000 square miles) of Peruvian jungle from the government's list of protected lands.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/06/18/peru.indians/

Your pretense that the US, or capital, has some high moral position from which to decry others is a sad joke, pure and simple.

This is corporations killing indigenous people under the protection of the US government. it occurs on a daily basis all over latin america, all over africa, in the middle east, and even in north america and europe.

you are so *conditioned* to think of it as simply 'regrettable collateral damage' that you can't even *see* it.

really, a sad joke.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

35. You're seriously claiming that business intel gathered by Wal-Mart

is the legal and moral equivalent of the KGB?

[HiPointDem]

38. 'business intel'. lol. is spying on worker organizing efforts now considered 'business intel'?

is employing people to monitor all public communications about walmart, including letters to the editor in some podunk newspaper now considered 'business intel'? i know what walmart does in my local community, and it is hard-core spying with political targeting of 'enemies'.

is sending phoney 'journalists' into labor press conferences now 'business intel'?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/14/union-workers-walmart-spy

Fired Wal-Mart technician alleged the world’s largest retailer has been spying on its workers, critics, vendors and consultants. The company defended its security practices.

Wal-Mart declined to comment on specific allegations made by 19-year veteran Bruce Gabbard to the Wall Street Journal in a report published Wednesday. Wal-Mart reiterated that it had fired Gabbard, 44, and his supervisor last month for violating company policy by recording phone calls and intercepting pager messages.

Wal-Mart made the case public last month and denied Gabbard’s claims that his actions were the result of pressure from Kenneth Senser, a former senior CIA and FBI official who has headed Wal-Mart’s office of global security since 2003. Another FBI veteran, Joseph Lewis, is head of corporate investigations under Senser.

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2007/04/05/fired-technician-claims-wal-mart-spies-on-everyone/

Corporations also spy on other businesses, on governments, and on politicians. They spy domestically and they spy overseas. They run covert operations.


All large corporations run full-blown intelligence operations, and always have. If you aren't aware of that, you don't know much about business.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

42. How does that even come close to the KGB and secret police of your beloved mass-murderers?

[HiPointDem]

44. oh, first it was 'walmart doesn't have spies,' but now it's 'well, they do, but they're not as bad

as stalin!!!!!'

what a joke.

corporations kill people too:


PHILIPPINES: Another indigenous leader killed for opposing the incursion of a US-based palm oil company

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) deeply regrets to inform you that another indigenous leader has been killed in Misamis Oriental. The victim and his group had been opposing the expansion of a big US-based company operating a palm oil plantation. The company intends to grab the land that the indigenous villagers are occupying and to replace the tropical fruits they are cultivating with palm oil. Despite making the threats on him known to public, the victim was never provided any protection and nor were the threats on him investigated.

http://www.humanrights.asia/news/urgent-appeals/AHRC-UAC-179-2012

The violence is ubiquitous, ongoing, and supported and protected by the US government and its leadership, who are themselves supported by a system of legalized corporate bribery.

Unaccountable power = unaccountable power, no matter what the ideology of those who wield it.

Your silly slurs ('your beloved mass murderers) are just silly slurs. They have no relation to anything i've said.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

47. I repeat, how does that come close to the KGB?

You're equating anti-union activity -- which can be appealed in court -- to the rounding-up, imprisoning, slavery and murder imposed by communists.



Pictured above: not Wal-Mart

Communists are as bad if not worse than Nazis are so are their apologists.

[HiPointDem]

59. where is it that i make the claim that walmart's spy practices are the equivalent of the KGB?

try to pay attention. *you* claimed walmart didn't have spies.

i said that indeed they did.


as for pol pot, once again i remind you:

* the US war in vietnam created the conditions that brought someone like pol pot to power
* for 15 years the US supported Pol Pot (as a tool against the Vietnamese communists, who were more communists than Pol Pot ever was).
* the us bombing of cambodia killed more cambodians than pol pot.


The US not only helped create conditions that brought Cambodia's Khmer Rouge to power in 1975, but actively supported the genocidal force, politically and financially. By January 1980, the US was secretly funding Pol Pots exiled forces on the Thai border. The extent of this support-$85 million from 1980 to 1986-was revealed six years later in correspondence between congressional lawyer Jonathan Winer, then counsel to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. Winer said the information had come from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). When copies of his letter were circulated, the Reagan administration was furious. Then, without adequately explaining why, Winer repudiated the statistics, while not disputing that they had come from the CRS. In a second letter to Noam Chomsky, however, Winer repeated the original charge, which, he confirmed to me, was "absolutely correct.''

Washington also backed the Khmer Rouge through the United Nations, which provided Pol Pot's vehicle of return. Although the Khmer Rouge government ceased to exist in January 1979, when the Vietnamese army drove it out, its representatives continued to occupy Cambodia's UN seat. Their right to do so was defended and promoted by Washington as an extension of the Cold War, as a mechanism for US revenge on Vietnam, and as part of its new alliance with China (Pol Pot's principal underwriter and Vietnam's ancient foe). In 1981, President Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said, "I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot." The US, he added, "winked publicly" as China sent arms to the Khmer Rouge through Thailand.

As a cover for its secret war against Cambodia, Washington set up the Kampuchean Emergency Group (KEG) in the US embassy in Bangkok and on the Thai-Cambodian border. KEG's job was to "monitor" the distribution of Western humanitarian supplies sent to the refugee camps in Thai land and to ensure that Khmer Rouge bases were fed. Working through "Task Force 80" of the Thai Army, which had liaison officers with the Khmer Rouge, the Americans ensured a constant flow of UN supplies. Two US relief aid workers, Linda Mason and Roger Brown, later wrote, "The US Government insisted that the Khmer Rouge be fed ... the US preferred that the Khmer Rouge operation benefit from the credibility of an internationally known relief operation."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/UncleSam_PolPot.html


Even CBS news says something similar --- now.

However, the truth could be uncomfortable for a lot of people outside Cambodia. A lawyer for Ta Mok, a Khmer Rouge military leader who could be tried for war crimes, has threatened to subpoena Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger and three former United Nations secretary generals to answer questions about their countries' support for the KR insurgency.

After the Vietnamese invaded and threw out the Khmer Rouge, the U.S. government supported the non-communist partners in a coalition army of which the Khmer Rouge was part. And world powers allowed the Khmer Rouge's delegate to occupy Cambodia's United Nations seat even after the Khmer Rouge were overthrown. Because Vietnam was America's enemy, critics say, the Khmer Rouge were treated as friends.

"There's a lot of embarrassment to go around," says Sydney Schanberg, who covered the Cambodian civil war for The New York Times."We haven't learned that the truth is the cleansing thing."

The truth is that U.S bombing of Cambodia killed many thousands, long before the Khmer Rouge had a chance to.

"The first phase of the genocide, from 1969 to 1975, was pretty brutal," said Noam Chomsky, an MIT professor and longtime critic of the role of U.S. policy in the Cambodian tragedy. "By mid-1975, when the Khmer Rouge took over, most of the country was pretty much a wreck."

"That is true evil," says Schanberg, but adds, "we didn't commit it but we, all the gret powers, provided the engine that helped create it."

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-202_162-184477.html


The US carpet-bombed Cambodia for four years.



On March 18, 1969, the United States began a four year long carpet-bombing campaign in the skies of Cambodia, devastating the countryside and causing socio-political upheaval that eventually led to the installation of the Pol Pot regime.

The United States dropped upwards of 2.7 million tons of bombs on Cambodia, exceeding the amount it had dropped on Japan during WWII (including Hiroshima and Nagasaki) by almost a million tons. During this time, about 30 per cent of the country's population was internally displaced.

Estimates vary widely on the number of civilian casualites inflicted by the campaign; however,as many as 500,000 people died as a direct result of the bombings while perhaps hundreds of thousands more died from the effects of displacement, disease or starvation during this period.

http://rabble.ca/toolkit/onthisday/secret-cambodian-bombing

[Nuclear Unicorn]

65. Sorry dude. You can't build a closet big enough to hide 100 million skeletons.

[HiPointDem]

67. they make a desert and they call it peace.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=iraq%20bombings&psj=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.42553238,d.cGE&biw=1024&bih=582&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=Y1geUYquKOTwigKgi4CoDw


enjoy yourself in the new world order.

[theKed]

34. I think you are conflating

Communism with Toralitarian Dictatorships brought about through worker revolutions. Communiam holds no beliefs about race, gender, age, etc. Only about wealth and social class.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

37. You left out religion and freedom of conscience.

And communists, since they seize control of everything, use that anti-democratic power to persecute the ethnic enemies of the ruling elite, i.e. Pol Pot --

The Khmer Rouge government arrested, tortured and eventually executed anyone suspected of belonging to several categories of supposed "enemies":

...

* Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese, ethnic Thai and other minorities in Eastern Highland, Cambodian Christians (most of whom were Catholic, and the Catholic Church in general), Muslims and the Buddhist monks. The Roman Catholic cathedral of Phnom Penh was razed. The Khmer Rouge forced Muslims to eat pork, which they regard as forbidden (ḥarām). Many of those who refused were killed. Christian clergy and Muslim imams were executed. One former Khmer Rouge Commander, Comrade Duch, converted to evangelical Christianity in the years after the regime fell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge

One is left to wonder if this was an "avowed" policy.

[theKed]

39. 1950 called

They want their misguided beliefs about Marxism back.

Communism is not inherently anti-democratic. In fact it is possibly more democratic than capitalism pretends to be. Totalitarian dictatorships (ie. the USSR, Khmer Rouge, China) are anti-democratic, yes, but you're missing the point.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

43. "Communism is not inherently anti-democratic."

The US is a capitalist society with a active communist party. How many communist countries have active capitalist parties or open opposition of any kind?

None. Communists murder their opponents by the hundreds of millions.

You might as well claim that since stormfront does advocate for mass genocide then the OP is a 1940's misguided belief about Nazism. Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao were able to do what they did because all power was held by the state. And whatever apologia people want to offer for mass murder and genocide by communists they still want to recreate those exact same conditions that are the precursors for totalitarianism.

[HiPointDem]

49. when the CP actually was a viable party, that was not the attitude of the US government.

The Communist Control Act (68 Stat. 775, 50 U.S.C. 841-844) is a piece of United States federal legislation, signed into law by Dwight Eisenhower on 24 August 1954, which outlawed the Communist Party of the United States and criminalized membership in, or support for the Party or "Communist-action" organizations and defined evidence to be considered by a jury in determining participation in the activities, planning, actions, objectives, or purposes of such organizations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Control_Act_of_1954

The Alien Registration Act of 1940 (Smith Act, 76th United States Congress, 3d session, ch. 439, 54 Stat. 670, 18 U.S.C. § 2385, enacted June 29, 1940) is a United States federal statute that set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government and required all non-citizen adult residents to register with the government.

It drew some of its language from statutes recently passed at the state level and combined anti-alien and anti-sedition sections with language crafted specifically to help the government in its attempts to deport Harry Bridges...

After a ten-month trial at the Foley Square Courthouse in Manhattan, eleven leaders of the Communist Party were convicted under the Smith Act in 1949.[48] Ten defendants received sentences of five years and $10,000 fines. An eleventh defendant, Robert G. Thompson, a distinguished hero of the Second World War, was sentenced to three years in consideration of his military record. The five defense attorneys were cited for contempt of court and given prison sentences. Those convicted appealed the verdicts, and the Supreme Court upheld their convictions in 1951 in Dennis v. United States in a 6-2 decision.

Following that decision, the DOJ prosecuted dozens of cases. In total, by May 1956, another 131 communists were indicted, of whom 98 were convicted, nine acquitted, while juries brought no verdict in the other cases.[49] Other party leaders indicted included Claudia Jones and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a founding member of the ACLU.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_registration_act


In June 1918, the Socialist Party figure Eugene V. Debs of Indiana was arrested for violating the Sedition Act by undermining the government's conscription efforts. He was sentenced to ten years in prison. He served his sentence in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary from April 13, 1919, until December 1921, when President Harding commuted Debs' sentence to time served, effective on December 25, Christmas Day.[19] In March 1919, President Wilson, at the suggestion of Attorney General Thomas Watt Gregory, released or reduced the sentences of some two hundred prisoners convicted under the Espionage Act or the Sedition Act.[20]

With the act rendered inoperative by the end of hostilities, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer waged a public campaign, not unrelated to his own campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, in favor of a peacetime version of the Sedition Act.[21] He sent a circular outlining his rationale to newspaper editors in January 1919, citing the dangerous foreign-language press and radical attempts to create unrest in African American communities.[22] He testified in favor of such a law in early June 1920. At one point Congress had more than 70 versions of proposed language and amendments for such a bill...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918

now that most of the actual communists have been drummed out labor unions, deported, jailed, forced out of their jobs, smeared in the press, and the party infiltrated and neutered, people like you go around talking about how open the us is to opposition parties.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

51. Good! I would want them to do the same thing to fascists

Who are the moral and practical equivalent of bigoted, mass-murdering communists.

[theKed]

54. *sigh*

[theKed]

50. Calling the USSR

Khmer Rouge, China, and any similar state actually Communist is as misguided as calling the Nazi regime socialist.

The world has yet to see an actual Communist state emerge. There have been Communist revolutions, which were co-opted by dictatorships, but never a Communist state.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

52. Sounds like the definition of insanity.

[theKed]

53. Huh?

Wanna take another run at that?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

57. You wrote

There have been Communist revolutions, which were co-opted by dictatorships, but never a Communist state.

The communists seize all food production, all medicine, all media, all government, all courts, all manufacturing. They never allow competition, criticism or opposition. How can a dictatorship NOT arise? It is totalitarian by definitition. And yet the snake oil salesmen tell us the next time will be different.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result.

[theKed]

58. Tell you what

You go learn about actual communism and come back. We'll have a proper talk.

[laundry_queen]

60. NO kidding.

Been shaking my head at the entire conversation. Some edumacation is in order here.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

62. "Some edumacation is in order here."

And some communist regimes have entire camps dedicated to that very purpose.

[laundry_queen]

63. LOL are you series?

You clearly know nothing about the divide between economic systems and political systems and the theories within each. But carry on. It's entertaining.

[patrice]

78. As do OTHER types of regimes, so all such are brothers & sisters in fascism.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

61. I gave up fairy tales as a little girl. It's the real life body counts that concern me now.

Get back to me when you have a totalitarian regime that doesn't turn in to -- a totalitarian regime.

[theKed]

66. Huh?

You're not making much sense.

Listen, you truly do not understand communism. It's not your fault. American government and society spent most of a century telling you that democracy and communism are polar opposites. They're not, you were lied to, to protect and preserve capitalists while they seized food production, industry, media, government, courts, medicine, all those things you're terrified the evil reds are after. Don't believe it? Look around you and see the corporate stranglehold on America.

A proper communist regime doesn't seize those things so much as release them from the iron grip of corporations, the wealthy, and the elite - into the hands of the masses. Gosh. Sounds almost fucking democratic.

[Mosby]

70. It seems to me

That you guys are arguing theory vs application.

In theory communism is not anti-democratic but in practice it is.

If there has never been a true communist country it's because its never been able to make the jump to application without degenerating into totalilarianism, which indicates to me that the theory is lacking in very significant ways.

[HiPointDem]

40. On the Side of Pol Pot: U.S. Supports Khmer Rouge

For the last eleven years the United States government, in a covert operation born of cynicism and hypocrisy, has collaborated with the genocidal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. More specifically, Washington has covertly aided and abetted the Pol Potists' guerrilla war to overthrow the Vietnamese backed government of Prime Minister Hun Sen, which replaced the Khmer Rouge regime.

The U.S. government's secret partnership with the Khmer Rouge grew out of the U.S. defeat in the Vietnam War. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, the U.S.-worried by the shift in the Southeast Asian balance of power-turned once again to geopolitical confrontation. It quickly formalized an anti-Vietnamese, anti-Soviet strategic alliance with China-an alliance whose disastrous effects have been most evident in Cambodia. For the U.S., playing the "China card" has meant sustaining the Khmer Rouge as a geopolitical counterweight capable of destabilizing the Hun Sen government in Cambodia and its Vietnamese allies.

When Vietnam intervened in Cambodia and drove the Pol Potists from power in January 1972, Washington took immediate steps to preserve the Khmer Rouge as a guerrilla movement. International relief agencies were pressured by the U.S. to provide humanitarian assistance to the Khmer Rouge guerrillas who fled into Thailand. For more than a decade, the Khmer Rouge have used the refugee camps they occupy as military bases to wage a contra-war in Cambodia....

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/US_PolPot.html

[Nuclear Unicorn]

55. That's a source? Some guy's teal blue website?

And yet here you are defending a 100 million bodies piled high in the name of racism, ethnic cleansing and plain ol' greed that would make J. P. Morgan blush. You decry 1%ers but give a free pass to the commissars with their lakeside dachas. You decry anti-union activity but apologise for mass-slaughter of Jews, Muslims and Christians.

Whatever.

Your kind of totalitarianism is a non-starter in the US and thank God (does invoking God put me on the list?) because saner, more rational voices prevail -- and they have better websites too.

[HiPointDem]

64. The source is Covert Action Quarterly, 1990. But even CBS says more or less the same -- today.

As I noted.

There are lots of sources for the same information -- today, now that it's too late to change anything.

The US supported Pol Pot; financially, politically and logistically. The run-up to Pol Pot's control of Cambodia was 4 years of carpet bombing which spared hardly an inch of the country, displaced 1/3 of its population, and destroyed and poisoned the food supply.

You can post all the pictures of skulls you like; the fact is that the US is culpable for everything that happened in Cambodia, in multiple ways.

[patrice]

83. It is a trait of fascism that the drive toward power for power's sake alone will wear ANY label.

It's usually characterized as being in service to somekind of absolute principle/value/ideology, but if you examine the application of whatever they are preaching you can see their absolutes break down into relativities, all with plausibly deniable justifications that the fascists also OWN exclusively. This means that it isn't the principle, it's the power to exclusively define whatever principle and whatever exceptions absolutely without any "diversity" (relative values) other than those which the current flavor of the strongest fascist position also owns.

Paulo Freire says this is because we have a strong tendency to internalize the oppressor along with the oppression.

[Dirty Socialist]

23. I knew a guy who wanted to limit voting

After he told me his BS views about voting, I tried to stay away from him after that.

[Nye Bevan]

26. Could you be friends with someone who supports the summary execution, without trial, of US citizens?

[doc03]

27. Where I live you don't any choice unless you are a compete hermit n\t

[a la izquierda]

29. I'm related to many RWNJ...

I can't even conceive of willingly being friends with a Republican who's in my face about politics...

[el_bryanto]

30. Interesting

Well if there were basically all those things there, than it would be hard to be friends with them; our world views are too different.

But I don't know if that describes the majority of regular republicans. I mean in many cases they believe what they are doing is actually good. Take the voting thing - i have a friend who genuinely believes it should be harder to vote; that if you aren't willing to make an effort to vote, you shouldn't be able to. We've talked about how those laws hit poor and working class people more - and he agrees that is problematic - but he remains pretty firm. Does that make him a bad person with which I can't associate? No - because on lots of other things we do agree.

Bryant

[SQUEE]

41. Just a thought.

There is far more to life than the political.
I regularly converse, hang out with and have a few beers with a friend who happens to be a conservative Xtian, you know what we talk about? Cars, weather, music, significant others, bitch about work, even art.. we just went together to see the new exhibits at the Frist Museum last week, then had sushi and a long talk about how truly dreary so many of Rembrandt and his peers works were, (that and running joke for days about single points of light), and how we both would like a few hours alone with the Phelps Klan.
We as a rule do not discuss US politics, aside from a general sense, but we have discussed world politics, mainly Israel, (and both found it funny how much the "Jew" is the one opposed to much of the Israeli policy)... but hey YMMV

[derby378]

45. I smell another "purity thread"

Oh, by the way, nice try attempting to link people like me who support the Second Amendment with people who support racism and disenfranchisement. Epic Fail, pal.

[Fla_Democrat]

46. That depends, by Nazi, do you mean..

A. An actual member of the SS?

B. Someone that likes to dress in funny looking uniforms and ask me if I have seen Kyle?

C. Members of law enforcement, regularly referred to (in some circles) as jack boots, thugs, fucking pigs and Nazis.

D. Someone who disagrees with my political view, therefore they must be a Nazi.

[LanternWaste]

48. If the point every comes in which I deny friendship based merely on American politics...

If the point every comes in which I deny friendship based merely on American politics, I will be forced to consider myself a failure as human, more intolerant and dogmatic than those I indict for being intolerant and dogmatic, and a wee bit too melodramatic for the good of reality.

I do however, understand many people will indeed do just that, and then rationalize American politics as an ethical choice founded completely on black and white morality, with little, if any, room for the human condition.




All these imaginary human constructs which we allow to not merely run our lives, but also to decide our friendships...? No thanks, not for me...

[samsingh]

68. no

[nadinbrzezinski]

73. Once, before the country became this divided

We were friends, good friends, with a hard core Libertarian, now freeper...as you can imagine we have drifted apart.

[Bettie]

74. I can be casual "friends" with such people...(the second group, not the Nazis)

But, as soon as they show their views, I'll distance myself from them.

There are some like this I'm related to, so I just avoid them and talk about things unrelated to politics.

There are some in groups of people who I really enjoy, so I just keep my interaction with the unpleasant ones to a minimum and don't discuss topics that will be annoying to me.

My DH and I have ended friendships over politics though.

[patrice]

76. K&R for evergreen personal reality testing!

[OceanEcosystem]

77. Your criteria is far too slanted.

Someone who opposes gun control, welfare, and tries to suppress certain people from voting may be distasteful, but until or unless they support the killing of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust and the conquering of numerous neighboring countries, calling them a Nazi is a stretch.

[KamaAina]

79. "She's a Nazi, George. A Nazi!"

"Kind of a cute Nazi, though."

[slackmaster]

82. Say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism; at least it was an Ethos.

Befriending a Nihilist seems a lot worse.

(This post is sarcasm. The subject line is a quote from The Big Lebowski.)

[just1voice]

84. People praise hit men all the time, along with torturers and civilian killers

Not to mention banking criminals, propagandists and vigilantes. Sadly, there are a million excuses for having "friends" that do all those things too.