Truman: We're not going to turn the US into a right wing totalitarian country.

[madfloridian]

Run time: 01:07 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FfdsHP1UWU   Posted on YouTube: September 15, 2006 By YouTube Member: eblumrich Views on YouTube: 22912   Posted on DU: December 02, 2006 By DU Member: madfloridian Views on DU: 1456

 
in order to fight communism abroad. Poor quality film but the words are so appropriate for today. He said we were not going to control what our people read, say, and think. We were not going to transform our fine FBI into a gestapo secret police.

Someone needs to say those words today....very loudly.

[rockymountaindem]

1. Why does it seem like we're fighting the same battles over and over again?

You'd think that people like Newt would shut up and stop fantasizing about shutting down "threatening" websites. But no... too bad ol' Give 'Em Hell Harry isn't around to give Newt what for.

[madfloridian]

2. It's like groundhog day.

Over and over and over.

[StarTurtle]

7. Edna St. Vincent Millay said it best.

"It's not one damn thing after another, it's the same damn thing over and over."

[yurbud]

9. other side has money and corporate memory on their side.

regular people just pay attention until things are tolerable again.

[MannyGoldstein]

3. Screw Solar Energy

I'm guessing that the presence of Bush and his craven Congressional enablers is causing the corpses of Truman, FDR, Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, Franklin et al. to spin in their graves with such speed and vigor as to power our entire country.

[Erika]

4. Solar energy will just add a smile n/t

[usregimechange]

5. You don't see Truman Videos everyday! K R

[madfloridian]

6. But wouldn't it be nice if we did.

I disagreed with him very much on some things, especially the bombs. But he was right about giving up our freedoms.

[Why Syzygy]

8. Communism is 'left wing'?

Does anyone understand why? Explain?

[rman]

10. In essence, yes:

Communist ideals would have it that the worker class controls the means of production, as opposed to it being controlled by a small wealthy and influential minority. You won't find many RW-ers supporting it.

Of course in practice it worked out completely different, at least in the USSR and in China. Lenin and Trotsky were working on it but never got around to actually implementing communism. Then Stalin took over. There's good reason why Trotsky decried Stalin for his State Capitalism. China's communism was modeled after the USSR.

[Syrinx]

11. Of course Communism is left wing.

It's the epitome of the most extreme form of left-wing policy. And to my knowledge, there has never been an honest implementation of it anywhere, anytime, in the world.

Rulers the world over always make exceptions for themselves. They don't practice what they preach.

Similarly, capitalist leaders make exceptions for themselves. Rulers make the rules, and they always provide loopholes for the benefit of themselves and their associates. (ie. Halliburton.)

Both communism and pure capitalism are deeply flawed.

Capitalism is a bastardized form of social Darwinism -- bastardized in the sense that the elite rulers make rules that favor themselves and their friends. On the other hand, Communism is an unrealistic plan for governing that is incompatible with human nature.

The proven and correct form of government, in my opinion, is Socialism, where the basic needs of all citizens are met, while social and economic advancement are possible through independent initiative.

[Why Syzygy]

12. And thus ends my confusion

Because the practice Truman was condemning was not true Communism. Thanks.

[struggle4progress]

14. Uh, Lenin wrote a book "Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder"

Now Lenin is not one of my favorite thinkers: his organizational ideas were popular reading on Wall Street a few decades ago, and a number of the early Russian communists, such as Trotsky, worried his ideas would lead to dictatorship -- as (in fact) they did. But if one wants to discuss "communism," then certainly one should be aware that there have existed some political traditions (among the various approaches called communism) which were quite hostile to "left-wing" ideas.

[struggle4progress]

13. Limit CIA Role To Intelligence (Harry Truman WaPo 22 Dec 1963)

Harry Truman Writes: Limit CIA Role To Intelligence

By Harry S Truman
Copyright, 1963, by Harry S Truman

... I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports ... I wanted and needed the information in its "natural raw" state and in as comprehensive a volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it. But the most important thing about this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions—and I thought it was necessary that the President do his own thinking and evaluating ... For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government ... I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue ...

http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman's%20CIA%20article.html

The "intelligence" operations now directed by "Death Squad Johnny" Negroponte involve, of course, the nastiest sort of cloak-and-dagger work