"It's an ill wind....."

[armchair_pundit]

(...)The Socialist/Communist ideology is the biggest killer of all ideologies and I have explained why to you so many times. It goes against human nature. We are not meant to be collectivized. We are all selfish. That's they way we are made. To go against this requires a lot of compulsion.(...)

You still do not understand what socialism is. Either it is beyond your capacity to understand, or you have decided that you were not going to understand it...

I do understand. It is people like you and Neverfail that do not.

Marx gave us the theory of dialectic materialism. It goes something like this. There is only the material world and nothing else. Society evolves according to the forces of nature. It has evolved from primitive communalism to slavery to feudalism to capitalism. The next phases are Socialism and then Communism.

My theory goes like this.

1)Democracy will lead to Socialism because as Aristotle said, the poor are the majority and the will of the majority is supreme in a democracy.

2)Socialism leads to poverty and dictatorship.

Point 2) is relevant to our topic of discussion. So I won’t talk about 1) which I spoke of previously.

Human nature makes Socialism unworkable. The law of nature is that each organism competes with others to survive and pass on its genes. Nature has made us selfish and thus Socialism unworkable. Capitalism only requires each individual to pursue its own interests.

Socialism requires each individual to sacrifice his own interest for the good of the community. Thus is against the force of nature. To go against this force you need a counterforce. That is why Socialism always end up with dictators. Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, Fatty Kim and Castro were all Socialist dictators. And they were also mass murderers.

This is cassowary’s version of dialectic materialism. Unlike Marx’s version, I have history to back me up.

(...)The Socialist/Communist ideology is the biggest killer of all ideologies and I have explained why to you so many times. It goes against human nature. We are not meant to be collectivized. We are all selfish. That's they way we are made. To go against this requires a lot of compulsion.(...)

You still do not understand what socialism is. Either it is beyond your capacity to understand, or you have decided that you were not going to understand it...

You must surely be aware by now that WE HAVE a closed mind.

There fixed it for you

Because trying as hard as you have, you can never convince us to embrace the siren song of social-communism. EVEN by revising history and pointing guns at our heads in 'Murica, and apparently Singapore. Kill enough of us and maybe, but that might backfire (pun intended) terribly for your cause and its followers...

You can't out debate Cassowary, so you try ridicule and denigrating his culture. Straight out of the Alinsky rules...

Intelligent people know that Socialism and Marxism are not the same thing. Just like the Roman Catholic Church and the Sevent Day Adventists are not the same thing...Unfortunately there aren't as many intelligent people arouns as one would like...

Change the subject because you have nothing else to argue.

Yes, socialism is communism light, so technically not the same, just a progression from bad to worse...

[Sertorio]

Yes, socialism is communism light, so technically not the same, just a progression from bad to worse...

No. Communism is socialism heavy. Not at all the same thing. Or to you is drinking a beer the same thing as drinking two bottles of scotch?...

[armchair_pundit]

Yes, socialism is communism light, so technically not the same, just a progression from bad to worse...

No. Communism is socialism heavy. Not at all the same thing. Or to you is drinking a beer the same thing as drinking two bottles of scotch?...

ahhh, nitpicking semantics... that the best you got?

and like your analogy, they both get you to the same destination if you swill enough of the "beer", like Europe is doing.

But strangely all the former "satellites" of the USSR are cutting back on the "free" beer... Wonder why?

[neverfail]

You must surely be aware by now that WE HAVE a closed mind.


There fixed it for you

Did I ask you to tamper with my post?

Because trying as hard as you have, you can never convince us to embrace the siren song of social-communism.

That does not even remotely describe what I am trying to do.

[neverfail]

So was Berlin, not to mention Nagasaki and Hiroshima. How come I don’t hear you complaining? You want the US to win wars without killing people. I know what it is. You want Socialists to win. That’s why you object to US intervention in Vietnam.

Specious comparison! Nazi Germany was an aggressor state that brought the woes of military defeat down upon the German people. Vietnam was an internal matter for the Vietnamese to settle among themselves. Did I want the socialists to win? As I see it, what my or your preference is in the matter I see as irrelevant for the simple, I would have thought obvious, reason that Vietnam is neither my country nor yours. If the mass of Vietnamese preferred national unification under Hanoi's leadership than the alternative then why stand in their way?

[cassowary]

So was Berlin, not to mention Nagasaki and Hiroshima. How come I don’t hear you complaining? You want the US to win wars without killing people. I know what it is. You want Socialists to win. That’s why you object to US intervention in Vietnam.

Specious comparison! Nazi Germany was an aggressor state that brought the woes of military defeat down upon the German people. Vietnam was an internal matter for the Vietnamese to settle among themselves. Did I want the socialists to win? As I see it, what my or your preference is in the matter I see as irrelevant for the simple, I would have thought obvious, reason that Vietnam is neither my country nor yours. If the mass of Vietnamese preferred national unification under Hanoi's leadership than the alternative then why stand in their way?

What makes you think the mass of Vietnamese want a Socialist dictatorship to rule them? The N Vietnamese don’t allow elections. The South did, even under difficult conditions.

[neverfail]

So was Berlin, not to mention Nagasaki and Hiroshima. How come I don’t hear you complaining? You want the US to win wars without killing people. I know what it is. You want Socialists to win. That’s why you object to US intervention in Vietnam.

Specious comparison! Nazi Germany was an aggressor state that brought the woes of military defeat down upon the German people. Vietnam was an internal matter for the Vietnamese to settle among themselves. Did I want the socialists to win? As I see it, what my or your preference is in the matter I see as irrelevant for the simple, I would have thought obvious, reason that Vietnam is neither my country nor yours. If the mass of Vietnamese preferred national unification under Hanoi's leadership than the alternative then why stand in their way?

What makes you think the mass of Vietnamese want a Socialist dictatorship to rule them? The N Vietnamese don’t allow elections. The South did, even under difficult conditions.

The South permitted a couple of elections under pressure from their US patron;: the purpose of which was to save face in Washington DC (as distinct to permitting South Vietnamese voters change their government via the ballot box.). Very hard for the US administration to "sell" the US public the idea that it was striving to save South Vietnam from Communist tyranny when the Saigon regime was nothing but a dictatorship itself. The elections of course did not have to be either free or fair since they were only there for PR show.

Did they "want a socialist dictatorship"? Mate, a people who have never known democracy in their entire history are not so choosy as we about the form their government takes as they are conditioned by past historical experience to expect government to tell them what to do. What seems to count is that the government is their very own rather than one imposed on them by foreigners - which is why the Southern regime with its past association with French colonialism and wholesale dependence on US arms to prop it up never commanded much respect - unlike Ho Chi Minh's crowd in the north who had previously "earned their stripes" through years of insurgency resistance from the jungles of the north to both the Japanese and then subsequently the French.

Their struggle was for a unified Vietnamese state which only Hanoi could deliver. The fact that so many southern Vietnamese volunteered as Viet Cong insurgents, putting their lives and fortunes at risk by so doing, is enough to inform me that even in the South the consensus supported Vietnamese reunification.

[neverfail]

You know, in a way I can understand Britain's concern over wanting to keep Malaya-Singapore out of potentially hostile hands in and after the mid-20th century. Both front up against the Malacca Strait. This is one of the world's most important shipping routes and the shipping lane is on that side of the strait. On the opposing Sumatra side are shallow waters that make it unsuitable for navigation.

Rather clear that despite having ceded independence to India, Britain still viewed itself as a slightly downsized global power with worldwide interests: not as a spent force by any means.

But while Malaya-Singapore in important geo-strategically to the West, I fail to see how Vietnam is strategically important anyone but China.

[cassowary]

So was Berlin, not to mention Nagasaki and Hiroshima. How come I don’t hear you complaining? You want the US to win wars without killing people. I know what it is. You want Socialists to win. That’s why you object to US intervention in Vietnam.

Specious comparison! Nazi Germany was an aggressor state that brought the woes of military defeat down upon the German people. Vietnam was an internal matter for the Vietnamese to settle among themselves. Did I want the socialists to win? As I see it, what my or your preference is in the matter I see as irrelevant for the simple, I would have thought obvious, reason that Vietnam is neither my country nor yours. If the mass of Vietnamese preferred national unification under Hanoi's leadership than the alternative then why stand in their way?

In addition to what I said earlier, the bigger Socialist/Communist powers, did not leave it to the Vietnamese to sort out things for themselves. North Vietnam was supplied by China and the USSR. Without US intervention, South Vietnam was doomed.

Your policy preference that the US stay away will result in Socialist victory. It seems to me that the western left mostly want their fellow Socialists to win even though they were dictators, thugs and mass murderers.

…..................,,.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,...........

If Vietnam was only a civil war, then the Malayan Emergency was also a civil war. Why did you approve of British and Commonwealth help?

I don’t regard the Vietnam war to be only a civil war. It was also a globalwar between democracy and dictatorship and between two opposing ideologies - capitalism and socialism.

[Jim the Moron]

"If Vietnam was only a civil war, then the Malayan Emergency was also a civil war" (cassowary)

An undeniable truth.