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TM
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14 Oct 2012, 3:56 pm

ValentineWiggin wrote:
TM wrote:
ValentineWiggin wrote:
TM wrote:
ValentineWiggin wrote:
Governments are slaves, just as we are, to financier-created "inextinguishable debt" Henry Ford talked about.


As long as government controls the printing press, there is no such thing as "inextinguishable debt".


Hence my point.

A group of nameless, unelected, anonymous individuals called the Federal Reserve does, as of, oh... 1913

Said Woodrow Wilson, in regret, "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."


The board of the Fed is picked by the President, so your argument could just as well apply to the "non-elected" "unknown group" that controls the military.


Yup.


and you don't see the irony in this, you being what I interpret as a fairly staunch socialist?



ValentineWiggin
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14 Oct 2012, 3:58 pm

TM wrote:
ValentineWiggin wrote:
TM wrote:
ValentineWiggin wrote:
TM wrote:
ValentineWiggin wrote:
Governments are slaves, just as we are, to financier-created "inextinguishable debt" Henry Ford talked about.


As long as government controls the printing press, there is no such thing as "inextinguishable debt".


Hence my point.

A group of nameless, unelected, anonymous individuals called the Federal Reserve does, as of, oh... 1913

Said Woodrow Wilson, in regret, "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."


The board of the Fed is picked by the President, so your argument could just as well apply to the "non-elected" "unknown group" that controls the military.


Yup.


and you don't see the irony in this, you being what I interpret as a fairly staunch socialist?


I'm a communist, actually, and I'm not seeing why that affects anything.


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ruveyn
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14 Oct 2012, 3:59 pm

ValentineWiggin wrote:

I'm a communist, actually, and I'm not seeing why that affects anything.


Churchill once said: If a young man is not a communist by the time he is 20 he has no heart. If he is still a communist at 40 he has no brains.

Communism is a big time fail. And for very fundamental reasons. It is contrary to human nature.

ruveyn



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14 Oct 2012, 4:04 pm

ruveyn wrote:
ValentineWiggin wrote:

I'm a communist, actually, and I'm not seeing why that affects anything.


Churchill once said: If a young man is not a communist by the time he is 20 he has no heart. If he is still a communist at 40 he has no brains.

Communism is a big time fail. And for very fundamental reasons. It is contrary to human nature.

ruveyn
Do you have OCD for unsolicited lecturing or what?



TM
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14 Oct 2012, 4:04 pm

ValentineWiggin wrote:
TM wrote:
ValentineWiggin wrote:
TM wrote:
ValentineWiggin wrote:
TM wrote:
ValentineWiggin wrote:
Governments are slaves, just as we are, to financier-created "inextinguishable debt" Henry Ford talked about.


As long as government controls the printing press, there is no such thing as "inextinguishable debt".


Hence my point.

A group of nameless, unelected, anonymous individuals called the Federal Reserve does, as of, oh... 1913

Said Woodrow Wilson, in regret, "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."


The board of the Fed is picked by the President, so your argument could just as well apply to the "non-elected" "unknown group" that controls the military.


Yup.


and you don't see the irony in this, you being what I interpret as a fairly staunch socialist?


I'm a communist, actually, and I'm not seeing why that affects anything.


Well, considering you are complaining about non-elected "hidden male elites" controlling society, yet communism has been exactly that in 100% of it's incarnations since the ideology was invented.

It's a bit like Ruveyn complaining that he doesn't get a welfare check.



ValentineWiggin
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14 Oct 2012, 4:06 pm

ruveyn wrote:
ValentineWiggin wrote:

I'm a communist, actually, and I'm not seeing why that affects anything.


Churchill once said: If a young man is not a communist by the time he is 20 he has no heart. If he is still a communist at 40 he has no brains.

Communism is a big time fail. And for very fundamental reasons. It is contrary to human nature.

ruveyn


The morally-bankrupt are historically wont to proclaim the horrors people visit upon one another as incontrovertible "human nature", until society demands that they be held to a higher standard.


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They talk and vote as they are directed by Some Man of Property, who has attached their Minds
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ruveyn
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14 Oct 2012, 4:07 pm

TM wrote:

Well, considering you are complaining about non-elected "hidden male elites" controlling society, yet communism has been exactly that in 100% of it's incarnations since the ideology was invented.

It's a bit like Ruveyn complaining that he doesn't get a welfare check.


Bite your tongue.

The Soviet Union was ruled by an all male gerontocracy, a dictatorship of sick old males. Beria could not get it up unless he was raping teen age girls. They were a sad, pathetic and evil lot.

ruveyn



TM
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14 Oct 2012, 4:10 pm

ruveyn wrote:

Bite your tongue.

The Soviet Union was ruled by an all male gerontocracy, a dictatorship of sick old males. Beria could not get it up unless he was raping teen age girls. They were a sad, pathetic and evil lot.

ruveyn


My point wasn't that you were like hte rulers of Soviet Russia. My point was that a communist complaining about non-elected males having all the power, is like you a very strong anti-government guy complaining that there isn't enough government.



ValentineWiggin
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14 Oct 2012, 4:10 pm

TM wrote:

Well, considering you are complaining about non-elected "hidden male elites" controlling society, yet communism has been exactly that in 100% of it's incarnations since the ideology was invented.

It's a bit like Ruveyn complaining that he doesn't get a welfare check.


Argument from missing the entire-f*cking-point?

Haven't seen that one in a while.


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They talk and vote as they are directed by Some Man of Property, who has attached their Minds
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ValentineWiggin
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14 Oct 2012, 4:11 pm

TM wrote:
ruveyn wrote:

Bite your tongue.

The Soviet Union was ruled by an all male gerontocracy, a dictatorship of sick old males. Beria could not get it up unless he was raping teen age girls. They were a sad, pathetic and evil lot.

ruveyn


My point wasn't that you were like hte rulers of Soviet Russia. My point was that a communist complaining about non-elected males having all the power, is like you a very strong anti-government guy complaining that there isn't enough government.


Could you share with us, please, what you think "Communism" as a philosophy entails?


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They talk and vote as they are directed by Some Man of Property, who has attached their Minds
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14 Oct 2012, 4:13 pm

ValentineWiggin wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
ValentineWiggin wrote:

I'm a communist, actually, and I'm not seeing why that affects anything.


Churchill once said: If a young man is not a communist by the time he is 20 he has no heart. If he is still a communist at 40 he has no brains.

Communism is a big time fail. And for very fundamental reasons. It is contrary to human nature.

ruveyn


The morally-bankrupt are historically wont to proclaim the horrors people visit upon one another as incontrovertible "human nature", until society demands that they be held to a higher standard.
I'm morally bankrupt for believing that civilization is nothing more than a thin veneer for our primal tendencies? And just to be clear, what exactly are you referring to?



Last edited by AceOfSpades on 14 Oct 2012, 4:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

TM
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14 Oct 2012, 4:21 pm

ValentineWiggin wrote:
TM wrote:
ruveyn wrote:

Bite your tongue.

The Soviet Union was ruled by an all male gerontocracy, a dictatorship of sick old males. Beria could not get it up unless he was raping teen age girls. They were a sad, pathetic and evil lot.

ruveyn


My point wasn't that you were like hte rulers of Soviet Russia. My point was that a communist complaining about non-elected males having all the power, is like you a very strong anti-government guy complaining that there isn't enough government.


Could you share with us, please, what you think "Communism" as a philosophy entails?


Communism as a philosophy is revolutionary socialist movement with the end-goal of creating a class-less, money-less and stateless social order based upon common ownership of the means of production as well as a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of this social order. (As per the writings of Marx and Engels, further developed by Lenin, Trotsky and a quite a few other "thinkers")

Communism in practice is a revolutionary socialist movement, with the end result of creating an authoritarian dictatorship ruled over by an all powerful party, with a personality cult, where the means of production are controlled by the state for the benefit of the party. (as evidenced by every country that ever tried to implement communism).

I've read my Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Kropotkin and Luxemburg, which is more than I can say for most people who brand themselves "communists".

So you know, if you intend to take the Chinese route of "we will do whatever works and call it socialism" route in your argument, I would advice against it.



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14 Oct 2012, 4:29 pm

TM wrote:
Communism as a philosophy is revolutionary socialist movement with the end-goal of creating a class-less, money-less and stateless social order based upon common ownership of the means of production as well as a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of this social order. (As per the writings of Marx and Engels, further developed by Lenin, Trotsky and a quite a few other "thinkers")

Well-done, then.
TM wrote:
Communism in practice is a revolutionary socialist movement, with the end result of creating an authoritarian dictatorship ruled over by an all powerful party, with a personality cult, where the means of production are controlled by the state for the benefit of the party. (as evidenced by every country that ever tried to implement communism).

So, then, communism "in practice" has never actually existed, as per definition number 1?

Thank you. You may sit down now, Johnny.


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of the human Heart, that very few Men, who have no Property, have any Judgment of their own.
They talk and vote as they are directed by Some Man of Property, who has attached their Minds
to his Interest."


TM
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14 Oct 2012, 4:36 pm

ValentineWiggin wrote:
So, then, communism "in practice" has never actually existed, as per definition number 1?

Thank you. You may sit down now, Johnny.


So, you're really going the "IT HAS NEVER EXISTED" argument? That was played out back when I was discussing this with communists back in 98.

It becomes somewhat like this, an ideology is a a plan, communism as a plan sounds great, when you try to implement it it warps into a completely different beast. The problem is that Marx sucked at everything, and created an ideology which required party rule in a transitional period, with the result that due to human nature the party will never relinquish control.

So, if we accept Einstein's definition of insanity, "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result" then people who argue for communism are per definition insane.

P.S "No true scotsman" fallacy.



Last edited by TM on 14 Oct 2012, 4:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ValentineWiggin
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14 Oct 2012, 4:36 pm

AceOfSpades wrote:
ValentineWiggin wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
ValentineWiggin wrote:

I'm a communist, actually, and I'm not seeing why that affects anything.


Churchill once said: If a young man is not a communist by the time he is 20 he has no heart. If he is still a communist at 40 he has no brains.

Communism is a big time fail. And for very fundamental reasons. It is contrary to human nature.

ruveyn


The morally-bankrupt are historically wont to proclaim the horrors people visit upon one another as incontrovertible "human nature", until society demands that they be held to a higher standard.
I'm morally bankrupt for believing that civilization is nothing more than a thin veneer for our primal tendencies? And just to be clear, what exactly are you referring to?


Ah, of course not.
Moral bankruptcy comes into play when someone makes a fallacious argument from tradition that because exploitative relationships exist, that they are some inescapable mode of the human condition, more basic and "primal" than other impulses such as empathic response and altruism,
and contrary to all of history showing that human beings always have and always will impose moral demands on institutions and other individuals, IE, that people will treat one another well to the exact extent that it is culturally-expected and societally-required of them.


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of the human Heart, that very few Men, who have no Property, have any Judgment of their own.
They talk and vote as they are directed by Some Man of Property, who has attached their Minds
to his Interest."


ValentineWiggin
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14 Oct 2012, 4:40 pm

TM wrote:
It becomes somewhat like this, an ideology is a a plan, communism as a plan sounds great, when you try to implement it it warps into a completely different beast. The problem is that Marx sucked at everything, and created an ideology which required party rule in a transitional period, with the result that due to human nature the party will never relinquish control.

So your real qualm is with socialism.
TM wrote:
So, if we accept Einstein's definition of insanity, "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result" then people who argue for communism are per definition insane.

If it had ever been instituted, then yes, I'd agree.


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of the human Heart, that very few Men, who have no Property, have any Judgment of their own.
They talk and vote as they are directed by Some Man of Property, who has attached their Minds
to his Interest."