Lenin on sex

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Including Lenin himself?

The old cliche' among Communists is to dismiss that something with which you disagree (even mildly) as "Bourgeois", in this case, one attitude or the other concerning sex and drinking water.

Or, on the other hand, he may have felt that drinking water was a most serious act.

You asked him?

No, but his statements have been documented and are widely available. You obviously are not bothering to read the responses to your post. I provided two quotes (with attribution) that includes Lenin's discussion of the glass of water metaphor (which he rejected as bourgeois) . Can you provide an authoritative source that disputes the quotes I provided or that proves that he said what you allege he said?

I thought not.

Are you saying he didn't say it?

And how do I know what *you* will consider an "authoritative source". Such is constantly debated among scholars.

Yes, I'm saying he didn't agree with that statement.

How do you know what I will consider authoritative? Maybe a scholarly book or article? Not some other internet bulletin board where no one has attributed their information. Not some rabid ideologue that is more interested in dramatics than in truth.

Do a Google search and check the first 20 results for (Lenin "glass of water"). Seems that a few people with blogs and rants think he said it, but all the scholarship says he didn't.

I got it straight out of the book "Treason" (2003) by Ann Coulter. You probably violently disagree with most of her opinions, but she is quite accurate in her quotes. I'll check and see if she gave a citation, which she usually does, and if so, I'll give you that source.

ann coulter is the only person i can think of that makes a ton of money for being empirically wrong. she knows as much about history as you know about religion. which is basically nothing but claiming to have a vast ocean of knowledge.

Yes, Ann Coulter said this:

That was a theory that was being kicked around Europe at the time. Lenin discussed it and rejected it. There were some in Russia that supported it, but Lenin (and Stalin) did not.

It's not just that I vigorously disagree with most of what Coulter says; I don't respect her as a scholar - because she's not. She is an ideologue. A polemic. Her mission is not to get beyond any preconceived ideas to get to the truth. It is to get beyond the truth to 'prove' her preconceived notions. It is to paint a picture where her side is good, and anyone else is evil. And if the facts get in the way, they can be bent or ignored.

I second that!

Here's another Coulter distortion:

When I taught in a university, I was in class actually teaching 15-16 hours a week. I had 5 hours of office hours where I met with students. I prepared lectures, graded assignments and exams, helped maintain a computer lab, did research, and had to attend various administrative committees. A typical week was 50 to 60 hours. My health plan was an HMO from a large insurance company - pretty much the same as everyone I knew that wasn't in a university setting. And I didn't make a lot of money - since leaving academia, I make twice as much.

But Coulter's goal is not to really discuss what academia is about - it is to tear down higher education in America. It is to create villains. So let me be one of her villains.

I used the classroom to be a ruthless, political, godless dictator and corrupt the youth. Because I talked about the fossil record and the geological record, which prove that the Earth is much older than 6,000 or 8000 years. Because I didn't want to let some flaky religious discussion in when I was doing what I was supposed to do - teach science. There were dinosaurs, and they died out long before humans arrived. There may have been a flood in Noah's hood, but it was local and involved a breach of a natural levee and the creation of the Black Sea. When I taught biogeography, I insisted that there is scientific evidence for evolution. When I taught weather and climate, I made it clear that global warming was an accepted by the scientific community, although there is no agreement on how big the changes will be, or how fast they will occur.

Call me Dr. Evil. Mu-hah-hah-hah-hah!

You are horrible!

I made a whopping $12K and had no insurance when I was a Teaching Assistant in the Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science Departments at UVa. I saw my advisor's paycheck and I make way more than him today, than I would have had I gone into academia.

Wow, wrong on both counts, Mr. Empirical.

If she said this, obviously she was paraphrasing a liberal ideal.

I say "if", because she is constantly being misquoted by websites, and people like you.

You are a coward to resort to argumentum ad hominem. First you tell us that Coulter is so good and careful about quoting people. Then you admit maybe she was paraphrasing and was factually wrong. But you hedge your admission by implying that maybe she isn't wrong because people like me are constantly misquoting her. The source is the same as the other quote I provided - it was her publisher, which seems to have put chapter 1 of the book (or a large chunk of it) online. Here's that citation again:

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/disp ... ew=excerpt

Why don't you just admit it - Coulter's attention to the facts is not much better when she is quoting something than when she makes sweeping hyperbole. She is not about objective reality and recognizing complexity. She is one of those people who makes herself feel good by attacking others. And you apparently want to spread that pattern here, based on your open and covert propagation of Coulter think.

Joybob, you sure do have AS.

I really think what Lenin was trying to say is that necessity beats ornamentation. Sex is the most primal instinct. Freud would say that all the mistakes of man come from the fruitition of the degradation to man's most sacred gift. Just imagine what life would be like if you could express yourself sexually with utmost liberation, albeit it of course not harming another person in the process.

Just ponder that one...