> The problem with much of the discussion about "democracy" versus
> "totalitarianism" that people like Bradford DeLong and Max Sawicky traffic
> in is that it is ahistorical. . . .
I wasn't in that discussion, just people of my "ilk" I guess. (greetings to fellow ilksters.)
As I've said before you seem to get all scientific/dialectical/pseudo-objective when the topic of abuse under systems calling them- selves socialist or communist comes up, but in the face of a tragedy under capitalism, all the moralistic cylinders are firing.
< . . . Stalin's gulag was not the product of
> philosophical beliefs but conditions rooted in a time and place. Stalin,
> who was a member of Lenin's party, read exactly the same Marxist classics
> as Tomas Borge, who Reagan's propaganda-machine labeled a "Stalinist". But
> what did Borge do after being named Minister of the Interior in Sandinista
> Nicaragua? He declared that there would be no firing squads. He said that
> the best punishment for Somoza's torturers would be for them to live with
> their crimes.>
I wasn't talking about Borge, but about a certain vacuous style of left rhetoric.
> As it turns out, this was too optimistic. These torturers went to Honduras
> where they were trained in low-intensity warfare by the CIA and
> Argentinian military operatives. The Argentinians were fascists, who not
only completed Fascism 101, but 201 and 301 as well. They are the same
tortures who ranted at Jacobo Timerman in his prison cell that all dirty
kikes got what they deserved in Nazi Germany. These Argentinian thugs were
our buddies.>
This ends like one of those Ronald Reagan stories, completely out of sight of the beginning, if there was one.
Cheers, MBS
P.S. Ma says please don't bring your laundry home again.