>In a message dated 7/6/00 6:08:07 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>furuhashi.1 at osu.edu writes:
>
><< The point of Christine's post is that Brad & Justin as well are
> Stalinists in American political discourse. And my point is that it
> is not the Right alone that is responsible for this type of political
> culture; liberals & leftists (loosely defined) engage in the same
> habit of using the word Stalinist as a form of epithet. Americans
> can never get over the culture of Cold War, it seems. Don't complain
> the next time someone red-baits _you_! >>
>
>Oh, grow up. I can't speak for Brad, but you cannot intelligibly use the term
>"Stalinist" to describe someone like me who is a militant loony raving ACLU
>civil libertarian.
American political culture isn't very sophisticated, in my opinion. Try arguing for national health care, and you find someone piping up, "that's socialism!" in an effort to derail discussion. There is an ideological reason why America has the least developed welfare state among rich nations, aside from rampant racism, and the culture of red-baiting seems to me to be a big culprit. The ACLU must be a CP front, and Hilary Clinton a feminist radical, in the American ideology. :)
You grew up in America, and that's why you don't notice how odd this country is.
Yoshie