-----Mensagem original----- De: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]Em nome de Seth Ackerman Enviada em: sexta-feira, 26 de maio de 2000 15:14 Para: 'lbo-talk at lists.panix.com' Assunto: RE: Kim Jong Il Thinks He's a God-King: Why Ignore It?
Brad De Long wrote:
> >That's a different topic. Did the US know, in 1950 that Sun[g] was a
> >megalomaniac?
>
> He was a client of *Stalin*, for God's sake. Of course it seemed
> likely that Kim Il Sung's regime would be a disaster for the Korean
> people.
>
> Or do you think that Stalin liked to put nice, friendly, benevolent
> do-gooders in power in neighboring countries?
>
Brad, you have a weird view of history: Sung was a client of Stalin... Stalin's a genocidal tyrant... So Sung *must* have been a genocidal tyrant.
Does this historical formula work for our own leaders? Trujillo was a client of LBJ. Trujillo was a blood-drenched dictator. So LBJ was a blood-drenched dictator too, right?
Is that how history works? Democracies always stick with democracies, bound by an immutable communion of shared values? That seems to be part of some catechism for you, but is it true?
Seth
-This what I call the "Star wars" view of internal politics (Remember Ronald Reagan and the Evil Empire). To believe in it seriously one must forget US support for maniac dictators like Suharto, Pinochet, Pol Pot..., not to mention the South African apartheid. Btw: Brad seems to has dicovered E. Hobsbawn. What does he think about Hobsbawn assertion that the USSR (specifically Stalin´s USSR) saved the liberal democracies in two senses: by introducing the concept of state planning and by defeating the NAZI Germany?
Alexandre