<HTML><BODY BGCOLOR="#3dffff"> <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">> Officially, the Soviet Union was trying to overthrow the US system, which is > one reason they were funding the CPUSA.  Everything people say seems to be > supporting McCarthy in his arguments. > > -- Nathan Newman ^^^^^^^^ CB: Are you for or against overthrowing the U.S. system ? </BLOCKQUOTE> The arguments would support McCarthyism only if one is for keeping the U.S. <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">system ^^^^^^^^</BLOCKQUOTE> So the right to free speech is conditioned on its ineffectiveness? -- Nathan Newman ^^^^^^^^ CB: What are the important values underlying the right to free speech ? ^^^^^ <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Nathan Newman  wrote:Who said anything about violent overthrow of the government?  The Cuban dissidents involved in these trials specifically supported political overthrow of the system-- that was the point of the Verela petition and movement. ^^^^^^ CB: Do you support, political, non-violent overthrow of the Cuban system ?</BLOCKQUOTE> Nathan: All this apologia for Castro is exactly what's wrong.  I can at least buy <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> the "it's not the right time" arguments but this kind of apologetics sounds exactly like Ashcroft.  Authoritarians of the Right and authoritarians of the left united as enemies of freedom. I just don't see much difference. ^^^^^^^^ CB: If you don't "see" the significant difference by now, you ain't gonna , because it has been made clear in about 20 posts from numerous people on this thread.  The true unity is between bourgeois liberals ( you) and conservatives ( Ashcroft), the real enemies of freedom and socialism.</BLOCKQUOTE> ^^^^^ <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> Nathan: Why is it so hard for people just to say, Castro is engaging in human rights violations of a high order here.  He is executing people and imprisoning non-violent dissidents.  Whether you agree with the "timing" of the petition against those acts, the refusal of people to just call a human rights violation a human rights violation is exactly the problem. </BLOCKQUOTE> CB: Because "he" has not. You say so based on a theory of human rights that has been superceded for over a century.  Your human rights analysis is obsolete because it does not recognize economic human rights as of the same import as speech rights. Why is it so hard for you to say "oh, now I see, we petitioners' idea of human rights is deficient and partial. We shouldn't have circulated that petition? " </HTML>