Trump defenders have a full time job
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So do Christians. 200 years of slavery here in the United States, by and large, condoned and even justified by Christians.
Islam has banned slavery, but, yes, it is still practiced even when officially abolished. I'm not a fan of Islam. I am merely saying that liberals haven't "embraced" Islam. In the US, we practice freedom of religion. That includes all religions, including Islam. Those religions though still have to follow our laws. So what we need to maintain and fight for is democracy. And I would be willing to bet that the vast, vast majority of Muslims in the US want democracy and don't support slavery.
Again, you say "they." It certainly isn't Muslims in the US killing Christians. And remember, Muslims are also persecuted in some parts of the world. Let me be clear: I oppose Muslims persecuting Christians, Buddhists persecuting Muslims, Christians persecuting Buddhists or whatever. I also 100% oppose any religious state. Religion and government should be entirely separate. You cannot have a democracy if there is a state religion or a religion based on a state. In those cases where Christians are persecuted, generally speaking, there is an Islamic state. Any authoritarian state scapegoats and murders minority populations. Germans killed Jews, Guatemala killed indigenous people, Vietnamese Christians killed Buddhists, Chinese communists kill Muslims, et etc etc. This is an aspect of authoritarianism. Take state power away from religions and they can't do that. (I know some of those I listed weren't theocracies, per se.)
Most liberals are Christians. 44% of mainline protestants are Democrats. 44% of Catholics are Democrats. 44% of Orthodox Christians are Democrats. 80% of Black Christians are Democrats. You need to use facts, not just whatever you think is true.
Under Islamic law as practiced by Islamic fundamentalists. But I agree there are some horrific Islamic states out there. I wouldn't say liberals "embrace" those states. In fact, it's conservatives who embrace states like Saudi Arabia, not liberals. It was Jared Kushner who cut a deal with Qatar to save his ass on the 666 Park Ave property. It's Trump and family who are literally friends with MBS who had a journalist, an American resident, hacked to pieces. I don't see liberals "embracing" Islam at all, other than to say we practice religious freedom in the United States and people should be persecuted based on their religion.
I don't know what you mean. The first part: no, I don't think that was much of a problem and isn't what has led us to where we're at. What's led us to where we are it is the marriage of conservative Evangelical Christianity with the Republican Party.
I don't know what you mean about the intolerance on the left. Can you be more specific?
Aborting a fetus isn't harming a living being, at least if we follow Roe v Wade guidelines. At that point, the fetus isn't a separate living being. I remember when I was a young Catholic arguing with Protestants about this from the other point of view. I remember them saying it was "just a bunch of cells." But when the GOP starting pushing abortion as a wedge issue, protestants switched their position on it. They did convince me first though.
Everything else I agree with, except the caveat of children who want to transition. I'm still not sure what to think about that.
What I asked for was that you point to where Marx ever mentioned the government controlling all power.
The creation of federal public lands occurred even under the Articles of Confederation and continued on under the Constitution. If anything, there has been a long process of ceding public land to private hands. For history of acquisition of public lands see Table 1-1. In fact, since 1990, a net 31 million acres of public land has been lost. [see page 15]
In other words, federal public lands were created before Marx even lived and was instituted by the Founding Fathers of the USA. Were the founding fathers actually communists?
Where in the Manifesto is this? In Marx's view, the rich themselves would be abolished. This appears to be utter nonsense. I do support progressive taxation, why wouldn't I? It isn't at all a communist position. This is actually just an absurd position to hold. You can't say that Marx wanted to abolish private property and tax the rich more than the poor. It's absolutely a contradiction. This should indicate to you that this source is not well-thought out nor is it reliable.
I don't have a personally strong position on estate taxes. But ideally we live in a country where everybody should have equality of opportunity. If rich scions just live off the fruits gathered by their ancestors, that isn't actually in keeping with that ideal. So by saying you oppose heavy estate taxes, you are essentially saying you don't believe in equality of opportunity and actually support a system of rich and poor. Because as we know, the rich get richer without doing anything at all, they don't have to work at. The poor get poorer or stagnate even if they do work hard. That appears to be the system you support. I don't have that much sympathy for griping about estate taxes, nor do I want to go out and advocate for them. But philosophically, they are entirely in keeping with often proclaimed American ideals. And again, this would be irrelevant in a Marxist system, so this isn't a tenet of Marx.
As is stated here, this isn't a particularly Marxist position. Since Marx believed in public control of all property this also seems to be irrelevant. But I'm not sure there's a place on Earth where the property of rebels isn't seized. As far as emigrants go, does that happen here? I don't think so. I am opposed to the drug war, by the way, and I believe there's a lot of corruption behind the Blue (we support the Blue, right?) seizing property. This has zero to do with Marxism. I have never heard Trump say he wants to end this policy. Has he?
The Government doesn't directly manage credit. Banks, credit unions, etc, are still by and large private entities.
So far this list is 0/5 on what it sets out to prove. And nothing really from the Communist Manifesto at all. I don't believe you've read it. I think you've read about it. That's why instead of pointing me to direct quotes from it, you link to wingnut websites about it. Nothing you say, nothing in this list, suggests you've actually read it.
There are private roads and bridges (which are not free to use). Licensing is a far cry from "centralization in the hands of the state." It's not like Russia where a station can be shut down because of what it says. It isn't like North Korea where broadcasting is actually done by the state. The most direct connection we have is PBS and NPR and actually, I like a lot of that programming, but I don't watch for the news mostly. And it's usually conservatives who try to influence programming by threatening funding.
What businesses does the government run?
The Second Amendment has nothing to do with "escaping" this one. No one has even attempted it or expressed any desire for it. Mostly people want jobs and during the New Deal, welcomed public works jobs run by the government. Nobody opposed that with their gun collections. I will point out though that for the first century of US existence we literally practiced slavery. With the abolition of slavery, we gone pretty dramatically in the opposite direction on this one.
All you have to do is look at red versus blue counties to see that cultural differences have not been erased. 100% false. I do agree that big corporations dominate agriculture and that it's a bad thing. But, note, "big corporations" are capitalist entities. They are a natural consequence of capitalism, especially unregulated capitalism, pretty much the opposite of Marxism.
100% support this. Not at all a Marxist idea and, even it were, not necessarily a bad one.
Are you for child factory labor? Really? I 100% support this. If this is part of the Marxist agenda, score one for Marx. I'm down with this. I am frankly surprised that you favor child factory labor and oppose free public education. (Don't say you don't, you were the one who told me to read this as a warning of the dangers of communism).
Not done at all. I mean, ok, there are apprenticeships run by unions to help young workers get into the occupation. There are vocational school programs (but mostly were substantially cut back in the push to make all kids go to 4 year colleges), but are those bad things? Are they Marxists? They seem to benefit both industry and young workers who want a job out of high school. Are you against that?
I don't see where you're coming from. This entire thing, which I spend quite a bit of time and energy responding to is junk. The items that are actually true, I agree with (abolition of child factory labor, universal free public education). If it isn't junk, please show me how it isn't.
And I repeat: where in the Communist Manifesto does Marx say the government should control everything?
The public owns it. I think the building that burned down was a house converted to apartments. I don't think it was "government housing," but I could be wrong. It could be that it was government housing in that the occupants were eligible for rental assistance (voucher), but that housing is actually privately owned and managed. But I have spent a great deal of time in large public housing developments and they are not ideal. Some aren't too bad but too many of them are substandard. It's an underfunded program and obviously, considering the homeless situation, we need better solutions. The private market is not meeting the need of the public.
If the entire book covers "the state" owning everything, then you should be able to find a quote from the book saying that.
My reading of Marx is that the public owns it, not the state. The government doesn't own federal lands, we the people own federal lands. What happens on federal lands is determined by policies created by elected officials. That's how public property is managed in a democratic republic. When I say "we" own it, that doesn't me that I get to go out on public land and do with it whatever I personally want to do with it. We all collectively own it and we manage it through our elected representatives. That's the only fair way to do it.
EDIT: Just read about the house in Philly. It was operated by the city housing authority and had passed inspections, including functioning fire alarms with good batteries. It's a horrible tragedy either way. Just note that weaponizing this example, out of many many examples of building tragedies is cherry picking though. For example, the building that collapsed in Florida was not public housing.
Then why do you link to a list that says it's one of the indicators that socialism is taking over?
And if we can agree that child factory labor should be abolished, what about other things on that list? Can we then say, progressive taxation is probably a good idea and not necessarily just a step toward Marxism? Can't we say that some things on that list are good things and so we implement them and some things aren't (like for example confiscation of all private property), so we don't adopt them?
And if that's true then isn't the claim that are getting closer to a communist takeover false? Isn't it true that some things on that list, we all just pretty much universally agree are good things? Abolishing child labor, progressive taxation, public education. The other things on that list aren't happening, as I demonstrated.
I agree with this. Absolutely. But then why do you support Trump who extended corporate welfare to agricultural corporations? Don't all the political elites, including Trump, support corporate welfare?
But they aren't communist. They are capitalist. They are founded on capitalistic principles. They are not owned by the public. The public does not make decisions regarding what to do with the fruits of their endeavors. The public does not decide what their workers get paid. The public has no say whatsoever into what those corporations do with their profits, mostly siphoned off labor, except to the extent that the government imposes regulations on those corporations. But yet it's your side that opposes those regulations that are the only way the public has a say in what those corporations do. That's not at all like communism. It is exactly the opposite of communism. The private sector controls all decisions while the public sector subsidizes it. That's not communism in any way shape or form.
So on that list of 10 items that show how far we've come toward Marxism, which ones do you actually agree with and which ones do you oppose? It's a bit confusing now.
Well, you got me reading the Communist Manifesto again (it's been at least 20 years). But I'm not sure why. It's interesting, but also a little outdated for modern times. For one thing, the modern western democracies thwarted the contradictions that he said would lead to massive worker movements by adopting the prescriptions that weren't necessarily inconsistent with capitalism--those we've been discussing--universal free public education, progressive taxation, end of child labor, etc. Adopting those things weren't pushing western democracies toward communism, they were responses to movements for reforming capitalism (and also, capitalists saw a more educated workforce as a positive).
EDIT: And look, we agree on one thing: corporate elites, corporate monopolies all of that is bad. So how do we deal with that? If we just look at that one thing we agree on and put aside things like gender dysphoria and Islam, how do we, the people, deal with corporate elites?
Here is a link to a research article about gender dysphoria. I think this issue is more complex than you think.
[Factors Associated With Desistence and Persistence of Childhood Gender Dysphoria](Factors Associated With Desistence and Persistence of Childhood Gender Dysphoria)