11-18-2017, 09:11 AM
(11-17-2017, 01:57 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(11-16-2017, 09:44 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: (snip)I assume that you can write at a college level. I assume you can read at a master's level and possibly a doctoral level. I also assume anyone who can read write at those levels should have the intellect to be able to look at what you say about fascism/Nazism and compare what we see today to what people seen/experienced when fascism was at it's height ( which was a long time ago and America played a major roll in defeating) which is also very well documented. Why does a so-called highly educated person like yourself come across to a so-called lowly educated person like myself as being so clueless and so worthless as far as people go? This a million dollar question that you probably can't answer because it's to disturbing. If you could answer that question, the million would already be in your pocket and you wouldn't be here for me to ask you it.
I recognize a continuum between conservatism with democratic values to genocidal fascism, just as there is a continuum between liberalism and genocidal Marxism-Leninism. Thus the Right has Sir Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler, with such types as Kurt Schuschnigg, Ioannis Metaxas, and Antonio Salazar, authoritarian conservatives. all of whom had poor records on human rights without the racism or mass murder of Adolf Hitler.I do not consider Schuschnigg, Metaxas, or Salazar totalitarian. Even among Marxist-Leninist regimes, it is quite clear that Poland under Jaruzelski and Hungary under Kadar in the 1980s were far from the totalitarianism of the Stalinist era, let alone the monstrous horror of the Khmer Rouge.
Even this is incomplete. It is hard to determine whether Ba'athist regimes in Syria and Iraq, Afghanistan under Taliban rule, or areas under control of ISIS are so clearly Right as Left. But in the command system, the controlled economies, the complete absence of political pluralism, and the pervasive propaganda one sees totalitarianism. It is also possible to recognize the absence of such foundations of liberal democracy as civil liberties, security of life and property, due process, and competitive elections that one has the absence of democracy (although I would not consider pre-modern tyrannies like Imperial Russia or ancient Sparta totalitarian, and neither would I consider such mad despotism as that of Idi Amin "totalitarian").
It is hard to cut clear distinctions between democracy and tyranny where there is no such clear distinction.
Quote:Despite all the years of posting here and the 4T, I have yet to meet a liberal who measured up to the standards that they supposedly claim to represent.
Except for perfect evil there is no human perfection. There is not, and never will be a perfect performance of Hamlet or of Beethoven;s Ninth Symphony, either.
Quote:Kiff was a piece of shit.
How sick can one get as with that statement? Very few people are pure evil, and pure evil includes people who use a pretended attractiveness to lure people into doing great horrors or in turning people into pointless victims of monstrous horror. You are welcome to use that phrase against Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, their operatives, or sundry serial killers...
People are not evil because they disagree with you. People are evil because they do horrible things to other people.
(Note: I ordinarily modify such statements because I have no desire to relay such nastiness. But removing the vileness takes away the offense that I excoriate).
Quote:Kiff did her best to hide under Jesus's banner.
Raising the banner and living up to Christian expectations of pious decency is admirable. Of course people can be very good without Jesus, as I well know from Jews, atheists, and agnostics that I know. When one raises Jesus' banner, one certainly isn't hiding. I happen to like Catholic social teaching, an arguable antithesis of the "I've got mine -- $crew you!" ethos of many of our elites, especially Donald Trump.
Quote:Kiff learned something from old KIA. KIA taught Kiff that her religious association was meaningless to people like him. She also learned that being a woman granted her no special passes or treatment with people like him either. People like him didn't [profanity deleted]( take gender/ race into account) about race or gender when judging them as a person.
Well, well, well! People don't have to interject their ethnicity, social class, gender, national origin, or other such things into chat rooms. Of course, misrepresentations of their intellectual qualifications usually implodes. I have excellent ways of detecting people who make fraudulent claims to technical knowledge. Think of Elena Ceausescu pleading for her life with the claim that as a scientist and engineer she could make great contributions to academic life in Romania -- she could not identify the formula of carbon dioxide. I'm not going to say what question I ask, but it should be as natural to someone with any college-level math and science as falling off a spinning log.
Quote:BTW, a true believer in equality doesn't grant special passes or treatment just because they're a woman or have a certain skin tone. BTW, I've yet to meet a blue woman who measures up to my standards. I've met women who do or are viewed as capable, but I've yet to meet a woman who claims to be a blue, so to speak.
You aren't looking hard enough, and maybe you shouldn't. If you are happily married to some arch-conservative Hausfrau, then stick with her even if she is a five-by-five who can be attractive to you only because you have shared inimitable experiences over the years. Adultery is for schmucks. Marital stability (barring overt abuse) is worth the struggle and self-restraint.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.