Bipartisan Senate group proposes ‘no fly, no buy’ gun measure

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-10-2018, 02:03 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(10-10-2018, 12:19 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(10-09-2018, 04:59 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The Left always represents freedom; the right-wing represents authority.

These days, of course, authority uses slogans of freedom to deceive the people into voting to enslave themselves.

Did the Soviet Union represent freedom? Do any of the communist nations that are still left represent freedom? Do you represent freedom when compared to me? Come on dude, think like a liberal before you blurt out something stupid like a person who claims to be liberal does.

Totalitarian regimes are too far around the circle to be the Left that I mean. They took over by force in Russia and won a civil war. They are not like left parties in democratic countries. North Korea is horrible, and was installed in power by Russia, but Cuba may be getting better; time will tell. China is not really communist anymore, but state capitalist, and is not free. Left countries are the happiest and freest in the world, many of them in northern Europe.

I certainly represent freedom more than you. You represent enslavement to the bosses, among other oppressions. Freedom is not owning a gun. Guns destroy freedom and destroy lives. Freedom is not cowtowing to traditional, authoritarian notions of "respecting America" instead of asking that America live up to its ideals.

I consider the difference between authoritarian government and democratic as more basic than the left-right difference.  Autocratic government was a signature of how they did it in the Agricultural age, with fascism and communism as attempts to continue autocracy into the Industrial Age.  Trying to extend the very valid lessons learned about fascism and communism into democratic institutions is mostly propaganda and an unwillingness to learn.

Now I do lean blue.  I do value the "all men are created equal" Enlightenment value as important.  Thus I see the red idea of freedom as less that the blue.

But red or blue I find the attempts to keep true autocratic governments alive lacking badly in terms of defining and understanding what freedom is.  Being unaware of the difference between autocratic and democratic values results in absurdity.