Yet another failure for socialized medicine or anything else.

[pbrower2a]

(11-14-2018, 06:08 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(08-12-2018, 12:31 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: You are talking about the Soviet Union. Remember, of course, that its progress is from the wreck of the Romanov dynasty, a society rotten to the core.

The Soviet economy never adopted the discipline of the market. It was always adept at demanding sacrifices. Unable or unwilling to reward those, it did not get them. Without the discipline of the market, it could only use fear. Fear does not bring out competence.  It is telling that Soviet physicians who left the USSR for America had to be retrained in many aspects of medicine as those from most European countries  (most of which have socialized medicine) don't.

The rate of 7.8 abortions per Soviet woman sounds like an exaggeration -- but a country with no market system that tries to raise its birth rate by not making birth control readily available gets such a result. Add to this, as many Christians will, an amoral society that rejects all religion in the name of socialist progress can make people callous toward the unborn. Even of abortion is legal in America it is an ethical crisis. I'm also guessing that prostitution was rampant in the Soviet Union, and abortion is practically a condition of employment as a prostitute.    

The Soviet Union was a poor country. It rejected the market on everything and remained a command society in its economics to its end. Countries with free enterprise do their socialism better than countries without free enterprise.

You don't think blue America would end up being very similar to the Soviet Union. Where would blue America's progress be coming from other from the  wreck of an American based system that blue fools like you and others are accustomed to and are  used to experiencing the benefits associated with its higher standards of living. Yes,  the Soviet Union was a poor country that was full of largely uneducated peasants who were clueless and decades behind the development of the  USA at the time.

To go through the early industrial phase of economic and social development, a society needs little intellectual sophistication. This is a society that builds things in mass and needs the Mass Man who can be ordered about like a soldier or a prisoner. Anyone who wants more in life is suspect unless in the privileged elite of ownership, management, or enforcement. The problem with the early industrial society is that it produces things that increasingly become low in value. People want more, and the government must become more sophisticated at meeting internal dissent and foreign threats. The ultimate threat to the mindless industrialism that underpinned the Soviet economy was that it needed more sophistication to meet its military needs and to fend off demands for more out of life than the raw basics. To get more sophistication it relied upon mathematics, science, and engineering that were free of politics. Sure, the Soviet Union could excoriate the worst of foreign mass culture and the crassness of materialism -- but eventually the realities of the West seeped in. Add to this, the people who mastered mathematics and physics began  to ask questions about consequences of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

(With respect to culture, the Soviet Union played up the past in Russian achievements in literature and music. Soviet classical musicians like Richter, Gilels, Oistrakh, Milstein, and Rostropovich were excellent...and Western sophisticates loved them as if their own).

Mathematicians, scientists, and engineers are a talkative, contemplative, and cosmopolitan lot. The Soviet Union did well in mathematics, science, and engineering, but wanted to do better in these. So the Soviet system sent those thinkers to conferences in places like London, Paris, Rome, New York, etc and invited foreign mathematicians, scientists, and engineers to conferences in Moscow and Leningrad.  The foreign masters of basic thought, who could do the crude calculations of damage that nukes could do, came to Leningrad and Moscow, saw the sights, and figured that it would be absolutely horrible to destroy such cities in the Soviet Union. The Soviet masters of basic thought could apply the same calculations to Barcelona, Copenhagen, Chicago, and San Francisco and draw much the same conclusion about such places. Mathematicians, scientists, and engineers are a talkative lot, and their cold feet about destroying the world out of some ideological dispute spread as dissent. The most famous and effective dissident in the Soviet Union was Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet H-bomb.

Quote:Dude, a godless world has no basis for moral values/principles, right and wrong, whatsoever. Basically, if you're going to round up and execute a royal family or cut the heads off kings and queens or round up, rob, enslave and execute millions of a particular group and whatever else, the human sense of morality and the common belief in morality has to be removed.  You come across as being about as smart as the low down slugs who supported and voted in the Nazi's. Am I worried about the Nazi's or fascism? Nope. The American Right Crushed The NAZI'S and destroyed fascism.  I'm going to ask you a question, how long would you expect to survive in a godless world with no Christian influence or Christian belief or Christian values.

Christian values? I've met plenty of Jews, and the vast majority do fine without Jesus. I've met plenty of Muslims, and they do well enough while adding Mohamed. Atheists can have moral compass, as such has survival value in itself. For real problems, look to people who expect cheap grace to spare them the horrors of Hell.  I'll say this of Judaism: it offers no cheap grace. If one is righteous and not Jewish one will go to Heaven. If one is unrighteous, then no expressions of piety in one's lifetime will save one from annihilation. Atheists and agnostics can develop solid moral values, and I will take Bertrand Russell over some medieval Pope who called for a bloodthirsty crusade or an early-modern Pope who called for an Inquisition that the current Pope condemns on moral grounds.

Buddhist, Confucian, and Shinto values underpin a political order that is among the least violent in the world: Japan. Japan is the worst country in the advanced industrial world in which to be a criminal, although it has extensive freedom in political discourse and artistic creativity.

Quote:In my opinion, the blues are walking a fine line that has few limitations. Oh, we heard a ton about the person who mailed the Democrats pipe bombs but we didn't hear much of anything about the person who mailed the Republicans poison previously. Do you think one may have been a direct response to the other that was largely ignored?

Unsolved crime widely condemned irrespective of ideology. Where were the Democrats who said that representative Steve Scalise had it coming for being a leading Republican?

Quote:... if we start seeing groups of  dead Democrats, you'll be seeing what happens when the media is no longer interested in remaining fair and balanced and is more interested in pushing liberal agendas. It's only a matter of time before the Democrats are dealt a nasty wake up call that forces an inward look and reassessment of themselves as people and the clowns you have in Washington aren't going to be up for the challenges that lay ahead.

You have the opposite. The 2018 election is rightly a wake-up call to Republicans who have latched onto an excessively simple, primitive, and inhuman ideology. We have a President of suspect character but firm beliefs in discreditable ideas, and politicians on the Right who have endorsed both. Conservatives are turning away from Trump much as liberals have turned away from people like Castro and Chavez.

Quote:I've been engaging in a form of political warfare with you dumb bastards for over a decade and things aren't even serious yet.

I don't know how you figured out that I am a bastard, but I must admit that I was born a little more than a year after my parents married. That's just over six months for Dad and six months for my mom... oh, is that shady!

As for intelligence and the desirability of political beliefs -- let me introduce Vladimir Lenin and Josef Goebbels, both of whom were brilliant. Saddam Hussein, by most accounts, was a genius with a debased morality.

Reports from Russia suggest that Lenin had syphilis, which can make people cruel and cranky.

You've seen me when things aren't so serious yet. Can you imagine what it's going to be like, what I'm going to be like when things get serious? Do you think I'm going to be fucking around with you and Eric or do you think I'm going to be going straight at your Democrats and acting more like a ... liberal?

Quote: I don't have a problem with making Democratic lives miserable and I don't have a problem with a Republican group scarring (people that you disparage with indecent language) who (think) his title gives him power that he doesn't have naturally and I don't have a problem with CNN dealing with bomb threats or a crowd throwing bricks and rocks at its windows and destroying its property.

Bombs are acts of terrorism if they have political connotation. All terrorists are criminals and deserve arrest, trial, and upon conviction, incarceration. I shed no tears over the demise of Timothy McVeigh, and I feel no pain in Ted Kaczynski rotting in prison for sending bombs, some of which killed innocent people mostly on what he considered the Right. I am glad that the bombs that a fanatical Trump supporter sent to prominent Democrats did not go off. Had one of those killed, then the damage to the Trump Presidency would be severe. We Democrats would have a martyr or two. Be glad that law endorsement got Cesar Sayoc fast. The FBI that got Ted Kaczynski used what it learned from studying him against someone will end up in the same prison with Kaczynski.

Quote:Basically, I believe in the concept of two being able to play the same game. Now, the goody two shoes liberal or goody two shoes conservative may not like it and may be diabolically opposed to it but who cares because both them are pretty much aren't powerful or persuasive enough to stop it. All they can do is say boo hoo and bitch and whine about it.

I believe in the rule of law, all that keeps a flawed Humanity and a flawed social order from going into the abyss of horrific cruelty and exploitation. I have no delusion about the goodness of the American people, and none about the innocence of our political order. We have seams in a political system that people who knew about were scared to exploit. In recent years we have had people driving eighteen-wheel trucks, so to speak, through those seams.