You cannot seriously compare support of Hitler pre war with the Left’'s support of the Soviet Union. Despite some very nasty goings on in pre WWII Germany Hitler for most of the 1930’s had not murdered millions of his own people; The Soviet system had already killed vast swaithes of people. No, both sides of the US political spectrum were not as complicit as each other in supporting genocidal totalitarian regimes of the 1930’s. One side was far, far worse in that regard; and that side was the genocidal supporting Left.
No room for the poor and average folks in the greens and progressive world.
The cost per house for this silly idea would be in the range of 100,00 to 150,000, depending on local conditions, if not more. I am sure Algore and Bob Redford can afford that heating scheme but not the average guy.
A more reasonable proposal to just dig a trench 4-5 feet deep and lay out PVDF pipe and catch the latent heat of the earth for a water based heat pump has exceptionally high set up price beyond the reach of the average person.
Well, you know, the government could subsidize the drilling. If they were to do so at the rate they subsidize the fossil fuel industries, at $200K per hole, we could drill holes for a hundred thousand homes per year.
I am not sure what you mean by “supporting”. In fact, your very post looks like a prime example of what this thread is about: false equivalency. The Left, as a group, did not send lots of money or arms to Stalin or Mao. It is not even realistic to say that many of them advocated turning the USofA into a nation just like the Soviet Union.
What you are spewing is old-line rhetoric from the captains of industry, that treating workers like humans at the expense of profitability is Communism. Thence you conflate the fundamental ideas of socialist thought with genocide, which is simply intellectually dishonest. It is a blinkered attempt to strangle discussion with divisive invective – ironically, very similar to the Republican Rhetoric of Ridiculous.
The difference in ideology between the right and the left seems to be that the left tries to look at what we are failing at and explore alternatives, which may involve borrowing some ideas from others, while the right says it is not working because we are not trying hard enough, we just need to do more of it so that it can work right. Yes, the Soviets and Red China did some pretty bad stuff, does that mean that all their ideas were bad? Baby->bathwater-> …
The most important lesson we ought to take from the Commies is the part about totalitarianism. Stalin’s heinous actions were possible because he was allowed to consolidate power and project his psychotic paranoia through the apparatchik out upon the nation. Ironically, the policies put in place or espoused by the right (extending well into the Democratic Party) appear to be converging toward putting a “Democracy” nameplate on a plutocratic state. Which is to say, blanket condemnation of every component idea from Communism/Socialism (right-wing language) leads exactly down the road to where the Soviet Union crashed.
Oh, and there is that constant, annoying drumbeat for bombing Iran. The worst folly of the left is nowhere near the colossal idiocy of attacking Iran, any person who advocates doing that is an enemy of America and her allies.
I just wanted to pop in and congratulate all the liberals here on using their superior intellect and keen powers of deduction to avoid choosing the worst political party in the US.
It’s a bit unfortunate that despite being vastly superior in every way you some how managed to choose the second worst party in the US.
Do you realize that you’re measuring crazy based off Michele Bachmann? That’s like Rihanna measuring her boyfriends based on if they hit her less than Chris Brown. Being slightly less crazy than Michele Bachmann is still too crazy, you should not be okay with that. But here you are, bragging that your shit smells like roses.
You are using Sarah Palin to measure intelligence, and you think that’s okay. Congrats, Joe Biden is slightly smarter than Sarah Palin, you win.
You guys sound like two kids on the playground arguing over who is better, the NY Knicks or the Minnesota Timberwolves.
But do please continue to tell us your shit don’t stink.
To be fair, the question for this thread isn’t who has the perfect political party, but which one does “it” more than the other. Whatever “it” is. It’s relative by design. If you want to compare how the Democratic Party stands up to the Objective Ideal, perhaps you should start a thread for that purpose. And good luck with that!
What you don’t understand, and this is a problem with many conservatives, is that there are idiots on both sides. Fact. But the idiots in the GOP run the primaries. The idiots on the left, are marginalized by the left.
Maxine Waters, if we were to stipulate she’s as crazy as Bachmann, has not one hundredth of her political sway. But there are masses of glassey-eyed GOP voting dipshits waiting to see what M-Bach is gonna say next.
There is also the fact that the GOPs policies lead to a worse country pretty much across the board. Increased teen pregnancy, reduced birth control access in general, tens of millions off health insurance, the return of pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps, utter disregard for climate change, utter disregard for regulation and safety, more of the tax burden shifted to the poor and middle classes, fewer services for those classes, reducing the minimum wage, draconian immigration reform, public education gutted, etc. etc…
Aside from the craziness and stupidity that the GOP exults in, they also produce a shittier country.
So even if the Dems are only slightly less crazy, it’s way less crazy to vote for them. Also, Biden is way fucking smarter than Palin.
Supporting as in defending/backing/excusing one of the most disgusting regimes the world has ever seen. Support does not necessarily mean giving money or arms, and I did not imply such support in my post. That was something you unaccountably seized on. If you want to find the US Left’s intellectual and moral (and yes financial)support of Stalin during the 1920’s and 30’s go search for the many examples of such support. That is one cite I needn’t give.
Neither did I smear the entire Left with the same brush. I simply said enough on the Left supported Stalin to suggest the Left had more than its fair share of human scumbags in it’s midst’s back then. A share that will not have entirely disappeared in subsequent years. You were no more morally or intellectually superior in the 1920’s and 30’s than you are today.
Yes, many on the left supported communism in the 1950s.
That was a while ago! 150 years ago, Republicans were on the side of the freedmen; today, they oppose civil rights protections.
Things change! Are you going to bring up Alexander Hamilton?
Today (and pretty much since 2001) the right wing in American politics has succumbed to a level of craziness that the left wing does not even remotely match.
Show us a dictator of Stalin’s mettle that the left supports today.
Do you support the right-wing (i.e., US Republican) agenda? Because their agenda is driving the country exactly toward a totalitarian oligarchy/plutocracy. That is the key aspect to the Soviet regime that made it disgusting, the consolidation of power followed by totalitarianism. You have a choice here: you can revile the Soviets or you can reject the US right-wing ideology. You cannot do both and remain undelusionally honest.
Sorry, that talk is wingnut talk. Sure, both parties have their totalitarian tendencies.If one party was to obliterate the other than that would be a bad result for democracy. Plurality should be kept as much as possible. But hey, the Dems want to obliterate the Republican machine just as much as the Republicans wish to destroy the Dems. As I said earlier, absolute assholes on both sides.
Ever since society has engaged in politics each side has tried to demonise its opponents. You are doing the exact same as every political partisan has ever done. The political animal has not changed much in thousands of years.
He told you it was there, keep looking till you see it. When you do, you will be cured.
There’s another factor in the whole “supported Stalin” shtick. The memoirs of many lefties of the 30’s is rife with that wretched decision: who is worse, Stalin or Hitler? And not only did the left choose Stalin, however reluctantly, so did the USA. Even Bugs Bunny endorsed Stalin!
I never had to make a choice like that, mine were pretty easy: does the Vietnam War ensucken dead water buffalo balls? Yes. But which of two monsters is worse? I’m not qualified to judge their decision.
It’s always something, isn’t it? If I give an example of a democrat official supporting secession perhaps you’ll object that he’s not a high-enough official or maybe his last name isn’t Perry.
And not all the idiots are marginalized. Ralph Nader (who is trying to protect our precious bodily fluids from fluoridation) is still going strong and Al Sharpton is apparently working with Obama. Greenpeace certainly isn’t marginalized.
Isn’t that a pretty strong indicator that one can’t make broad generalizations based on political leanings?
If you truly believe this how can we possible have a rational dialog? You believe that Republicans are actively moving towards totalitarianism? You sound almost exactly like the wingnuts on the Second Republic of Vermont website (you left out “American imperialism”).
This is true but it’s also true that much early support for Hitler was because he opposed Stalin (and communism). Until Kristallnacht one could make a case that Hitler was better than Stalin. I think we can agree, though, that both conservatives and liberals have supported murderous dictators more than we’d like.
Nope; that would be foolish. You just can’t make generalizations from sixty years ago and expect them to be true today.
I have every hope that the conservatives of the 2070s will be reasonable, rational, sensible, and intelligent people. The conservative movement of the 2010s is insane.