From: Dehede011@aol.com
Date: Mon Oct 28 2002 - 16:34:12 MST
In a message dated 10/28/2002 5:04:38 PM Central Standard Time,
alexandersheppard@hotmail.com writes: Well, I say that the USSR was not
socialistic, or the PRC, or Cuba, or North Korea, or North Vietnam, or any of
these places. Why? You say I am trying to define away the evils of socialism.
Yes, you are doing exactly that. Not only does socialism have a long
tradition of allowing brutal thugs to get in charge but they also have a long
tradition of initially having a large group "useful fools" (Lenin's phrase)
providing the theoretical basis to form a state that is easy for a thug to
take over. According to von Hayek in the case of Germany there was great
pressure to find a person like Hitler to become the dictator and make things
work.
I have read in Hayek that most of the terms you use are nonsensical
and incapable of accurate definition -- that is why I refuse to try to define
socialism. If you cannot define it after 200 years, and this exchange of
email, and still are incapable of defining your own system then why expect an
outsider like me to do so?
Alexander, you can't even bring your system down to Earth enough to
accept your past mistakes, which we have enumerated, or to tell us how you
intend to avoid those same mistakes in the future.
Friend, IMHO, it is time to put not only this thread to rest but also
the entire subject of socialism both online and in the real world. Give it
up, it is a bad job. You are wasting the time you spend on socialism just as
the workers under socialism and those poor souls in the concentration camps
or the gulags are having their lives wasted.
Carlyle (spelling?) was reputed to have been asked by a young man how
he could improve the world. Carslyle is supposed to have answered, "Become
an honest man, then there will be one less crook in the world." Alexander,
become an honest man, join to a good woman to have a better life, raise some
decent kids and stay off relief that is as much as any of us can get done.
Ron h.
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