Originally posted by: Craig234
You can spot the very weakest posters by their misrepresenting the views of the people they argue with, creating at least straw men if not outright falsehoods.
Jaskalas did it recently in a thread where he referred to my views as 'communist', when they are opposed to communism; and vic, who always gets it wrong, does similar here where he claims I endorsed the corruption of Long, when I oppose it, and endorsed instead the specific views I referred to.
Vic is not an honest poster, unfortunately; he has a long history of this sort of dishonest posting which harms the threads he posts is with his dishonest post followed by the correction, if one is made, distracting from the legitimate discussion.
He further apparently missed the facetious nature of the reference to Greenspan as a radical leftist, somehow, and went on to mischaracterize Long as a fascist, apparently because he doesn't understand fascism, confusing it with simply a strong government.
He'd have a hard time explaining why the German communists were the first real opponents to fascism in Germany, and were Hitler's first targetted group for killing. He may recall the first line of the famous poem:
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out for me.
You are ridiculous. You spew enough hot air to be a viable alternative energy source, yet you never actually say anything beyond stupidity, ignorance, and insults.
I'm not an honest poster? Prove it now. With links and quotes. Or STFU about that.
Moving to the heart of the issue though, you lie right away (and in multiple ways, which I'll detail) when you say that I claimed you endorsed Long's corruption. However, that's simple ignorance on your part of my opinions about you. What I did say it that I was not surprised that you would endorse such a corruption politician. That is because your ideological fanaticism is so strong that you willingly overlook the evils and abuses of powerful men who happen to parrot the right words for your ears. Moving on though, you also lie in that statement because you did not in in fact condemn Long for his corruption, as you allude, but simply make a brief statement about his "weaknesses" and then move on with your praise for him.
However, if we need to get to some real lies, stupidity, and ignorance on your part, it's that you somehow believe that Long was a socialist or a communist (and thus, in your mind, an opponent of fascism), when in fact he was a outspoken opponent of both communism and socialism. Rather, his "share our wealth" and other such programs were based more on a mixture Mussolini-style economic fascism and Bible belt-style social moralism. He once remarked that the "share our wealth" program came from the "Bible and the Declaration of Independence" and that "This plan is the only defense this country's got against communism." He even held a public debate with Norman Thomas, leader of the Socialist Party of America, pitting his plan against socialism.
So yeah, you basically praised a corrupt man that you obviously don't even know fsck about, and then personally attacked me when I laughed at you about it. Nice work.
As to the comments about Greenspan, I knew you were being facetious, however, I thought that humorously ironic and I didn't want anyone else here to miss the irony. Obviously, you missed my facetiousness.
As to your last little rant, which began from your ignorance of Long's politics, Hitler said, shortly after he took power, "There are some who have condemned me for outlawing the communist party... to them, I say, I have outlawed ALL the other political parties!"
From the purely economic standpoint, though, the ruthlessly authoritarianistic aspects of fascism, communism, and socialism hold little to distinguish themselves from each other. Fascisms offer no apologies. Communists delude themselves with the fantasy of the stateless workers paradise, while cynically enforcing a ruthless brand of authoritarianism that has murdered more innocents than any other political (or even religious) ideology in history. Finally, socialists tells us that people are free if they can speak, say, write, and fsck whatever and whoever they want, while they can't own or posses anything beyond what the state allows, as though a person could live if he were denied food, water, and shelter (to protect against this, socialists tell us that we should just rely on the inherent good nature of people... yeah, right).
Which one of these deluded ideologues are you? You're so self-deluded that you give us few actual clues, but personally, I think fascist. It's the most ruthless and consequently the most apparently willing to compromise. It's base premise that the ends justify the means makes it capable of any means, and that makes your usual apologetic stances towards dictators who parrot the proper populist ideological phrases much more understandable.
