: :: Oh yeah, have I endorsed any EXISTING or PAST system of "communism"? Where? And what did I say about it?: The second you do you'll have to answer for its depravity. It will be a cold day before you support anything but your own collectivist rantings. Same as all the rest - stroking your own ego with intellectual jello.
: Stuart Gort
Well, I defend certain models of actually existing socialism, and as yet I see no 'depravity' to answer for. When I defend socialism as it was incarnated in Nicaragua, in India, and in Burkina Faso, its record is essentially spotless. Quite simply, there are no crimes to apologize for. In Vietnam on the other hand, I believe I recorgnized that the VC weren't able to resist the temptation to bloodlust and easy violence that had successfully tempted men before them for millenia. They went overboard with the reprisals and the use of punitive and 'exemplary' violence- most famously in Hue in 1968- and they did many things that were deeply wrong; and I have no doubt that the men responsible for it will suffer.
Still, I believe that for all their sins and faults, the North Vietnamese were still better than the alternative- the governments of Diem, Thieu, and Air Vice Marshal Ky. They were very far from being perfect- but they were better than the alternative, and now that they are the legitimate rulers of the land, their positive acheivements as well as their unfortunate excesses should be recorginzed. i believe that;s all I've said in favor of the VC- that, and the fact that the refugee exodus, while tragic, was dwarfed by the exodus fleeing the American revolution. Capitalist revolutions produce as many rfeugees as socialist ones, and in the main have resulted in more suffering.
To ask me to answer for the criems of 'socialist' regimes is a bit silly, don't you think, when you have yet to apologize for the crimes of Ronald Reagan, a man you claim to admire. During Reagan's tenure, massive numbers of innocent people were killed by death squads, terrorist armies, and governments that received heavy financial, diplomatic, advisory, moral, and military support from Reagan. A million killed by the right-wing RENAMO terrorists in Mozambique; a quarter million killed by the Guatemalan army, often with American Green Berets beside them on the firing line; seventy-five thousand killed by the Republican Alliance in El Salvador; thirty thousand killed by teh Contras in Nicaragua. Can you honestly argue that reagan DIDN"T support these peopel and abet them in their killings? And that on occasion, he went even further, sending actual American soldiers to kill innocent villagers in Guatemala?
