: : SDF: Who is to say there's any EXCHANGE of ideas here? Posters may just be stating their ideas without persuading anyone.: Some visitors might change their minds, probably not the way you want.
SDF: Mere triumphalism. Has everyone been brainwashed to think like you do yet?
: Having been there I now think the best way to put people off socialism and collectivism is to show it to them, all of it in theory and practice. Hide nothing. All that Mcarthyism got it wrong, hiding socialism in the realm of 'intellectuals' makes it more attractive, displaying it in its full 'glory' its full context is much better than portraying 'commie pinkos' as monsters, if your aim is to turn people away from collectivism.
SDF: Go back and read the newbies, the new people to this Debating Room, who recognize that your notion of "collectivism" doesn't encompass all of what is meant by "collectivism."
: : SDF: Why ban them? Von Mises and Rand are full of falsehoods, the stamp of Friedman upon a society can be seen in today's Chile...
: This excuse ive used before, Pinochet notes Friedmans book as a favourite and then Friedman is suposed to cop the blame for Pinochet doing exactly the opposite of what Friedmans 'libertarian' views would suggest. Bullshit blame shiftng.
SDF: Nope, I'll post the hard evidence later. I have to go to work soon.
: If you want falsehoods in copious quantities then read Marx and various derivatives. To think I used to buy that. Youll recall a scene in the exorcist where the priest says "the devil will hide falsehoods amongs the truth". Well its a silly comparison, but socialist literature makes accidental, and more often deliberate, use of that principle.
SDF: Care to cite any passages of Marx you think are false? We won't think "you used to buy that" if you can't cite any.
: : SDF: Socialist societies would be made up of individuals anyway, so what was it you were asking? That people would rediscover reasons for not working together to make things better, and start a movement to make them worse? Together?
: fantasy based on what? which practice? some romantic image about some primitive tribes?
SDF: Again, there are at least a couple of well-substantiated arguments against the blather about "primitive tribes," regardless of the (non)applicability of the lessons they teach to industrial society: there's NJ's argument, and there's Robert Dunn, another newbie...
It's okay to admit that society is already formed into collectives -- the corporation is a collective, the family is a collective... the real fantasy is "American rugged individualism" that hides its real dependency upon collective support, government support etc.
: : Let's ask this: Why is the model for the "individual" under capitalist society always the white, European, property-owning (see C.B. MacPherson's POSSESSIVE INDIVIDUALISM), dominant male, swathed in a mythology of "rugged individualism" (see Stephanie Coontz' THE WAY WE NEVER WERE)?
: Because you (plural) lay the blame for everything at the feet of any human who dares to be born white and male, and ignore the blacks that willignly fought for the south in the civil war, the black slave traders of africa etc etc.
SDF: Those poor white males! They only rule the world, conquering continents right and left for corporate profits... pity them...
