You evidnetly have no desire to understand the motivations of progressives, but let me give it a shot anyway. All of us, Barry and myself included, await some sort of revolution that will do away with a social order taht is by any measure, unjust and disregards teh basic human rights. We see the hope for building a better society as embodied in Socialism / Communism, as it was incarnated in Kerala and Nicaragua. these are my models, I know that Mr. Stoller may have different ones. In any case, based on the proven success of these nations in achieving progress and human development during their years of socialism, this is the society that we think wold be ideal for mankind. Other societies achieved small slices of teh socialist vision and fell woefully short in other areas, some political,, soem spiritual and some economic. yet we can take the good things from the experience of Burkina Faso, Sweden, Cuba, Zimbabwe, etcetera, and discard the bad. that is what human progress is all about. Barry and I differ on what revolution is, and how it can be achieved. I believe, as Marx did, that revolution can sometiems be peaceful, though this is not always possible. Both Kerala and to some extent Nicaragua were peaceful revolutions, at leats after Nicaragua's brief overthrow of teh Somoza tyranny. i also believe that the US will porbably never (in teh near future at least) turn to socialism, due to a lot of cultural factors. therefore, I believe that the most important task for the US is to do its own thing and let others do theirs, and not to try to imnpose their capitalist system on other nations, as was done in tehg past. If Americans wanted to see their wages fall, and voted for Reagan as a means of accomplishing this, then that's their decision. in this sense, reagan was the legitimately elected ruler of the land.
But why shoudl the Nicargauan people, who didn't vote for Reagan or capitalism, have to suffer at his hands? Why is it right for him to intervene to suppress democracy in Central America, when the Central Americans were not responsible for electing him? Please explain thsi to me.
You say that Barry wants war as a means of sweeping away injustice and exploitation from the world. But sometimes war brings about good thinsg, because it clearly exposes teh difference bewteen good and evil. The Civil War was a monumental war of good against evil, as was teh Second World War, as was the Nicaraguan Civil War, the Tanzania-Uganda war, the war over Bangladesh, the Spanish Civil War, and any number of anti-colonial wars. The Bible predicts a war between God and the Devil at the end of time, which must precede the final judgment day- I presume that you treat this as a 'good thing'. Incidnetally, speaking of 'calamity', it also predicts a thousand-year rule by the Antichrist. Hindu scriptures say a similar thing, that the world must become evil before it can be made good again.
Looking at history, calamities have often been necessary to waken people to tehir ondition and to spur them to build a better society,. Teh Great Depression ushered in social democracy in America. The European rebellions of teh late 1800s ushered in social democracy to Europe. Do you think Christianity would have conquered the Roman Empire if Rome hadn't been a hellhole of amoral corruption, decadence, injustice, murder and slavery? I think that the evil nature of the Caligulas and Neros made Rome ready to receive a creed of love and mercy.
so in conslusion, who is truuly more sociopathic, those who want the failings of teh economy and the system to become suddenly apparent so taht peopel can overthrow them in a day, and teh next day install a new system of justice and peace, or thsoe who wish an exploiattaive system to continue for another thousand years?
"Communism is more than Marxism, my friend, as Catholicism is mroe than teh Roman Curia....Catholics and Communists have commited great crimes, but at least they have not stood by, like an established society, and been silent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate." -Graham Greene
