Apparently Stalin was good guy who killed no one...

[myrkul]

Let's look at the context. It is from his essay on Gulliver's Travels.
http://www.george-orwell.org/Politics_vs._Literature:_An_Examination_of_Gulliver's_Travels/0.html

Gulliver's master is somewhat unwilling to obey, but
the "exhortation" (a Houyhnhnm, we are told, is never COMPELLED to do
anything, he is merely "exhorted" or "advised") cannot be disregarded.
This illustrates very well the totalitarian tendency which is explicit in
the anarchist or pacifist vision of Society. In a Society in which there
is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is
public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to
conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of
law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual
can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly
governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make
him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else. The
Houyhnhnms, we are told, were unanimous on almost all subjects. The only
question they ever DISCUSSED was how to deal with the Yahoos. Otherwise
there was no room for disagreement among them, because the truth is
always either self-evident, or else it is undis-coverable and
unimportant. They had apparently no word for "opinion" in their language,
and in their conversations there was no "difference of sentiments". They
had reached, in fact, the highest stage of totalitarian organization, the
stage when conformity has become so general that there is no need for a
police force.

Now what is your misinterpretation?

That he, like yourself, had a flawed conception of Anarchy. Anarchy is, at it's core, a celebration of nonconformity. The only thing that is inviolate - the only "law" - is the non-aggression principle, which as I said, states unequivocally that it is not permitted to initiate the use force, the threat of force, or fraud against another person or their property. All else is permitted.

[Anon136]

If I had not picked a libertarian author

orwell was a socialist

[myrkul]

If I had not picked a libertarian author

orwell was a socialist

Democratic Socialism: for when one fallacy just isn't enough!

Cunicula is like a Borat-style parody of statism. At this point, I just use him as a convenient source of bullshit to debunk.

[Rudd-O]

Even without the border markers, it would be abundantly clear where North Korea sits on that peninsula...

I disagree. Without the border markers, it could quite easily be a number of fishing boats on a large body of water.

I loled.

[Rudd-O]

See, it's "barbaric" when you resist giving your stuff to causes that cunticula wants, but it's not at all barbaric when armed men take you to a cage for resisting, or shoot you if you attempt to defend yourself from them.

Statism survives on upside-down ethics.

[ElectricMucus]

It's fundamentalism that's moronic, independently of the flavor 

Amen!

Thanks, I've been itching to use one of these...

Your logical fallacy is...

I didn't offer a compromize, I stated a fact.
Fundamentalism is a distinct process and there is not middle ground between differnt kinds of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism always leads to tyranny and it is fueld by ignorance not by rigorousity.

[myrkul]

It's fundamentalism that's moronic, independently of the flavor 

Amen!

Thanks, I've been itching to use one of these...

Your logical fallacy is...

I didn't offer a compromize, I stated a fact.
Fundamentalism is a distinct process and there is not middle ground between differnt kinds of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism always leads to tyranny and it is fueld by ignorance not by rigorousity.

Then your comment is significantly off-topic. I took it to mean that either of the two extremes presented here was a poor choice, and that the answer lies somewhere in the middle. But I agree, that fundamentalism, fueled by ignorance does indeed always lead to tyranny.

[Rassah]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PdajUraK0LM

This idiot should tell this to my great grandparents, who had the privilege of having armed men break into their house, line them against the wall, and execute them right in front of my 10 year old grandfather, then have all their property and house confiscated, just because they were Counts.

[ElectricMucus]

It's fundamentalism that's moronic, independently of the flavor 

Amen!

Thanks, I've been itching to use one of these...

Your logical fallacy is...

I didn't offer a compromize, I stated a fact.
Fundamentalism is a distinct process and there is not middle ground between differnt kinds of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism always leads to tyranny and it is fueld by ignorance not by rigorousity.

Then your comment is significantly off-topic. I took it to mean that either of the two extremes presented here was a poor choice, and that the answer lies somewhere in the middle. But I agree, that fundamentalism, fueled by ignorance does indeed always lead to tyranny.

Off the topic of your own posts perhaps

But in response to OP and the guy in the video I think it's spot on.
My point: The failure of Communist regimes are not because the people who run them are socialists but because they are fundamentalists.

[Rudd-O]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PdajUraK0LM

This idiot should tell this to my great grandparents, who had the privilege of having armed men break into their house, line them against the wall, and execute them right in front of my 10 year old grandfather, then have all their property and house confiscated, just because they were Counts.

Yah.  It's sad that idiots like that rarely get the chance to face what they've been clamoring for (and then mutter "oh, god, what have I done").  If they did, Darwin's theories would have taken care of these idiots a loooong time ago.

Of course there are other idiots who think that with a "softer, gentler communism" (sometimes they even name it "socialism", as if shit tasted different because one named it steak) the problem of having to threaten or use violence across the board would be solved.  Behehehe.

[myrkul]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PdajUraK0LM

This idiot should tell this to my great grandparents, who had the privilege of having armed men break into their house, line them against the wall, and execute them right in front of my 10 year old grandfather, then have all their property and house confiscated, just because they were Counts.

Ah! A fellow relative of a deposed royal line! I don't get to run into many of those. The US are the ones who kicked my family out of power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Kamehameha

But anyway, back on-topic...

My point: The failure of Communist regimes are not because the people who run them are socialists but because they are fundamentalists.

No, I'm pretty sure Communism being a shitty way to run anything larger than a farm has something to do with it.

[ElectricMucus]

My point: The failure of Communist regimes are not because the people who run them are socialists but because they are fundamentalists.

No, I'm pretty sure Communism being a shitty way to run anything larger than a farm has something to do with it.

How about many small farms for example?

[myrkul]

My point: The failure of Communist regimes are not because the people who run them are socialists but because they are fundamentalists.

No, I'm pretty sure Communism being a shitty way to run anything larger than a farm has something to do with it.

How about many small farms for example?

Individually, yeah. Collectively, doubtful. Central planning would start to set in, and we know how disastrous that ends up being. Might work, might not. Probably dependent on the number of farms, and the personalities of the farmers.

[myrkul]

[AnCap,] if ever achieved is entirely barbaric in its treatment of those that cannot fend for themselves.

Well said, Penn.

[Rudd-O]

Penn is the shit.

[Bitware]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PdajUraK0LM

This idiot should tell this to my great grandparents, who had the privilege of having armed men break into their house, line them against the wall, and execute them right in front of my 10 year old grandfather, then have all their property and house confiscated, just because they were Counts.

What happened to your family was a crime, but it had nothing to do with police criminality, misconduct, nor breach of the trust of the public who employs them.

Police react, and they have no legal responsibility to do anything other than react. In America, the Supreme Court has upheld that law enforcement has no obligation to protect the citizens not in their custody.

When those we have trusted break that trust, and harm us, we must band together to fight them, because they are no better than those people who murdered your family.

I am very sorry for your loss.

[herzmeister]

I can't believe that this level of discussion (in the video) is still going on. All those false dichotomies and in-the-box thinking.

It's not about communism vs capitalism, it's about authority vs freedom.

Stalin killed people, Pinochet killed people.

Socialism is not bad, as long as it's voluntary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_spain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH43YHaUGyQ

Speaking of Orwell, this is what he had to say about it:

I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life—snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.—had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master.

[...]

This was in late December 1936, less than seven months ago as I write, and yet it is a period that has already receded into enormous distance. Later events have obliterated it much more completely than they have obliterated 1935, or 1905, for that matter. I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately, because at that time and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do. The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing. To anyone who had been there since the beginning it probably seemed even in December or January that the revolutionary period was ending; but when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags and with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Senor' or 'Don' or even 'Ústed'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' or 'Thou', and said 'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos días'. Tipping had been forbidden by law since the time of Primo de Rivera; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of people streamed constantly to and fro, the loud-speakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed' people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls or some variant of militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in this that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for...so far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful. There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low; you saw very few conspicuously destitute people, and no beggars except the gypsies. Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine."

One man's utopia is another man's dystopia. Just let people self-organize in any way they want, I say.

[Balthazar]

About Stalin we can say a lot of good and bad both. But he was the one who took the country with the plow and left it with a nuclear bomb and well-developed industry. He was genious manager.

[Jimmy Chang(y)]

It's fundamentalism that's moronic, independently of the flavor 

Amen!

Thanks, I've been itching to use one of these...

Your logical fallacy is...

Fail.

[Rudd-O]

People praising democidal mass murderers.

Sociopaths, everywhere.