I don't think we have any 9/11 truthers here. Also, isn't class a better way of explaining the world than just screaming 'Free market' and then fapping?

Lee Harvey Oswald blew JFK away all by himself.
Julius Rosenberg was a spy and got exactly what he deserved.
All of those landings on the moon were not hoaxes.
Princess Diana was killed by a drunk chauffeur
The Holocaust happened, it was not made up.

Any other nutjob conspiracy theories?

Largeham, please return to the beginning of your sentence and repeat "subject, verb, object" so that you write something intelligible.

It seems like a tossup to me, fapping and screaming vs. marxism.

Lol, Mr Tettleton can't read what what I wrote above and still wants to cut funding for public education. Wonderful.

Swordsman, true it is a difficult choice. Though you would have to be a bit weird to fap to von Mises. Most people I meet aren't into necrophilia :P
Also, for fun: http://ohinternet.com/File:Optocum.jpg

Largeham, you aren't old enough to remember the free market. It disappeared in 1932 with the election of FDR and the massive government expansion of the New Deal.

There were $3 Trillion Dollars in federal spending programs in 2007 funded by taxation and borrowing.
That is a free market?
That was also before Obama's massive expansion of the federal government.
There were 90.000 pages of federal rules enacted into law before Obama's massive expansion of the federal government.

So you can take your fantasies about the free market and put them right up there with Oswald, 9-11 truthers, etc.

As far as this board not having truthers I guess yo missed the thread about Bush four or five weeks ago. I'll find it for you.

Is there anything else you are ignorant of that you want cleared up?
It isn't my fault that you got the horns when you messed with the bull.

Simply exposing Marxism for what it is swordsman, a complete and utter fabrication that has no supporting facts or evidence whatsoever to lend credibility to its theories.

As a matter of fact the historical evidence shows Marxism has collapsed completely wherever it gained power and it responsible for the deaths of at least 100 million human beings in the 20th century.

But if you head feels better in a dark, warm place feel free to keep it there.

Yes, Largeham, I am totally in favor of ending the monopoly that teachers unions and faculty associations have on the education system in the United States.

I guess you call the results of the last four decades a smashing success and take the Paul Krugman idiots approach, spend even more money on a failure.

I honestly and quite seriously support capitalism. My family fled from communism in the Soviet bloc.

However, you aren't "exposing" Marxism by comparing it to conspiracies or religion.

It's a "complete and utter fabrication" in the sense that a guy sat down and *thought of it*, but one can say that of any idea. The word "fabrication" implies a deceitful intent on the part of the creator, and that's just not true at all. Karl Marx was a very well-educated, well-meaning, person who came up with an idea of political economy and a prediction of the future that turned out to be.....wrong. He *meant* to accomplish good and he *thought* he was right.

Marxism didn't have "no supporting facts or evidence" at the time Karl Marx (and Engels, for that matter) created it. The conclusions that the first socialists reached turned out to be overstated and overly optimistic.

People used to believe in a Geocentric model of the universe. It's wrong, but that doesn't mean it was *never* based on any evidence. Do you see what I'm saying?

You haven't "exposed" Marxism - just made fun of it. There are people who have many thoughtful critiques of socialism and communism [like Ayn Rand]. She didn't just declare that Marxism was equivalent to creationism and try to anger people who disagreed with her through insults or belligerence. She made tried to * persuade* people through her arguments.

Marxism was an idea that was embraced by millions of people, some extremely intelligent ones included. It's very important to understand why it turned out to be a bad idea, and why so many people wrongly concluded it would be a good one.

I say this because every word you say makes me want to side against you - the type of rhetoric you employ, I mean. It's insulting and offensive, so it makes me feel in my gut that your statements must be wrong because you articulate them in a bad way. I would like very much for you to spread the idea that Marxism is flawed and capitalism is the best-known way to manage economies. But please do it in a way that is rhetorically pleasing so that you don't drive people away from our side.

For example, calling Paul Krugman an idiot - why do you think that would make anybody believe what you are saying? That is man who won a nobel prize in economics, is a professor at princeton, has written 200 scholarly articles, and so forth.

Even if you think his ideas are bad, he is anything but an idiot. He is among the most educated people on the face of the earth in the field of economics. Now, that doesn't make his ideas right. All sorts of qualified people have bad ideas. But calling him an idiot is just a dismissal of his ideas without any sort of consideration or argument. It makes me, the reader of your statement, think that you have nothing to say about his economic ideas that is worth saying. You resort to namecalling, so it appears that in fact you are the less intelligent of the two, and it makes me want to side with Krugman. I am not sure to which policy you are referring to when you call him an idiot, but based on the fact that you resort to namecalling before even specifying what you're talking about, it makes me instinctively feel that Krugman must be right and you must be wrong - and I don't even know what you're talking about!

Don't do yourself such a disservice. The world can use more supporters of capitalism. It already has enough namecallers.

I haven't experienced the free market? So what do you say to the last four decades of neo-liberal reforms, falling wages, falling taxes and deregulation?

How much communist literature have you read Tettleton? Have you looked at Marx's ideas at all? Neither communism nor socialism is big government. Big government and the welfare state is something to push for only in the short term to help ease worker's lives. The very basis of socialist theory is common control of the means of production (private property) by the working class. Communism is a stateless, classless society; socialism is the transition period between capitalism and communism.

As for communism killing 100 million people, aside from the fact that this is part that there were just more people and the increases in technology have made it easier to kill, this ignores the deaths and poverty caused by capitalism over the last 150+ years.

Swordsman, not all Marxists believe that the USSR, China, Cuba, etc were socialist (no one thinks they were communist, those countries did have states and classes). And for all the faults of the USSR and China (and there were many), they managed to create industrialised states out of what basically were backwards, feudal, peasant societies, though at huge human cost.

Largeham, you have a glaringly ignorant idea of what the free market is.

There was a free market in mortgages when the Community Reinvestment Act set quotas for mortgages that banks in targeted neighborhoods had to write if they wanted preferential rates from the FDIC?

In your second paragraph you show you utter ignorance of history and disconnection from reality when you describe Communism as a stateless, classless society.
In reality the historical examples of Communism show it to be a massive, bureaucratic state that concentrates power, destroys freedom, and murdered one hundred million plus people.

As far as your claim that capitalism has created poverty that is a bald-faced lie and you are a disgusting liar. The true facts are that capitalism has raised more people out of poverty than any system in the history of mankind.

I understand why you repulsive Marxists lie every time you open your mouths or tap your keyboards, but it is utterly disgusting to read.

Oh no, one small quota and the entire free market is crashing down around us. What is the free market? I provided a basic definition of communism and socialism, please provide a definition of the free market.

Have you ever read any of Marx's or Engels's works? Ever? Do you have any idea what they have said? What the USSR, China and the rest claimed to be is *socialist*. There is a difference between communism and socialism. You understand it and willfully ignore, you are simply refusing to even look at that which you hate or you are too stupid to get past the Cold War rhetoric you were brought up with. You know what they say: knowing is half the battle. Defining communism as a stateless, classless society is not a disconnect from history, it is simply a definition.

As you understand why we Marxists are lying, could you please explain to this foolish, young, blind, lazy idiot who leeches off the hard work capitalists have done why I am lying. Of course, I would like to think I am not lying, but what do I know? You obviously know more about me than myself, oh Great One. What wisdom about my motives does the Invisible Hand provide?

You can't help but lie, obfuscate, and misrepresent can you largeham.
One small quota? I guess you don't realize that the government owns .02% of the mortgages in this country, but over 30% of those are foreclosed.
So the quota which was not small by any means led to 800,000 loans being written, but more importantly that quota demanded by the Community Reinvestment Act lowered underwriting standards and demanded that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy that small quota of subprime loans so banks in targeted areas could write more.

In stepped the speculators to a system created by the lowered underwriting standards of the government and funded by the easy money of the fed and voila and explosion of bad mortgages,

But of course bald-faced Marxist liars like yourself try to ignore reality as they always do by ignoring fact and posting "one-small quota" that means nothing without any facts, without any understanding or explanation outside of total ambiguity.

The free market is a voluntary transaction between two parties where neither is compelled in any way to enter into the transaction, and the price for the good or service transacted for is mutually agreed upon by each party without any interference from any party outside of the contracting two.

It's easy Largeham. I'm not suprised you could understand the free market because it requires "individuals" and "freedom," two basic concepts you repulsive Marxist have no understanding of whatsoever.

As I posted in my previous post you are lost in the theoretical and utterly ignorant of the real history of Marxism. Everywhere Marxism has been applied in human society it has led to murderous dictatorship. Give one example where it hasn't. I apologize for making you deal with reality instead of your dream world of Marxist insanity.

I've not only read the Manifesto and other works I studied Engel's writing on the family intently. I'm wondering if you've ever read the real world applications of Maxism. The Marxists I've encountered, including you, love to retreat into the world of theory and claim that "true" Marxism has never manifested itself.

My hate is for oppressors of freedom and mass murderes, namely Marxists.

I always love the basic argument of a classless society, which in reality is anything but in a Marxists regime, the governing class vs the governed class destroys the hideous fallacy of you insane Marxists.
As far as the historical struggle between classes inevitably leading to Marxism, social mobility in the United States demolishes that theory, Individuals rise and fall in economic strata all the time in the United States so there is no coherent unchanging capitalist class.

Defining Marxism as stateless and classless is a total disconnect from history. A definition that has no historical basis at all is disconnected from history.

The invisible hand reveals you as an envious, covetous individual who wants want he can't produce on his own, and instead chooses a convenient theory that replaces individualism and freedom, something you aren't successful at, with exploitation, violence, and manipulation, things you also aren't successful at but you feel will produce better results than having to rely on your own abilities.

There is no altruism, there is only self-interest, and any who denies that their actions are motivated by self-interest fools themselves and becomes a fool to the world.

During the past 10 years I have not met a single individual who, after doing research on the subject, switched from questioning the official narrative of the events of 9/11/2001 to believing the official narrative of those events.

It is always the other way around.

Why do you think that is?

It's because they're too emotionally invested to consider changing their minds. I never heard of anyone switching from thinking Marylin Monroe was killed by a mafia enema on Bobby Kennedy's orders switch to thinking she just overdosed either.

I read that Slate article too. Very well done piece. The way that the 9/11 denialism has developed among nutcases like Darwyn is a much more interesting story than the some cockamamie conspiracy theory.

and you only hang out with other whack job nazis

yeah I agree with Santa, your argument only really proves that you hang out with people who have the same unreasonable thought process that you do.

What if I said I was a Christian and only had met people who had converted to Christianity and never *from* Christianity? What would that mean? Only that I hang around Christians.

What if I said I was an atheist and had never met somebody who decided to believe in God, only people who rejected believing in God? The same conclusion - I must hang around only people that are like myself.

AND, in addition, your argument is an argument from popularity [it's true because many people say it is true] which is a subset of the genetic fallacy [the truth of falsity of an idea derives from where it originates]

Also - free market and communism debate:

Have either of you considered that there is no historical example of either the ideal free market or the ideal communist society? All sorts of issues end up trumping economic theories in their application - like war.

I don't think it's reasonable to call the current U.S. economy a totally free market [or that it ever has been], but it is equally disingenuous to imply that it's socialist.


The reason why I object to extremely high-minded ideals is that they ignore the real world. They ignore the human element. They ignore pragmatism.
To say that an economic system would work with certainty *if all the premises of the system were in place and all of it's assumptions were true* begs the question.

A competent benevolent dictatorship is the best form of government, because it ensures the most efficient maximization of justice. The *problem* with dictatorship is that the odds that it will be benevolent, or even competent, are very poor.
Democracy is good because it's the least bad type of government - the least likely to govern poorly.

To say that some kind of anarcho-libertarian totally free market would be utopia most likely ignores the fact that people would try to subvert the principles upon which the economic system was based. I reason this because the same thing happened with communism; if everyone acted based on the ideals, I suppose the system might have worked. The problem (an INSURMOUNTABLE problem) was that people don't conform to ideals. The totally free market ALSO has ideals about human behavior in its assumptions, which likely would flaw its real-world application.

Personally, I'm pretty happy with the general nature of the current U.S. economic system. I think what it needs is pragmatic fixes, not ideological overhaul.

Swordsman, you are categorically mistaken as far as no historical example of the free market. You need to read Margaret Newel's economic history of the domestic free market in New England from settlement to the Revolution. You should also consult From Market-Places to a Market Economy by Winifred Barr Rothberg that talks about the transition from the class agrarian economy brought to New England and the transition to a free market economy.

So your claim that there is no historical example of a free market society that was a stunning success is patently false. There not only is a fine historical example it is well documented and researched.

I guess Swordsman needed a straw man to attack.

I tried to find anyone who said that there was "some kind of anarcho-libertarian totally free market would be utopia."

I guess when you've run out of ideas you turn to such tactics.

Next someone totally ignorant of the economic history of the United States will say that cutting marginal tax rates in the early 1920s, at the end of Kennedy's four year-term, and during Reagan's first term led to massive job creation and economic expansion.

There is nothing like an ideologue who can't back up there theoretical claims with real world historical examples

You keep fighting the good fight Tettie!

Did not lead instead of led too.

My worthless keyboard was obviously built by Marxists.

"My worthless keyboard was obviously built by Marxists."

Without a doubt, the greatest sentence ever written. This man deserves a Pulitzer.

Let me sum up this thread with a few quotes from TC:
-"Largeham, please return to the beginning of your sentence and repeat "subject, verb, object" so that you write something intelligible."
-"I lost the how he threw Marxist right under the bus with the nutjob truthers, right where nutjob Marxists belong."

Say what you want about TC's politics, but the man has some great lines

I think its pretty natural to question the total veracity of the governments version of events. I think alot of the ideas 'they' (truthers) come up with are pretty hilarious (alex jones anyone? I mean just come on), but really I cant blame them. Accepting the government's story on 9-11 requires cognitive dissonance on the level of orwell's 1984. The jet fuel was hot enough to melt steel, yet not hot enough to ignite the jet fuel soaked passport of a high-jacker (which was found a hell of a lot quicker than say... survivors) etc.

Ultimately I view the governments story as just one in many, many, nigh impossible theories about the 9-11 attacks. I have said before and will say again, whats important isnt what happened on 9-11, but after.
If it comes out that say.. dick cheyney was 100% culpulpable sp for 9-11, he planned and execute it, and it will be in tommorows paper.
so the fuck what.
You still go to prison for taping the cops. You still hear terrorist alerts on NPR. You still live in a country with secretive prisons for citizens and foreign nationals alike. you still cant go to the mosque (whichever) without meeting an FBI agent there. You still live in a country where everyone gets to vote... for one party. You still live in the country that has instigated more military engagements than any other in history. To travel, you still have to show your 'papers'. You live in a country where every keystroke, every phone call, is tracked and recorded. America is a planned corporate capitalist state, i.e. Fascist.
I mean... we have the dept of HOMELAND security. come on.

"You still live in a country where everyone gets to vote... for one party."
Two parties that are fairly similar is what you mean there.