Wright flees Ignominiously
Posted on 20 February 2012
One small advantage of being a Christian is that I no longer need to be as scrupulous about my honor and pride. Indeed, part of my task is to beat down my pride, which, as a candid reader can see in the words that follow, I have not yet done.
I young (I presume) man (I presume) named Bran, who in his spare time serves as the the Mouth of Sauron and an apologist for the heresiarch Karl Marx has addressed me with the following offer, which I admit is a noble one:
He writes:
John, then let neither of us muddy the waters. This argument was not started specifically with the intention of making this into ‘capitalism vs communism’. I may have less experience than you, but I have still argued it enough to be tired of it. For the same reasons as you, just in reverse.
Let us go even unto the electronic mail, where no hecklers, rhetoricians and other people in general cannot interfere. Let us set out our arguments in a logical fashion, without ad hominem and other logical fallacies, which you rely on, but claim that you do not and I do. Let us be emotive when emotion is called for, and analytical when it is not, not this strange fusion which we are experiencing here. Let us state our sources, and also quibble over them.
How shall we discuss it? Shall we select elements, such as economic and humanitarian, and then beat them to exhaustion in turn?
What we shall not do is make unsupported assertions. Or insist that, to quote point 13: Start referring to Marxism as being some kind of religious faith, Messianic, or whatever other spiritualist bullshit you can come up with. When people point out that you can draw similarities between virtually any political ideology and other religions, ignore them. Or use smilies. -_-
Until such a time as we have finished or, to prevent either side (well, given my record, mainly me) simply not replying in order to gain time, you shall not do an overtly anti-communist post. Continuing your posts against the current action regarding insurance is fine. Criticising the Democrats is fine. Doing an angry 20,000 word rant on communist infiltration, communist indoctrination and the international communist conspiracy sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids is not fine.
In return, I shall be a lot more restrained, and not get into arguments, on any topic, with anyone. This is, of course, a perfect moment to engage me in argument. I will remain actively commenting, though.I set out the terms here, as opposed to privately, so that if you and I agree to them, then we have witnesses to our promises. A bit like a marriage ceremony, really.
I decline. I am not willing to debate a man who does not know how to debate on a topic with which he is unfamiliar. My offer was for a future time after you had corrected these shortcomings.
If the offer had been made in the language a mature man would make, not the same old sneering smugness and accusatory tones, I might be willing to put some faith in your ability to conduct yourself honorably.
As it is, I will let the gauntlet lay as is, and accept the dishonor of refusing to meet you in the lists. I think my escutcheon can withstand the stain.
I was not doing overtly anticommunists posts because, frankly, I thought with the fall of the Soviet Union your heresy had lost so much prestige that it was no longer an issue.
Just one more idol that fought the Church and failed.
I met two people, a brother and a sister, who escaped from one of your Worker’s paradises. They were Korean. In broken English, and with a look of disgust on his features, the brother explained how at the factory those who stood outside lounging got paid as much as those who worked hard all day, and so no one worked hard, or, if they could help it, at all. He could express, even in broken English, the concept so simple and so obvious that only an intellectual could fail to see it.
If you do not pay people for work, people will not work; and in order to make them work not for pay, you must taskmasters over them to drive them. They are slaves. Nothing could be more clear.
The sister mentioned that they had lost everything, their family and their home, when they fled.
That is what you are defending.
Those people were friends of mine. I knew them and worked with them. They were people whose lives were ruined because of an idea so stupid, and so obviously stupid, that no honest man can take it seriously for an instant.
Your idea.
You say that these events, the the astronomical number of innocent dead, and far more lives ruined, were killed not by your idea, by a transitional stage of communism which is not true communism: a perversion of your idea, which is wonderfulness incarnate.
To which I reply, in all courtesy and gentleness, that I do not give a tinker’s damn for your distinction between ‘true’ (i.e. make-believe) implementation of your idea of communism and ‘bad’ ( i.e. real) implementation of your idea of communism.
My idea of limited government by free men does not require nor ask that tens of millions be sacrificed during the transition from an imperfect form to a perfect form. My idea does not expect nor promise perfection this side of heaven. All my idea says is that you are not a slave, which means, you own yourself, and you own the fruit of your own labor. All my idea says is that you should tell the truth, think logically, and not covet your neighbors’ possessions, provided you are secure in yours.
If your happy-talk make-believe Alice-in-Wonderland idea of the Marxist dictatorship of the proletarian is supposed to usher in a worker’s paradise, but if in fact all this Wonderland idea has done so far is pile up ruined lives and pyramids of skulls, what in the name of the Hell you serve makes you think that somehow, tomorrow, next year, or next century whatever the mysterious mistake is that keeps derailing the promised pie in the sky will not rear its head again?
Every Communism so far has turned into a slave labor camp and a death camp. No one on the Western side of the Berlin Wall was machine gunned down trying to climb away from the racist exploitation of the democracies into the glorious five-year planned prosperity and luxury behind the Iron Curtain.
No one from Florida risks his life on a raft with a child, and dies in the attempt to sneak the child into the Worker’s Paradise of Cuba, there to get free health care.
No one. Not one. Nobody.
If all the Communism we have seen so far in history has been nothing but an empire of darkness and a vast wasteland of unconvincing lies, Newspeak, double-talk and doublethink, bloodshed, torture, lies, bloodshed, orchestrated famines, falsehoods, one-child policies, propaganda, bloodshed, secret police, political correctness, bloodshed, political polices, bloodshed, show trials, and blood, what in the Hell you serve makes you think that everything will be different once your version of the Big Brother is in charge?
For that matter, What in the Hell you serve makes you think anything at all will be different? Will human nature change? Will people work without pay and without taskmasters?
Why should you and yours be in charge of anything? I do not even trust you to hold conversation honestly. Why should I and mines place life and labor and fortune and future in your hands?
You won’t even admit that blood that is on them.
Read HUMAN ACTION von Mises. There is no argument I can make which he does not make with considerable more clarity and patience. Here is the link: http://mises.org/document/3250
If that is too technical for you, I can recommend a fairy story addressing the issue. http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/eaf_go
Hear! Hear! And one for von Mises as well. He should be required reading in every respectable university, it should be a measure of their worth. One can also be humbly educated reading Mises’ Socialism – he completely destroyed every single support and argument for socialism and showed it for the fantasy it is. I could also suggest a friend of his…
“If my model fails, it is the fault of the people for failing to live up to it,” says the theorist. “They were not living my model.”
It is as if such theorists want the world to spin as well as the ball of a globe, and not as the oblate ellipsoid we actually have. Somehow it never quite spins so well as we want. Somehow the Revolution always fails.
When one fails, how badly must the next that we don’t try again?
+1 for Animal Farm. My students are always amazed when I get to the lesson whose topic is, “I know you all think that this plot is unbelievable because no person would realistically allow any of this. Well, everything you read actually happened. And here’s how.”
Then I must say that you are a coward who is incapable of the logical, rational argument which you champion, who is incapable of looking at history, and relies on the power of the crowd of right-wingers with whom you surround yourself to even falsely assure yourself that I am ‘gone, discredited and totally dead’. You rely on Trotskyist novels to demonstrate your viewpoint. And you didn’t even get my name right.
Yeah, because you Marxists really love “history” don’t you?
Branabus
Herein is the problem. In theory communism sounds wonderful and noble but in implementation it fails because people don’t live up to the theory that communism advances. In theory capitalism sounds horrible and ignoble but in implementation it succeeds because people live up to the theory that capitalism advances.
I don’t know what variation of communism that you advance but what is supposed to take place in classical communism is that industrial workers (who are the ‘workers’ of Marx’s thesis) rise up and overthrow their oppressive capitalist overlords. This is supposed to be an organic uprising that is part of on overarching mechanistic historical narrative. It is impossible for the uprising and victory not to occur and rampant capitalism as a precursor is both essential and inevitable. After the uprising there must be a ‘short’ dictatorship of a generation or two where threats to communism are either reeducated or pass away. Then ‘real’ communism emerges.
In real communism people don’t decide how much they will work. They work as much as they possibly can. People just show up at the local jobs office and are then farmed out to the jobs that are needed that day. On Monday you might pick oranges, on Tuesday you teach at the local elementary school, on Wedneday you pick up garbage, etc.
For communism to work everyone must be perfectly selfless and perfectly self motivated. People can’t lie and say that they dont feel well enough to work or the system breaks down. People can’t say I want to stay home and make paintings every day or the system breaks down. People can’t decide to be thieves or selfish or the system breaks down. Thus the requirement for the interim dictatorship and reeducation.
What happens in real life though is that intellectuals start the workers revolution in anything but (though they are typically agrarian) industrial societies. Then in an unending dictatorship there is typically a mad rush to industrialize the country. This rush is not to supply some needed goods or to improve the people’s standard of living. Rather the rush to industrialization occurs because communism is supposed to be a post capitalist industrial society.
In its theory communism assumes that some people will be anti-communist during the early revolution and that they must be reeducated or eliminated. There is no such theory in capitalism. Murder and theft are built into the theory of communism in the belief that these early crimes will make way to an earthly paradise. Communism fails because humans cannot live up to its theories — as even its leaders show.
Capitalism assumes that markets will fill needs and that efficiency will be created by competition. Capitalism also assumes that people are rational and will make rational decisions based off of self interest and that this will create even playing fields for everyone to compete to provide and receive goods and services. The less valuable the goods you provide the less goods you receive. However capitalism assumes a non-capitalist actor — that families will support children who provide no or few current goods and services on the assumption that they will provide goods and services when they become workers to those who find themselves in no position to continue to work due to age or infirmary. Capitalism fails because people are not the detached rational actors it needs them to be.
Christianity is neither communist nor capitalist. It finds the philosophies of communism and capitalism to be based on unrealistic views of humans when they are not outright morally repugnant. That said, capitalism is the lesser of two evils because it is essentially reformable. Communism by its nature cannot allow dissent. Communism by its nature cannot allow a wavering in the belief of its tenants or the whole idea collapses. Conversely capitalism is built on dissent in ideas and actions. Christianity can fight for mercy and equality of access in a capitalist society but not in a communist society.
And this is how socialists succeed. Ever hear of a people moved by the law of diminished returns or the division of labor? History is moved by the moral argument – go ask Jesus. You give them the moral high ground. It sounds perfectly moral to you, but man is not good enough to practice it.
It should sound terrible and vicious, it should sound ignoble. You should recoil in horror not set up a barrier between the moral and the practical.
How you do this within your religion is a feat for you to accomplish. But don’t give them the moral high ground.
I don’t know if this is how socialists succeed (which is different than communism which is what I was writing about) or even what you mean by that statement. I would say that the reason that Branabus and many other people are attracted to communism is that it all sounds really quite wonderful. Now there is the problem of the revolution (which communists regard as historically inevitable and thus beyond anyone’s control) and the dictatorship (which is justified as using an evil means to reach a good end - and thus innately immoral) but communists usually justify them as no worse than the excesses of capitalism and temporary to boot.
I’m somewhat puzzled by the above. I don’t know what ou mean by ‘history is moved by the moral argument’. Could you elaborate?
I’m pretty certain that I didn’t give the communists the moral high ground. I suggest you reread what I wrote if you think that I did. Let us imagine an analogy where there is a philosophy that if everyone becomes completely emotionless then peace and prosperity will sweep the Earth — but to get there you will have to have a temporary benevolent dictatorship so everything can take proper root and the non-believers can be reeducated. Well the dictatorship aside, that sounds amazing. Now whether the outcome of everyone becoming emotionless would be the result desired is really not relevant (a) because the plan can never be effectively executed because everyone cannot become completely emotionless and (b) the dictatorship will never end even if the leadership would want it to because point a will never be realized. This will incentivize the leadership to find reasons other than a failed philosophy to account for the failures of the philosophy. This is what really happened in the USSR. There were true believers who really tried to eliminate money, experts, managers, careers, families, etc because they thought communism would actually work and eliminate government and all earthly ills. When this didn’t happen they went looking for scapegoats.
No, it should sound like what people are actually arguing and trying to do. You should leaven this with what actually happens. You don’t seem to understand (and I’m not certain that Branabus does either) that if communists actually practiced what they preached then you would never have a communist revolution nor communist governments. Communism is supposed to occur as an organic factory worker revolutionary reaction to industrialized global capitalism where the middle class has disappeared. In reality communism has always been introduced by intellectuals in heavily corrupt agrarian societies with little or no free market capitalism.
If communists waited for the organic global workers revolt (which according to them MUST occur as a natural development of rampant capitalism) then it would never happen which is why communists always feel they must put their thumb on the scale to, you know, set events in motion.
It is no great shame to stumble upon a utopian philosophy and become enamored with it. The great shame is when you have numerous examples of it in action but blind yourself to the results. Look at Cuba, China, North Korea, Cambodia, Hungary, and the USSR to name just a few. Did any of them revolt from industrialized factory-worker led revolutions as Marx predicted? Have any of them transitioned from the temporary dictatorship to governmentless communism? Have any of these countries produced a generation of supermen? How many of these nations are or were highly corrupt bureaucracies? How many have produced dictators for life who run the country like a mafia organization passing leadership from father to son?
I don’t know what you mean.
“In theory communism sounds wonderful and noble but in implementation it fails because people don’t live up to the theory that communism advances”
I beg to differ. The Marxist theory is illogical from the get go.
It rests on the assumption that the value of goods is equal to the amount of labor involved: as if digging a dry well were the same as digging one that struck water, or, worse, if digging a well with your hands because it involves more work, is more precious to the customers than if you dig with a shovel, or a steam shovel.
The Marxist then sees no role for the investor, that is, the man who rents a shovel to the ditcher. Because the investor is not doing work, Marx assumes in an odd leap of logic that the ditcher who rents a shovel is a victim of the shovel owner, EVEN IF the shovel owner is poor and the ditcher is rich. In reality, the deal is one of mutual benefit: the ditcher digs a well in less time and effort, and therefore has greater profit for less overhead, including profit out from which he can pay back the shovel rental. The Marxist theory say that it is more efficient to prevent the shovel owner from renting the shovel, and to have the well dug by slave labor, and that the laborers who dig a dry well with their hands should get a higher wage out of the public till, because their need is greater. This absurdity when put into practice deters efficiency and encourages waste, mismanagement and sloth.
You get results like shoe factories operating by a quota, producing shoes to meet an assigned number, but not in sizes anyone can use — true story. You get results like the Chinese building “ghost cities” empty buildings with all the modern conveniences in the deserts in location where no one has any reason to live, whereas the cities on the coast where people live are overcrowded — also a true story. This is not the result of a failure of the theory, this is a result of the theory put into practice.
The immediate result is that the only way to live under this system is to cheat the system, and the only way to beat the cheaters is to have a man as string and bloothirsty as Stalin who will put the fear of punishment into all the middle management so that they will not cheat the system. You have to both spread and pretend to believe politically correct propaganda that the empty cities and the mad shoe factories are productive, and you have to lie and pretend you are needy when you are not to get your wage, and pretend to work when you don’t to prevent your substance from going to waste. Productivity is deterred, and the only way to get ahead for an ambitious man is to get political control of the body controlling the rationing.
Even Adam before his fall, or angels without sin, could not live under Marxism. It is illogical.
I don’t necessarily disagree. The idea of communism is a utopian one that isn’t isomorphic to reality.
I don’t believe that is correct. First, I don’t believe that communism takes thought of customers one way or another. Second, I don’t think that communists believe that digging a well with your hands is more valuable than digging it with a shovel. Instead they believe certain classes (classically, factory workers) are more valuable than others (classically farmers and ’intellectuals’) regardless of actual work involved.
In theory, everyone is supposed to be ready and able to work any job so that classes disappear–I forget if it was THE ABC OF COMMUNISM or something else, but one example was everyone reporting to a work center everyday where they were assigned a job that needed to be completed that day. This all, of course, takes place after a short dictatorship where reeducation occurs.
Well yes, because in communism everything is owned by everyone. There is no man to rent a shovel from because there is no man who owns a shovel. Communism doesn’t actually glorify the state because, after aforementioned short dictatorship, the state is supposed to whither away.
In the end, under communism, even money is supposed to vanish. In fact this was a problem for the early Soviet Union as there was a significant faction that wanted to eliminate money to quicken the transition to true communism. In fact, I think there was even an experiment to this effect that further wrecked the economy of the early Soviet Union.
This is all absolutely correct. Communists are so enamored with what is supposed to happen that they ignore what actually happens. I would like to point to Branabus as a classic example. The world that communism posits is industrial (factory workers are needed for the revolution, unless you are the Khmer Rouge) so factories must be built and staffed whether the products they produce are needed or not. Factory managers can’t be really tolerated and experts are not trusted so bureaucrats create orders based off of whatever crazed scheme enters their head — combined with whatever the grand overall plan is.
Everything else we agree on. My substantive point is that communism posits humans are perfectible. This almost sounds like Christianity which it apes, but perfection comes through proper education. Once the revolution occurs, the children born and raised under the temporary dictatorship will be as supermen compared to us. They are why the post dictatorship utopia can occur. It is an elegant and pretty system (aside from the inherent murder and theft) but has no connection to reality.
This is why you and the other Communists fail. Your theory requires men to be angels, and you cannot manage it for two seconds on a pointless internet thread. Mr. Wright is not acting like a coward here. He is a family man, who must work for hours and hours until the end of his days, for men are not yet paid for existing, which is theoretically why you rail against the “Capitalist” system. Instead of showing sympathy for his backbreaking burden, like a real Communist would, you shower him with contempt. You, a prophet of Communism, can’t even fake love for a worker.
Truly, your dreams are doomed, for, as you yourself have told us, your “system” is so weak that it can be commandeered by thieves without pause, and any external “corruption” will cause it to fail. You have stated that everyone must “transition” to a Communist state at once or it will not work, and never mind that you have not managed to convince me or Mr. Wright, you have not managed to convince yourself! Never mind walking the walk, you cannot even talk the talk! Not a good sign for a system that allows no human weakness or sin…..
As to History, you fail because you compare a Strawman (Capitalism is not a system, it is the absence of one, so Marxism created it so that they could fight against it) and a future Utopia. This fails on multiple levels. First, you have given us no examples of bad things happening in history because of “Capitalism”. You can rail against “bad things” all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that “Capitalism” is not a Utopian creed, and never claimed that following it would bring about Heaven on Earth. You must find an example of “Capitalism” alone causing harm, which you cannot do, for pure Capitalism has never been allowed in any part of recorded history. Government always comes first, and has always interfered with the market. And, of course, you ignore any and all history about your theory, because it wasn’t “real”, “hasn’t been tried”. So you claim your “system” is perfect, because if it didn’t work it wasn’t your system. Heads you win, tails we lose is not an argument in any sense, it is a cheat, which both Mr. Wright and I can see. Given that your theory requires Everyone to sign up, and Mr. Wright and I are not going to, well, we come back to the mountain of skulls, don’t we? You may not want to murder us, but the theory requires it, and you have given us no reason to believe that one of your stronger peers will not “Do what needs to be done”. Yet more broken eggs for an omelet that never happens……
If I were to say ‘that’s very good, Mr Wright. Your point of view is entirely correct’, then I would not be a communist, would I? His ‘back-breaking’ work does not prevent him from spending hours of his day composing and replying to the same ‘pointless threads on the internet’ which you degrade. I’m not entirely sure why he does this, but a logical conclusion, since he cannot, if he is rational, hope to change society through his posts, is that it is a form of entertainment. He’s probably actually an extreme left-winger in real life, and just uses this as a platform for hilarity.
(The last bit actually had a point. It is your duty to work out what it is. Other than that, he’s not a worker. I’m not sure what he is. All I know is that he writes well, and I want him to get on with doing that)
I shall be the judge of whether or not I am convinced, and I am. As evidence: the fact that I am arguing with you now.
It can be commandeered when it is not actually happening.
External corruption cannot occur following a world revolution.
Don’t worry. You’re pretty safe. And at the moment, you can see no reason to become communist, can you? Your education, your social group, and your own position in society do not accept the possibility of it ever occurring. Neither can most other people in the western world. For the moment, that will prevent communism from happening, since it requires an establishment of a worldwide class consciousness. Just look out for tomorrow.
It doesn’t require anyone to be convinced. Marxism is a formulisation, with suggestions for how it will occur, of the inevitable product of history. It will come about, because it is what everyone wants.
Anarchism is the absence of a system.
Capitalism is evil. That is what I am arguing. You cannot find examples of Communism causing harm either, for equivalent reasons. Therefore, we must look to killings committed due to capitalist and communist ideologies. And the skull piles in your back yard, again, are bigger than mine.
Not at all. You are a Communist because of your political beliefs. If you claimed to agree with Mr. Wright, you would, in all likelihood, be lying, as most Communists do. You will claim otherwise, but that is the history, which you can only whitewash by claiming that they were not “real” Communists. So it goes.
He does not. He spends some of his precious minutes of leisure dialoging on the internet. He does not have the months and years it would take to break you out of your “false consciousness”, to borrow a term from you and yours. And your aside shows how simplistic a system “Communism” is. Of course Mr. Wright is a worker. Because your system is based on Envy and Hate, dividing people by claiming some work is “Work” and other work is “Theft”, you have no way to place Mr. Wright, who is not employed (and so an oppressed Worker) but does not employ (and so is an hated Capitalist). So it goes.
No, you are not the Judge, your life is, for if your system is to work, you must be like until a Prelapsarian Man, for there is no room for Anger, or Hate, or Greed in a Communist system. You can’t even manage to fake in this thread, yet you claim you can live your life that way? Right.
Of course it can. Mr. Wright and I will not be part of that “Revolution”, and we and the others like us will get together to form a quite little gulch. We will be outside your little “Revolution”, which will then collapse, because Freedom is better the Slavery. Or you will murder us all, mounds of skulls time. So it goes.
“It’s what everyone wants”? Well, no. I grew up in a socialist medical system (Military medical, dad was career Navy) and I would rather live free, and maybe die, then live by committee and guarantee it. You promise Heaven on Earth, which many of us believe in, but you claim that we don’t need God on Earth to pull it off, and that is not something that many of us believe. So it goes.
Yes, we understand you think Capitalism is evil. You have not shown any understanding of Capitalism, or given any believable examples of it being evil. Capitalism (Actual, not your strawman) is the free exchange of something (whatever they agree is something, something Marx could not handle) between peoples(could be two, could be more. People are allowed to work together for mutual gain) Where is the Evil there? As opposed to you, who cannot even allow that Mr. Wright is a worker, and must yell “Doesn’t count! Doesn’t count!” when we point out the actual photographed piles of skulls made by those claiming to create a Communist paradise on earth. If Communism is inevitable, the attempts to make it happen prematurely have murdered millions, as you of all people should understand. If history cannot be denied, then neither can it be forced, and the attempts by you and your peers have made a river of blood flow in your attempts to do so. Truly surreal, for the Successful “Real Communist” is by definition a Successful “Real Capitalist”, and you and yours cannot manage it, and so will be low end lackeys when the Revolution comes. So it goes…..
‘Most Communists lie’ is an unsupported assertion. If we evidence from their actions, that is, when given the chance, did they step down from being dictators, and leave that to the proletariat, or take power for themselves, then by that one test, then we find them non-Communist. Also, while we’re quibbling about whether or not places are, or were, Communist, I challenge you to give me a definitive date of when the organically evolved capitalist system started, or feudalism. If we take those two to be the rule, then if we assume that Communism evolves organically, we must look for features, as opposed to what they say they are.
It is based on the rejection of envy and hate, both of which are advantageous in the capitalist system, certainly.
I would say that John is an intellectual, a special class, which is a mixture of the oppressed and the oppressors. Hence why he has the leisure to spend what looks like hours developing a wide variety of intelligent posts (albeit not always rigorously logical).
I am not in a Communistic society. I claim that Communism leverages the natural altruism of mankind, which is demonstrated, even in a society which prevents it from showing through fully, by the aforementioned charity workers, free software developers and people who run distributed computing programs, to give three examples. If we see these thinks peeking through here, then what has man got the potential to be?
John, is his argument ad hominem? Seems like a decent example to me, without being too obvious.
Heh. You say that now, in the wrong situation, at the wrong time. I would be the first to admit that the Revolution will not happen tomorrow, but when it does, then you (if you are still around) will be as pleased as I that it does.
Who knows? It will not be ‘Heaven’, it will be ‘as Heaven’. Just as capitalism is as heaven would be to the peasants of feudalism.
Evil lies in exploitation, letting people starve, being solely for profit, and for not valuing human beings. Evil lies in hideous inequality, the infamous ‘n% of the wealth in the hands of 1% of the population’. Evil lies in hiding the evil so that people cannot see it.
I do not try to force the Revolution, it is impossible to do such a thing. What I do do is maintain that it will come, that capitalism is but the passing of greed, and that those who support it are more evil than Satan himself. The last little bit was but a faded meme, nevertheless, it’s not a good thing to support it.
And the skull piles in your back yard, again, are bigger than mine.
That is the biggest lie in human history. Your system has killed, by a sober and scholarly estimate, 100 million human beings by direct government action in under 100 years. That does not count the millions of additional deaths in wars and civil wars fought by persons attempting to impose your system on countries where it was not wanted. Nothing, nothing, in the history of the human race compares with the deliberate slaughter by Communist dictatorships of their own enslaved populations.
Nice oxymoron there. I would be happy to have such skills as you do at blinkered typing.
And here is where I got my statistics from: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat8.htm
Entertainment changes society more then most people realize. In a narrow limited sense by posting on a blog he has already changed society. In a broader sense a blog post is just as a rational platform for changing society as posting on a church door or writing pieces for newspaper.
So you are a troll that is here for fun and profit?
That’s annoying. I couldn’t find the xkcd which covers this perfectly.
It’s a form of entertainment for him, which was the point that I was making. And I’m in here to improve my own arguments, make you doubt your own, and generally to get to know the opposition. There’s all of 5 people here who I can argue with who I wouldn’t meet anywhere else. And I must admit, you’re (general you) better than most people that I meet, who have learned to say ‘communism works in theory, fails in practice’ and to quote Animal Farm incessantly (which we all know why you shouldn’t do, I hope?). And possibly me.
Am I a troll? Are you a troll? I admit that left-wing posting on an essentially right-wing blog could be considered trolling, yes. However, the main factor is motivation. It’s also the troll who initiates the argument, whereas the last one, and probably the one before that grew out a comment which was agreeing with the subject matter. Deliberately inflaming a situation is the hallmark of a troll, so it could be claimed that anyone who does so is trolling. It is also easy to label someone as a troll simply for holding, and sticking to, different views from you. Hence why I don’t do it.
If you are serious about your position then you *may* not be a troll, the incessent name calling, reading statistics in a way that makes no sense both in the straight numbers and in the per capita basis, not understanding basic concepts of economic thought, responding primarily to the posts that make fun of you while ignoring others that point out that even in theory communism doesn’t work and give the reasons why (like information problems, freeloader problems, and so forth), and joking about being “an extreme left-winger in real life, and just uses this as a platform for hilarity.” as well as the incessant, and often nonsensical, Ad hominem, all of those sort of say either troll or something that makes Sean the Vampire look like the most holiest of saints.
You’re wrong to say that I cannot read statistics in a way that makes sense. Again, the fact that I read them differently to you does not mean that I read them wrongly.
What basic concepts of economics do I not understand? You may also be wrong to say that I do not understand, because I simply do not accept them to be true, while understanding them.
I apologise for my laxity, I got distracted by the absurd posts. Present your arguments now.
I was not joking at the left-winger thing. That had a distinct point, and you still don’t seem to have ‘got it’.
My pointing out of ad hominem was acceptable in all cases.
Communism rests on a few faulty assumptions, or rather assumptions that require ideal world circumstances that can not be matched to the real world. A non-exhaustive description is a follows:
First, the freeloader problem, which is not unique to communism. This is a problem in any organization where the work done is not tied directly to the person getting paid. Since the pay is going to come regardless of how successful or good the work done is, then why do any work at all? To get around the problem requires the use of supervisors, and supervisors of the supervisors, and on up to the CEO who essentially gets paid larges sums of money to make sure everyone else works with the compensation tied up with the success (and profitability) of the firm. And that is where Capitalism gets one of its huge advantages, freeloaders effect the firms profitability meaning there is someone whose pay explicitly and directly is changed by making sure everyone is doing a needful task and doing it well.
Second, supply and demand mismatches. So lasts year top of the line phone had a huge amount of sales, however that same phone with the same specifications would not sell nearly as well this year. In a market system production is tied to how well things sell, as the individual firms make or lose money based on meeting market demand. Firms must be very responsive to small and rapid changes in demand, otherwise they will likely go broke as some other firm will be willing to step in if they are nor responsive enough. In communism there are no competing firms and if there is innovation it is as the state desires, not according to what the market desires. This means that the state firm has only the direction of some group somewhere to determine what and how much to produce, not market demand. Now it might be possible to have production meet last years demand, unfortunately however last years demand is the past, demand has likely shifted. Hence some things will have too much produced and others not enough, unless the group is able to predict not only the changes in peoples preferences but also changes in the weather, changes in the availability of resources, changes in solar weather, earthquakes, volcanoes, and anything else not covered that may change the demand for goods and services.
Third, in addition to the problems of forecasting above communism runs into an information gathering problem. (This is still assuming like above that if the group that sets production had all the available information then they could process it, see Fourth) In capitalism someone that is farming a field has information that is very valuable to them but that is passed on to everyone else in the form of a price. The farmer takes a price and what they know about their land and comes up with what to plant, however getting all of the variables that the farmer out of the farmer and onto paper is nearly impossible. The farmer doesn’t necessarily know what he knows and what is important, but as his livelihood depends on it he is still able to act on all the information he has available. Under communism the farmer doesn’t own the land and doesn’t get rewarded for being more productive or punished for being less productive with in reason (and may get punished for being more productive and rewarded for being less productive (both have happened in real life)). Therefore, the farmer no longer cares as much about what is being done, he is not gathering or processing all the information that he would if he owned the land (or, at least, the product of the land) and not only that but he himself doesn’t have all the same information available to him. The cost of a tractor, of fuel for the tractor, of fertilizer, of getting extra workers to help in the field, of jeans, of food, of the product of the field, all of that and countless other things are no longer available to the farmer, and if they were he would not be in a position to make a decision based on that information. Since the farmer (who still even with all the limits knows more then he can put into some form) has lost information then so to has the group making decisions, and the farmer not only knows more then he can share he also no longer has a reason to share what he does know.
Fourth, Assuming that there are no freeloaders, that all the information about supply and demand is both gathered and passed up to the central group that makes decisions and there is no loss of information then communism assumes that the group can process the information and make some intelligent decision. This means that the aggregate decisions of everyone in the economy must be known before they are made, as well as all minor and major disasters before they happen. This is dependent on things that are not known and are only knowable in the academic sense of reductive materialism. I am not sure how to communicate the number of factors that such a group must try and deal with, if you truly think that such a mass of information can be successfully processed and used for predictions while still being relevant then you should prove it by making a consistently large amount of money nearly daily in the trading of stocks, bonds, options, insurance, credit default swaps, commodities, and other financial instruments that are used to mitigate risk, take advantage of risk, and make sure money and goods and services get to where they need to be. (I should point out that there are firms that do make a consistent large amount of money in all of these things, but they do it by essentially charging transaction fees to everyone else (they have rigged the system that everyone uses to trade in such things))
And that is the truly main point, Communism is developed in a world where there is no risk. That is there are no unknowns, no disasters, very slow to no change, in short an ideal impossibility. The whole idea of Capitalism though is the taking of risks, a firm takes a risk by moving into a new market, a person takes a risk by starting a firm, always risk and always the potential for reward and always ways to try and mitigate the risk while maximizing the rewards.
Also, I was referring to your uses of, not you calling others. Like with me pointing out that trade had essentially stop pre-WW2 and you saying that I like Hoover and Bush a lot, totally unrelated and unjustified.
This is very well said.
“I’m not entirely sure why he does this, but a logical conclusion, since he cannot, if he is rational, hope to change society through his posts, is that it is a form of entertainment.”
Again, argumentum ad hominem. The left has only one arrow in its quiver, only one weapon in its arsenal.
This is why I am not willing to debate with you. You don’t know how to debate.
No, it is not argumentum ad hominem. The question is ‘why is John making the posts on his blog?’ I don’t say that the arguments you make are invalid because your posts are merely entertainment for you.
Here’s the full reasoning behind my answer to the question:
Society changes due to mass exposure to a meme.
This blog’s posts do not have a wide readership (which would result in mass exposure).
John is a rational person.
Therefore, John is not making these posts in order to change society.
No-one does anything without a cause.
One writes on a blog either to change society or for entertainment.
John’s blog does not have enough exposure to change society.
Therefore, John is writing for entertainment.
Point 2 in the second paragraph is a little weak. However, I cannot think of any other motivation which doesn’t fall under these two categories. If you can, I shall revise my arguments.
You need to stop using Latin names for logical fallacies if you do not know what they mean. You are stuffed with sophomoric swagger; a few rhetoric lessons you mislearned and now apply poorly.
In the past I joked and argued with you because, truthfully, I saw a lot of myself in you. I’m an inveterate smartass, my father was a Marxist, and due to his rantings I picked up a few bad habits. I am now 30 something and unemployed as I followed his sage advice. If someone had slapped me out of being happy with underachievement and mewling avarice a few years earlier I might be in a much better place now. After a decade of hard knocks I have committed myself to thrift and investment. If you are not a typical 99%-er (ie, a trust fund baby in denial) you have a very poor future ahead of you. I must ask your forgiveness for antagonizing you, when one says something very, very stupid I reflexively mock it. On some level I was trying to help snap you out of your arrogant self congratulation. Unfortunately, I feel I have reenforced it. Please understand, I saw logic has no effect on you. I thought being as snide as you might draw us into productive conversation. I have come to believe that at this point in your life, you are a lost cause.
Unfortunately, at this point I wash my hands of you. Call me whatever names you like, but you DO NOT call the host of this site a coward for refusing to site in the mire and fling turds like you and I. You were amusing to me for a time, then I thought better of it and began to feel sorry for you. My advice from a crazy old fart to a foolish young ass; (which I assume could not mean less to you)
*If you are a student, immediately drop out of college. You are learning nothing good there. If your family has money, nice start. If you do not, you certainly won’t learn to make it by parroting your otherwise unemployable instructors.
*Find something you like to do, then find a way to build a business around it. If this does not appeal to you, find a franchised business and start it as an experiment. You can use the money you were previously squandering on studying the word-salad of dead monsters.
If you succeed, you will learn the joy of self-support, and helping bring the same to others. You will begin to see that real life is a symbiosis, not a slave/master rationed sum game.
If you fail, you will learn of the burdens your cult puts on those trying to better themselves.
Some day, I hope you become a good man. Some day I hope I will too. Until then, we will not be conversing anymore.
It is amusing that, while I will not follow your first suggestion, I will follow your second (pretty much). I may be a Communist, that does not mean that I am suicidal. I may benefit from the system, that doesn’t meant that I like it.
You may choose to interpret this as the rebellious act of a young person, or as blatant hypocrisy on my part. Indeed, given the general record, I would expect you to do that. You see, you’ve looked at me and decided that my mind is closed and can only be opened by experience. I’ve looked at you and decided that your minds are closed, and that they are unlikely to be opened at all, but that there is little harm in trying.
To be truthful with you, when I had the temerity to criticise, nay, insult our host, then I expected a lot more people to refuse to talk to me. Well, one must always be prepared for the unexpected.
As to ‘college’, by which I take to mean ‘university’, then I think that you either have a very unrealistic view, or took the wrong course, or universities are different in America. Here, for my course, we need the same dead monsters that you’re talking about, otherwise we’ll mess up in the future, and someone’s animal may well die because of us.
I think that your father was a very strange Marxist, then. I seek to better myself, and society, through working to the best of my ability, and this seems to be paying off now.
Logical fallacies which I don’t know the meaning of? Well, if I do not, then neither do ‘you and yours’, to borrow a phrase. Arguing that Communism is evil because it is practised by murderers is not a valid argument.
I apologise for the disorder of this post, and provide no excuse for it.
“Arguing that Communism is evil because it is practised by murderers is not a valid argument.”
No, but arguing that Communism by its very nature replaced the price system with a rationing system, and that a rationing system that rations human labor by its very nature is slavery, and that slavery is maintained only through violence and the threat of violence, and then, as confirmatory evidence, to look at history and note that Communism has used more violence than any other institution in history by an order of magnitude or more, is a valid argument.
Rationing. If you wish to call it that, yes, it is rationing. But if you look at times in history when we’ve needed extreme rationing, and the binding together of all levels of society which resulted, and the greater equality which existed, then even extreme rationing is a good leveller.
Slavery to the whims of the market and the capitalists is also slavery. The most effective chains are those which are invisible, and are backed up by people telling you that you are unchained, free, and that the alternatives are far worse.
If by ‘order of magnitude’ you mean ‘twice’, if that, then you may well be correct. Again, Marx was very silly to make his theorism public, when he should have kept it to himself to ensure that what he wanted to, and thought would happen, happened.
It’s still irrelevant. If I am an axe murderer, and kill a hundred people, and go to prison declaring my capitalism, it doesn’t mean that capitalism is inhumane because of it. If I am a Catholic in Ireland, and blow myself up, then it doesn’t mean that Catholics believe that they should kill themselves. If there is famine, it doesn’t mean that the system fails, because if that were so, then all capitalism would be failing, and that’s blatantly untrue at the moment. So we must seek to demonstrate the communism fails or succeeds theoretically. Which is what most of you are doing. With certain exceptions, who I shall dismiss as ‘trolls’.
Why do you qualify your statement by saying “if you wish to call it that”? Is it not rationing?
“No, it is not argumentum ad hominem. The question is ‘why is John making the posts on his blog?’ I don’t say that the arguments you make are invalid because your posts are merely entertainment for you.”
Child, if you were not indulging in an ad hominem, you would not be talking about my motives, nay, you would not be talking about me, at all.
By no-one’s but your definitions am I a child, and the blazing hypocrisy in that statement is obvious.
I don’t know your age. You talk like a child.
You reason like a child.
And Mr. Wright’s point has been proven.
Do you know what a quote is? ‘When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.’ Admittedly I did get the lines mixed up, but that’s still not an excuse for not knowing common quotations from the Bible.
Incapable is demonstrably untrue. Unwilling, rather. Remember, he did call your request noble in the abstract.
Let’s commit the fallacy of presuming 1 life = 1 life. Which Beast consumes more lives at a higher rate?
I’ve never seen someone call someone else a Trotskyist before. Quaint, almost.
Yea! No man is completely without truth. But it should be said that he did couch what he did call you with “presumably,” so it cannot be said that he thought his efforts were authoritative.
Sorry about the name thing. I will make the correction.
Thanks.
What, precisely, is the difference between Communism and Socialism? I apologize for asking a question that’s only somewhat related to the topic at hand, but it’s something I’ve never quite been able to figure out, and the explanations I’ve looked up have varied so wildly that I’m not sure which one is correct.
Technically, there is no difference. Marx called himself a socialist and so did Hitler. In common use, a socialist is a Fabian, which is, a communist who seeks by peaceful means to incorporate some of the aspects of a communist commonwealth, but not all.
It’s because the terms often have technical definitions based upon the user.
For example, for a communist socialism is an intermediary state dictatorship that occurs between capitalism and communism. While in the socialist phase, most or all of the means of production are owned by the state. Once a period of time passes humanity will transform based off of education and a new generation being raised under the socialist dictatorship. This new humanity will no longer need government so government will vanish.
Therefore: socialism = transitionary omnipresent state dictatorship and communism = permanent absence of state and government.
For many non-communists socialism = government ownership or management of certain sectors such as healthcare or air travel while communism = permanent omnipresent state dictatorship.
“Provided you are secure in yours”? So, if you are not secure in your possessions, you may be illogical, or covet your neighbor’s possessions? Surely you cannot mean this seriously and it is merely an unfortunate sentence structure.
I mean that if you are not secure in your possessions, your desire to take from those who have taken your possessions is perfectly reasonable, and is, in fact, natural justice. If your neighbors will not make laws allowing the town Jew to be secure in his possessions, he has no worldly reason to support the system that robs him, no worldly reason to support laws and customs to make sure those neighbors are secure in theirs. There is a degree of reciprocity involved.
Very well, but you should make it a bit clearer to avoid misleading those who might think that if one’s state is mean enough, one has license to commit the serious sin of covetousness. We are never permitted to sin, ever. Now a man who has been unjustly deprived of the means of life and desires that they should be restored to him by the one who has arrogated them — he is not coveting, merely desiring justice. This may be a quibble, but one cannot be too careful about such things when those are reading who might be led astray.
Although it is a while since I read Animal Farm, it seemed to me that the failure of the farm wasn’t due to the problem of collective work, but to the pigs’ lust for power – especially Napoleon – and their ability to bamboozle the other animals. Orwell was a Socialist; he was clear-eyed enough to see that the Russian revolution had failed to produce the great results expected of it, and honest enough to admit it even though it was an argument against his side. But I think he mis-identified the problem, or rather he saw only one of the many problems; he was still arguing “the Revolution was betrayed” rather than “the Socialist Utopia is impossible”.
And, to be fair, he had a point: Collective action did work, to some extent, in the USSR of the 1930s. One should be careful not to conflate the failure modes. The USSR under Stalin was a dreadful tyranny, but it did produce a large amount of good tanks, passable aircraft, serviceable rifles, and sufficiently-accurate artillery. You could argue that for purposes of defeating a German invasion it was better than the Czars had been. The USSR under Brezhnev was less dreadful in terms of secret police knocking down your door at midnight, show trials, and executions. Conversely, it was also less productive, partly because people were less afraid and partly because they were more cynical about freeloading. The “they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work” phenomenon does arise, but it takes a while to do so – at least, it did in Russia. Nowadays, with very high literacy and some historical experience, perhaps it would be faster.
Actually, Russia under the Czars was better off, by any measure you’d care to use. An immense amount of propaganda says otherwise, but then again Mussolini did not actually get the trains to run on time, but people still believe it.
I agree that Russians, the people, were better off under the Czars. Russia, the state, was stronger under Stalin: Stalinist Russia defeated Germany, which Czarist Russia was unable to do. By the measure of rifles and ammunition, the communists did better than the czarists. (I’ll leave tanks and aircraft out of it, as reflecting technological change rather than industry.) When the Czar conscripted five million serfs, half of them were told to wait and pick up their comrades’ rifles when those comrades inevitably died. When Stalin did the same, he at least managed to put a gun in every man’s hands.
Russia’s supply problems in WWI were more the result of the corruption under that particular Tsar than the Tsarist system per se, and in any event, they were largely ironed out by 1916; the orders to pick up a stricken comrade’s rifle were indeed given, but only during the first months of the war. As for WWII, Stalin ignored ample warning from the British, Americans, and his own spies that a German attack was imminent. When it did happen, he repeatedly ordered Russian troops to make futile holding actions that cost millions of casualties. Just prior to the German halt before Moscow in December 1941, it’s now known, Stalin was giving serious consideration to capitulating.
Stalin’s idiocies as commander in chief are a separate problem from his achievements as industrialiser-in-chief. In a similar vein, you would not criticise the autobahns on the grounds that Hitler tended to order famous last stands whether called for or not. It’s not as though Nicholas did any better. It’s true that by 1916 the Czarist army had managed to find a rifle for every man, but they were still far behind on such vital matters as heavy artillery, trucks, locomotives, and aircraft.
I don’t think it’s open to dispute that Stalinist Russia produced far more weapons per capita than did Czarist Russia, even allowing for twenty years of technological advance. They did so, it’s true, by methods that Hitler might have flinched at, but on the very narrow metric of guns per man, they did well. Grain per man not so good, but to defeat the Wehrmacht they needed guns, not butter.
The czarist state also had its military triumphs. Russia defeated Napoleon, after the failure of other European powers, including the German states, Prussia and Austria. By March 31, 1814, Russian troops had conquered Paris and Alexander was the most powerful monarch in Europe.
The historical record fails to recognize the organization and determined strategy of Russia, because English and French writers drew mainly upon records of French commanders, who tended to overrate French military methods, to underrate the skillful management of Russian cavalry, and to blame all setbacks on the Russian winter. This record has been corrected in the writings of Dominic Lieven.
I met a lot of people in Russia who missed Stalin because that was when their country was STRONG!
You’re absolutely right about Animal Farm, as well.
I actually got around to downloading your article (well, not yours. Mises’). I do not want to read it on a screen. And I don’t have the facilities to print it off. ‘I’m printing off 952 pages because it’s educational’ is not considered a valid excuse in the computer suite. 47 was bad enough.
Suggestions?
Ah, the glories of the Capital “system”. Make a Amazon wishlist, and let people know your screen name for it. Bet you someone will spend the eight bucks to send it to you, just on the off chance you will read it.
I will happily join the Christians here in attacking this swine, but of course I won’t be so gentle. I would crucify a cretin like this rather than argue with him, peel the flesh from his bones with a sharp knife and feed it to my Rottweiler, as an object lesson in the existence of evil and the utter futility of all atheistic ideologies which fail to recognize it.
As for capitalism being evil, guess what boy: this entire planet is evil! Evil is *integral* to the functioning of the world, and can never be removed! This is sometimes called the “Lucifer Principle”, and it explains why do-gooder attempts to eradicate evil just tend to make things worse.
Your communist moralizing is just Christianity in disguise — if you want real success upon this infernal orb, try this instead: embrace the Lucifer Principle and become more evil than the next guy! Nietzsche (the real revolutionary philosopher of this age, not that sad-sack crypto-Christian Marx), said “man needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him,” and these are the words of a prophet.
Contemplate these things on the tree of woe, commie-boy, put away your ideological toys, embrace the world in all its Satanic glory, and perhaps in time you will begin to know real power!
Wait. The Communist and the Satanist disagree? Shouldn’t you guys gang up on the Christians? Besides, the Commie is more evil, and more pleasing to Satan, than the Satanist, on the grounds that an evil disguised as a good is not only evil but also hypocritical, whereas an evil which is openly evil is honest, and honesty is not evil.
But let me not look a gift horse in the mouth. Thank you for your words of support.
Bravo, Sean!
Communism is just one of the more idiotic Christian heresies. Communist states are a transitional phase: they all either revert to capitalist democracies (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, the Baltic states) or they evolve into the more logical and stable form of national socialist states (China, North Korea, Russia).
The human mind is capable of rational thought and will eventually draw logical conclusions. A generation raised to be atheistic and materialistic will eventually reject any sentimental view of “the poor downtrodden working class” and the millennial dream of the “perfect, classless society to come”. These reworkings of Christian beliefs are jettisoned.
Any functioning nation requires hierarchy and differentiation between classes. Managers, scientists, artists are needed as well as workers. The hopes of the downtrodden may be useful to create social upheaval as a path to power but, once power is in the hands of the party, a new ideal is needed. The nation or race is now idealized, not some class of incompetents, distributed across the globe.
Thus, North Korea now glorifies “the cleanest race”, the Koreans. China is a nationalistic state, quite happy to have wealthy corporations and entrepreneurs. It maintains Communistic ideology in form, but this is now a vestige and an inconvenience, when the workers protest their condition. Russia is now a one party nationalistic state. Communism is the cocoon from which emerges the mature insect form, national socialism.
But, there will be no millennial end to the struggle. “Socialism”, the notion that all property, rights and power belong to society as a whole is rapidly jettisoned. As Thatcher noted,”There is no such thing as society.” Property, rights and power will all belong to the inner party, within which there is no security, only a ruthless, continual struggle for more power.
Thus, it is quite right and proper to flay Mr Branabus and feed him to your dog. That will be his eventual fate under Communism, in any case, as cleverer, more Machiavellian elements assume control of the party.
why settle for the lesser evil, indeed.
And here I thought our Sith Lord peaked early.
The American system has its body count too. 50 million aborted under the ruling philosophy of
the heart of liberty which is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
Ah, no. Abortion came about because of Old World thinking. A small group of aristocrats forced their desires on the country using a mockably bad ruling that no one of note in the legal profession, Democrat or Republican, commends. Second, it would be America’s body count if it were unique to America, which, alas, it is not. It is the World’s body count……
America does indeed have its body count too, and little tiny bodies at that. The future will look back on us as we look back on Aztecs, and wonder how we endured a holocaust in our midst, or how we never even admitted what it was we were doing.
But, more to the point, I don’t think taxpayer-funded semi-public Planned Parenthood, aka Murder Incorporated, is a sterling example of the free market in action. If it is, I will condemn the free market as quickly as Marx. If it is not, if abortion is just as equally practiced, say, in Communist China as in Socialist England as it is in Semi-Socialist America, then this is an evil which persists despite any change in economic institutions, and is not something particular to one economic system.
Proud capitalist that I am, I do not believe that a free market in pornography, opium, slaves, or the services of harlots or hit-men is desirable. I am not a libertarian nor an anarchist. The free market outside a civilized public agora where decency reigns and contracts are honored and men have those certain imponderables like honesty and work-ethic soon turns into a juggernaut, an idol that tramples its worshipers.
I think myself that abortion is inspired by Moloch. Hell always hates children.
This, “… to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life”, is not a right. It is a short definition of moral relativism, ‘Your truth, my truth, his truth, her truth, the hell with truth.’ (As another one of ‘them’, we have the Truth, and He is the second Person of the Holy Trinity.) Other than Him, one is just making things up. Abortion was just made up by the imagination of certain men in black. Liberty did not participate in the decision. It was a sheer, willful ‘non serviam’ decision.
“I think myself that abortion is inspired by Moloch. Hell always hates children.”
This gave me the thought that, on Satan’s list of “greatest” feats, abortion in the name of the good of society is #2. #1 still being convincing people that he doesn’t exist.