A cocaine sniffing, bi-sexual alcoholic who became an evangelical Zionist about the time that he was fingered for a career as a top apparatchik. Since when he has become a philosopher committed to spreading ‘freedom’ for financial oligarchy.
Correct.
judicame said:
There’s not a post of mine on this thread where I even touched on Roosevelt or Truman. What makes you think that I mentioned either man?
I praise him because he’s funny and on point. You don’t have to agree with my opinion. You may have your own favorite comic strips.
Quite right.
Actually, the antagonisms between Russia and Poland go back at least to the 11th Century. You are correct about the efforts of Tsarist Russia to obliterate Polish culture, efforts which failed.
“Wrong headed Poles”? They were simply Poles fighting for their country. Who gives a damn if they were Communists or Falangists or Catholics or Orthodox? Their patriotism transcended their political leanings.
I believe that communism has always taught that it was a worldwide movement and their is no room for patriotism. How can one be a good communist and a patriot?
Hello David Paul (lovely tag!) and nice to meecha on The Board… thank you for all that information…may I ask your source? I recall with Maths in College loosing my interest in it for needing to use 22/7 as pye and not understanding why 22/7 = pye in the discerning of the diameter of a circle…
Well that’s the problem with any ideology, isn’t it - it isn’t sustainable in real life. As you point out, communism doesn’t really leave room for nationa identity. Yet China and Russia never merged, nor China and Vietnam, nor did Cuba cease being Cuban. In fact, even in the USSR they never successfully obliterated the distinction between Russians, Georgians, Latvians, Ukrainians, etc…
Though you don’t understand how, Communists throughout the world have indeed been both Communists and patriots. The only Communist Party outside the Soviet Union that was totally loyal to Moscow was the American Communist Party.
Your opinion.
The only correction I’d make to your observation would be to say, “many of us in the United States.” Nowhere else was there such a sense of panicky “the Communists are coming” than here and nowhere else was Communism seen as a monolith. In most of Europe, the Communists were simply another political party and there were no witchhunts nor equivalents to the rabidly reactionary House Unamerican Activities Committee.
I remember taking a class on Italian politics since WWII. The funny thing about the Communists is that they were supposedly the anti-system party, committed to the overthrow of the government, pledged to non-cooperation, yadda yadda… The only thing was, when you went back and counted votes that passed legislation, turns out that the Communists regularly cooperated, reached compromises, and voted for laws…in other words, they were really just another political party, despite all their talk.
Exemplified by the fine humor of Giovanni Guareschi in his Don Camillo stories of life in a small Italian village where the stubborn priest Don Camillo is forever at odds with Peppone, the Communist mayor of the village.
Oh really-- East Central Europeans knew full well the seriousness of the Communist threat as did most Western policy makers of any stature or good judgment. Italy was a separate case where Communists were not in full control and were playing by someone else’s rules. It’s obvious you’ve never lived in a totalitarian state or know no one who has. By the way, many people in Western Europe (i.e., the nuclear freeze crowd) were more than willing to give up some freedom to appease the Soviets and to provide the Soviets with the economic material to survive in exchange for not being threatened or attacked. Thank God, the Pope, Walesa, Reagan, Thatcher and Kohl were true leaders and not mere figureheads who took polls to decide what to do in response to the Soviet threat. You minimize their accomplishments and that of the people of East Central Europe by pooh poohing the very real nature of the enemy they overcame and subdued.
Oh? Obvious, huh? My first cousins in southern Poland don’t count? My late uncle and his family near Bialystok don’t count? My cousin who was in the Polish Army the same time that I was in the U.S.A.F. doesn’t count? Or our other relatives over there?
It’s not a question of poo-poohing, it’s a question of seeing clearly enough to formulate an effective response to a threat. Communism was not a monolithic bloc. Perhaps if we had seen that, we wouldn’t have felt it necessary to prop up evil men like Osama Bin Laden for the sake of anti-Communism.
Just consider the relationship between the USSR and Yugoslavia, the inability of the Russians to impose collectivization on Polish farmers, the conflicts between the USSR and China.
And to make this discussion more immediately relevant, I would note that anti-Americanism/terrorism is also not a monolithic phenomenon. Iraq, Al Quade, N. Korea, and Iran are all unique problems, not some sort of unified target for a “war on terror.” I fear we may be reapeating the same mistakes we should have learned by now.
The appropriate nuance required in meeting the very real Soviet threat and the threat of explosion rather than implosion was exactly that provided by Pope John Paul II (who supported the deployment of missiles in Europe in response to Soviet deployments aimed at Europe and at the same time preached Christ’s message with full knowledge that that would destabilize Communist governements based on an ideology that is antithetical to the Truth of Christ), President Reagan (whose resoluteness and strength took away any Soviet illusions of victory via outward aggression), and Solidarity (which exposed Communism as a bankrupt ideology based on lies). Unfortunately, an alliance with the Soviets who started WWII with the Nazis was justified given the larger and more immediate threat of Nazi aggression and expansion and potential victory, just as the Soviet threat required alliances from time to time with smaller and less dangerous authoritarian governments. If you notice, many of the authoritarian governments justified as a consequence of the neurotic bipolar post WWII world collapsed as the Soviet threat collapsed–(e.g., see South Africa and the Phillipines) and the US then welcomed and often encouraged such changes.
I wouldn’t put Reagan in the same category as JPII and Solidarity. Not by a long way. Especially considering his hostility to labor, in contrast to the fact that Solidarity was a LABOR MOVEMENT, and in light of JPII’s stong committment to LABOR UNIONS. Come to think of it, the current Republican pres isn’t a big fan of labor either. Ironic, for someone who professes such admiration for JPII.