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UNCLE!!!

The turning point (more of a long, gradual curve than an actual point) for my wife was when she came to the realization that the "pro-life" Republicans really didn't give a crap about also helping kids or families in need. In her words, you cannot be one and not the other.

The vast majority of "pro life" people don't give a damn what happens to the baby after it's born. They just want to make sure the mother is punished for her "sinful" behavior.
 
I doubt it. Perhaps universal health care = communism?


Of course it is! Have you never read the Manifesto of Universal Health Care?!

A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of universal health care. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as pro universal health care by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of universal health care, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact:
I. Universal health care is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.
II. It is high time that advocates of universal health care should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Universal Health Care with a manifesto of the movement itself.


:)
 
Some people call themselves skeptics, but are really just contrarian.

Some people call themselves skeptics and really make an effort to be skeptical and objective about things they encounter in life.

This thread has some good examples of the latter. That's a good thing.


ETA: I'm kind of a prepper, but not a Libertarian, for whatever that is worth. I am just sort of fascinated by growing my own food and preserving it, home canning, pickling, that sort of thing. Lately I've been experimenting with lacto-bacillus fermentation. I have a lot of camping gear and have practice at going long periods of time with no electricity or refrigeration, at purifying my own water, building wood-fired brick stoves to cook with, all sorts of things like that. Then again, I own no guns and haven't the least desire to own any. I'm an odd sort of semi-prepper. I don't expect any sort of mass calamity, I just think it is a fun sort of thought experiment. I would much prefer to never need to really need to depend on my prepper-lite skills to survive.
 
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Some people call themselves skeptics, but are really just contrarian.

Some people call themselves skeptics and really make an effort to be skeptical and objective about things they encounter in life.

This thread has some good examples of the latter. That's a good thing.


ETA: I'm kind of a prepper, but not a Libertarian, for whatever that is worth. I am just sort of fascinated by growing my own food and preserving it, home canning, pickling, that sort of thing. Lately I've been experimenting with lacto-bacillus fermentation. I have a lot of camping gear and have practice at going long periods of time with no electricity or refrigeration, at purifying my own water, building wood-fired brick stoves to cook with, all sorts of things like that. Then again, I own no guns and haven't the least desire to own any. I'm an odd sort of semi-prepper. I don't expect any sort of mass calamity, I just think it is a fun sort of thought experiment. I would much prefer to never need to really need to depend on my prepper-lite skills to survive.

With no guns how can you protect your bullion?
 
The budget and how about today's Senate hearing with the top national security chiefs who are Trump's appointees?

Trump's admin is absolutely appalling but his inability to admit the Russians are tampering with our elections is truly putting the country at risk (among a few other things).

He wants them tampering with the election, because it helps him.
 
I think people who say this kind of thing must have read a different Marx :p . He specifically critiqued this, contrasting "utopian" socialism, with its planned models, with their "scientific" one, based on historical materialism. In fact the better critique would be that Communists use this as an excuse for not having a model at all, a "blueprint" Communists will mockingly call it.


I didn't know that we needed an excuse for not having a model!

"Recipes for the cook-shops of the future" is what Marx dismissed it as. Communism has to emerge based on material conditions. Marx's life work was called Das Kapital, after all, not Das Communism.


Well, communism won't "emerge" based on anything unless the worker decide to do away with capitalism, which is why Marx wrote Das Kapital, the analysis and criticism of capitalism. (The one that he didn't write would have been Der Kommunismus in German ...)
 
Well, I see theprestige was able to successfully derail a thread about the GOP's shortcomings into a discussion of Marxism-Leninism.

Good job.
 
I have to agree with you on libertarians, at least the Libertarian Party. I tend to agree in principle with the idea of social progressivism combined with fiscal responsibility, but most of them want to go way too far with the fiscal part; far beyond anything remotely practical, for the most part.

Whats wrong with being a loon? Or going beyond remotely practical?
 
Whats wrong with being a loon?

Nothing if you're another loon.

For the rest of us, loons can be viewed as unpleasant tasting birds.

Or going beyond remotely practical?

Again, nothing. Demonstrating that ideological purity leads to all sorts of absurdities and a social organization that is as unworkable as pure capitalism, communism or feudalism has a real benefit.
 
I have to agree with you on libertarians, at least the Libertarian Party. I tend to agree in principle with the idea of social progressivism combined with fiscal responsibility, but most of them want to go way too far with the fiscal part; far beyond anything remotely practical, for the most part.

I had a flirtation with Libertariansim, but a good look at their foreign policy cooled the relationship,and when you begin to talk about getting rid of health regulations and fire codes, you are in loon territory.
 
The vast majority of "pro life" people don't give a damn what happens to the baby after it's born. They just want to make sure the mother is punished for her "sinful" behavior.

This thread has developed into ******** on both sides now. Thanks for achieving parity.
 
Some people call themselves skeptics, but are really just contrarian.

Some people call themselves skeptics and really make an effort to be skeptical and objective about things they encounter in life.

This thread has some good examples of the latter. That's a good thing.


ETA: I'm kind of a prepper, but not a Libertarian, for whatever that is worth. I am just sort of fascinated by growing my own food and preserving it, home canning, pickling, that sort of thing. Lately I've been experimenting with lacto-bacillus fermentation. I have a lot of camping gear and have practice at going long periods of time with no electricity or refrigeration, at purifying my own water, building wood-fired brick stoves to cook with, all sorts of things like that. Then again, I own no guns and haven't the least desire to own any. I'm an odd sort of semi-prepper. I don't expect any sort of mass calamity, I just think it is a fun sort of thought experiment. I would much prefer to never need to really need to depend on my prepper-lite skills to survive.

That's having a hobby, in the same sense that Civil War re-enactors like to imagine what it would be like, but don't reckon that the 1860s would happen again. Not what one means by Prepper, not even in the half-ass sense.
 

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