Gaza/Israel Issue Discussion

[Dutch]

This president has not done 1 thing good. NAME ONE thing he did to help this country or one thing he has done GOOD PERIOD!

He called kanye west a jackass. Besides that, I'm all out. Lol.

While it's true that extreme religious groups have no favor towards communists, remember that the idea of communism has only been around for roughly 160 years or so (1840s I think? Karl marx?), whereas extreme religion has been murdering people for the bulk of documented history (radical Islam, the crusades, yadda yadda). I honestly think some groups of people are hell bent on killing other people, and use whatever reason they can find as an excuse, be it religion, socio-economic beliefs, tribalism, so on and so forth. They probably won't admit this, because I think they've managed to convince themselves of their cause too.

[RL Clown]

remember that the idea of communism has only been around for roughly 160 years or so (1840s I think? Karl marx?),

Actually, communism has been around a lot longer than you think... The origins of communism might have started with Plato's thinking. (For those that don't know, Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher.) In Plato's Republic, he described a society where all human beings shared property (not only that, they also shared wives and children.) Communism actually existed before the rise of the Roman Empire! Some Native tribes have practiced a system that was very similar to communism. I think that Karl Marx was the first person to organize communism into three steps: 1. Revolution, 2. Socialism, 3. No need for a government: pure communism. Of course, no country has ever reached step number 3. Human beings will always need a form of government...

Side-note: Some people think that Robin Hood was a communist. He was not a communist, he was an anarchist. (Some people would even call him a hero.) He stole from the rich and gave to the poor. But Robin Hood and his allies argued that the rich were the first ones to steal from the poor. All he did was give some items back to the poor folks. [Did Robin Hood really exist? I don't know.]

Source: Communism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Dutch]

Good point. I always thought of 'communism' as part of a bigger idea which is the one you refer to: where the government has supreme control. Marx's third step is complete Fantasyland. In order for everyone to capitulate and 'share' everything, it would have to be enforced by threat of persecution and/or violence. To me, communists, fascists, hardcore socialists, empires, factions, tribes, oligarchies, military juntas...basically where the government runs the whole show are one in the same: supreme government control, which history proves never ends well. That may not be the intended goal of some of those systems, but it always seems to pan out that way.

Anarchy is unrealistic if people expect to live amongst each other. There absolutely has to be a law of the land that ALL are bound by (it is a recurring trend here in America, and I'm sure most of the world, that political leaders, crony capitalist executives, and big-time celebrities are above the law). The trick is finding the right balance between a truly free society and the law of the land. That in itself is nearly impossible because the government is run by people, and people are inherently greedy (this goes back to the whole primal instinct for survival thing).