Bill Maher - Republicans are the same as 14 year olds who are dicks.
- Thread starter ChiTownBuffalo
- Start date
- Status
People seem to forget that things like police departments and public schools are communist ideas. Could you imagine how fucked up things would be if you had to pay the police department in the case of an emergency? What if the only way you could go to school is through a private institution?
I remember that article about that town that made its citizens pay for fire protection. Some poor family forgot to pay, and the fire department sat back and watched their house burn to the ground. Shit is unreal.
I get you, but some Republicans (Romney) want to get rid of things like the DoE and make parents pay for private school (vouchers for those who qualify, lol). Romney also mentioned how the Wisconsin vote was the publics opinion that they didn't want more teachers, firefighters, and police officers (and that was cheered for...). So yeah, I don't get it.
Taxes are a necessity that you cannot remove (remember the articles of confederation?) and are supposed to be used for the public good; yet it seems that idea has lost it's course somewhere along the line.
No, that's a socialist idea. Almost every society in the world operates a mixed economy of some sort.
Marxism includes a proletarian revolution, and leads to an entirely classless, stateless system of communal ownership in the final stages of communism. Government services really don't embody the vision of Karl Marx's communism.
Communism also includes the abolition of private property.
Conflating social democracy/socialism with communism is really annoying.
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
Yes, the debt ceiling debacle was caused by the Republicans. And it was the equivalent of a child throwing a tantrum. It's embarrassing.
PhoenixDark
Banned
God dammit, why are people giving that asshole kid more press
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
Your teenagers don't have opinions? That's new.
Our teenagers don't write 176 pages about them, they don't pose for the cover pic like they're enlightened by the Holy Fire and they don't try to sell it as "how the ideology I follow REALLY works"
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
ReturnOfTheRAT
Member
Those kids are creepy. We've seen what beauty pageant moms act, you have to wonder what goes on in those households if you have young boys talking like that.
Most conservative media in the US works purely as an echo chamber. If you cycle through any of this garbage on any given day you'll start noticing certain keywords and talking points pop up on multiple shows. It's not like these kids have to even come up with anything on their own, all they have to do is parrot what Limbaugh, Hannity, Fox and Friends, and the various online blogs are saying.
As usual his final New Rule was great and the highlight of the show. The more people call out the current Republican party for the intellectually bankrupt lunatic freakshow it is, the better. They really make it hard to be hyperbolic about how much of a joke they've become.
France. And a lot of teens already have opinions. They just consider they haven't lived enough to give lessons about life, ideology or how to rule a country. And even if they did, they certainly wouldn't use their youth as a selling point.
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
Are you speaking for all of France?
It doesn't matter how many there are as long as it's sizable enough that moderate/rational Republicans in Congress won't stand up to them. Unless of course the reason this doesn't happen is that there are no moderates left.
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
What in your opinion are hardcore zealot right wing thoughts that are making their way through our laws?
Crazy laws aren't getting made into law because Republicans don't control the Senate and Obama can still veto things. I don't know why you're trying to change the subject, though. And I don't really know what it has to do with my point.
edit - If you're looking at the current situation in Congress since 2010 and your only takeaway is "well hey, no crazy laws are being passed!" I don't know what to say. It's very clear what the Republicans are doing in terms of obstruction and flat-out refusing to negotiate in good faith with Democrats while introducing all sorts of especially-conservative legislation regarding abortion/women's rights, immigration, budget plans, etc (much of which gets shot down, thankfully). The clearest example is the Norquist Pledge and the flat-out refusal to even consider any kind of tax increase period. This has a lot to do with the more extreme members of the party writing the playbook and dictating strategy. I know there are Republicans who don't follow this agenda, but my whole point is that they aren't putting themselves out there to say "hey, wait a minute, this isn't what our party used to stand for".
I don't know, but I can assure you that no (conservative) publisher would take the risk to publish a book by a (conservative) teen about political philosophy, because it would debunk conservatism more than anything and because it would be quite hard for the publisher to be taken seriously afterwards.
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
Stop. Just stop.
Do you honestly take a look at the publisher when looking at a book before you purchase? Or just the author?
CoffeeJanitor
Member
So much salt and faux outrage ITT. Kind of hard to read.
Oh, what a TOTAL false equivalency! He's a tad bit nicer!
You're underestimating the influence of a publisher's image if you only see it from the eyes of a customer. They have to be invited at events, they must have visible spaces in bookstores etc.
Dreams-Visions
Member
Such an angry thread.
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
So you're assuming that this 14 year old had that type of promotion? Tonight is the first time that I even knew he had a book out and you are plastering your opinions over an entire country. There's 300+ million of us and I can guarantee you that we don't follow his example. And stop with trying to make out that your kids are any better. Do you want me to drag up the whole graffiti incident?
el retorno
Member
I think even social democracy and socialism are completly different. Socialism is the USSR. Socialism says the means of production should be controlled by the people rather than just a few (pensions, a few industries, health care, etc)
I hate when people already say "we're already socialist, we have social security" I know the point their trying to get across but that is social democracy. not "socialism"
Well, social democracy and socialism are obviously different. One is a political and economic system, while one is purely economic (at least as far as you can separate politics from economics). However, they're not entirely different.
The core concept of socialism is social ownership, and government ownership is one form of that. It seems reasonable to state that the government provision of certain services is a component of socialism that exists in the modern economy.
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
No he didn't.
WHAT KIND OF FREAKS ARE YOU BREEDING AMERICA?
Fooled me.
WHAT KIND OF FREAKS ARE YOU BREEDING AMERICA?
Fooled me
You didn't, and for that I apologize.
I would love to debate Jonathan Krohn. It would be an absolute slaughter.
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
Exactly. The Democrats aren't even a left wing party by even Western standards.The Marxists have been defeated. Communism is dead. Socialism has been on its death bed for years and only lives on in a few 60+ Europeans. However the radical right wing still exists. This isn't an argument of who has the most loony individuals, but which side has the greater share and influence of radicals. Outside of Michael Moore, who has pretty much become irrelevant, I can't think of any prominent left wing figureheads who advocate socialism, but right wing figureheads advocating government programs to be practically non-existent? Too many to count.
I think the best example for this case is this. If you wanted proof for examples of a share of the population who advocate radical things such as privatizing the school system, abolish minimum wage laws, make unions near illegal, and strangle the social welfare system, just go to any Tea Party and or Ron Paul rally. Hell many of them show up for the RNC. Now how many people on Obama's front campaign for the mass nationalization of many key industries?
Exactly.
Every nation is made up of a different make up with people coming from many different backgrounds. The politics of Sweden is different than the politics of Egypt, the politics of Venezuela is different from the politics of the United Kingdom. "Left" and "Right" often mean different things in different countries. If I were to call the left crazy loones in the United Kingdom I would be called out for being strongly biased, but if I was referring to Venezuela, people would be nodding in agreement. This is because the left in the United Kingdom has moved past ideas such as Socialism by nationalization, Venezuela has not. And America, like all these countries, is different. And in America, there is a problem with the right wing. The right wing in the developed world has realized that a nation needs public health care, tuition prices under control, a more regulated food industry, and that government can function very well at many things The right wing in America doesn't understand this by and large.
I think it had something to do with the fact that every country that tried to enact his manifesto turned into a ground zero for human rights leading to genocide, slavery, and other things.
But than again Marx obviously didn't predict this. I mean wasn't Plato's dream nation a fucking disaster as well when it was enacted? Though for likely different reasons.
So you respond to his smug response by acting like those 14 year olds in the OPs link?
I'm just flabbergastsed how some people won't admit that the right is worse than the left. Its like Playstation Vita owners trying to deny that the console will start selling well so it doesn't get discontinued in two years.
Well this is a curious position. Mind expanding?
Many labour parties and progressives weakened their stances in favour of neo-liberalism and conservatism in the late 80's.
Parties who were known as 'traditional socialist' went to 'center-left' while right-wing parties didn't budge.
This is ridiculous; left-wing policies for a stable economy, environmental consciousness and international solidarity are something nobody with a long-term vision can ever be against.
You don't want short economic booms and huge crashes, you don't want to live in a huge dessert, you don't want international conflicts to interfere with trade.
Yet they lost the political debate because they thought the ultimate execution of solidarity was to compromise with the right-wing.
Xdrive05
Member
I have family members who, at the same time, will criticize Obama for being a socialist commie pinko, as well as "anti military" for any reduction at all in our DoD budget.
So basically conservatives of this stripe (which are the majority IMO) want to pay no taxes and have no government, and yet somehow endlessly fund the largest military empire the world will ever know.
I guess our soldiers (and police, firefighters, public works, infrastructure) run on copius amounts of magical Jesus juice.
Agreed, they cheer often wrong times and hold up the conversation. Bill should also get rid off the opening monologue and actor guest stars. Yesterdays guest star was ok I guess because he actually had something to say besides promoting shitty movie he is in.
Guileless
Temp Banned for Remedial Purposes
Is it rational for you to spend your working years under crushing tax burdens designed to transfer wealth to old people who made spending commitments to themselves that they 1) did not invest in to pay for, or 2) have enough children to pay for? The Baby Boomers enjoyed more low inflation economic growth than any generation in history, and they still want more that you and I will have to pay for while the country cannot even sustain 2% growth.
That's my position. I think it has a shred or two of rationality.
Edit to add: the Baby Boomers also were the first generation to enjoy the effects of birth control pills, which has contributed to the problem. That didn't exist when the New Dealers designed Social Security.
FieryBalrog
Member
Since the USSR/China/Cambodia/Ethiopia/Cuba/North Korea/Bengal. Familiarize yourself with the long history of communism in detail. Don't speak from a position of ignorance, it isn't subversive or clever.
There is a rather massive body of Marxist literature since the Communist Manifesto. On top of which, the Manifesto is much more chilling when you see how the philosophy of armed destruction of the bourgeois state and dictatorship of the proletariat actually worked out... in practice. To you, stuff like that is just words.
are you kidding me
Why do people take Maher seriously? This guy pretends to care about peoples' rights at home at the same time that he publicly extends no compromise to an infallibility of Israel's war operations and settlement incursions.
It's easy to say you support gay marriage on a comedy show.
It's easy to say you support gay marriage on a comedy show.
He isn't kidding you. Public schooling as denoted by Karl Marx's 10th plank states, "10. Free education for all children in government schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. etc."
So, he isn't incorrect. Now, I doubt that communists created the idea of public schools, but it was an oft talked about and major tennet of Communist idealogy. The police, i'm not so sure of. That probably came about in feudal China. The Ming dynasty created the first "secret police" entity that I can think of in terms of historical precedence.
stable economy: Higher taxes, more government spending
environemental consciousness:
"Rich countries will have to stop the consumer high life as part of any deal to heal the world's social and environmental stresses, a top UN official said ahead of a key development summit this week.
"We don't need more cars, more TVs, more whatever" UN Development Program chief Helen Clark told AFP in an interview ahead of the Rio+20 summit starting Wednesday."
As for the nonsense that police is some creation of communism... seriously???
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police#History
LiveFromKyoto
Member
On the one hand, I hate Maher, he's a smarmy projecting asshole.
On the other hand, he's mostly right. Conservative talking points mostly use civil rights as a code word for "get larger bank account."
That little kid says it's not about feeling or romanticism but protecting people's rights - but all that constitution talk was proven empty when they stood up and cheered for the Patriot Act. It absolutely is about responding to feelings rather than rational thinking (except in business), which is why it tends to hold liberal education in such contempt, and why the Tea Party can spring up in rage against a nebulous array of things that Obama didn't actually do but his predecessor was somehow cheered for doing.
On the other hand, he's mostly right. Conservative talking points mostly use civil rights as a code word for "get larger bank account."
That little kid says it's not about feeling or romanticism but protecting people's rights - but all that constitution talk was proven empty when they stood up and cheered for the Patriot Act. It absolutely is about responding to feelings rather than rational thinking (except in business), which is why it tends to hold liberal education in such contempt, and why the Tea Party can spring up in rage against a nebulous array of things that Obama didn't actually do but his predecessor was somehow cheered for doing.
- Status