>>"Who in youth isn't a socialist, has no heart. Who in old age isn't conservative, has no brains." - Nikola Pašić (whom I never really liked, politically, but he had the brains and the guts)
>
>Not sure who was plagiarizing whom but Clemenceau said, "If you're not a Communist at 18 something is wrong with your heart, but if you're still one at 30 something is wrong with your head."

Mike Helland would call this a meme... the guys were contemporaries, and being prime ministers in two countries which were close allies during the WWI they surely met many times, meaning they probably drank together - ergo, toss a coin and decide who's the author ;). BTW, Pašić started as a socialist, then founded his own Radical party, which now repeats as farce - that's Šešelj's profascist redneck nationalist party today, to far right to reach.

>What of the socialist states which have failed because they degenerated into kakistocracies that completely lost legitimacy by failing to provide either social justice or prosperity for the people and for a fraction of a second relaxed the stranglehold on liberty they required to keep power ( USSR, East Germany ad continuum ... )

Only USSR was an original communist country, where they did their own revolution and did the will of the people (as much as will the people had then ;). The others had the socialism imposed upon them by Soviet fiat. They voted just as freely as in any other such situation - even in then DFY (Democratic Federal Yugoslavia) of 1945 it was the same, there were some of the old parties, those which joined the people's front and didn't collaborate with the nazis, but the election was reduced to two lists, and one voted by inserting a hand into one, then the other box and dropping a rubber ball in one of them, but the drop of the ball was audible ;). Simpler and more cost-effective than Diebold.

And then there's the issue of young USSR being surrounded early on. First, it proved that capitalism won't let go of the ball no matter how badly it screwed up, ergo the theory of revolution as the only way was on solid ground. Second, it gave the military element (including the nice guys you listed - Stalin, Beriya, Molotov, Malenkov etc) a good excuse to play a protection game, hunt down their enemies as people's enemies, invent enemies as needed, and generally do the "war is peace" game.

>Of course this would be appalling if it weren't for the upwardly mobile nature of the society.

And downwardly as well, thanks to the geniuses in the financial industry ;).

>You also may be a bit fuzzy about the meaning of 'corporation' - it is a publicly held entity.

So I get some say in the behavior of, let's say, Verizon because I'm a Joe Q Public and pay taxes? Me neither (in case you said "I wouldn't say so"). It's publicly held, but owned by individuals. And while the ownership is distributed, a corporation is legally a person (which is nonsense but legal ;) and comrade Corporation somehow always trumps comrade Joe Q, simply because this is the best system money can buy, and comrade C has more money.

> I grant you some portions of the public hold greater portions than other, but the game is open to anyone who wants to play.

Only to discover that the playground isn't exactly flat.

>How many millionaires in this country come from modest beginnings? I grant you there also many who never did anything more clever than pick the right parents or outlive far more clever ancestors, but this is not historically unique. What is unique is a society in which so much prosperity has been achieved by so many through their own efforts. I notice that when you left Yugoslavia you did not seek your fortune in Zimbabwe or Cuba. <s>

Yugoslavia was far more vertically mobile, it's just that the top points of that vertical weren't so high, money-wise. Looking at my high school mates, more than 80% have graduated from college, and the 20% that didn't have tried for a number of years, and failed for their own reasons (mostly high life or getting married). Practically everyone I know there that has a diploma has peasants or manual workers in their immediate ancestry - if not parents, grandparents. Well, that was the way up, through education, not through financial shuffling.

As for going to Zimbabwe, my money wasn't there. I really didn't leave for any lack of political liberties - even Milošević was smart enough to leave that door open - it was just a chance to make a living by doing my job, and to have a future for our girls.

>>You mean, rely on Supreme Court thereafter?
>
>Why yes, otherwise we would have had to have an election again in 2004 and again this year.

But of course, once the virginity is lost (a federal court deciding elections in Florida, whereas the constitution says the elections are a matter of state?), promiscuity is not far. Just read the front page article in Harper's about GOP taking over the judiciary - activist judges indeed - and among other stuff, all sorts of subtle nudges to effectively rig the elections. The outrageous theft that we had to fight is not necessary here; subtle does it. Invent a voter's ID, and spread the word among yours, and you can be sure that 3% of the opposite side won't vote next time - even a bit more than we really need. If everything else fails, there's the Diebold, with app written in Access, that can be broken into by any high school script kid.

>I don't think the experience of European nations - East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania - who voted in the Communists is a good argument that allowing the Communists to win is the best assurance of the continuation of democracy.

Rigged, see above.

>>Oooops... wrong thread.
>
>No, just an inappropriate comparison <s>

Maybe... should have said "rely on Supreme Court from time to time, have the rest of the judiciary at hand for the rest" ;)


>>>Venezuela recently but it didn't work).
>
>But keep a good thought ... it ain't over yet ...

What do you have against the guy? That he's always giving the wrong answer when asked "who owns your oil"?

>>They could have taken the independent line - this was already past 1948, and Yugoslavia was not invaded by either bloc, right?
>
>You think the Czechs or Hungarians were not trying to take in independent line? That was exactly the problem. Stalin decided he didn't want to try to swallow a hedgehog in going after Tito. ( Stalin was evil but he wasn't completely crazy )

Um... there's another thing done to the hedgehog in our proverbs ;). One gets to know a hedgehog.

Stalin was waiting for Tito to fall - his spies kept telling him it's just a matter of weeks, the masses will rise. Meanwhile, Tito played a bit of the same game; most of those spies either fled (according to a story I picked somewhere, the grandfather of Mila Jovović was a colonel or summat when he defected) or were gulaged into Goli Otok ("barren/naked island") camp.

So Hungarians tried a bit of independent game in 56 (we helped, I presume), Czechs tried in '68 (we helped, I remember - specially by giving refuge to thousands of Czechoslovakian tourists who were stranded after August 21st).

>Budapest and Prague were easily accessible with armor. A Communist government in France elected in 1950 would have had similar access to bolstering from the east and that would have truly led to nuclear war. That was the reality of 1950. We did not have the armor or ground troops to stop a Soviet push West, but we were definitely prepared to stop them.

There was the difference in the game - remember Yalta and "spheres of influence"? France was on the wrong side of the iron curtain, no tanks, thanks. No war, not in Europe - we can fight via proxy in Korea, or Vietnam, or in any other place where we all want to showcase our new weapons, but not poor old Europe.

>But again, the goal was to stave off a situation where the alternative was Soviet armor vs American tactical nukes. I'm a big believer that a few covert thugs do a lot less to upset the average citizen's life than a few megatons of explosive.

Therein lie two rubs: first one is whether there really are no other alternatives to choose from, and the second (which should come first) whether the choice is there to be made in the first place. Today it sounds just like another WMD story to approve of someone's itch to get the boys into action.

And this is where I actually and fundamentally disagree with you: how can you expect respect from anyone, as a country, if you're taking the liberty to intervene within the borders of a foreign country. If you don't respect them (and grant them the same rights to intervene on your soil, or else you don't deem them equal), they won't respect you, they'll only suffer you, and they'll take the first chance to get away under your paw. Which De Gaulle did, by exempting French army from NATO command structure, and then later, 2003 - no guys, you're wrong, we aren't going with you again, specially not as a junior partner, do your screwups on your own.

>>I was getting there. With the web being everywhere, can't we just eliminate the parties as those deciding in our name, and restore our right to make decisions? The parties' task would be to merely define the problem and make the case for several possible solutions - and then we'd vote. Takes about five minutes per and surely costs less than lobbyists, K Street etc.
>
>And yet you disdain the culture that dotes on American Idol?

The first order of business of any socialist and specially communist government is to educate people, not only in general knowledge, but in "we don't get fooled again" way.

>Okay, but when Lindsey Lohan becomes President, I'm holding you responsible.

Hey, I didn't hold you responsible for GW2B - be fair.