I think the thing to remember here is that when it comes to personal liberties, the US has always been a bit more enlightened than Europe.  That was one of the big reasons people came here in the first place.

European nations are very liberal in some areas - such as universal health care or their attitudes towards sexuality or the use of a death penalty.

But in many areas, they are far less tolerant.  Religious freedom, for example.  Or things like mandatory government service / conscription.  Or immigration (European nations are far, far more restrictive on immigration than we are).  And they are far more tolerant of facist police states.  

Remember, much of the totalitarian dystopic future of science fiction was written about Europe (such as the poster boy, "1984" - or the more recent "V for Vendetta").  There's a reason for that.

I certainly don't want the US turning into Europe.  I want freedom from big government.  I don't want unnecesary search/seizure tactics, or mandatory government service, or a state of some religions being more equal than others.

And I have yet to see any evidence of these kinds of increases in security actually accomplishing much of anything.  Again, the US is freakin' huge.  It's simply not possible to have 100% secure borders, or to keep track of everyone, or to completely prevent crimes and terrorist acts (something that none of these much smaller countries have ever managed to do, either).

I think it is dangerous for any country, European or North American, to imagine that its populace is somehow immune or specially resistant to tyranny. Let's not forget, for example, that there was a point in the 1930s when the US could have gone either way; there is some evidence - evidence convincing enough to convince a Senate inquiry into pre-war Nazi propagandising in the US - that at least one group of people were actually planning a coup, and it's a cold historical fact that Nazism (and Communism) found a certain amount of support in the US.

People are people, wherever they are; I would suggest that the real reason that tyranny has proven so hard to impose on the US is a matter of geography. The country is simply too big. Could you imagine trying to fight a US-wide insurgency? You could post soldiers in every small town in the Midwest and you still might not find out where the rebels are hiding.

Oh, and for what it's worth in the UK we abandoned national service ages ago, have search/seizure tactics that are no more extreme than the US practices, and a heck of a lot of religious freedom. Europe-wide, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union is meant to safeguard religious freedom and protect people from arbitrary search/seizure; as far as national service goes, the clause about "conscientious objection" would mean that the government couldn't force you to work in the armed forces, but most nations which do a year of national service* let you choose things like the fire department or the police or the civil service instead.

Of course, many of the European nations which have adopted the treaty reserve the right to ignore it in a national crisis, but, hey, the US Constitution doesn't explicitly let the President ignore the Bill of Rights in an emergency but we can all name instances where that's happened. And having a transnational body where you can go to sue your own government has turned out to be very useful; it makes a lot of sense, to me, that in a case where one of the parties is a government the court of final appeal should be a transnational one which isn't part of the governmental structure of the nation in question.

*By the way, national service isn't so much press-ganging people into working for the government so much as it is a massive pain; a bunch of 16-year-old kids can be just about trained to do paperwork and help out in an office and perhaps make the effort put into their training worthwhile in a year. In Britain, when we still had it, national service kids had to sit around in barracks peeling potatoes, because the only thing they were useful for was freeing up real soldiers to do real soldiering. It's not a fascistic brainwashing thing so much as it's a historical artifact that's a result of most European nations fighting terrifying, potentially nation-destroying wars on their own soil in living memory.

Ok, time to change the subject. But first my conclusions: Its true, that no country should think itself immune to loss of its freedom.  The Europeans certainly have little right to revel in the American's "human rights abuses" when you look at their actual record on it. Meanwhile, the United States, which has not had to suffer fascist regimes or war and bloodshed on its own soil in living memory, may be having some serious problems with taking its freedom for granted, and assuming itself immune to becoming a banana republic.

Next Topic: Communism.  It sure looks like its seen better days; the Soviet Union is gone, Russia having exchanged communist totalitarian with fake-democratic totalitarian stylings under Putin. China is communist in name only. The only real holdout where what's practiced can really be considered to even resemble communism is Cuba, and while I think it would certainly be foolish to predict its demise (people have been predicting it for decades now), there is some serious question as to whether communism in Cuba would survive the death of Castro.

And yet, many historians and academics are predicting that marxism will see a resurgence as a philosophy and political movement in the 21st century.  Are these guys all just bolshie-retards, or could they be on to something? Certainly South America has demonstrated that it hasn't gotten over its love affair with socialist revolutionary populists, like Chavez and Morales and co.  Is this a last gasp, or a first sign of something different?
Is communism done? Will Marxism have a resurgence? If so where and how?

RPGPundit

Quote from: WarthurI think it is dangerous for any country, European or North American, to imagine that its populace is somehow immune or specially resistant to tyranny.

I don't think we're immune (we have all kinds of idiots in the country who can be scared into supporting anything - like, say, Bush's war on terror).  I do think we have more of a cultural bias towards personal liberty, though.

We are, after all, a country founded by people who wanted to do as they damn well pleased.

And I, for one, want to keep it that way.  Which is why I want to avoid trading off personal liberties in exchange for "benefits" to society (particularly questionable ones like increased security hassles at the airport or mass video surveillance of public areas).

Communism: People will always flirt with political philosophies that "stick it to the Man". And professors, from their comfy padded chairs and tenured offices always prefer a political system that they would clearly be the elite rulers of, rather than dusty old men in forgotten offices, because Communism requires Smart People to make it work, not the hoi-poloi that is a Democracy. Its a power-trip daydream of those who KNOW they are better than the unwashed masses, who need to be "helped" to lead a proper and productive life for the "common good" i.e. those in power.

Will Communism make a comback in our lifetime, however? My feeling, based on precisely nothing, is not in any huge fashion. There are still communist guerillas fighting all over SE Asia, for example, but they're not making any progress towards overthrowing any existing government. Chavez, I think, is more a Fascist that a Communist, and since he's rubbing elbows with other Fascists (President Tom of Iran), odds are he'll continue in that direction. And once Castro dies, Cuba will begin to move away from Communism, simply because I think the people want new cars and food and stuff.

IF Communism makes a comback in the more traditional form, I think it will come from the place that started it all - Russia. The situation there is bad and getting worse, and more than a few people are casting wistful glances back at the days when the Soviet Union was the geopolitical equal of the United States. Sure, you couldn't get toilet paper back then, but you can barely get it NOW, and at least in the good old days, people feared and respected the Bear. Now, nobody even notices them. And Putin, the old KGB guy that he is, wouldn't mind being the next Premier, I'm sure.

Quote from: RPGPunditAnd yet, many historians and academics are predicting that marxism will see a resurgence as a philosophy and political movement in the 21st century.  Are these guys all just bolshie-retards, or could they be on to something? Certainly South America has demonstrated that it hasn't gotten over its love affair with socialist revolutionary populists, like Chavez and Morales and co.  Is this a last gasp, or a first sign of something different?
Is communism done? Will Marxism have a resurgence? If so where and how?

I think it's possible for a resurgence of some kind.

The main reason being, democracy is all too often believed to be some kind of pancea that will cure the world's woes.  

But the truth is, the democratic system has many of its own problems.  It can breed corruption just as badly as any other form of government.  It usually leads to an increase in crime because of the increased freedoms.  It can't eliminate problems of scarce resources or poverty (and, in fact, may exascerbate them).  And it's a lot of hard work.

So, I can see the people in these countries, a few years down the road, going - "Hey, we did all this work to become a democracy, but we're still poor, we're still starving, the government is as corrupt as ever, and now crime is out of control, too.  We may as well go back to being communist."  

Now, I don't necessarily think that will happen anywhere.  But I can see how it could happen.  As for where it could possibly happen, I think the usual suspects of poor third world countries in Central/South America, E. Europe, or Asia (I still don't see the nations of Africa as real possibilities).

Quote from: jgantsI think it's possible for a resurgence of some kind.

The main reason being, democracy is all too often believed to be some kind of pancea that will cure the world's woes.  

But the truth is, the democratic system has many of its own problems.  It can breed corruption just as badly as any other form of government.  It usually leads to an increase in crime because of the increased freedoms.  It can't eliminate problems of scarce resources or poverty (and, in fact, may exascerbate them).  And it's a lot of hard work.

So, I can see the people in these countries, a few years down the road, going - "Hey, we did all this work to become a democracy, but we're still poor, we're still starving, the government is as corrupt as ever, and now crime is out of control, too.  We may as well go back to being communist."  

Now, I don't necessarily think that will happen anywhere.  But I can see how it could happen.  As for where it could possibly happen, I think the usual suspects of poor third world countries in Central/South America, E. Europe, or Asia (I still don't see the nations of Africa as real possibilities).

This here is a good point, that in part, isn't it the general crapulence being shown by the so-called nation of liberty, the United States, one of the things that is pushing people back toward socialism?

They see the corporate welfare, the abuse by people in power in the name of companies like Halliburton or other multinationals.  I mean shit, you want to know why Bolivia supported the marxist Evo Morales (who is if anything more radical a leftist than Chavez)?
Directly because of the abuses they've suffered under capitalism.  This was the country where an American company (Bechtel) had purchased legal rights to ALL water in the country, and made it illegal for people to collect rainwater in buckets (which for many of them was the only source of fresh water they could afford).

When you see abuse on that level, it certainly makes you want to raise the red flag and line up every last fucker on Bechtel's board of directors on the firing line wall. We're talking crimes against humanity here.

I think one consequence of the end of the Cold War, and the loss of a rival "superpower" for the US, is that they no longer feel they have to even put up a veneer of being the more decent nation.  Its not that they didn't do awful shit before, but in the past they also had this image of ultimately being the guys who were standing up for liberty, whereas the other side led only to totalitarian oppression.  Now, the US is openly occupying other sovereign nations, setting up puppet governments, kidnapping, torturing, making people "disappear", all the shit that used to be unthinkable coming from their side, or at least directly from them without going through some puppet-regime third party.

I used to have serious doubts about that theory, of a resurgence of socialism in the 21st century; but if anything the abuses that the major capitalist states are wallowing in could lead to that.

Ultimately, a dude like Chavez couldn't exist, if it wasn't for the United States.  If the US didn't act like shitheads, Chavez would be nothing and no one.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditUltimately, a dude like Chavez couldn't exist, if it wasn't for the United States.  If the US didn't act like shitheads, Chavez would be nothing and no one.

And once again, we see the "Its all America's fault" ideology.

Really.

Chavez led a coup the first time, was elected the second time, and has their congress naming him dictator-for-life - and its the United States' fault... how?

Sounds to me more like the typical South American penchant for tin-horn dictatorships rearing its head. I blame the Catholic Church for keeping Central and South American hispanics and natives used to being lorded over for centuries like middle-age serfs -it seems most of them PREFER a heavy-handed thug as a leader, because that way they don't have to do anything scary like make decisions or have ideas. After all, its called a FLOCK for a reason, now, itnit?

Seriously - point anywhere on a map that Spain and the Church had first and longest influence - Phillippenes, Mexico, Venezuela, etc - and they are at best unstable third-world hell-holes by comparison, with the stability of a two-legged stool (Uruguay excepted, of course, it is heaven on earth in comparison).

At least it makes as much sense as the evhul United States doing it all - muhahahaha! (twirl mustache)

Werekoala's point about the church is a decent one, although I would point out that historically in South America's the church been on the side of the right-wing dictators as opposed to the leftist ones - the Pinochets as opposed to the Chavezes. Liberation Theologians - leftist Catholic thinkers in South America - got short shrift from John Paul II (and the current Pope back when he was in charge of what used to be the Inquisition), and were excommunicated on a regular basis.

In terms of the Pundit's original question: I think Communism, in the form of classical Marxism and its successor philosophies (Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, etc), isn't making much of a comeback, and isn't likely to. The thing to remember about Karl Marx is that in ecomonic terms he was like a perceptive but incompetant doctor: he was decent enough at diagnosing the causes of problems, but wasn't very good at coming up with solutions. The state of the working class in the industrial world in the 19th Century was incredibly bleak, and there's no denying that the leftist political movements that arose to challenge that state of affairs won important victories for all of us; if you think working for Wal-Mart is a tough job these days, look into Victorian factory conditions. That said, I feel that it's more the trade unions and Labour movements (capital L, no "New" in front of it) - those organisations which did their best to include the actual workers every step of the way - that had the most success, as opposed to more extreme philosophies.

The big stumbling block with Communism is that Marx didn't have a very good grip on human nature. He felt that once the workers had revolted to seize the government the ones who had taken over would willingly redistribute all the wealth and the means of production, and then dissolve the government so that people could exist in a socialist communal government-less happyland. We've all seen the results, of course: no such dissolution of the government has happened in any self-described Communist nation; a lot of Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, Dao Zedong Thought and so forth involves convoluted explanations as to why we can't quite live in utopia just yet.

Chavez represents something new and interesting: a leftist, socialist form of what has be described as "resource nationalism". Vladimir Putin's handling of Russia's natural gas supplies is a non-socialist example of the same thing. The idea behind "resource nationalism" is a simple one: the primary beneficiaries of the income from natural resources such as oil and gas should be the people living in the nations they come from, not foreign corporations. Opponents of globalisation (and capitalism back in the 20th century, and colonialism back in the 19th century) often complain that the people of third world countries with fat stacks of natural resources tend not to enjoy the benefit of those resources much, and in a lot of cases they're correct. In Saudi Arabia, for example, only a small proportion of the population really enjoys the benefits of the oil revenue - this is why the Saudi royal family are so despised in some quarters there, and why the likes of al-Qaeda were able to recruit a bunch of disaffected Saudis to attack the US; part of the reason some citizens of Saudi Arabia don't like the States is that the US has helped the Saudi royal family stay in power.

In Chavez's idealistic, socialist form of resource nationalism, it involves nationalising the oil industry and using the proceeds to fund a generous welfare state; in Putin's pragmatic, realpolitik version of it, nationalised control of the Russian gas industry gives him an important bargaining chip in international negotiatons. It is important to note that Chavez's approach is very different from Communism: Communism requires "from each according to his means, to each according to his needs", whilst Chavez's ideas only really handles the second half of the equation. "Hey, let the government look after our natural resources for you and we'll make sure you get a fat share of the loot! It's like you're shareholders in the nation! All you need to do is keep voting me in; changing the constitution so I can stay in power forevs would be a nice way to show your gratitude too."

So, in conclusion: Communism is dead. Post-Communist socialist resource nationalism is young and sexy, but possibly not a good thing.

Only possibly?  Its pretty well been shown at every turn to be a grotesque fuckup of the worst kind.

Also, the suggestion that Latinamerica just likes dictators is pretty well a load of bullshit, whether you try to blame it on the church or not.  The amount of blood latinamericans have shed fighting dictatorships could fill an ocean.

Most of the dictatorships have occured because of two factors: south american incompetence, and foreign (usually American, in this last century) interventionism.

Both are blameworthy.

However, once again, I don't see what any of this has to do with Chavez and the appeal of socialism. I don't think anyone particularly likes Chavez because he wants to be a dictator (and indeed, his supporters deny that he does).  People like Chavez because he pretends to be a revolutionary who will struggle against the evil American Empire. And that message would NOT resound with latinamericans if it wasn't for the fact that consistenly over the last 60 years the U.S. government have acted like an evil empire all over south america.

I'm saying that Chavez wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the repeated crapulence of the U.S. and its failure to live up to the dream of what it could be for the world.

RPGPundit

And I'm saying Chavez wouldn't exist if the people in his country didn't allow him to exist. Voting for him, then rolling over when he essentially has Parliment or whatever the fuck that matchstick country has for a "representative body" makes him dictator for Life is NOT the US' fault - its the people in Venezuela's fault. Fortunately, there are plenty of people trying to resist his ascendency, but I'm not sure it is enough people.

Every South American dictator promises more for the Peasants, and they love it. They leap to the arms of someone who can nationalize the oil and promise more gruel in each pot. Why? I've told you why - they're pathetic sheep who need to be led, and there's always one pinapple-faced populist ready to jump onto the throne. And using the US as the big bad boogie-man? EVERYONE on Earth does it. Why? Because we're on top of the heap. We've done some bad things, sure, and made some bad mistakes. But on the whole, we're more of a force for Good in this world (even in Latinamerica) than evil, and if they're not smart enough to realize that, its not OUR fault when they drop to their knees and fellate anyone who promises to Make Satan Pay (tm). Trust me, ANYTHING Chavez does to "strike at America" will only make life worse for his OWN people - the people too stupid to learn from history that they will do nothing but lose. But they'll do it, with smiles on their faces and flags a'wavin'. They make their own bed, they lie in it, and they should be honest enough to admit they brought it on themselves.  

So, when the people decide to stand up for themselves, Chavez will be gone, hopefully at the end of a rope. But its not OUR fault.
Seriously, Pundit, you sound just like Chavez in some ways, with your anti-American rhetoric.

Quote from: RPGPunditOnly possibly?  Its pretty well been shown at every turn to be a grotesque fuckup of the worst kind.

Resource nationalism seems to have served Putin's government well; whether what's good for Putin's government is necessarily what's good for Russia is of course questionable.

QuoteHowever, once again, I don't see what any of this has to do with Chavez and the appeal of socialism. I don't think anyone particularly likes Chavez because he wants to be a dictator (and indeed, his supporters deny that he does).  People like Chavez because he pretends to be a revolutionary who will struggle against the evil American Empire. And that message would NOT resound with latinamericans if it wasn't for the fact that consistenly over the last 60 years the U.S. government have acted like an evil empire all over south america.

Exactly. Chavez has been friendly towards Iran for pretty much that reason: it's really, really good for his anti-American credentials. It's a pose which he has to maintain to keep his support; it's incredibly difficult to tell whether he believes it, just as it's difficult to tell whether he actually believes that he is indispensable and that his anti-democratic measures in undermining the Venezuelan constitution are justified in the interests of the nation, or whether he's just indulging in a cynical power-grab. The results would be the same whatever he believed.

Quote from: WerekoalaAnd I'm saying Chavez wouldn't exist if the people in his country didn't allow him to exist. Voting for him, then rolling over when he essentially has Parliment or whatever the fuck that matchstick country has for a "representative body" makes him dictator for Life is NOT the US' fault - its the people in Venezuela's fault. Fortunately, there are plenty of people trying to resist his ascendency, but I'm not sure it is enough people.

I think that it would be wrong to put all the blame at the feet of the US - the lion's share has to be Chavez's and the people who support him - but at the same time it has to be said that he's used the US's track record in South America to good effect. I've not seen concrete evidence that the US backed the 2002 coup attempt against him, but given the CIA's usual MO in South America I can see why a lot of people would believe it, and he's played that to the hilt. The defeat of the coup would have galvanised Chavez's supporters - they'd have felt that their elected government was under threat and would naturally be willing to defend it - and might have caused more apathetic individuals to sympathise more with Chavez. ("I don't necessarily like Chavez, but I can't support a coup.")

We can argue all day that the US has done more good than harm or more harm than good in South America, Werekoala, but do you really think it was a good idea for the US to back the likes of, say, General Pinochet? Loudmouth dictators who justify abuses of power by appealing to the Fight Against Communism are just as bad as the ones who appeal to the Fight Against US Imperialism, wouldn't you say?

Like I said, we've made mistakes in the past. So what? Does one wrong justify another? If you're a South American, apparently so.

Quote from: WerekoalaLike I said, we've made mistakes in the past. So what? Does one wrong justify another?

No, but if you made a habit of making a particular kind of mistake in the past people find it easy to believe that you've made the same blunder again in the present, even if you weren't involved. That's the tactic Chavez uses whenever he talks about the coup attempt against him: he tries his damnedest to attribute it to the US, and people fall for that line (because the US has done similar things in the past) and are eager to back him against the US.

There is unfortunately not a lot the US can reasonably do about its past mistakes, beyond being vigilant against making such mistakes in the future.