I think people overestimate the number of times minorities actually "pull the race card". From my experience it's often nothing more than an illusory correlation.

This is nonsensical. Here's what I'll do. I'll kindly ask you to name the sections that you're referring to. If you can't name them, I'll assume that you haven't read the bill. It's all I can do.

The only clip from 2009 is his claim that a Public option is not a trojan horse, for a single-payer system. The video then, at ~26 seconds, skipped to 2007 and then to 2003. The rest of the clips from 2009 aren't even about Obama. So I don't know what you're talking about.

The "you lie" yell was ironic because President Obama was speaking the truth on all counts.

And your video is irrelevant to current legislation. It doesn't matter what Obama said 2 and 6 years-ago. What is relevant is the regulations in the current proposed bills.

My major contention when people ask these kinds of question or propose an issue of "better", "better at what"?

My major contention when people ask these kinds of question or propose an issue of "better", "better at what"?

Oi... If you're not going to accept truth based on facts, then tell me now because I don't want to waste my time.

I'm not disputing facts. I'm disputing whether the facts make an action morally warranted. And that fact seems to have flown way over your head. Maybe this is an issue that's beyond your abilities and you don't recognize it, because you seem to be stuck in this conventional thinking that the ends morally justify the means. That if we want less homeless people we have a moral obligation to end their suffering by sterilizing the abjectly impoverished. Or that China is morally justified in its one-child policy.

Dogs, unlike cats, evolved because of humans.

Domesticated cats are just as artificially selected as dogs are. You don't know what you're talking about.

Wolves, who were geneticaly less tempermental, trustee humans more and were fed by humans.

Grey wolves, for example, are genetically identical to domesticated dogs. So it's not like there's some "fundamental" genetic difference. You don't know what you're talking about. The difference is the domestication, not the genes. If you take a wolf today (and that's basically how it started, someone took a wolf) and started artificially selecting various traits over thousands of years, you'll end up with a domesticated dog. That's what artificial selection does.

Secondly, that "hypothetical future" is the present. Animal shelters are overun with animals. So either we spay the animals now to prevent surpopulation, or we kill them in shelters. Your choice.

What you're highlighting is a self-inflicted wound. You and people like you don't think of dogs as animals. You think of them as pets. As toys or slaves. And you treat them as such. That's why you refer to yourself as your dog's "owner". For you, the dichotomy is pet/shelter or death. And not freedom. You don't think of these animals as organisms that do or can exist outside of this humane, self-gratification. Let the dogs go and allow selection its course.

My experience growing up in a third world country tells me that dogs will form packs if left alone for months, scavenge for food, hunt down and kill goats and other animals, and dogs will become increasingly feral over time, and that poodles can definitely and do survive on their own and in packs in a metropolitan zone. Now maybe "your poodle" can't. And maybe that says more about how you've raised your poodle or how you just perceive your poodle than it does about the dog itself.

By suggesting that I want to spay the homeless human population, you admt your own ignorance.

You admit you can't read by making this point. By simply altering the subject of the proposition you made, your logic: the movement from one premise to another, to form a necessarily connected and contingent conclusion could be utilized to make the sterilizing argument for the homeless or the poor. It's an argument from analogy. According to your logic, the argument can be made that sterilizing the homeless and the poor is justified because of its end. And that is a necessary implication of your logic.

It's birth control for dogs. It's humane, not immoral.

Yeah, and China's one-child policy is also birth control. It must be humane and moral because "it's doing a good thing". Forced sterilization of another animal is not moral. constraining your consideration to pet or death is not moral. Your entire worldview on "pet" care is immoral. You just don't see. Probably can't. So, I've made my points. I'm out.

First, the term "domesticated" only refers to the adaptation of an animal for living with humans--both dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) and cats (Felis catus) have been domesticated. So, if you're going to argue that cats can survive without humans... I'm going to allow you to finish the logic. But the term "domesticated" doesn't mean that they require humans to survive. That is patently absurd.

Second, what I'm advocating is not that stray dogs have equally good lives, what I'm advocating is that it's immoral to spay and neuter dogs based on the assumption that some hypothetical dog in a hypothetical future will hypothetically give birth to a hypothetical pup that some hypothetical person may not want, and therefore the "moral choice" is to ensure that the hypothetical dog living in that hypothetical future won't even be capable of hypothetically giving birth to a hypothetical pup who hypothetically may not be wanted. That's the twisted logic of a psychotic human being.

By all accounts this argument: "stray dogs have far shorter lifespans, suffer more painful deaths, go hungry in metropolitan areas, endure lifelong pain from untreated injuries, always have fleas and ticks feeding off of them...." could very well be used to ensure the homeless or poor people around the world ought to be neutered. Let's agree that this is somewhat of a fact. Some stray dogs will live shorter lives. Some will suffer painful deaths (I don't know if it's more painful), some will go hungry in metropolitan areas, some will endure lifelong pain from untreated injuries, some "always" have fleas and ticks feeding on them.

So? Does that mean they should never be born because of a hypothetical scenario that some human has concocted in his or her selfish brain? What you're advocating, and this is necessarily implicit from your argument(s) thus far, is that if a dog MIGHT not have a standard of living acceptable to you, then we should ensure that it is never born by neutering or spaying its hypothetical father or mother. And we are moral to do so. And that's absurd and psychotic.

The selfishness is so pungent and thick. It's like a dizziying miasma. I can taste it. In all of your response, there isn't even the winking pretense of acknowledging that these animals are independent organisms that can and do live outside of the care of the doting human who tries to humanize them with psychobabble that really only makes them feel good. I mean, if you really think that dogs view humans as loving "owners" and not just another member of the pack, you've watched too many Disney movies.

"All he cared about was the cone and the fact that he had a home with a loving owner." I mean, really? This has nothing to do with the dog. It just brings you comfort by saying it. And if you think you're dog isn't conscious of its genitalia then you are absolutely out of your flipping mind and should be laughed at and ridiculed. And dogs tend lose interest in sex because a large part of the libido-system comes from the biochemical actions in the mammal genitalia.

Just think about the logic you're using. Forget the fact that dogs are animals that can hunt, form packs and live on their own, go feral after a few months away from human contact, we should cut out their genitalia because WE can't take care of them!! By golly, if a future dog might not have a human in its life, we might as well make sure it's never born! That is the ultimate in selfishness. Come on man. By your reasoning, it's morally right to spayed and neuter the homeless.

No, it's not morally wrong to neuter or spay dogs and cats. Every organization I can think of advises you do just that. The unwanted, uncared for population is so out of hand that we cannot afford not to neuter as a precaution to more unwanted pets.

China for dogs, huh?

Yes, it is immoral to remove the reproductive organs of an animal. The single thing that is universal and fundamental to all life is its ability to reproduce and provide for the next generation. I find all arguments justifying the act simple contrivances that betray a deeply underlying selfishness on the part of humans who think they have a moral obligation to cut out genitalia.

I'm sorry if this was mentioned elsewhere, but who is "we" and where is "here"?

Maybe not. But then, why do people learn in college?

People learn in college because they study. People go to college or a variety of reasons, which might include the incentive of a degree. But, if a "certification process would have the same effect", then there's really little point to replacing the current system with a new one if it's going to do the same thing. Moreover, a university is one form of a certification process. Literally.

Sitting in a lecture hall with a hundred other students while a professor reads a Powerpoint presentation isn't any improvement over reading a well designed website.

Well first: a well-designed website doesn't mean the website has new and accurate information, and it certainly doesn't mean you're gaining any technical or practical knowledge from it. You're not (not specifically you) going study up on HIV on the web and then jump into HIV/AIDS research and revolutionize how we combat human lentivirus families.

We have been able to combat these kinds of problems because we have researches who are practicing their fields across disciplines: biologists and geneticists help microbiologists and microvirologists in a discussion about the virus. Some Nana who's just read some website about HIV probably won't be any help, will almost necessarily not be up on what research is currently being done and will have to wait around until the results have already been published just to try keep up.

Second, I was in the main lecture hall of my school for an Astronomy class two semesters ago. And even in a large class, people still ask questions. And some people asked questions I didn't and couldn't conceive of, and I learned something more than I would have if it was just left to me (and god forbid it was just me and some website, I would have been doomed).

For example, we were able to ask questions of an active researcher who is looking into Quintessence, and all got information beyond what Wikipedia (I just checked) and probably most - if not all - internet sources have available right now or might ever have.

It helps when you have an active anthropologist who's just finished her conclusionary research on the descendents of the Ju/'hoansi of Dobe and what's happened to their people, who can tell you things that aren't in books or on websites.

Third, we can discuss stuff after class; we can get in groups and debate, and ponder what we've learned and broaden what we know by interacting with others in an academic environment, with academic and colloquial information to back up our points.

I'm not sure what you're saying here, but it sounds like "universities are cost-effective because students pay tuition."

Not really. I even specifically noted that students financially benefit universities, off-setting the overall cost of functioning, beyond tuition. Specialized institutions will cost more because they have a lower student body and will invariably have a proportionally lower number of students doing things like research or participate in extra-academic events like panel discussions that will help whatever school or institution they are going to.

Well that's a rather vague benefit, isn't it?

Your point was, and I quote: "the one reason to go to college is to signal competence to potential employers." My point was simply that college signifies more than competence. It signifies progress, that when x-student/graduate goes to y-institution, they will be able to do more than just maintain the business or be competent, they will be more likely to innovate or to add to its infrastructure and money-making powers.

If we want people to have a broad range of knowledge, than that can be incorporated into the aforementioned certification process.

This basically means that you're going to replace college with college, except you're not going to call it college as per your first statement.

Whoo! There's a lot of disputing going on.

If want to put money into the economy you let the consumer do it not the government.

Why?

By letting people spend their money on what they want or need is the best way to stimulate the economy not a trillion dollar plan that will take 2 years to work.

Actually, we've had a contemporary example of this experiment failing in America. Please remember that the Bush tax-cuts were accompanied by the the encouragement to spend. And Americans did. They spent their money on whatever they pleased and ultimately the economy collapsed in a four year period because of it. Consuming doesn't stimulate an economy. It doesn't even maintain one. It never has and never does and it probably never will. Spending tax-cut money really only equates to recirculating an existing pool of hard-currency. Nothing is actually being made: tangible wealth is not increasing. Producing, on the other hand, does stimulate economies.

Remember, in a capital environment, the best and possibly only way to stimulate an economy is to produce more capital: resources, produce for free exchange in an open market, not spending an abstractly valued thing like green paper. In a consumer environment, and one that is increasingly becoming service oriented, no one is funding production.

So, how does common sense solve advanced problems like AIDS research or more dense political considerations like the the consequences of Perestroika and how we might avoid similarly bad decisions, exactly?

Please explain, and make sure to use only common sense.

You can easily learn stuff without college, via books and the internet.

Most people aren't autodidactic in ability or discipline. What I have learned from my experience with many people who attempt self-learning is that at best they acquire a competent but rudimentary level of knowledge and very little understanding or wisdom. Further it's rare that this kind of knowledge can be applied in a cumulative discourse across disciplines or in-depth, or in practice for that matter, that people who have gone through a university experience can't do better.

Sure college provides some nice social opportunities, and universities conduct useful research, but if we want to do those things, we should create separate institutions that are far more cost effective.

First, interdisciplinary universities are more cost-effective than specialized universities because they incorporate a larger number of paying students who ultimately help in the money making enterprise of universities outside of their tuition. It's one of the reasons why many Ivy-league schools are so expensive; they reject over 90% of applicants and have to make up for their functioning costs in other ways.

Second, universities play a major role in human advancement beyond simply making people competent workers. They help people formulate more robust intellectual considerations and conclusions through a process of competition and discussion across classes and disciplines.

The one reason to go to college is to signal competence to potential employers.

It's more than that. It signals that out of the competing field you are above competent and can add to whatever institution you enter.

I think we should replace degrees with some kind of certification process for various professional fields.

I think this diminishes a part of the point of the university experience. Anyone can be prepared for professional fields. All that would be required is a high school diploma, or some certificate from ITT tech and (other) trade schools. Undergraduate and graduate schools act as secondary and tertiary vetting systems, respectively, that allow people to not simply be competent, but add to human knowledge and achievement.

What exactly is a "higher order"?

I mean organisms that qualify as complex and not simple life: bacteria or archaea, and exist in higher taxanmic classifications like Aves and Mammalia.

If you're saying as predators, let's see how well you fare in a pin with a leopard (or even in the wild, with a leopard).

How humans (apparently how I) compete directly against particular predators has no bearing on whether or not humans are also predators. I could put a cheetah in a cage with a male silverback gorilla and the cheetah would lose, too. So what? Does the cheetah suddenly stop being a predator?

If you're talking about intelligence, why if we are so "high" in the order, are we still eating meat?

The question is moot: our intelligence has nothing to do with why we still eat meat.

There are plenty of healthy alternatives that cost much less in the way of work required, resources needed, associated pain, environmental impact, etc.

Only because they're not "mainstream". If everyone or even most people, for example, lived on a vegetable dominant diet and not a meat dominant diet, there would still be a need to have an industry that can produce the necessary quantities for people to survive on that diet. That means: farms, trucks, fuel, processing factories, machinery, increasingly more land for produce and a much larger labor force. You'd just be switching one for the other; it doesn't come "carbon-imprint" free. And to be honest with you, we are killing life either way. I don't buy into this whole humane bullshit. The whole pain angle is like saying it's better to shoot someone in the head than stab them in the throat - the latter unethical and the former morally acceptable because it's less painful. Humans kill life to survive. I don't give a flying fuck how much or little pain the life I kill and eat encounters; at the end of the day I'm still killing. Or someone is killing on my behalf. I don't put a hierarchy on killing or compartmentalize my ethical judgment. Killing is unethical. But I'm going to eat meat and vegetables.

Animals, like cheetahs, don't have a sense of morals... Humans do, and yet it seems to make little difference.

Which is not the point. The point is what moral judgment humans ascribe to other animal behavior, we recognize that cheetahs are doing what cheetahs do. Whether or not they have morals is immaterial. Humans are doing what humans do. We have bodies that have evolved to ingest and digest meats, vegetables and grains. So we eat these things. To say "killing painfully is unethical" is as meaningful a judgment as saying "cheetahs choking their prey to death is unethical". It's just what we do.

We have moral choice, many morally acceptable options that are just as good if not batter tasting, and we have the ability, physically, to choose... and you say that meat is perfectly acceptable?

Yes, I do say killing and eating organisms that have meat is perfectly fine.

How do you feel about cannibalism?

How I feel about cannibalism is irrelevant.

the world has been getting colder since 1995 so how come we have global warming. please answer that also both poles have got thicker ice.

Tits or gtfo.

What criteria would permit someone to "know what they are doing" with respect to quantitatively analyzing how many people should be permitted into the US? What does "know what they are doing" even mean with respect to immigration?

The quote has nothing to do with this issue at all. This is not about compassion or justice. The point is that, at what end do you regard illegal behavior a "preclusionary" consideration for prospective immigrants?

What if the kid stole a candy bar? Should that kid never be able to receive a Visa to visit America, ever, afterward? Where does it end?

I agree that only certain amounts of people should be allowed to immigrate, plus the should not have criminal records.

Even if it was just theft at... like 12 years-old to feet a starving family member in India?

I agree with everything except the amount of legal immigration should be limited.

Why should it be limited and what would the limit be?

In other words, "it's natural."

Well, that's not the point at all. The peripheral point is that higher order animals will cause undesired pain in sentient beings simply by living. The more substantive point is that you don't believe that anything that causes undesired pain to sentient beings is wrong. What you're really arguing isn't about pain in and of itself, it's about painful killing. And humans painfully killing, at that. Because clearly, I can tag an elephant in a preserve and it would cause undesired pain to a sentient being, and you probably wouldn't argue that I was doing something wrong. So your initial sentiment is what I am contending. It is in fact not the case that you "...believe that anything which causes undesired pain to a sentient being is wrong."

You believe in specific conditions and not the very general statement you made at the start.

It's wrong to kill humans, even painlessly, because if we don't condemn murder then we will not be able to function as a society.

You're going to have to flesh out this argument for me. How does not condemning murder result in a non-functioning society? What do you mean by a functioning society? Is your definition universal?

However there is a second aspect of morality at work here: Pain is bad and it should therefore be minimized.

Why is pain bad? Is all pain bad? Should all pain be minimized? Does minimizing pain make the act of killing the animal more "good"? And if it does, why does it make it more "good"?

Predators are not behaving immorally because they lack the intellectual capacity for morals.

Humans are predators, so are many of the other great apes. And like humans, many apes have the intellectual capacity to be moral and this morality has been documented.

As far as I'm concerned, so far you're trying to impress upon the debate a bit of special pleading on behalf of humans, when humans are animals, we are predators, like many other apes, have a moral compass and still behave true to our biological roots. What is immoral about treating other animals in the way other animals treat other animals? But to the major question itself. Do we have a moral obligation to not eat meat simply because we can live on other foods?

I wouldn't call it "murder", but I do believe that anything which causes undesired pain to a sentient being is wrong.

Meh, we're higher order animals. It's what we do. All predators do it: cause undesired pain to their prey, which are usually other sentient beings.

Killing an animal painlessly would be morally acceptable

Why is it morally acceptable to kill at all?

In fact, due to the atrocious conditions maintained in the factory farming industry, the entire lives of millions of sentient beings are filled with suffering.

So?

Why don't people get that?

Is a cheetah immoral for choking their prey to death or sometimes eating them alive? Do you yell at the discovery channel animals for doing what they do?

I disagree with Noble Truth #3. True suffering comes from physical or emotional pain.

"Pain" is not synonymous with suffering. The word "suffering" is used to highlight a metaphysical point of the self-degenerating nature of yearning or "desire".

It is human nature to compete and competition by definition must cause some degree of harm to the losers.

Speaking of "a nature" is a philosophically easy thing to do - and permits us to talk about behavior axiomatically without having to question the verity of our claims. But whether or not it allows us to talk about things as they are is another question altogether. People do compete; it doesn't mean that it is in our nature to compete any more than smoking cigarettes is in our nature just because people do it. Behavior is a contingency, resulting from the development of an overarching vocabulary. So is the notion of "competition" a part of this greater vocabulary. But that's it.

The fact that you nor anyone else has to compete and can consciously choose not to compete suggests that on the one hand it is a contingent behavior and on the other hand can be abstained from such that you are not doing harm. But, even the latter isn't necessarily a part of the consideration of the suggestion to do no harm or that competition does cause harm.

Decapitalize markets. Let robots work, Allow humans to reap the benefits. Don't let Wall-E fool you!

actually, i said provide examples.

I pointed to the KDP and NSDAP in Germany to highlight the fact that Fascism and Communism are extremist liberal and conservative systems diametrically opposed to one another. So when you write “In the post that i was criticizing, you didn't provide any examples on why one movement is Extremely Conservative and the other is extremely Liberal. All you said was that they were, and provided no examples.” you are wrong. I also briefly discussed the basic principles of Fascism: militarism, nationalism, and anti-communism, and provided the points presented in Mussolini's treatise to support those principles, which I did happen to cite mind you: “What is Fascism? 1932”. I, however, never required you to cite anything. I simply asked that you hold yourself to the same intellectual obligation (that you held me to) and also support your claims with sources other than your own claims.

It was all about the labor class creating riots and revolting against the Ruling Class and the Capitalists

You should re-read the manifesto, and then Marx's other works for an education in Communism. If this is your conclusion, then you really need to get up on your analytical game.

okay, now for your first question, Marx (from what i remember) doesn't say anything specific about killing all political prisoners. on the other hand, he believes in that people will only be truly Communist once any other idea is gone from their heads. You know, once they no longer think about how it could be: really, this would explain both the political turmoil and the hatred towards Capitalist Democracies. If this answered the question at all, I would surely accept it. But it doesn't. I asked, from what Marxist literature do you get the idea that he believed, quote: death was the only way to prevent ideological turmoil. If you can't point to any source, just admit that you're pulling out of your ass. It happens.

If he hated Pacifism so much, it couldn't be from Marx's and Engle's beliefs in Communism, for people who were fine with physical overthrow and riots surely were not pacifist

If and only if we accept your proposition that “physical overthrow” is the same thing as violence, violence being the issue you were addressing, then they are not. But all revolutions require “physical overthrow” - even non-violent ones. The velvet revolution of 1989 also resulted in the physical overthrow of Communists in eastern Europe, but it was non-violent. But the thing is, Communism doesn't propose any notion of “rioting”. That's something you've just made up. And the quote you use only talks about force, but even the pacifist Hippies used force. The question is what does that mean? Does it mean violence? No. Since, even in the Manifesto, Marx uses the term “revolution” in a variety of ways, but most normally within an ideological context. That is, the revolution overturns a historical ideology (the very perspective is called “end of history”, not beat people up). Mussolini's commentary on pacifism was a jab at the socialist criticisms of Nationalism - which played a major role in the military engagement(s) of World War I.

I never mentioned anything about Garibaldi. Nationalism was a thrown around term.

But I did. I mentioned Garibaldi to highlight how wrong you are when you state that “Nationalism is an up in the air idea”. It's not. It was a concrete philosophic system that evolved from the class consciousness, and the growing tension between classical conservatism and liberalism that developed in the middle 19th century. In fact, there were specific principles universal to Nationalism as highlighted by, again, the Prussian Germans, or Greeks before the Greek revolution in their attempt to overthrow Ottoman control in the 1820s (Oh look, another example). And it was a very basic concept, one that I will further reduce here: nationalism was the idea that the cultural makeup of a bordered people be reflected in the state politics. Hence a German nation is one in which cultural German traditions are represented by the government.

Nationalism, supporting your country above all else, was technically a necessity for both rules. It's really a necessity for totalitarianism in general.

Maybe now. But we're not talking about a contemporary “nationalism”. We're discussing classical discourse. And it's not necessary for totalitarianism in general since I can point to any number of classical monarchies that existed before the idea of “the nation” existed, and were totalitarian: the Hapsburgs, Tudors, or Hohenzollerns are examples I can think of off the top of my head.

The state itself is supposed to not exist after time in Communism. How long it takes, nobody knows

I know. Communist writers knew. It was supposed to be immediate, and necessarily so. Why? Because the successful revolution of the proletariat would make the people the government. Hence the dissolution of the state – as such - would be quick so as to permit a pure democracy. That's the whole point of Communism: raise the proletariat to the ruling class, class system is thus destroyed because everybody becomes a member of the proletariat, centralize capital as belonging to the state, which is defined as the organized proletariat and move onward in a true democracy.

But back to the original issue. Communism and Fascism are nothing alike. One is militaristic and expansionist. The other is not. One is classically nationalistic, the other is not. One is anti-communist, the other is "communist". One believes that the people are relative to the state, the other believes that the people are the state. What you have been comparing is the similarity of two totalitarian systems, Fascist Italy and Germany on the one hand and Communist Russia and China on the other (for example). The former followed the tenets of its philosophy, where the latter did not in any way follow the tenets of its philosophy. You're not comparing Communism with Fascism, but totalitarian states.

Not at all. You pointed out that I did not substantiate my claims. I then supported my position with the evidence present in the Fascist treatise. I am merely suggesting that you do the same thing. You've made certain claims about the positions of various historical figures who have written and spoken at length about their various theories, their writing and speeches readily available for anyone who is interested to view them on the internet. You have not taken the opportunity to use any of the resources available to you to buttress your points. Instead, you have relied solely on ipse dixitisms - which is the very thing you accuse me of. I am not questioning or attacking your credibility, merely pointing out that you're being hypocritical. And that's on the one hand. On the other hand, the things you have said are wrong and a simple read of the various figures you're trying to account for would easily correct your misconstruction of their positions.

And on another hand, I've asked you very basic questions, and the answers you give to those questions can highlight whether or not you actually have read anything these people have produced and why, for instance in the case of Marx, your claims are wrong. Simple reading will solve those problems.

Between the writings in Grundrisse and Das Kapital, where does Marx propose that "death was the only way to prevent ideological turmoil"? According to Marx, how is the battle of Democracy won? What is the distinction between Lenin's understanding of ideology and Marx's understanding of ideology, and how do you think it affected and effected the later Soviet Russia? Which communist revolutionaries did Mussolini point to and where, and in what context? What does Nationalism mean to Garibaldi? Under whose Communist philosophy is the state supposed to be strong and not "wither away" and is that Communism?

These questions are completely relevant to the claims you have made. Please answer to them, and stop being a hypocrite.

Anyone who says "nationalism is an up in the air idea" doesn't know much about the class consciousness and national philosophies that sparked the 1848 revolutions in places like Budapest and Milan, and the notions of citizenship of Prussian Germans.

Anyone who argues that Marx believed that Communism could only be possible from a violent revolution or that Marx saw democracy as a threat to Communism hasn't read Marx. Anyone who proposes that the Soviet Union is the closest reflection of Communism doesn't know what Communism is.

You accuse me of doing as the troll does, but turn around and do the same, as if your claims have any factual basis without supporting evidence. Why are you the only one who is exempt from the criticism of ipse dixit? Where is your supporting evidence, do you have available any primary sources or am I to conclude that your opinion is fact?

Let me help you along: between the writings in Grundrisse and Das Kapital, where does Marx propose that "death was the only way to prevent ideological turmoil"? According to Marx, how is the battle of Democracy won (This should give you a hint of the incorrectness of your point that Marx viewed democracy as a threat to communism)? What is the distinction between Lenin's understanding of ideology and Marx's understanding of ideology, and how do you think it affected and effected the later Soviet Russia? Which communist revolutionaries did Mussolini point to and where, and in what context? What does Nationalism mean to Garibaldi? Under whose Communist philosophy is the state supposed to be strong and not "wither away" (see the second question in this paragraph and the quotation marks in this question for a hint of the most accurate answer) and is that Communism?

I was going to present a more thorough rebuttal, but it seems clear that you're not really well read on the literature, nor do you know much of your history, and you seem to have an inadequate understanding of both fascism and communism at best. So it doesn't really make much sense to keep going in earnest.

I don't mean to be an asshole, missing the spirit of the quote or anything, but Abraham Lincoln never said or wrote these words. The sentiment comes from Rev. William J. H. Boetcker.

My first criticism is simply that Communism has never been practiced. Totalitarian regimes under the name of Communism (Russian and Chinese Communism, for example) are not Communist, any more than modern Democracy is Democracy as it was conceived. The founding fathers of America were fundamentally against Democracies and were Republicans.

But to get to your points one by one.

Fascism isn't Communism cause it's Conservative and Communism is Liberal.

This is in fact not what I said. I stated quite specifically that they are extremist positions. During the rise of nationalist movements of the late 19th century, socialist movements acted as their primary sociopolitical opposition. You can look at the socialist criticisms of nationalism leading up to World War I, as examples. The point is that it means that they are direct political opposition.

Mussolini's dislike of Communism wasn't simply relegated to the issue of private property. In fact, all you have to do is read his treatise on Fascism (which I mentioned earlier) and you would know this. In his criticism of Communism (and his development of Fascist doctrine), Mussolini writes (What is Fascism (19832)):

Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment (Communism), believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism

The first consideration of Fascism is militarism, which is diametrically opposed to Communism.

He goes on:

The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State

The second consideration of Fascism is Nationalism. Again, diametrically opposed to Communism which sees the state as relative to the group, as it functions to serve to the benefit of the group, to its eventual dissolution.

Again:

the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone . . . . For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality.

The third consideration of Fascism is the perpetual growth of the nationhood as its primary means of survival. That is, the expansion is both the goal and the means.

More importantly:

Such a conception of Life makes Fascism the complete opposite of that doctrine, the base of so-called scientific and Marxian Socialism, the materialist conception of history of human civilization can be explained simply through the conflict of interests among the various social groups and by the change and development in the means and instruments of production

The fourth and primary consideration of Fascism is anti-Communism. Mussolini believed that Communism did not represent the aspirations of the people, and was counterproductive to the vitality of the nation. Private property wasn't that big of a deal to him, it was the entirety of socialist thought.

And the only reason I will cut it short is because 1) the treatise is readily available on the internet and 2) Fascism is politically and economically opposed to Communist philosophies and economics, and to be quite frank, it would take a paper to more appropriately explain why (using Mazzini, Marx, Mussolini and so forth). It shouldn't be surprising if you look at the German political struggles of the early 20th century as an example: the NSDAP (NAZI party) was entirely opposed to the politics of the KDP (Communist).

The only coinciding characteristic shared by Communism and Fascism as they have been practiced is that they are both totalitarian. And the only thing we can say, then, is that totalitarian regimes are similar. But not that Communism and Fascism are the same or even that Fascism has elements of Communism in it, because it doesn't and they aren't.

If you have bad posture, you're screwing yourself over in the long run (and that's the relatively short long run). And repeated typing (if that's what you're doing), of course, can and often does lead to carpel tunnel syndrome, which sucks.

It's a very Marxist position. One of Marx's chief criticisms of capitalism was indeed that people begin to kind of "fetishize" capital.

Fascism is pretty much the opposite (It is an extremist conservative movement) from Communism (which is an extremist liberal movement). There ain't an inkling of Communism in Fascism. Mussolini would be turning in his grave if he heard that. If you read his treatise on Fascism (he was the one who invented it and everything), you'll quickly realize how much he hates Communists and Communism. The idea of him or any Fascist utilizing Communist principles is kind of comical.

"First of all, I would rather believe that there is a creator, then that everything happened by chance."

If one follows where the evidence leads, we see a planet and universe that is diametrically opposed to design or hyperagency, one that is probably devoid of divine touch and one that is very, very much a natural phenomenon contingent on natural processes.

But consider for a moment what you state here. You would "rather". For you, it's a matter of preference and not a matter of what accurately explains and accounts for the world around us. You want to exist in the comfort of tradition and the safety of ignorance in the same way that a young child might ignore the fact that he or she is devoid of companionship because they would prefer to remain in the comfort of their imaginary friendship with their imaginary friend.

"It doesn't make sense to say that if you look at a car, that somehow everything crashed together and made a car that RUNS."

You're absolutely right. And we can demonstrate precisely why that wouldn't make sense. We use artificial designs to produce and manufacture artificial objects called cars that exist to serve a specific human purpose. And we can demonstrate to you how that car was precisely built, we can even show you the philosophy of transportation leading to the development of the car, we can even take you to a manufacturing plant and watch humans and other robots assemble the car for you if you want. But the universe and the planet earth are not cars.

The universe is a product of elemental forces acting upon one another. It might seem very complex, but it's just a combination of simple interactions overlapping with one another in various ways.

"This "powerful being" already thought of that and gave us a book that he inspired called the bible. "

And many Biblical scholars can attest to the fact that the Bible more than likely isn't the product of divine revelation or divine production. In fact, because of the various writing styles in the Bible, Biblical scholars know almost unequivocally that many of the books in the Bible have multiple authors from various cultural sources over varying periods of time. The Bible is folklore.

"He gave it to us so that we could know more about him"

And we can be fairly certain that this is wrong - insofar as reality and the history of human life is concerned. But I recognize that this is what you would "Rather believe". This is your preference. It has little to do with reality or human history. This is what you would like to believe. But there is nothing objectively or ontologically true about your beliefs, and god-belief tends to oppose reality and transforms the worldview of many into something unreal and unrepresentative of how the world and the universe really works. And this is precisely why you have to "rather believe" it. And I won't knock you for it.

But god doesn't exist. And any complex definition of god, as Paul Tillich would conclude, is simple idolatry and revokes the divine status of god, transforming that status into a very pedantically human entity absolutely devoid of its uniqueness.

This begs an epistemological question: how could you know that there is something necessarily so powerful that humans are incapable of understanding it? (isn't that a statement that relies on understanding the very entity that you say we might be incapable of understanding?)

It also begs a further question: how would you be able to recognize an entity or being that is outside of your capacity to understand; that is, without understanding what you are encountering, how would you be able to acknowledge it for what it is: a being more powerful than you are capable of understanding?