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Originally Posted by JayJamJah
I don't agree with your assessment of the Scandinavian model, I believe it's the general freedom allotted to their citizens and the people's willingness through generations of acclimation to carry such a heavy tax burden that has lead to the majority of those nations being so productive in the last decade.
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Why can't freedom and socialism coexist? They're not mutually exclusive in fact it's what everyone from Trotsky and Orwell argued for and I believe that democracy is completely vital and should be the center of any socialist state.
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I was specifically talking about Communist nations in response to a quote Wayfarer used from Lenin. I tried to make a note of that in my earlier post suspecting you simply meant socialistic aspects of government. If you think the US is the bad guy and Cuba the good guy in that match-up then I have no interest in any further discussion, so lets just stop that right here.
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What did Cuba do to make them the bad guy? Overthrow a US backed and oppressive dictator?
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This sounds like twisted history to me and I really can't think of anyway to productively respond to most of it. It wasn't propaganda that murdered millions of it's own people, and held millions more of them below the poverty line in favor of imperial aspirations.
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You're right I should have worded things better. I was more referring to the leftist ideology itself as opposed to specific regimes. Stalin, Pol Pot and all of them were clearly deeply evil men but again I point to Orwell who argued against totalitarianism better then I ever could. It turns the supposed good proletariat into the elite bourgeois, or turns former piggish leaders into humans.