> Behalf Of K.Feete
> John D. Giorgis wrote:
>
> >At 10:53 AM 5/25/01 +1200 K.Feete wrote:
> >>Er, Reagan planned something? I always regarded him as sort of the
Tin
> >>Man of Presidents... "If I only had a brain...."
> >I highly recommend that you at least leaf through a copy of "Reagan
in His
> >Own Hand" before you ever make another comment about his
intelligence.
>
> Why don't I just watch his movies? You know, the B-grade flicks?
Kat, that sort of comment is why it's very hard for me to even discuss
these things with you. So, you think you know something about Reagan.
I think it's fairly clear that what you do know is wrong, but okay,
maybe I'm wrong. But, judging by that comment, you aren't interested
in having your own perceptions challenged. You know what you know,
and there isn't any evidence that could persuade you otherwise, and if
someone makes you aware of it, you'll just dismiss it with a flippant
comment. Reagan wrote those speeches himself. We know that, because,
for most of them, we have the original yellow legal pads on which he
drafted them in longhand. Apart from which, he couldn't exactly
afford a speechwriter when he wrote most of them.
> Incidentally, there's a few problems with this. For one thing,
unless I
> miss my guess, most of these places were already experiencing
atrocities
> *before* they became communist countries. Russia was a mess- the
monarchy
> was an atrocity; China the same (read some accounts of the old
Empire
> there sometime- it makes Mao look positively sweet); Ethiopia was a
> colony, and one good, hard look at colonialism will tell you that
even
> communism was preferable. At least then, as one postcolonial author
wrote
> (DAMN my bookshelves for being at home), the countries were making
their
> own mistakes and not having the French or the Germans or the Brits
around
> to commit atrocities for them. Cambodia and Vietnam I *know* were
French
> colonies, and the French were some of the worst, most oppressive,
> bloodbathian, pay-back-every-white-death-with-a-hundred-black ones
colonialists in existance.
Kat, you really need to learn a _lot_ more about the history of these
places before you make a comment like that. I've made these points
before, and I'm going to _keep_ making them until you at least respond
when I do. The Soviet Union under Stalin killed _at least_ 20 million
of its own citizens. There was nothing under the Czars that was
remotely comparable. And, I should point out, the Communists did not
overthrow the Czars - they overthrew the Kerensky government, which
was at least an attempt at democracy. Roderick MacFarquar, who
teaches a course at Harvard on the Cultural Revolution in China (which
I ahve just taken) says that the Chinese government's _own estaimte_
of deaths in the Great Leap Forward is 20 million, and in the Cultural
Revolution is another 10 million. There is no equivalent to that in
Chinese Imperial History. Ethiopia, as has already been pointed out,
wasn't anyone's colony. The French were unpleasant, yes. Pol Pot
killed _2 million_ of his own citizens in Cambodia. The French never
even approached the level of depravity that he showed. Do you
understand that there's a difference there, and it's not a small one?
> Er, yes. Do try and remember, for a moment, when I grew up. By the
> eighties communism was a joke. I was eleven when the Berlin Wall
went
> down. My family celebrated, but I don't recall anyone being real
> surprised. By then it was seen- by the people I knew and loved at
least-
> as only a matter of time.
If that's so, then they were just about the only ones. The CIA didn't
predict it. The SIS didn't predict it. The DGSE didn't predict it.
The Mossad didn't predict it. No one did, actually. Except, I should
point out, Ronald Reagan - whom you so blithely dismiss as an idiot.
During the 1980s, I should point out, the Soviet Union occupied
Afghanistan, during which time they used such instruments as chemical
weapons and booby-trapped toys designed to be picked up by children to
enforce their rule there. The Afghans, I'm sure, thought that it was
all a joke. Much less say, the friends of mine who had relatives
"disappeared" by the KGB during the 1980s. It was all a laughing
matter to them, too, I'm sure. The people of North Korea who live in
a country where - according to the Washington Post - it's a death
penalty offense to place a newspaper with the photo of Kim Il Sung on
the front page face down? Communism must be very funny to them too.
> Kat Feete
I actually take back what I said earlier - I'm not going to keep
repeating this, because I don't see the point. I'm not even sure
you're reading what I'm writing, to be honest. We all talk about the
scientific method here, on occasion. OK - what evidence exists that I
could supply you that would _disprove_ your contention that Communism
wasn't all that bad - or at least no worse than the other options?
If, as some estimates put it, 100 Million deaths (20-40 million in the
USSR, 30-50 million in Communist China, plus more every day) won't do
it, I'm not sure what will. But perhaps you can come up with
something. If hundreds of speeches written by Ronald Reagan that have
now been praised by even his opponents as very intelligent don't
convince you that he wasn't an idiot, what will? Or is that just an
article of faith for you?
********************Gautam "Ulysses" Mukunda**********************
* Harvard College Class of '01 *He either fears his fate too much*
* www.fas.harvard.edu/~mukunda * Or his deserts are small, *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Who dares not put it to the touch*
* "Freedom is not Free" * To win or lose it all. *
******************************************************************
