[Hal 2004]

Thanks to those many of you who replied in a rational manner to my comment and to those of you who didn't, grow up! You don't do your cause any good by acting like pre-teens!

Just a few comments:

It seems that many of you don't know what Marxism or Communism is. Rather, you lump all those with whom you disagree in one bunch and apply a label to them. FYI, a Marxist, in a nutshell, is a philosophical materialist who regards class struggle as the motive force of history and who believes that collective ownership of the means of production, socialism,is the next stage of human progress. I don't recall any mainstream Democrat calling for the collectivization or nationalization of America's industries, land, banks, etc. I don't recall any mainstream Democrat denouncing belief in God and calling for the abolition of our 1st Amendment right to worship.

Marx believed that socialism would occur inevitably through the mechanism of history. It was Lenin who believed that socialism required a secretive vanguard to lead the masses and who, in fact, was the father of Soviet totalitarianism. I don't recall any mainstream Democrat who called for or attempted to pass legislation that would abolish the entire Constitution, abolish all our freedoms, provide complete gov't control over all media, set up the Dems as the only lawful political party,provide labor camps and execution for political enemies with a secret police force established to enforce one-party rule etc. THIS is totalitarianism, and it is an absurd stretch to see Ted Kennedy, Tom Daschle, and even Al Sharpton as advocating these policies.

Why do you have to exaggerate your disagreements with liberals? Abortion is a good example. The Roe decision was authored by Harry Blackmun, a Republican, like Earl Warren, Governor of California before he came on the Court; appointed to the Court by Richard Nixon, another Republican, like Ike who appointed Warren. Yet some of you folks see Roe as some sort of Communist, atheist, traitorous plot to destroy America, just, as I presume, you see the decisions of the Warren court. Have you folks overdosed on John Birch Society propaganda?(Is that Society still around?) Certainly, one could argue these decisions were wrong, but treasonous? Really?

Some of you said that your extreme rhetoric was ony a response to extreme left-wing rhetoric. So, let's see if I got it right: Some liberals and Dems have said stupid, vile lying things, so you are also going to say stupid, vile and lying things. And this makes you better that liberals...how?

I am against stupid, vile, lying political rhetoric no matter who says it. I don't know about the DU (Democratic Undeground?). If that's a website where people compare Bush to Hitler etc. then I don't want to have anything to do with them. Stupidity and acting like a pre-teen is just as bad on the left as on the right.

We do disagree about the 2nd Amendment. I believe its purpose was to grant states the right to have their own militias (remember the part about a "well-regulated militia"?)so that it would not just be the federal gov't that would have an armed force. I believe, therefore, that individual citizens have, at best, a circumscribed right to own their own guns. Now I'm sure that nearly all of you don't agree with my opinon, but, guess what? I really believe that to be the correct understanding of that Amendment as do nearly all the other liberals I know. We don't advocate this to set up a one-world dictatorship!

Finally, some of you need to examine just how you are different from Osama Bin-Laden. He believed that his views are RIGHT, just as right as believing 2+2=4. So if you disagree with Osama, you disagree with TRUTH, you are a liar, an infidel, evil and you must be destroyed. Some of you say the exact same thing; that liberals are "nuclear waste", etc. Tell me, how does that differ from the Al-Qaeda mindset, or the Communist, fascist or Nazi? If you really believe that, then you're no better and you present no viable alternative.

That's all for now. Peace and Love!

From Hal 2004 in Brooklyn

[Moonman62]

I think you wrote the WSJ reply because you know that deep down in your heart you are becoming a FReeper, and that in a year or two you won't be able to refer to yourself as a liberal without a gag reflex. BTW, many of us here consider ourselves to be at least in part, classic liberals.