[Yardstick]

Likewise, if you don’t like being called anti-American, don’t behave that way.

And let’s not forget the setting here — you’re on a patriotic American forum. As such, don’t you think it’s a little brassy of you to come on here and start making excuses for communists? We were locked in a cold war for 50 years with this enemy, and its ideological spinoffs continue to be an existential threat to our philosophy of liberty. So we tend to be a bit touchy about the subject. How could a “friend” be so unaware of this?

[mkjessup]

And let’s not forget the setting here — you’re on a patriotic American forum. As such, don’t you think it’s a little brassy of you to come on here and start making excuses for communists? We were locked in a cold war for 50 years with this enemy, and its ideological spinoffs continue to be an existential threat to our philosophy of liberty. So we tend to be a bit touchy about the subject. How could a “friend” be so unaware of this?

Exactly Yardstick. It always amuses me when these phuckwits who don't even live in our Country think they're going to tell us how to think, and how "wrong" we are when in the overall big picture, they (speaking of New Zealand now) don't even qualify as a pimple on our all-American ASS!

Let 'em go hump their New Zealand lamb, or whatever it is that gets them through an anti-American night down there.

They have as much an impact on FR (not to mention the United States) as a bug smashing your windshield:

Hit the 'wash' button, the wipers clean off the mess, and it's clear vision ahead once more.

Simple as that.

[DieHard the Hunter]

> And let’s not forget the setting here — you’re on a patriotic American forum.

And insofar as it is possible, I am a good friend to America. But just because Americans are “Patriotic” doesn’t put you beyond criticism: and it certainly doesn’t mean that those of us who are not Americans need to acknowledge inferiority as a condition of friendship.

That was never going to work.

> As such, don’t you think it’s a little brassy of you to come on here and start making excuses for communists?

Perhaps — but it is equally inexcusable for patriotic Americans to make excuses for Nazis and their allies and sympathizers like Franco. As you will be aware we all ended up having to fight the Nazis to the finish just over half a century ago. It wouldn’t take much for them to return in some guise or another. (Islamofascism?)

Nazis may not have left a strong impression on America and Americans — I dunno. The rest of the world fought the Nazis nearly twice as long as America did, so perhaps they left a stronger impression with us.

I can assure you that many people outside the US view Nazis as being far worse than Communists. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin.

> We were locked in a cold war for 50 years with this enemy, and its ideological spinoffs continue to be an existential threat to our philosophy of liberty.

True — and in many ways that is merely an accident of history, depending upon which of the two evils we addressed first.

The Cold War would probably have still happened had we instead fought the Socialists and left the Nazis alone in Europe. Except the Cold War would have been with the Nazis and by that time they would have been a continental power, much more difficult to beat.