Hugo

How about "better" as in "how well it does the job it was designed for"? As in, "an M16 is better than an AK-47" - remember that one? What, like the Big Red One (US Army 1st Infantry Division)? Of course - but the fact remains that in its day, the legion was the superior "weapon".

Actually, the Punic wars were fought before the legion had taken its final form. What you also forget is that Hannibal and Hasdrubal were two of the finest generals to grace an army of men, and the fact that they won battles against often less experienced and downright incompetent Roman leaders does not mean that their weapons were superior. Regardless, you are wrong anyway, since just because a weapon fails to win a battle or a war does not mean that it is not the best available. After all, B-52s and F-4s "failed" in Vietnam - and I wouldn't say it was because they were inferior weapons compared to Communist aircraft, would you? V-2 rockets and Me-262 jet fighters failed to save the Third Reich, but there's no question of their technical superiority to anything the Allies had. Well, duh.

Actually, "fetus" is Latin for "child".

I think Kennedy is a decent historian but it is always hard to interpret history that occurred within the last decade. Since that time, Japanese economic growth has slowed and the Chinese economy has been shown as the paper tiger that it is. Further to your point about the tendency of intelligentsia to misinterpret data during that period, as Barber noted as an example, in the late 80s American manufacturing and raw materials output seemed to be slowing, and in some cases were even overtaken by Soviet industry. However, this did not mark the decline of the US economy or the growing strength of the USSR, rather, it was actually indicative of the start of the evolution of the US economy from a manufacturing base towards a service and information industry base. Returning to the thread title, it is inevitable that the USA will decline and I agree with Kennedy that it will not implode but rather just shrink, as the British empire did, and rather than reflect the 40-50% of collective world power that it is now it will shrink to around 13-15%, which is more in keeping with its population size and resources - certainly the USA will remain a significant player, but probably no longer the most significant. When will this happen? Centuries. Even if America's rivals continue to grow as they have I cannot see them approaching America's strength for a long, long time, barring disaster - and disaster is not reserved for the dominant power, I might add.

No, those economies are called "mixed" economies. You need to learn the correct terminology, otherwise you end up making a fool of yourself.

Yes. Did you know that Karl Marx himself had no job and no independent means, and lived off the wealth of a friend who owned several factories and made his money from "exploiting the proletariat"? Did you also know that he had an affair with said friend's housemaid, and when she became pregnant, had her sent to a workhouse and denied all involvement or responsibility? Oh, yes, certainly Marx really, really believed all the crap that he wrote. No, it's based on what law and morality calls "theft" - taking wealth away from those who have earnt it and giving it to those who have not earnt anything. The books were always cooked, which you'll see if you actually study the Soviet or Chinese economies in any depth. In the midst of terrible famines, both countries proclaimed that they had quadrupled food output. Similarly, communist countries generally sacrifice their economies to the good of a few industries - witness Chinese steel production in the so-called Great Leap Forward. Please go to your local library and check out a book called "Wild Swans", by Jung Chang. It's a true story of Chang's grandmother, mother and herself, who lived through the last days of the Emperor, the warlord phase, WWII, and Communism. It's an eye-opener for those who believe the drivel that Maoists spill on a regular basis.

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/nr/public/m...ants.Amount.htm Total grants: $800.8 million. Not quite $2bn, but I think that that's a fairly substantial sum. The Canadian military received $800m in the 2003-2004 budget. If he was in a socialist state he wouldn't have made any profits, because socialism stifles innovation and acumen and prevents companies like Microsoft and entrepreneurs like Gates from getting off the ground. So, under capitalism, social causes get $800m. Under socialism, they'd get $0.

Oh, and you never answered me: We can debate, but if you are going to ignore the parts of my posts that weaken your position and pick upon one or two points that you feel you can attack, it speaks volumes about the tenability of your arguments. That which can brook no criticism is inherently flawed - part and parcel of Communist suppression of freedoms, I'm afraid.

No, you have that backwards. The USSR wished to see every socialist country succeed and used its military might to ensure it, whether it be invasion of a foreign country to speed "building socialism" or crushing dissent in Eastern Europe. Why do you think that the USA was opposed to socialism anyway? I would like to get your thoughts on this. I think there are some serious blinders in your thinking. You believe that the failures of capitalism are due to capitalism, and that the failures of Marxism are due to capitalism. I believe you are one of what Lenin termed the "useful idiots", people who decry the system that nurtures and protects them and endorse the system that would crush and impoverish them. Regardless, Marxism is a grossly unfair and immoral system, even on paper.

That's right, Craig. Like I said, it's simply a question of how you'd like your socialism. There is not an option for a true conservative in Ontario. None of the big three will actually reform, what they all propose is mere tweaking to the existing system.

I've drawn two lessons from this election. Firstly, I think Eves threw it. He took power fairly unexpectedly, and since then he's been dogged with problems that he tried to resolve but which were not actually his fault. Hydro, for instance: the problem was brewing a long, long time before he took office. He tried to fix it by privatisation, then the rates went up and people moaned about that, so he put a rate cap on - maybe he didn't take the best possible course of action, but I think he tried his best. SARS and Walkerton, too, neither of them Eves' fault but people still seem to blame him for them. I think that he got sick of being blamed for everything and said, "Screw it, let Howdy Doody take the flak for all this crap and see how he likes it." He called the election pretty suddenly and didn't put up much of a fight. Secondly, far too many people I spoke to said they were voting Liberal because they had heard "it's the best party" or "my friend told me to" or because "the Tories want to give all my tax money to private schools." These people should not be voting! They don't know what they are doing! You don't let unqualified people drive cars or perform surgery, so why would you let ignorant half-wits decide your government? This reaffirms what I've believed for some time now: there should be "voting licenses" dependent upon being able to show some political knowledge. Either you demonstrate that you have some idea of basic policies and that you pay attention, or you forfeit your right to vote. That sounds fair to me.

Sorry, is this Paul Kennedy that you are mentioning?

I already went over this point, I think, with Lost in Manitoba. We agreed that the Marxist system can work but only in a community measured in tens of families or smaller. To therefore take this principle and want to apply it on a national scale is akin to taking a lawnmower engine, putting it in a locomotive and then being surprised when it fails to haul a 50-car coal train, saying, "Well, it worked in the lawnmower!" Cuba actually turned to the USSR first, and Kruschev decided to take a gamble and back him, not knowing which side he would end up on. The USA reacted badly to Castro because they perceived him as a potential enemy, not for fear that he would become Marxist, and as the Monroe Doctrine and even common sense tell you, it's not a good idea having an enemy nation 90 miles from Florida - just look at the missile crisis. Anyway, what are you saying - that the success of Marxist economies depends upon trade with capitalist economies around it, and that the Marxist economy can only succeed when capitalist economies aid it? Some endorsement! What on earth are you talking about? As regards your question, what is a high standard of living, I would have thought it should be obvious to anyone with a knowledge of economics. A higher real income, longer life expectancy, higher caloric intake, greater disposable income, greater availability of consumer goods, and so forth. All things that capitalist economies provide in spades, and all things that socialist economies desperately try to provide and fail utterly.

Just to note that Roman soldiers were called "Legionaries". A "Legionnaire" is a soldier of the Legion Etranger. They were not destroyed by elephants, either, they were destroyed because their original strengths were forgotten and the politicians in Rome did not fund them adequately or have the will to use them properly anymore. At that point they were easy prey for the barbarians that overcame them because the Legions were little better than they by that point. The Roman navy was sometimes weak but after Rome controlled the entire Meditteranean coast there was not much call for a large fleet. Athens was in a position to need a fleet, and the Athenian navy was always very strong, but the vast majority of Roman campaigns were fought on land. By all means, make historical comparisons, but let's keep them accurate or the conclusions we draw will be incorrect.

Then by all means, please name me a marxist state that has achieved higher standards of living than the USA or Japan. Canada's place is rapidly slipping. Real incomes are lower than in the USA, taxes higher, essential services harder to come by, incidence of crime is higher. I'd also like you to tell me how Sweden and Canada are "more equal" than the USA or Japan, please.

Then we are in agreement. I would further add that moral and ethical standards are also useful, or rather essential, to the society with capitalist economics. These can sometimes even be a substitute for law. My example of this would be the early New England colonies, which with an almost complete absence of economic law (indeed, they spent their time trying to evade English economic laws), thanks to their Puritan and Quaker moralities, still developed a prosperous and also an ethical society, those colonies being crucial in abolitionism in later years, for instance. I believe the gap is a cultural rather than an economic phenomenon. America has a vast gap, but even though Japan is probably even more capitalist than America, the gap is far smaller in Japan, and the average Japanese CEO takes home a fraction of that which his American counterpart does. This is even true for Japanese corporate giants such as Mitsubishi, Matsushita, Nissan and so forth. And no, people never start on an equal footing. They never will, no matter what you do. Even if you make everything equal economically, you are still going to have clever and stupid, handsome and ugly, charming and irksome. More to the point, the problem of starting from unequal positions is even worse in socialist countries, where advancement depends not upon intelligence or skills, or even money, but upon ancestry, Party devotion and so forth. One of the reasons that socialist economies fail so badly is that positions of control are held not by those most fit but by those most politically trustworthy. Of course, that isn't part of Marxist theory, but part of my beef with socialism and Communism is that every single time somebody tries to apply them, it always degenerates into a hodge-podge of primitive capitalism, welfare state and nepotistic feudalism. A theory that won't fit into the real world is called "wrong", and that's exactly what Marxism is: wrong.

I thought you were interested in socialism for what it did for the common man? The common man in China works very long hours in very poor conditions for a fraction of our minimum wage, has little to no choice of housing or even clothing, and may even be unfortunate enough to live in the rust belt or the pacific-rim cities where pollution has dragged the life expectancy down at least a decade below the rest of the world, and often more. If your complaint is that capitalism benefits the capitalist at the expense of the common man, my retort is that socialism benefits the state at the (far greater) expense of the common man. No capitalist has ever disagreed with that. Even Adam Smith was not in favour of a pure free market. This is why we have law and morality. Capitalism 'fails' when law and morality fail. Socialism fails from the get-go because it's downfall is human nature - you won't convince anyone to give according to his abilities when he'll still only be given to according to his needs, no matter how hard he works. Except, of course, at the point of a gun, and this is often what the Communist states had to resort to. You have attacked Craig Read for calling Islam a failure, but here you are, attacking capitalism in the exact same way. Why has it failed, and what system has, in general, achieved better results for the people? The free market (as we understand it) has "failed" only in the eyes of some beholders. You may see, for instance, the gap between rich and poor as a problem, whilst others see it as an incentive. Everyone who is productive is a driver of the economy. All taxation, at every level, stunts the economy. Heavy taxes on the rich discourage investment and growth. Heavy taxes on the poor discourage consumer spending. Taxes are a necessary evil, and like all necessary evils should be kept to a minimum, in my opinion.

My reaction is that you have no clue. Beggars on the streets, indeed. You think there were no beggars in the USSR? You think nobody starves in China? Rubbish. If you want to know which citizens have, on average, the best standard of living, it's those in free-market nations. There is. It's called "taxes", and it's a lot more than 10%.

Easy. Take a look at the standard of living, health, life expectancy etc. of the average Soviet citizen, any point since 1917. Then compare it to the average American citizen, same time period. Enough said. Hard to believe there are still Marxists in this day and age... it's like the Flat Earth Society.

Those are not communist economies, those are mixed economies. My point was, however, not the linking of socialism to absence of political freedom (although historically, they tend to go hand in hand, because socialism goes against the human tide), but that socialism, economically, does not provide. In economic indicators, Canada and Sweden are midgets compared to the capitalist giants of the USA and Japan. No, earlier than that. And so it would, if you knew that there was a vast empire across the ocean that tortured and shot its own people, was currently bent upon massive military and nuclear build-up and had sworn to destroy you. Not yet. Maybe in a half-century or so, if they have some luck, but for now China remains an economic pygmy to the USA, and if they are a source of cheap labour, they can easily be replaced.

The whole election was just a farce, in my opinion. The Liberals are obviously pretty left of centre - tax and spend, social programmes, etc. The NDP are very left, and Eves' Tories seem to have become Liberals in different suits. So the question in this election was, to me: how would you like your socialism - rare, medium or well done? Eves paid the price yesterday. He didn't sell himself as a leader for the year he was in power, and his election campaign was so inept he basically handed it to McGuinty on a silver platter.

I have never, ever argued against homosexuality from a religious standpoint. Therefore, according to C-250, I am a hate criminal and unprotected by laws of religious freedom. It is not misinformation at all to state that, in violation of this law, I am subject to penalty up to and including 5 years imprisonment. That is what the current hate crime legislation, which C-250 merely adds to, prescribes. No, they do not. Homosexuals have hundreds or even thousands more lifetime sexual partners than heterosexuals on average. This is the fact that's been borne out by every study I have read, and it's why their incidence of serious STDs is 2300% that of heterosexuals, their average life expectancy is 42 years, and that 80% of STDs are suffered by 3% of the population - the homosexuals. Now, I really must object to your post. You accuse me of misinformation because I am citing exact figures, percentages and penalties of law, and then you go on to talk about "heterosexual males probably lag very closely", and "i doubt just from common sense". Come on. I'm citing studies and facts, so you accuse me of misinformation, and then tell me what's "probably" true and what "you doubt" without any facts or citation to back it up? Nova, I don't believe I falsely attributed anything to you. Can you quote me so doing?

d4dev, There's so much wrong with what you've said, I just don't know where to begin. "Well-planned" socialist economies have always been abject failures. They are and were inefficient, wasteful and unproductive dinosaurs, unable to return decent economic indicators, industrial output, consumer goods or quality of life. The USA was about as threatened by Marxism as my views are by your post. The USA attacked Cuba and Vietnam because it feared the spread of Soviet and Maoist Communism. In case you're in any doubt as to why, suffice it to say that Soviet Communism murdered, starved or imprisoned 50 million of its own people, enslaved foreign nations it "liberated" (COMECON being basically a formality for the USSR to fleece the rest of the Warsaw Pact nations), and was bent upon expanding its empire wherever possible, by whatever means possible, be that armed insurrection or outright invasion and annexation. It stood for suppression of any kind of freedom and slavery to the state - a real-life evil empire. The expansion of NATO after 1989 was a recognition that the post-Cold-War world was, if anything, more savage than before (see Kosovo, Chechnya) and mutual protection would still be just as necessary. The new nations were, I believe, former Warsaw Pact nations freed from the Soviet yoke. China is not a threat to the US anymore. China has begun to enjoy a period of economic growth after moving away from Marxism towards a free market economy, and stands more to gain from peace than for war. China will be a stabilising influence in the Far East, and if the USA can successfully convince the Chinese that NK is a threat to Far Eastern stability and security they may well take care of him for them. Even if China was a threat, the same rules cannot apply to China. While the PLA is pathetic and could easily be bested by the US military, occupation of a nation of 1.5bn hostile Chinese would be impossible. This has been China's defence since classical times - militarily weak, culturally strong, and able to assimilate conquerors rather than defeat them. You can see what the human and financial costs are of holding Iraq - what do you think they would be in China? The US does not have a responsibility to police the world and does not want to. It protects its own interests because that is what everyone is doing in the world. That's what governments are elected to do: serve the people. If the US government serves foreigners better than Americans, it isn't doing its job. Furthermore, if anyone was going to be a policeman of the world, I would much prefer the USA, or the USA and her democratic allies, to anyone else. The USA and other democracies value freedom - freedom of speech, opinion and belief, freedom of association, political freedom, free markets - and this, to me, is infinitely preferable to the semi or outright slavery that Communist or Islamo-fascist nations would hold us in. You can stand up in the USA and say, "The President/Jesus/any other American cultural icon is a moron" and not only will you not be arrested, you'll probably be a guest on Bill Maher's show or something. I wonder what would happen if you stood up in Tehran and said "Mohammed was a moron"? What about if you stood up in Soviet Moscow and said "Lenin was a moron"?

Not at all. It's accurate as I said it. These studies basically compared pedophiles' choice of adult partners and found that over 30% of them were homosexual in their adult relationships, as opposed to 3% of the general population. I believe that I already stated which studies they were, so please, check up on them and tell me how you feel that they distort the truth. A gay man who's been monogamous for 10 years is an oxymoron. 27% of homosexuals have had over a thousand sexual partners. Less than 1% can even be considered semi-monogamous (5 or fewer sexual partners). This is the crux of the matter: homosexuals are not "just like us, but attracted to the same sex". Homosexuality goes hand-in-hand with psychological trauma, self-image issues, child abuse, pedophilia, extremes of promiscuity, personality disorders, immaturity and stunting of emotional growth and capacity, and so forth. Don't worry, though, Riff, after the senate passes C-250, you can threaten me with jail time if I continue to say this sort of thing. Does that make you happy? Oh, and why do you always capitalise my name?

"Person" is a legal term, and at one time, it didn't apply to blacks or women. If a fetus is not a person, at what point does it become a person, and why?