18
   

Helen Keller...a radical socialist?

 
 
roger
 
  1  
Reply Sat 15 Sep, 2012 04:25 pm
@Walter Hinteler,
I spent two years a lot closer to a Pershing missile site that that. I always wondered about what happened after they set one off. Can you imagine the kind of paperwork involved? Anyhow, it's like a platoon were issued one bullet. They fire it, and then what? They all go home?
Lustig Andrei
 
  3  
Reply Sat 15 Sep, 2012 05:22 pm
GRACIE!!!Welcome back to the best web-site on the 'net.Good to see ya, kid.
0 Replies
 
oralloy
 
  0  
Reply Sat 15 Sep, 2012 05:56 pm
@Walter Hinteler,
Walter Hinteler wrote:
I've been in the (German) navy during the cold war. And lived all my 'civil years' just 100 miles away from the border, but 10 miles away from a couple of nuclear missile camps as well.
We here were more afraid of being a target due to stationed forces than about anything else.


I've always lived well away from any cities, but there was always a town nearby with some sort of critical infrastructure like a fuel refinery or a factory that makes advanced missile parts.

I also live a good distance from the towns and villages, but was always close enough that a 1MT airburst would have shattered all my windows and embedded shards of glass in the opposing walls.

And then the fallout would come drifting downwind from the ICBM fields.

Presuming I had the presence of mind to hit the floor and avoid the flying shards of glass, I probably would have had one more day to live compared to most of the world.
oralloy
 
  0  
Reply Sat 15 Sep, 2012 05:56 pm
@roger,
roger wrote:
I spent two years a lot closer to a Pershing missile site that that. I always wondered about what happened after they set one off. Can you imagine the kind of paperwork involved? Anyhow, it's like a platoon were issued one bullet. They fire it, and then what? They all go home?


If it got to the point where a Pershing were launched, the people who launched it would have approximately a minute to live.
0 Replies
 
MontereyJack
 
  2  
Reply Mon 17 Sep, 2012 02:12 am
Hey, Gracie, glad you decided to come back. Welcome home.

There have been all kinds of socialists, including ones before Marx. The early mill owners in the first days of the Industrial Revolution in New England tended to be Owens Socialists (named for Robert Owens, look up "Utopian Socialism" in Wikipedia). Setanta touched on this, I think. They thought it was important for the work environment to improve the lot of the workers, who were often young women from the New England farms which were hard-scrabble and couldn't provide a living for a lot of the kids on them. the mill system at the time was organized to provide them clean living, good food, and plentiful cultural and educational activities, intended to give them a good start in life.
But other mill owners came in, and started pitting worker against worker, utilizing the growing numbers of impoverished immigrants as their work force, and cutting wages, which people desparate for work had to accede to. So the early idealism yielded to longer hours, appalling working conditions, and less money, which is why the mills were such fertile ground for pushes to form labor unions.

Also not all forms of socialism involve government control or direction. One form promotes ownership of factories and companies by the people who work there, everyone owns a share of the business. There have been some of these worker-owned businesses in the US--one of the pitfalls is that if the business does really well, somebody with a lot of money comes along, sees that, and sees an opportunity to make a profit, offers the workers a lot of money to sell. and they see a chance to make a lot quickly if they sell, and they do, and the company ends up just like everybody else.

0 Replies
 
Setanta
 
  4  
Reply Mon 17 Sep, 2012 02:36 am
Really, it was Lenin and Marx who gave socialism a bad name.

http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~pferd/pics/peace.gif
0 Replies
 
GracieGirl
 
  1  
Reply Thu 27 Sep, 2012 10:13 pm
@Walter Hinteler,
Walter Hinteler wrote:

oralloy wrote:

Socialism is a form of government and economy where the government runs all the businesses.

Socialism used to be the economic system of the Soviet Union, who were our implacable enemies and were really quite a threat to us. Because of that, some people see it as verging on evil.
Socialism roots in the scripts of Thomas Moorus (Saint Thomas). It was then developed during the French revolution, got later several national "branches".
Marx and Engels 'adjusted' socialism towards communism.
The communism in the USSR was called "real existing socialism" = their description of communism.

In European countries, we still have quite a few "socialist" governments, by the democratic kind of socialism, called "social democratic".

Many churches follow another kind of socialism, called "Christian socialism".


The economic system which we have got after the 2nd world war by the conservatives is called 'social market economy', which is a mixture of a bit capitalism with a lot of socialism.

I don't think that you can explain socialism in a few sentences.


Yeah! So thats why I was confused There's way too many different kinds of socialism. I've heard of 'social market economy' in American History last year. I dont know anything about the other kinds of socialism though... Thanks Walter.

Thomas wrote:

I think the American Heritage Dictionary gets it right in its first definition of "socialism":

Quote:
so·cial·ism n. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.

It's not your fault you don't understand the word "socialism", because it doesn't stand for any one coherent thing. For example, every country in the world today has a "socialist" (read: government-run) army. All developed countries in the world, except the US, have more-or-less socialist health care systems. But some countries, North Korea for example, have taken the idea to an extreme and abolished almost all private property. Socialism is a matter of degree. And most political ideologies call for some amount of socialistic institutions in society --- including some ideologies whose adherents would fervently deny having anything to do with socialism.


Interesting. So even people who say that aren't socialist agree with socialism to a certain extent right?

Thomas wrote:

While I haven't read Lies My Teacher Told Me, I guess that the tone of indignation you hear comes from an appeal to extreme cases of socialism such as North Korea and Cuba, which have indeed turned into hellholes because of (too much) socialism. Some people on the political right use those extreme, tyrannical cases to smear moderate, democratic socialists, the kind that just wants universal health care and strong labor unions.

So why is socialism a bad thing? It isn't --- at least not in the dosage you're likely to find in Western democracies. I don't know if Helen Keller's socialism went beyond that or not.


Well since socialism isn't bad and it means soo many different things, don't you think its a really stupid insult?

maxdancona wrote:

Socialists are largely responsible for the fact that women now have the right to vote in the US.

On the other hand, they did write a very nice pledge.



I thought suffragists were the ones responsible for women gaining the right to vote. You know, people like Lucky Burns and Alice Paul. They were socialists too?

Thomas wrote:

Allow me to turn this into a teachable moment. Gracie, do you notice how history has generally vindicated Heller's views? And do you notice how she got belittled for her radicalism in her early life? The same could be happening to putative radicals today. So don't pay attention to labels like "radical", "extremist", "far left" etc. Focus on content instead. When extremists are wrong, you can oppose them for being wrong, just as you can oppose anybody else for that reason. And when extremists are right, they're right. Either way, the fact they're extremist adds no useful insight.


You're right. I get what you're saying. Thanks Thomas. Smile

maxdancona wrote:

In the US socialists have been behind a variety of extremist socially destructive causes. It's not just the woman's right to vote. Socialists were behind child labor laws, civil rights, free public education, desegregation and Medicare.


Socially destructive causes? How? I dont get what you mean...

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Now, coming back to the original question.

I don't think (for all what I know about Helen Keller) that she was a Socialist.

And certainly not a "radical Socialist".


Pretty sure she was a socialist. Maybe the "radical" part is more of an opinion?

Joe Nation wrote:

Gracie: I had the privilege, several years ago, of having an email conversation with James Loewen about a number of historical oddities. (I knew of a couple of museums I thought he should see.)


Really?! Dude that's awesome! Were you guys friends or something? How'd you meet him?

Joe Nation wrote:

His point about Helen Keller was that American textbooks tended to portray her as this nice disabled person who had done well to learn to read and write and speak when, in fact, she was much much more. The history writers were leaving off the most interesting parts of her in order to make her image more agreeable to the average (bland, dull,) American.


Yeah, I got that after I read alittle further. What I don't get is why they did that to Helen Keller. I mean, maybe her views were extreme then but now everyone knows she was right, so why leave it out?

Joe Nation wrote:

That kind of cleaning up and smoothing the rough edges of history is one of several things about history writers Loewen despises. Get one of his other books, LIES ACROSS AMERICA, where he shows that whoever is putting up the monuments are the ones who get to tell the history.


Embarrassed I didn't even finish reading Lies My Teacher Told Me. Non fiction just isn't my thing. It was kinda intresting but parts of it were still boring to me. I just couldn't really get into and I was starting to force myself to read it cause I hate not finishing a book. But I still stopped reading. I'm gonna try to check the book out again and finish where I left off though. For some reason I'm way more interested in history when I'm talking about it with people than when I'm just reading about it or researching it on my own.

Joe Nation wrote:

So, all across the South, you have statue after statue dedicated to the memory of the poor, gallant and put upon Southerners who had their birthrights stolen from them by the arrogant Yankees merely because the Southerners wanted to install Slavery as part of the American Way forever.
Oh, the pity!! (yipes)

History, well written, is hardly ever pretty or dull. Remember that the next time you are reading something dull about what happened when; start asking 'What are they leaving out?"

Joe(That will be the good [and ugly] parts)Nation



Thanks Joe(Do you always do the parentheses thing? Laughing )Nation !

firefly wrote:

GracieGirl, you're back!http://www.picgifs.com/graphics/c/cheerleaders/graphics-cheerleaders-648823.gif

Missed you, kiddo.


FIREFLY!! Thank you! Thank you! Missed you tooooo!! Mr. Green Mr. Green

Ceili wrote:

Gracie, in the US, the 'individual' ala Ayn Rand is the ideal. Socialism is about the group. But, while the 'socialist' slur is political, it's all about money.
People hate paying taxes. The more things the government has to pay for, the more people are expected to foot the bill.
Basically, if you're considered a socialist, you tend to want to spend money on social programs like:
Parks, roads, schools, healthcare, libraries, police, armies, daycare, government, welfare, pensions, jails, courts and so on.
Conservatives generally think only certain things on the list are more worthy of the public dime, while Socialists feel these and many other things are money well spent.
Mind you, some programs cost waaaaaaay more than others, but people don't seem to mind paying for them, while others are a fraction of the cost but are perceived as a sin...
Every leader or politician in the US and the world, in a capitalist democratic country, has to walk a fine line between taxation and spending. If you spend too much, you're likely to be tagged with the socialist (or liberal in the US) handle, unless its military, or prisons.
Socialist laws from the past like the 40 hr work week, vacations, healthcare (everywhere but the states), education child labour laws, anti-segregation laws, women's rights, civil rights, anti-discrimination laws have changed our lives for the better, I believe.


Oh cool! Thats really interesting. Thank you Ceili! Hey, so the government never actually pays for anything? Everything comes from taxes? I didnt know that taxes pays for schools and libraries and even day cares and all that stuff! I don't know why but I never really thought about why you guys pay taxes. Totally off topic but, when do you start paying taxes? Around college time or something? Like, when will I have to start paying taxes? Is it different in Canada?


Okay! Its 9:00, I'm sleepy and I have school. More tommorow. Thanks guys! And thank you Setanta! I read some of your post and its really really interesting. Dude, its crazy how much you guys know about history. You should be teachers. I think you guys know more than any of my teachers do. I'm taking AP European history this year and my teacher sucks so I'm really gonna need your help, lol. Smile
But anyway, GoodNight!! Mr. Green
Ceili
 
  1  
Reply Thu 27 Sep, 2012 11:05 pm
@GracieGirl,
Gracie, taxes are paid on just about everything you buy, earn, sell, invest in or inherit. Some countries have death taxes. Some countries - think England, tax you just for being alive, a flat or a vat tax. Some countries tax their citizens even if they live or earn a living in another country.
In Canada, we pay income taxes - it's a sliding scale, the more you make - the more you pay, but... usually, if you earn more, you can find more tax loopholes. There are sales taxes but not in my province and some US states, GST - Good's and services taxes, sin taxes - booze and smokes. When you buy gasoline or luxury items, there are hidden taxes. Tolls are a kind of tax, paid when you drive on certain roads or bridges. Taxes are not necessarily uniform across provinces or states and every country has their own system.
Governments pay for things with taxes they've raised, fees collected and from investments they've made or from the interest paid on loans they've extended to industry or businesses.
My provinces has a rainy day fund that has billions of dollars raised from oil revenues. Which are really specialized taxes paid by oil companies that do business on our land.
Taxation is very complex, there are no simple explanations.
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Fri 28 Sep, 2012 09:07 am
@GracieGirl,
GracieGirl wrote:
Well since socialism isn't bad and it means soo many different things, don't you think its a really stupid insult?

I agree it's stupid in terms of content. But in another sense, it's not stupid because it works politically. Witness that the smears against Obama's Affordable Healthcare act . Although the Act makes the US healthcare system no more socialist than, say, Switzerland's, the Republican accusations of "socialism" portray Obama as some kind of American Breznev. And politically it seems to work. So the charge of Socialism is dumb and smart at the same time.
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Fri 28 Sep, 2012 09:21 am
@Thomas,
I would dissent from that only to the extent that the charge works with those who are disposed to think the worst of Mr. Obama in the first place. It's just larding on the insults, i seriously doubt that it convinces anyone among the so-called undecideds>
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Fri 28 Sep, 2012 11:49 am
@Setanta,
Your opinion of 'undecideds' must be higher than mine. I can't remember any presidential election when the choice between the candidates was as clear as this time. Any remaining 'undecideds' are likely to be insecure, uninformed morons. Murphy only knows what might sway them. But I digress. . . .
0 Replies
 
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Sep, 2012 02:49 am
I was not speaking in the context of the upcoming election. People were calling Mr. Obama a socialist as soon as he had been elected. At least two members here were ranting almost hysterically about him being a socialist when he had not yet even taken office. I was referring to the preaching to the choir aspect of calling him a socialist which began with the beginning of his presidency.
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Sep, 2012 06:25 am
@Setanta,
OK, that makes sense.
0 Replies
 
JTT
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Sep, 2012 10:36 am
@oralloy,
Quote:
Presuming I had the presence of mind to hit the floor and avoid the flying shards of glass, I probably would have had one more day to live compared to most of the world.


Didn't you get to take your grade five desk [or whatever grade you made it to] home with you, Oralloy? I thought those little desks were standard issue for all Americans as the ultimate safeguard against incoming commie warheads.

I mean, why would there be any fear when y'all had this wonderful government that never told any tall tales, never engaged in blatant propaganda, taking care of you?

0 Replies
 
JTT
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Sep, 2012 10:49 am
@GracieGirl,
Good to see you back, Gracie.

Even better to see you questioning.

Quote:
"Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James W. Loewen


Kinda makes you wonder sometimes whether an education is meant to enlighten or to keep readjusting the chains until you stop growing.
0 Replies
 
JTT
 
  1  
Reply Sat 29 Sep, 2012 10:55 am
@thack45,
Quote:
wut?


Quote:
There are many types but generally being a socialist is about having group orgies everyday and they plan to achieve this goal by butchering the greater part of the human populous who
Quote:


I took it as over the top sarcasm.

It's kinda scary, and eye opening, that you might have considered it reality.

Maybe you were right.
0 Replies
 
JTT
 
  1  
Reply Sun 30 Sep, 2012 11:47 am
@GracieGirl,
The lies have come from many more directions than your teachers, Gracie. 'socialism' had to be equated to 'communism' to allow the US military to overthrow numerous Latin American and South American democracies to ensure US business interests were allowed free rein in exploiting the wealth of these poor countries.

Most of the world's countries are socialist in nature, including the USA. Who builds your roads and schools? Who protects your communities from crime and fires? Who makes your parks and cares for them? Who controls the vast areas of land that the people of the US own?

Who sells off the riches of those lands owned by y'all to benefit a limited few? Smile That would be your socialist US government acting like a crony right wing/left wing government.

The US military is much more communist in nature than it is socialist. The capitalist part comes in when the government sucks up your tax dollars to feed the limited few of the military industrial complex.

Do you know how much the US military spends each year? Do you know how much energy the US military consumes each year just to go around invading poor sovereign nations?

Here's a couple of short videos that don't lie, Gracie.

American Imperialism timeline - Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=W96GLQ8bpew

American Imperialism timeline - Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=VPJB0hnUDHA
0 Replies
 
JTT
 
  2  
Reply Sun 30 Sep, 2012 03:02 pm
See this thread describing how "socialism" has, in the US, been made into a dirty word, how it has been equated, when necessary, with "communism", to aid US business interests in stealing the wealth of poor Central and South Americanos.

It's ironic when one notes, that communism is alive and well in parts of Israel. Is the US going to invade them next? Or will it just be a new US supported death squad to root out "those miserable Jewish communists"?

"Lies my teachers told me" - The War on Democracy

http://able2know.org/topic/198954-1
0 Replies
 
 

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