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What's your point? That doesn't exclude US Americans from offering criticism. We are not all one entity, there's ~300M of us. Many of us had nothing to do with

What's your point? That doesn't exclude US Americans from offering criticism. We are not all one entity, there's ~300M of us. Many of us had nothing to do with Vietnam and I can damn near guarantee wouldn't repeat that decision today.

avgcorrection 5y ago
> That doesn't exclude US Americans from offering criticism. I wasn’t replying to the criticism. I was replying to the comparison to the “liberal mindset”. If liberal democracies hadn’t invaded countries in order to stop the spread of ideas then the comment would have been fine.
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  While flawed in practice, I think the so-called "domino theory" had some valid roots in the so-called Paradox of Tolerance. It's hard to dispute one historical aspect of communism in particular, namely that it cannot tolerate competing ideologies. The only way to implement communism is through the use of force; it's not something free people will adopt voluntarily. I may think of myself as a tolerant person, but if you have to stick a gun in my back to make me practice your ideology -- which you do -- why should I be required to tolerate that? It can be argued that it's a moral responsibility to stop the spread of such a pathological system of thought by any means necessary, just as if we were fighting an infectious disease. I won't go that far personally, but others in America did, and the wars in Korea and Viet Nam were the result. Not so much an apology as an (admittedly oversimplified) explanation.
  - avgcorrection 5y ago
    Nice abuse of Popper’s phrase. Of course you have just hoisted yourself on your own petard: it’s hard to dispute that American capitalism cannot tolerate competing ideologies, evidenced by (e.g.) The Vietnam War and Korean War. But now I am just repeating my original comment. You also have another glaring problem to address: it is very easy and simple to tolerate the kind of socialism/communism where an independent nation state wants to use it’s own national resources instead of opening it up to foreign private interests. No one is harmed by that.[1] I guess the CIA just had a very eccentric interpretation of Popper. [1] Unless you want to get real Red Scare and concoct some crazy theory about how those small nation states are really puppets of the Soviet Union who will use those resources to eventually nuke the Free World… and therefore War is Peace, Paradox of Tolerance and all that.
    - CamperBob2 5y ago
      Comparisons to capitalism as an abstract ideology notwithstanding, you do have to use violence to keep people from voluntarily buying from and selling to each other. There is a reason why the Communist Party of the USA is a thing and the Capitalist Party of the PRC is not. They are willing to use violence within their own borders to suppress competing ideologies in the absence of tangible criminal offenses, while we generally are not. And then there's the simple question of whether more people die trying to sneak into your country or out of it. Moral relativists run into serious trouble with that one.
      - avgcorrection 5y ago
        You have to use violence in order to stop people from nationalising their own resources instead of opening themselves up to foreign corporate penetration. The US federal state had to use violence to suppress the socialist Black Panthers. I could go on like this all day. You have no legs to stand on when your claim is that capitalism is just voluntarism.
        CamperBob2 5y ago
        I could go on like this all day. Looks that way. I think we're talking past each other, peace out.

avgcorrection 5y ago

> That doesn't exclude US Americans from offering criticism. I wasn’t replying to the criticism. I was replying to the comparison to the “liberal mindset”. If liberal democracies hadn’t invaded countries in order to stop the spread of ideas then the comment would have been fine.

CamperBob2 5y ago
While flawed in practice, I think the so-called "domino theory" had some valid roots in the so-called Paradox of Tolerance. It's hard to dispute one historical aspect of communism in particular, namely that it cannot tolerate competing ideologies. The only way to implement communism is through the use of force; it's not something free people will adopt voluntarily. I may think of myself as a tolerant person, but if you have to stick a gun in my back to make me practice your ideology -- which you do -- why should I be required to tolerate that? It can be argued that it's a moral responsibility to stop the spread of such a pathological system of thought by any means necessary, just as if we were fighting an infectious disease. I won't go that far personally, but others in America did, and the wars in Korea and Viet Nam were the result. Not so much an apology as an (admittedly oversimplified) explanation.
- avgcorrection 5y ago
  Nice abuse of Popper’s phrase. Of course you have just hoisted yourself on your own petard: it’s hard to dispute that American capitalism cannot tolerate competing ideologies, evidenced by (e.g.) The Vietnam War and Korean War. But now I am just repeating my original comment. You also have another glaring problem to address: it is very easy and simple to tolerate the kind of socialism/communism where an independent nation state wants to use it’s own national resources instead of opening it up to foreign private interests. No one is harmed by that.[1] I guess the CIA just had a very eccentric interpretation of Popper. [1] Unless you want to get real Red Scare and concoct some crazy theory about how those small nation states are really puppets of the Soviet Union who will use those resources to eventually nuke the Free World… and therefore War is Peace, Paradox of Tolerance and all that.
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    Comparisons to capitalism as an abstract ideology notwithstanding, you do have to use violence to keep people from voluntarily buying from and selling to each other. There is a reason why the Communist Party of the USA is a thing and the Capitalist Party of the PRC is not. They are willing to use violence within their own borders to suppress competing ideologies in the absence of tangible criminal offenses, while we generally are not. And then there's the simple question of whether more people die trying to sneak into your country or out of it. Moral relativists run into serious trouble with that one.
    - avgcorrection 5y ago
      You have to use violence in order to stop people from nationalising their own resources instead of opening themselves up to foreign corporate penetration. The US federal state had to use violence to suppress the socialist Black Panthers. I could go on like this all day. You have no legs to stand on when your claim is that capitalism is just voluntarism.
      - CamperBob2 5y ago
        I could go on like this all day. Looks that way. I think we're talking past each other, peace out.