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[thombergeron]

Steinbeck wasn't a communist.

Steinbeck was more a populist, greatly influenced by the travails of the American working class during the interwar period. I think what Cuchulain was saying is that Steinbeck would have been horrified at your appropriation of Joad's speech in order to defend cretinism.

George Orwell, on the other hand, was a socialist, and fiercely proud of it. He was shot through the neck while defending the socialist Spanish Republic.

[insert_namehere]

Steinbeck wasn't a communist.

Sorry for bursting your bubble.

Nope, he wasn’t a communist – as thombergeron said, he was a populist. Like many populists, He didn’t fall into the classic libtard camp, or at least the one so many conservatives feel the whole “If you believe ONE thing, you gotta believe ALL these things” mindset socially progressive folks tossed into.

Point of fact, equitable opportunity doesn’t rob anyone. In my opinion, there is a fair standard of job opportunity, wage protection, fair housing and non-discriminating individual rights that don’t slam the capitalist dream into oblivion.

Political action tends to be a pendulum, especially when there are only 2 parties to mark the arc points – as such, BOTH camps tend to take a good idea and muck it up by pushing it past the point of logical application. Kennedy style democrats had their shot at screwing good ideas into the ground; post Nixon era Republicans have done and excellent job of trashing any sense of proportion and logic the Conservative camp ever had.

And now the pendulum swings again.

Trust me, if Steinbeck were alive today, he’d be writing about plenty of things you agree with, as well as plenty of things you don’t.

[Quinn]

Political action tends to be a pendulum, especially when there are only 2 parties to mark the arc points – as such, BOTH camps tend to take a good idea and muck it up by pushing it past the point of logical application. Kennedy style democrats had their shot at screwing good ideas into the ground; post Nixon era Republicans have done and excellent job of trashing any sense of proportion and logic the Conservative camp ever had.

From my perspective, this cuts to the heart of this nation's continuing inability to deal effectively with any of the truly pressing issues that threaten its future. It's harder to fall into this dynamic with a parliamentary democracy than it is in a presidential democracy, which is one of many reasons I tend to favor the parliamentary model.

-Quinn

[thombergeron]

From my perspective, this cuts to the heart of this nation's continuing inability to deal effectively with any of the truly pressing issues that threaten its future.

But don't you think this is a very contemporary deficiency in American politics? The American government, with active participation from both sides of the aisle, implemented some amazing and innovative public policy during the 20th Century: Social Security, Medicare, the Peace Corp, the Marshall Plan, the G.I. Bill, etc. These policies in particular were driven primarily by the executive.

It's really only been in the past quarter century that effective public policy has been hamstrung by, forgive me, partisanship, and as a corollary, a politics of style over substance.

So I'm not ready to give up on presidential democracy yet. The European parliamentary democracies, while showing an enviable level of efficiency over the long term, seem to me to be characterized by stasis, and really lack the innovative power of a presidential system.

[Cuchulain]

Steinbeck wasn't a communist.

From Wiki:

In 1967, at the behest of Newsday magazine, Steinbeck went to Vietnam to report on the war there. Thinking that the Vietnam War was a heroic venture, he was considered a Hawk for his position on that war. His sons both served in Vietnam prior to his death.

Sorry for bursting your bubble.

No, he wasn't, but he sure as hell wasn't a REICHwinger. You just pissed me off by taking a passage from one of my favorite books and twisting it to your own nefarious purposes. I'm sure you did it with an evil grin, knowing that it would be like fingernails on a blackboard to anyone on the Left.

Steinbeck wasn't easy to pigeonhole. He did support the Vietnam conflict; LBJ was a friend of his. He also had many friends on the Left. He sympathized with the poor and the Labor Movement and he detested Joe McCarthy and nuclear weapons. He's probably my favorite author. I suggest you read ' Tortilla Flat','Cannery Row' and 'Sweet Thursday' - books which will bring a smile to anyone's face, regardless of their politics.

[Quinn]

Thom, taken from a long-term historical perspective I would definitely be inclined to agree with you, particularly when it comes to waging war. It is the growing partisan divide, and the way it has come to affect our form of government, of the last few decades that has markedly changed the national equation for the worse. I agree with insert_namehere’s assertion: specifically that the two parties have monopolized every conceivable position and taken many of them well beyond the point of practical applicability. The resulting polarization of our political process has left this nation paralyzed for nearly three decades now, reliant upon bureaucratic inertia for anything approximating genuine progress.

I find it interesting that the international system’s other notable presidential democracy – that being France – suffers from a similar inability to respond to changing political realities the way other, healthy European parliamentary democracies have. I’m not saying parliamentary democracy is a political panacea – far from it. Nations like Italy serve as a prime example of that system’s potential failings. Still, in my opinion, it’s much harder for political parties to so thoroughly monopolize the entirety of a nation’s political spectrum in a healthy parliamentary democracy.

That's just my opinion. I would certainly be interested in hearing your or any other persepctive on the matter.

-Quinn

[Coroner]

No, seriously, I´d really like to share my knowledge and my opinions but since it´s all about America, I´m not interested and I don´t complain. This is an American forum, so it´s interesting to me anyways to see how people in America think.

Coroner, for what it's worth, the politics of Europe and Asia have long been of greater interest to me than those of the US. If there's an international issue you want to put on the table, by all means do so. Though this is primarily an American oriented forum, there are quite a few posters from Europe and places outside the US.

-Quinn

If only one person is interested in international issues, it´s enough for me to start different threads. Thanks, Quinn.

And guyone, as LG already made it clear, I´m talking for myself and I can´t believe that you thought I´d like you to die. It was more something like that you´ll be the only one here from the right-wingers corps. All that´s left to you is to copy and paste WMC´s posts, that were by the way also a result of copy and paste......

And there we go: you should solve your own issues...... your problem is that you claim everyone a communist who´s not a right-winger. There´s much more than The American Way and communism, than Republicans and the Democrats....... I´ll start European topics and you´ll see that you´re trapped in a dimension.

[guyone]

And guyone, as LG already made it clear, I´m talking for myself and I can´t believe that you thought I´d like you to die.

Well...*snif**snif*...thank you very much...*snif**snif*...you don't know how much that means to me.

your problem is that you claim everyone a communist who´s not a right-winger

Everyone who does not think like me is a communist (or more commonly bolshevik). And how is that a problem?



*Attention ACLU members - The above post is satirical in nature. We at guyone™ did not intend on offending anyone.

[thombergeron]

*Attention ACLU members - The above post is satirical in nature. We at guyone™ did not intend on offending anyone.

As a card-carrying member, I can say with the utmost confidence that the ACLU has never, in almost 90 years of existence, argued a position that could even be vaguely construed as stifling speech. In fact, the ACLU’s founding principle is a broadly expansive view of the First Amendment. So reality is precisely the opposite of what you’ve implied with your comment.

For a particularly titillating example of the ACLU's position on freedom of speech, google "Shirley L. Phelps-Roper v. Jeremiah W. Nixon, et al."

This makes at least twice in a single week that you’ve demonstrated a total lack of understanding of the issues involving the First Amendment, a core principle of the American experiment. Are you certain you live in and were educated in the U.S.?

[guyone]

Yes. I was educated in the USA not the USSR where you received your bolshevik training.