Re: Asimov Site

["Kelli Halliburton" <kelli217@crosswinds.not>]

"Paul Schlyter" <pausch@saafNOSPAM.se> wrote in message
news:8ollia$1c0$1@merope.saaf.se...

> :-) ....and there wasn't any Communist Party in the CCCP either?
>
> And everything published in Pravda was 100% true?  ("Pravda", the former
> major newspaper in the CCCP, is also russian for "truth").
>
> Don't believe everything you hear... :-)

I hope you're not trying to say that CCCP was some sort of abbreviation in
which one C stood for Communist and the P stood for party...?

Becasue, as I understand it, the Cyrillic alphabet uses the C character to
represent the sound that in Roman-based alphabets is represented by S.
Likewise P -> R. And that the abbreviation actually stood for something like
"Soyuz Sovietski Soshialstik Republikai." (Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics)

Oh, and by the way -- Communism was supposed to be the result of integrating
Socialist and Capitalist ideologies. And in that sense, there are many
Communist countries in existence today; *many* of them in the "Western
world," that don't think of themselves at all as Communist.

The true ideals of Communism are *far* different than the reality practiced
by totalitarian regimes that distorted those ideals for their own ends. Of
course, they're just a tad bit Utopian... :) (and I use the word 'Utopian'
in the sense of 'unrealistic, highly improbable')

> ...hmmmm, so the northerners benefited from the slavery in the south
> and that was wrong, but the southerners who actually had the slaves
> didn't do anything wrong?
>
> Anyway, if the northerners benefited so much from slavery, why did
> they go to war to stop it?

You misunderstand. He was admitting to the folly of the Southern position on
slavery first, then going on to say that the Northern motives for their part
in the war were not much better.

> But during those glory days of democracy before 1787, you did have a king
> and queen.

Actually, if we go by the Treaty of Paris, it was 1781. If we go by the
Declaration of Independence, it was 1776. If we go by ratification of the
current Constitution, it was 1789. The Constitution was merely *written* in
1787. The US was both independent and democratic from the time of the Treaty
of Paris, even while under the Articles of Confederation, which was replaced
by the current Constitution.

> BTW, whenever the Swedish king and queen visit the US, very many people
are
> interested in them, many more than when they visit e.g. Britain.  This
must
> be because the british are used to a king/queen, while the americans
aren't.

USians (as opposed to Canadians, Mexicans, et al. d. North America) go
"ga-ga" over just about any visiting monarch. Probably for the reason you
stated, we're not used to them. They're curiosities to us.

> In principle but not completely in practice.  You "forgot" your period of
> slave trading.  Trading slaves is not compatible with democracy.

Democracy, being the idea that "the people" should decide what course of
action the government should take, always depends on the definition of "the
people." Sweden is not a democracy, either, because children are not allowed
to vote. Democracy does *not* mean "freedom for all." It also doesn't mean
that *everyone* has a vote. Another example: convicted felons lose the
ability to vote. Many of them are also incarcerated or otherwise
detained/restricted involuntarily.

While not defending slavery at all, I will submit that, *at the time*,
slaves were not 'people' and therefore not entitled to vote, nor even to
personal freedom. In fact, until my own state cast the final vote to ratify
the Constitutional Amendment making it legal, *women* were not entitled to
vote, and (perhaps consequently) were treated as chattel, not 'people.' When
did Sweden grant suffrage to women?

In the final analysis, though, what the heck does any of this have to do,
anymore, with the inappropriately archaic way that the sound principles of
intellectual property rights have been applied to modern technological
developments?
--
kelli217@crosswinds.not