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Thought this was interesting. Fare evasion is skyrocketing in NYC costing the transit authority hundreds of millions of dollars each year. This is clearly linked with the DA's decision to no prosecute fare evaders because they don't want to "criminalize poverty".

This is an example of an extremely liberal state thinking with the heart instead of the brain. The transit authority can't sustain itself. Fare evaders are stealing from taxpayers. What's next? Is the DA's office going to not prosecute shoplifting because it "criminalizes poverty?"

Just to clarify, I would have no problem with discounted or reduced fares for the poor. Declining to prosecute a specific illegal activity just encourages more of it.
 
Heathme said:
How to confront marxists.

https://townhall.com/columnists/mik...xamine-incompetent-marxist-educators-n2549938
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Interesting a fake argument with a fake person that seems outlandish. He pretends to quote information from "academic book published by Harvard University Press" but does not say which book or site his source. This article is silly and pointless. He also ignores the bad things that other countries including the united states has done. How many of our own citizens have we killed in comparison to those countries? Why were those citizens killed? Among many other questions left unanswered.

As someone who does not believe that communism is a good form of government this article does nothing to show a good argument against it and really fails at its headline. Ironically it makes the author of this article sound very incompetent at putting together a reasonable argument.
 
Ron Mexico said:
Interesting a fake argument with a fake person that seems outlandish. He pretends to quote information from "academic book published by Harvard University Press" but does not say which book or site his source. This article is silly and pointless. He also ignores the bad things that other countries including the united states has done. How many of our own citizens have we killed in comparison to those countries? Why were those citizens killed? Among many other questions left unanswered.

As someone who does not believe that communism is a good form of government this article does nothing to show a good argument against it and really fails at its headline. Ironically it makes the author of this article sound very incompetent at putting together a reasonable argument.
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Well, actually, in fairness, it does mention the academic book in question:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106169.The_Black_Book_of_Communism

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism

I was not in academia for very long, but long enough, and in history departments, to know this narrative of students being indoctrinated by communist leaning professors is pretty silly. It's like do people really believe there are all these teachers standing in front of their classes waving copies of, and praising the wisdom of, Chairman Mao's little red book? Lol, this is really silly and over the top, if people actually believe this is somehow the game plan, either in college, or even in high school, well, IMO they are just subscribing to a paranoid narrative then reveals more about their paranoia then actual events in the real world.

During the Vietnam War era, I did know professors sympathetic to the North Vietnamese, but this was more from the perspective that saw American intervention as a pointless exponent of the "domino theory", and an intervention in what was essentially a civil war. Look at China's application of modern tech in their social credit system, and their treatment of Muslim minorities in western China, or their harvesting of organs, and you won't find too many apologists for their communist system, that's for sure. I just found the author of this article to be over the top with his imagination.
 
Red said:
Well, actually, in fairness, it does mention the academic book in question:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106169.The_Black_Book_of_Communism

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism

I was not in academia for very long, but long enough, and in history departments, to know this narrative of students being indoctrinated by communist leaning professors is pretty silly. It's like do people really believe there are all these teachers standing in front of their classes waving copies of, and praising the wisdom of, Chairman Mao's little red book? Lol, this is really silly and over the top, if people actually believe this is somehow the game plan, either in college, or even in high school, well, IMO they are just subscribing to a paranoid narrative then reveals more about their paranoia then actual events in the real world.

During the Vietnam War era, I did know professors sympathetic to the North Vietnamese, but this was more from the perspective that saw American intervention as a pointless exponent of the "domino theory", and an intervention in what was essentially a civil war. Look at China's application of modern tech in their social credit system, and their treatment of Muslim minorities in western China, or their harvesting of organs, and you won't find too many apologists for their communist system, that's for sure. I just found the author of this article to be over the top with his imagination.
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Good catch, the author did show their source. I actually skipped reading that paragraph because I thought it was apart of the poll on the website. It does seem like the original source has some decent information in it but also some controversial stuff. Including 2 of the main contributors disagreeing with information from it. Seems like at best its not a reliable source based on the controversy over the data.
 
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Ron Mexico said:
Good catch, the author did show their source. I actually skipped reading that paragraph because I thought it was apart of the poll on the website. It does seem like the original source has some decent information in it but also some controversial stuff. Including 2 of the main contributors disagreeing with information from it. Seems like at best its not a reliable source based on the controversy over the data.
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Yeah, I noticed the author of the book caught some flak from some contributors.

Well, it was a long time ago now, and I can only speak to my own experience, but if ever there was an era when college professors might have spoken like "commie pinkos", it was the Vietnam years. Yet, my professors were most concerned with helping us students learn how to use the discriminating faculty of our minds to recognize fallacies in arguments and theories, etc. The opposite of indoctrination.

I had one professor, he was from South Korea, and taught Asian history. He started every class the same way. He would stand in front of us, and loudly proclaim "History is bull****". Because he had a strong Asian accent, it always sounded like "History is boo****". And we always chuckled. It's conceivable that many didn't really understand what he meant. Well, it was his way of pointing out that history is almost always written by the victors, the winners. And so, history as written provides an incomplete picture when that is the case. We teach American history from the point of view of European settlement, not from the point of view of those who lost their land, Native Americans. And so he was saying our incomplete histories inevitably reflect bias and one sidedness. Again, this was an invitation to open mindedness, not indoctrination.

There was another professor in the department who lacked tenure. Uh, oh, gotta be careful without tenure. He preached revolution, overthrowing the government. It was his reaction to the war. It got him fired. I did not take the class that got hm in hot water, and I forget now what I thought, and what students or faculty thought.

Anyway, that was then. But in reading this guy's take, it honestly seems like he's still living in the era of Sen. Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare. It just seems over the top and very dated in that respect. And that was my initial reaction to the article @Heathme posted. Namely, it seemed like the author was stuck in the 1950's. "How to confront Marxists" just seems like an out of touch "problem" to solve.
 
Red said:
Yeah, I noticed the author of the book caught some flak from some contributors.

Well, it was a long time ago now, and I can only speak to my own experience, but if ever there was an era when college professors might have spoken like "commie pinkos", it was the Vietnam years. Yet, my professors were most concerned with helping us students learn how to use the discriminating faculty of our minds to recognize fallacies in arguments and theories, etc. The opposite of indoctrination.

I had one professor, he was from South Korea, and taught Asian history. He started every class the same way. He would stand in front of us, and loudly proclaim "History is bull****". Because he had a strong Asian accent, it always sounded like "History is boo****". And we always chuckled. It's conceivable that many didn't really understand what he meant. Well, it was his way of pointing out that history is almost always written by the victors, the winners. And so, history as written provides an incomplete picture when that is the case. We teach American history from the point of view of European settlement, not from the point of view of those who lost their land, Native Americans. And so he was saying our incomplete histories inevitably reflect bias and one sidedness. Again, this was an invitation to open mindedness, not indoctrination.

There was another professor in the department who lacked tenure. Uh, oh, gotta be careful without tenure. He preached revolution, overthrowing the government. It was his reaction to the war. It got him fired. I did not take the class that got hm in hot water, and I forget now what I thought, and what students or faculty thought.

Anyway, that was then. But in reading this guy's take, it honestly seems like he's still living in the era of Sen. Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare. It just seems over the top and very dated in that respect. And that was my initial reaction to the article @Heathme posted. Namely, it seemed like the author was stuck in the 1950's. "How to confront Marxists" just seems like an out of touch "problem" to solve.
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Out of touch? Red, how are we going to stop the Soviet Union by putting our heads in the sand?
 
Gameface said:
Out of touch? Red, how are we going to stop the Soviet Union by putting our heads in the sand?
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We've transitioned to a "new" problem: how are we going to deal with the spread of authoritarian nationalism?

I do remember the sense of hope, excitement, at the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
 
Gameface said:
Out of touch? Red, how are we going to stop the Soviet Union by putting our heads in the sand?
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And I'll say this, because it's as easy as anything to say. If I ever despair at the state of America under Trump, a brief look at what the Chinese are doing in their nation and society makes me ever grateful to be an American. Same goes looking at Putin's Russia....
 
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