Conversations with Libertarians

I was having a heated discussion a couple weeks ago on Facebook.  I keep this person on my profile because it is a bad idea to become isolated with people who only believe the same things that you do.  You begin to think everyone believes the same things you do and are shocked when someone else thinks differently.  If I were to take a stab at it, I would say it is what is wrong with America these days; everyone seeks out the company of people with the same view point and they became isolated.  So to help prevent this from happening to me, I read what people who do not believe what I believe say.  This leads to some interesting arguments.

One such argument had to do with the evils of Socialism.  There is a belief in the United States that Socialism is Evil and that it is equal to Communism and by that they mean a Communist Government, like Cuba and the Soviet Union.  The thing is, the point I was arguing is that the only thing Communist governments have to do with Communism is the word.  My fellow verbal duelists could not get past that it was only a name.  See words have meanings, but names do not have to follow the meanings.  The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a name, so is Russia.  Union means something, Soviet means something, Socialist means something and Republic also means something, but used together they did not really mean what the words together are supposed to mean.  Yes it was a union, a collection of states under common rule, but it was originally an Empire that had grown for centuries of conquest into one nation, so the word Union, which implies a willing coming together for common cause is incorrect.  Republics and nations are democratically ruled and the Soviet Union was not that.  Soviet is the Russian word for council and theoretically the voice of the common worker was represented in government in these councils, but in practice the councils were filled with one party state members with only one person on the election.  Socialism is a political ideal where the fundamental aspects of the economy are controlled by the whole community.  So with a name like USSR, you would expect a nation of democratically elected Councilors drawn from the masses that rule the economy and distribute the results of labour equally, if you just looked at the name you would say that that is what the country was all about.  And just like the book and movie Animal Farm, it started out that way, but did not last for very long.  

So back to the discussion, they were saying that Socialism is bad because the Soviet Union was bad and did not work, but I countered and stated that that country was not a socialist country.  But they responded that it was, because it said so in the name of the country.  Then I pointed out that if they believed everything that was written down they were idiots and believed that the China, North Korea, Belarus and almost every other totalitarian government were Democracies because the word 'Republic' is featured prominently in their name eg the People's Republic of China et al.  I told them that they can't just believe something is what it says it is, you have to use your eyes and investigate a little.  

My point was that they could not say that Socialism was bad and cite the Soviet Union, because the Soviet Union was not a socialist regime, but a totalitarian dictatorship.  True Communistic governments have never existed for very long, mostly because they scare the shit out of the people in control and they quickly get dismantled.  In the aftermath of the German invasion of France in the 1870s Paris established a very short lived communist government.  There have been countless communist villages stretching from the the dawn of time to modern small units in the present day.  Anytime that a group of people get together for the mutual protection and mutual benefit of the community it is communism.  Look at the two words: community and communism.  Don't they strike you as oddly similar?

The true fact of the matter is that there is no pure government form works on the larger scale and remains pure.  You can not think of one, because they all fail in the end, because people are all individuals and there is nothing that can get past that.  For example, the people I was arguing with are Libertarians, they believe ere should be no taxes and no government and this government works great, as long as you are wealthy and young.  If you are poor and old and get sick often and can't work libertarian societies would not work.  You cannot name a libertarian government.  Democracies also don't work in their purest form.  Everyone votes on everything, everyone has to stay informed about everything.  There are no politicians, because everyone would be a politician.  We would get nothing done because we would constantly arguing points of view and not farming or making things.  The only government that works is a government of column A, B, C D— straight through Z.  Little bits of everything working together.  Flexible to the situation.  The Canadian version of democracy allows for the suspension of democratic rights for emergency situations, something that the American Government does not have; they have to vote on everything!  In Canada, the government can suspend democratic procedures with the War Measures Act.  It allows the government to make quick decisions without having to debate them.