No way, you're not going to slide that one past me. Your technique is bad logic and bad science, not to mention dirty pool.

Sure, the Bolsheviks were awful, but so were the Nazis and the Tartars and the Aztecs, as were the Conquistadudes who wiped them out. Countries and civilizations were being destroyed by tyrants for thousands of years before Communism was invented, Capitalism is only a few centuries older, (with a pretty grim history too, I might add), and industrial finance Capitalism (dark, satanic mills, remember?) only predated socialism by a few decades. In fact, if it weren't for its crimes, there would be no socialism! Your own particular flavor of Libertarianism has by your own admission never existed at all, its a wet dream of the Reagan administration. And I hope it never does exist, from what I've seen of its champions. And pu-leeze don't go into your song and dance about the founding fathers, either. As enlightened as they were, and as much as I respect them in their historical context, they still stole the land from the Indians and worked it with slave labor. Look it up.

You pick a true fact, and use any challenge to your application of it as a denial of that obvious fact, which automatically justifies your position. Of course you're going to win, its a variation of the "when did you stop beating your wife"? maneuver.

And if we protest, we must be making excuses for the commies because we are obviously opposing someone who denounces them. If we further protest that we are not communists, you respond that we are unconsciously backing them because we do not join in your condemnation of them with equal vigor.

And if we condemn them, it's still not enough for you because mere condemnation is a necessary but not sufficient condition, we have to sign on with your whole goombah voodoo libertarian/Randian Zodiacal constellation because even the slightest deviation from it proves we are not serious about our anti-communist or patriotic bona fides.

Your tactic is not new, conservatives have been singing the red-bait rag for years on countless issues, invariably on the wrong side of all of them, too. By just changing a few proper nouns and making a few rhetorical substitutions, it worked for the Communists as well. Like modern American conservatives, the traditional classic Marxist is obnoxious, annoying, self-righteous and bull-headed, impossible to talk to, even for those who may agree with some of his views in broad outline; he invariably demands complete acceptance of his dogma or you are just a gutless "bourgeois liberal". You guys sound exactly the same, except you drop the adjective, maybe it sounds too lefty for you, and you folks are sooo sensitive to push-button, emotional trigger words.

Come to think of it, it is hysterical that you are so locked into your world view that you do not realize how similar your prose and discourse is to that of your ideological opposites. It's not just hyperbole, you sound EXACTLY like my cousin, Robert the Red; except we're family, and we understand we cannot remain friends long if we continue to argue politics. I don't feel you're capable of exercising that much self-discipline, you're a Man With A Mission, a Caped Crusader, and woe to him that gets in your way. You had to try and sneak it into your last post, didn't you?

As much as I'd like to talk with you about this and other topics (I think I might even learn something, you're not stupid and you have obviously given many of these issues a lot of thought and research), I feel I can't get a thought in edgewise. You ignore my data, you disparage my sources, you dismiss my convictions, you assault my logic, and question my morals. I do concede you have stopped attacking my alleged lack of patriotism. I guess that's some progress. But when cornered, you invariably fall back on calling your opponents Bolsheviks or their Bolshie stooges, and no matter how bad things were due to some right wing outrage, the other side was worse, as you never fail to point out. And then you tell me it is because of your rigorous engineering background. What a hoot. I'm sorry, but I do believe I've had enough. If you want to interpret that as a triumph for your philosophy or your intellect, go right ahead.

But you might be interested to know that you have succeeded in removing my apathy about politics. You have managed to radicalize my young ass. I haven't altered my political opinions, but I have definitely changed how I feel about those who hold yours. Congratulations.