"You can't parse facts."

Gee, just when I thought you were ready to kiss and make up.

The evidence is out there for anyone to find. If I'm wrong, it should be easy enough to prove it.

Face it Tom, if you were right, and if the evidence was that straightforward, we wouldn't be having this argument, you would have already convinced me. I may be dim enough to stumble on the subtleties of an argument, but I'm smart enough enough to see an air-tight case when I see one. You haven't got one, and the burden of proof is on you, because you are the one claiming to have an objective experimental method of determining a simple yes and no answer to a simple unambiguous question. You're not even close.

This argument has nothing to do with facts. It has to do with context, interpretation, opinion, and faith. And the faith is all on your side, because you are the one talking absolutes, not me. You have adopted the extremist, uncompromising position so you are desperate to apply a litmus test argument for it.

Your list-making is a fundamentally flawed exercise because you get to pick ahead of time who is on which list, and you get to pick which list is the good one and which is the bad one. You also have decided that list-making is a valid method of justifying your predetermined position that any form of capitalism is infinitely superior and preferable to any form of socialism; and that furthermore, any socialism leads inevitably to Stalinism or worse. While you are at it, you are completely dismissing any possibility of a hybrid or compromise between the two, because that conflicts with both your quasi-religious conviction and your list-making methodology. Tom, you made up your lists AFTER you decided what the question was, and what the answer had to be.

One more time, and then no more. How many people Stalin murdered has absolutely nothing to do with whether Denmark, Sweden or Finland had a better government in 1940. All it proves is that Stalin was an evil son-of-a-bitch in charge of a corrupt government. But so was his worst enemy and ideological opposite: Hitler.

I realize you totally reject the idea that Hitler and Stalin were ideological opposites, because that would inconveniently place each on different lists, but I would rather take their word for it than yours. It parses the facts much better.

OK, I'll let you have the last word, now. But I'm not playing this game any more.