[nothumb]

[ QUOTE ]
That's why Ray Zee and Zeno have more wisdom in their little fingers than all the Leftists in the world possess in their combined cerebral cortexes;-)


[/ QUOTE ]

I think Ray and Zeno are both pretty sharp guys, definitely bigger poker minds than myself, quite possibly more knowledgeable in other subjects as well.

But I could smoke their pinky fingers on the SATs, and I'll even spot them 5 minutes.

I would appreciate if you would define "leftist" a little better. I consider myself to be somewhere on the 'left' but probably not in any category commonly described here. You are usually much more specific than this.

I assume you probably meant communist/socialist.

I think there are a number of reasons (beyond the authoritarian, Leninist readings of Marx that pass for Marxism these days) that the worst human rights violations (in terms of sheer numbers) have so far been committed by socialist states. Some of them have to do with 'leftism' and some don't. I don't think we can attribute these brutal, inexcusable circumstances to Leftist ideologies, however; rather, those who have perpetrated them ceased to be 'socialists' or any other form of legitimate left-wing political types when they murdered their own people. Still, the vulnerability of left-wing revolutionary governments to these hacks is of great concern.

BTW, where do we put the Holocaust on this scale? In terms of sheer numbers it is not as successful as Stalinism when it comes to genocide, the motive was perhaps even more sinister.

I haven't read through this thread yet, so if anyone brought this up already, my bad.