<p>^^ Mini, I must, respectfully disagree on your take of Stalin’s rise. He was very much entrenched in power at the start of WWII and prior, when he signed the treaty with Hitler. Battle of Stalingrad is one of the most shameful experiences of the 20th Century - thousands of young boys going to slaughter, because if they didn’t, the police echelons walking behind them had orders to shoot to kill anyone who looked back.
In terms of Communism not being a possibility after the War - it stopped being a possibility when Lenin started killing of his comrades a year after the Revolution.</p>
<p>Bay - Punished? By killing off this tired old refrain? … “liberal press, courts, institutions, professors, etc. are killing America and must be stopped!” CC has suffered many similar threads over the years. The quicker this one goes, the better for us all IMHO. Plenty of heat … but no light at all.</p>
<p>". He was very much entrenched in power at the start of WWII and prior, when he signed the treaty with Hitler. Battle of Stalingrad is one of the most shameful experiences of the 20th Century - thousands of young boys going to slaughter, because if they didn’t, the police echelons walking behind them had orders to shoot to kill anyone who looked back."</p>
<p>I make no defense of Stalin, other than I likely wouldn’t be alive today if the Russians had lost. And you’d likely be speaking German.</p>
<p>@mini - jawohl ;)</p>
<p>OK … so when Gorbachev tore down the Berlin Wall, was that a liberal decision or a conservative decision? Or was it JUST A DECISION THAT MADE SENSE?? </p>
<p>Is it really possible to govern a democracy when every decision must be dogmatically sanctioned?</p>
<p>mini, you and I likely wouldn’t be alive today regardless, if Stalin’s ambitions had been fulfilled. I don’t know about yours, but a whole branch of my family vanished from what is now Belarus and Russia in the early 30s, long before the war. My great grandfather had siblings who stayed behind (and one who accompanied him to America, but went back). Their children, my grandmother’s cousins, enthusiastically supported the Russian Revolution. We have many letters and photographs from them until about 1933, when all of them and their families vanished without a trace.</p>
<p>^ JHS - My ancestors were on the “other side” … i.e., supporters of the Czar. My GF’s family were engineers working for the Czarist government, and my GM’s family were large landowners. Both families elected to sent part of their families to America … and the ex-pats were the only ones that survived. Harsh times, for sure.</p>
<p>I wish threads like this didn’t exist because they make me think bad things about many of the posters, about people whom otherwise I try to treat as intelligent … and who then reveal themselves to be something else.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one. As to main topic thread, tenured professorships are one place in the world where free thought cannot be bludgeoned into right-of-center or extreme right political correctness.</p>
<p>You all heard me. Conservatism is now politically correct in this country. The policies of Richard Nixon today would be considered liberal.</p>
<p>
Political discussions seem to bring out the worst in some people.</p>
<p>^certainly in the minds of those who have a differing ideology</p>