Ever since ancient times man has been keeping chickens. The ancestor of the chicken is the red junglefowl, which originated in India. The Indians, being superbly intelligent, domesticated this animal so that they could have them kill each other for their amusement. The Romans did it better.
(From an Email Correspondence on Veganism)
It does not matter if he is a scientist, he quotes real vigorous scientific research, while Doctor Campbell, although being a scientist, has no rigorous research to support his claims. The China study has been highly criticized for assuming correlation implies causation, among other things. Declaring that you don't want to hear what someone has to say because they are not a scientist is borderline ad hominem. Only listening to scientists is argumentum ab auctoritate, as is bringing up a list of influential vegans. Scientific research must stand on its own merit, not the merit of who is presenting it. No one is claiming you are going to lose intelligence simply from not eating meat, what is being claimed is that over millions of years meat played an important role in the development of human intelligence. To claim that that is false simply because an African tribe survives without meat is a strawman at best. What this does suggest is that if meat is taken out of the human diet, intelligence will be lost over millions of years. Socialism is often misdefined. Socialism is nothing more, and nothing less, than workers' ownership of the means of production. Capitalism is nothing more, and nothing less, than a ruling class's ownership of the means of production. In Canada, and especially in the United States, socialism is frequently misdefined. Misdefinitions of these terms are often even taught in high schools; with socialism always being associated with more government and free services, and capitalism with less government and less free services. This is quite wrong, as many forms of socialism would mean less government, such as anarchism and market socialism. (Even Marxism, which has historically led to massive bureaucracies and the exponential enlarging of the state apparatus, holds the abolition of the state as its ultimate goal.) On the same note, there are forms of capitalism necessitating larger government, such as fascism and Francoism.
Chinese nationalism (as promoted by Chinese nationalists such as Sun-Yat Sen and Chen Duxiu) tends to be somewhat different than the more ethnocentric European nationalism. Even the French Revolution, which was based off a more civic understanding of nationalism, could be ethnocentric. Robespierre had the Prussian-born revolutionary Anacharsis Cloots executed so that he could claim to have ridded France of "foreign influence." While Chinese nationalism has certainly not been completely free from xenophobia (Boxer Rebellion), it has predominantly been ethnically inclusive, accepting China's racial diversity and calling for the coming together of all Chinese.
Market socialism would create a system that abolishes wage labor, but encourages hard work and productivity. Such a system would abolish private property, but retain personal property; it would have communal ownership of the means of production, but what is produced would be the property of whoever produced it. Workers would not be paid wage labor, but would sell what they produce directly to stores, and receive the full value of their goods. The capitalist mode of production would be no more, and as workers would be their own employers, no regulation would be required. When something required more than one person to produce, workers would form temporary unions that would coordinate work, and th3en split the profits among themselves in a mutually agreed upon way,.
China today is an authoritarian system in which people enjoy few human rights. Workers are exploited and the standard of living is low. I suspect that in the years to come China will develop into a much more democratic society. I highly doubt that China will be able to maintain the authoritarian status quo. I suspect that as China develops people will start to expect better standards of living and the government will give in. No doubt China is to be the next superpower, and it would be incredibly difficult to keep the single party state with the eyes of the world on China.
A good solution to China's problems is mutualism. Mutualism is a form of free market socialism where private property is abolished, but personal property is protected. Under mutualism the worker sells his goods directly, as opposed to wage labor. China would benefit the most from such a system as its many workers would make much more money and the standard of living wold be greatly increased. Today many Chinese workers do not get a single day off and are worked like slaves. Under mutualism workers would make whatever the store would pay for their goods, not what the employer is willing to give in wages. Today Chinese workers who build Apple products are payed something like a dollar a day, but under mutualism they would make whatever the store would pay for their goods. The goods they produce would be theirs, not some parasitic employer's.+306 Nietzsche is, in my opinion, one of the greatest philosophers of all time. His criticism of just about everything, his prophecy of the ubermensch and his challenging of all certainties make him a truly revolutionary philosopher.
He was anti-capitalist, anti-socialist, anti-nationalist and anti-collectivist. His philosophy is one of individualism and elitism. He strongly opposed all forms of egalitarianism, favoring the use of eugenics to breed an ubermensch (overman or superman) who would create new values and lead society forward. He also disliked almost all the philosophers who came before him; calling Plato "boring", Mill "a blockhead" and Kant "a moral fanatic". Nietzsche wanted to create a philosophy of his own, a philosophy that demanded one question, rather than obey. It is unfortunate that Nietzsche's ideas were abused by the Nazis, as Nietzsche surely would not have approved of Nazism. He hated nationalism, antisemitism and anything that was disempowering to the individual's will to power (although he was a fan of social darwinism & most certainly anti-egalitarian). He was also a staunch philosemite, and held a certain outright hatred for his country (Germany). He even claimed to not be German but of Polish descent. There are many differences between Hitler's fascism and Mussolini's fascism. The most significant difference is racial views. Hitler was a raging racist, who glorified the Aryan/Nordic race. Ironically, Hitler knew how little the Nordic people had achieved, and even chastised Himmler for digging up Nordic/Germanic ruins, stating that the Italians must be laughing at the Germans; for they were living in mud huts while the Italians were building an empire.
Mussolini's racial views were much less extreme and much more honest. Mussolini praised the Mediterranean race, which consisted of the Greeks, Italians and other related peoples. Unlike Hitler's Aryan race, the Mediterranean people had actually achieved something. Race was also much less important to Mussolini, who at one point had a Jewish girlfriend. It is unlikely that Mussolini would have committed any genocide if not for Hitler's encouragement. Mussolini was more than anything, a sad little man with an ego inversely proportionate to his size. While Hitler was also a deeply troubled man with a big ego, he was much more dangerous. He hated the Jews because of his indoctrination into Germanism. He was most likely deranged and felt emasculated by the loss of his testicle during the First World War. Another interesting aspect of fascism is corporatism. Mussolini's corporatism was much more radical and socialistic than Hitler's ironically named "National Socialism". Mussolini was a true corporatist, meaning he supported the merging of state and corporate power. Corporatism is in essence a throw-back to feudalism with some modern socialistic qualities thrown in. Hitler was a semi-corporatist who was somewhere in between corporatism and capitalism. Hitler, coming from a conservative background, was much less radical than Mussolini, who came from a socialist background. Capitalism is a prerequisite for socialism. There can be no socialism if capitalism does not come first. A large reason that the Russian Revolution failed is that they tried to go from a feudal society to a socialist society. International socialism requires international capitalism to come first. Only once international capitalism has been achieved can international socialism be achieved. For this reason I support NAFTA, as it brings international capitalism closer to its apex and inevitable decline.
First off, I do support the right to bear arms. I do strongly support it & believe it to be the bulwark of liberty, but here are some NRA-style arguments that don't make much sense.
If someone had a gun there wouldn't have been a shooting. This is a very poor argument. I doubt bringing more weapons into a violent situation will pacify anything. More likely you will just end up with more corpses. The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Actually, some mental healthcare would do a great deal of good. Might also help if said healthcare was provided by the government and didn't cost a fortune. But that would be socialism (the worst thing of all)! It's the videogames/medicine/liberal Media! A convenient way to avoid a discussion about gun control or free mental healthcare. When all alse fails, blame something else for gun violence! The Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the CPRF, would be more accurately called the Russian Pensioners' Nationalist Party, or RPNP. On social issues the party is not much different from the American GOP. The party has recently congratulated the Russian government on banning "homosexual propaganda" for their crack down on LGBT rights. This is merely one example of how it is similar to the American religious right. They are also hostile to science (evolution in particular), taxes and are proudly "tough on crime" (AKA want to have some fun with capital punishment). Marx, who despised capital punishment, is surely rolling in his grave. Strangely for a party claiming to be Marxist, they also love Christianity; the leader has talked about the "spiritual aspects of communism" (Russian Orthodox Church) and would like to see church and state intertwined. They both blame "liberals" for all society's problems & that the media is out to get them. Even more strikingly similar is their wish to return to the 1950's (during Stalin's time for the CPRF, during the time of "family values" for the GOP).
Texas teaches a revised and censored version of history in the classroom. In truly Orwellian fashion, they have edited everything to reflect a Christian fundamentalist ideological bias. Lincoln is now taught about alongside the confederate leader and the civil rights movement has been edited out. Creation "science" is now taught alongside evolution. This is like teaching miasmatic theory alongside germ theory. Evolution is an accepted scientific fact. It isn't "just a theory", it is a theory in the same way that gravity and water displacement are theories. We might as well start teaching every crank theory we have. We could teach that the Earth is flat alongside round Earth theory, after all, it is imperative that we "teach the controversy".
Also changed are words such as "propaganda" when referring to the American invasion of Mexico. It is now "public education", not propaganda. No longer do students have to hear about the awful mistakes their country made in the past, now we can just ignore them. This is known as ostrich syndrome; "if I can't see it it isn't there!" Worst of all, it isn't just the Texans who will suffer from this, as Texas is a large buyer of textbooks, companies often sell the textbooks with the Texas revisions for schools all over America. |
AuthorSam is a grade 11 English student who loves international politics. Archives
May 2014
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