Aurino wrote:
"Your dead president certainly never heard of Marx, Hitler, Mao, and other people with 'harmless' ideas."

Hi Aurino,
First I just want to be clear that I like Canada and the 90 cents comment is totally benevolent.
The exchange rate is no measure of quality.
And I respect you; thanks for responding.

The guy who said that was Hopkins, I think -- the one famous for drinking in the morning. You see my guard is down.

If you look at each of the examples you cited
in the full context, I think you will see their ideas were always present in various forms -- it was the magnitude of their implementation that was way off, and that did not rely on the mistakes of one individual. Marx, by the way, made contributions to mainstream capitalist economics in making his own arguments. If 'management' had heeded his warnings, the world would never have gone through the worst parts of socialism.
Ideas are like various specie of friendly intestinal bacteria. In small amounts, they are part of the normal checks and balances. Having one species multiply rapidly and infect the body is a consequence of other things that went wrong.

I can certainly defend this in historical detail, but want you to know up front where I'd be going with it. You can't kill an idea.

Regards,
Mike

• "I don't like uncle Sam" - aurino_s - September 16, 2002 - 13:00 UTC