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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!seismo!ut-sally!riddle
From: riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Views on the USSR
Message-ID: <361@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 9-Nov-83 18:33:49 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.361
Posted: Wed Nov  9 18:33:49 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 11-Nov-83 08:55:25 EST
References: <114@astrovax.UUCP>
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 23


 > Contributors to this news group often assume or assert that the government
 > of the Soviet Union is 1) morally evil or wicked, 2) morally equivalent to
 > that of the US, or 3) morally good (or at least superior to the US 
 > government).

I think that this classification is both too simplistic and mistaken.  Mistaken
because I don't know ANYONE who believes (3).  Simplistic because I know at
least some people who try to avoid thinking in the black/white terms you
describe.

The "progressives" I know, among which number I count myself (for want of a
better word), tend to make a big distinction in their views of the USSR and
the US between the ways the two nations treat their own citizens and the way
they treat most of the rest of the world.  Most of us would agree that in
terms of personal liberty, at least, citizens of the Western democracies are
much better off than their counterparts in the Soviet world.  When it comes
to the residents of the Third World who are the victims of Soviet- or American-
style imperialism, however, the differences aren't so apparent.
----
Prentiss Riddle
{ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle
riddle@ut-sally.UUCP