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From: orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Criticism of America :re to critics
Message-ID: <1025@whuxl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 7-Mar-86 11:28:26 EST
Article-I.D.: whuxl.1025
Posted: Fri Mar  7 11:28:26 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Mar-86 21:15:06 EST
References: <1691@bbncca.ARPA> <536@whuts.UUCP> <1636@ihlpg.UUCP> <540@whuts.UUCP>, <1641@ihlpg.UUCP> <700@mtuxn.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Whippany
Lines: 37

> I would just like to thank Bill for taking the time to make the point 
> that comparing the human rights situation in the US to that of the
> USSR is a 'big lie'.  I am totally weary of the attempts to make the
> two situations SEEM the same.  
 
I *never* claimed that the US and USSR were equivalent.  I have
enormous admiration for our freedoms and defense of people's human
rights in this country.  What I *AM* concerned about is concentrations
of power which threaten such freedoms and human rights and threaten
to make our country more and more like the Soviet Union.  I have
stated this again and again - apparently however any criticism of
disturbing trends in our own country is not tolerated by some people.
 
More disturbing is the following:
> 
> Just joking Tim, we all know that you REALLY post all these articles
> to stimulate discussion.  Right?  You really don't think that if
> the Communists take over the world (excepting the vile part know -
> in a typically ethnocentric way - as America), right Tim?
> 

This is an age-old tactic: any criticism  of one's own country is
labelled as "consorting with the enemy".  This tactic *is* one which
is used in many countries, the USSR as well as the US.  The difference
as has been properly pointed out is the degree to which such attacks
result in actual repression.  In the Soviet Union one can be sent to
a Gulag for repeated dissent branded as "unpatriotic".  In the US
one may be sent to jail for a short legally defined term.  Unless
one is in a stage of right-wing hysteria such as McCarthyism during 
the 50's when people were systematically blacklisted for years.
Even then this is obviously better than being lined up before a
firing squad as happened in the Stalinist purges.  But is either
behavior to be condoned? I hardly think so.
Does anyone on the net?
 
     tim sevener  whuxn!orb