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From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,misc.legal,alt.flame
Subject: Re: The lawsuit of the year.
Message-ID: <19087@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 23 Jan 88 01:17:32 GMT
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Michael Friedman writes...
>Yup. Interesting, eh? Remember, Nazism stands for "National
>SOCIALISM". I wonder what the Soviet apologists on the net think of
>that?

Altho not a Soviet apologist (can you name any on the net Michael? or
is this just your chance to dabble in some McCarthyism?) I think you
are playing puerile word games. Gee, and the "N" in NRA stands for
"National", just like in National Socialism! And lord only knows who
really is behind "The Nation", or where SOCIAL diseases come from...

Hitler had no interest in Socialism in any accepted sense of the word,
the concurrence of those letters is meaningless as an extrapolation
(altho why he chose it is certainly interesting, and then proceeded to
blame a lot of Germany's ills on the Socialists, and exterminate
them.)

>Why don't you tell me what is wrong with the DICTIONARY's definition?
>I really want to know.

It's shallow and leaves too much to interpretation to begin to shed
any light on a rather complicated subject in one sentence, but I guess
if the shoe fits...

Socialism implies an economic system which I don't believe is a major
point of comparison between the two nations. There are certainly
similarities between the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany and the
totalitarianism that exists in the Soviet Union, certainly not least
among them the question of why populations tolerate and even encourage
such situations. However, there are also salient differences which are
critical to explore (for example, the longevity of only one of the
systems.) I fear, however, that the appeal to emotion which is so
attractive to some in claiming equivalence of Nazi Germany and the
USSR will generally overcome any good sense. "Nazi" has become such a
good "poo-poo doo-doo" word (meaning, content free aspersion,
cathartic obscenity etc.)

	-Barry Shein, Boston University