Post #158,693
6/6/04 10:35:12 PM
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Not true
The SU was collapsing already in the 70s. Why? Because they could not produce anything anyone else wanted to buy. The thing died of being too heavy, cumbersome, and consumptive to remain fed - in spite of the well-established brilliance of Russian scientists and engineers and industry of their workers. The Soviet SYSTEM died like a weed that had grown too large to be supported by its shallow roots. The social experiment of Marxist-Leninism had failed. Anyone might have been at the helm - thank Bog it was Gorbachev instead of Stalin.
We are now engaged in an equally wrong-headed and disastrous social experiment at the hands of the Radical Republicans - enforced, soulless, blind equalism that erases individual merit and reduces everything to numbers and bottom lines - Marxist-Leninism in another guise. It too will fail all by itself. When WE fail, let's hope we have our own Gorbachev to intone the eulogy.
-drl
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Post #158,726
6/7/04 1:12:28 AM
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Not that some of what you say about SU wasn't true...
but, Reagan ratcheted up the defense spending and scared them with "Star Wars". They could not match that.
He also ridiculed them in an effective way.
The domestic policy was a horse of a different color.
Alex
Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost. -- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher
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Post #158,728
6/7/04 1:16:20 AM
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We outspent them.
Best engineers and scientists all dedicated to the military machine that couldn't keep up to ours.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #158,873
6/7/04 6:14:26 PM
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And spent ourselves out of existence as well.
bcnu,
Mikem
If you can read this, you are not the President.
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Post #158,890
6/7/04 7:29:30 PM
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jury still out..
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #158,904
6/7/04 8:40:32 PM
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A convenient fiction
Not the part about the US spending money like a drunken sailor. The part about it's significance in respect to the collapse of the Soviet empire. A factor of course, but not remotely the decisive one.
The Beatles had more consequence.
-----------------------------------------
It is much harder to be a liberal than a conservative. Why?
Because it is easier to give someone the finger than it is to give them a helping hand.
Mike Royko
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Post #158,906
6/7/04 8:51:11 PM
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RIght.
Ringo did it.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #158,786
6/7/04 10:48:48 AM
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Blah, blah. blah
You're old enough to have lived in 70s. Do you really remember SU collapsing then? Guess what, neither do I. May be I was under 10, but I _lived_ there.
Anyone who hates Soviet Union (and that really should include every sane person on Earth) has to respect the man who killed the Beast dead. He was the one who had the guts to call a spade a spade, and then proceed to break it for good. People around him were oh so sure that Soviet System is immortal, is the "radiant future of the whole humanity" or at least a permanent factor in the world. He saw it a vulnerable then, just as clearly as you seet its vulnerability now.
Thank you, President Reagan.
--
Buy high, sell sober.
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Post #158,790
6/7/04 10:55:05 AM
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*applause*
+5 insightful.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #158,896
6/7/04 8:05:40 PM
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Sorry bud, you weren't here
Intelligence of S capability was always vastly inflated, again to justify monster defense budgets. Containment destroyed the SU, not profligacy.
-drl
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