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Permalink Reply by Arcus on February 24, 2013 at 3:42pm

From Bitter Legacy: Ideology and Politics in the Arab World (p. 60): "Aflaq's thought dominated the Ba'at party" and "[he] insist[ed] on the overthrow of the ruling class and socialism as the pillars of the new nationalism." Pan-arab socialism is certainly a different flavor than Russian or Chinese, but it's closer to those than fascism in ideology (though perhaps not in policy, i don't really know).

While they did collaborate with the Nazis, it was due to anti-colonialism aimed against the French and British, as well as a rejection of Soviet-style internationalist Marxism. Saddam was a tyrant and not particularly ideological. 

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Permalink Reply by Dave Mann on February 25, 2013 at 12:26pm

Thanks for the clarification.

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Permalink Reply by Doug Reardon on February 23, 2013 at 4:00pm

Communism is like religion, there are many differing sects.

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Permalink Reply by Reg The Fronkey Farmer on February 23, 2013 at 4:10pm

Hitchens on North Korea.

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Permalink Reply by Kairan Nierde on February 23, 2013 at 7:20pm

Excuse the tangent:

If a person were interested in learning about modern world history/international politics from source which is fairly unbiased, which books, journals, magazines would be a good place to start?

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Permalink Reply by Gallup's Mirror on February 23, 2013 at 9:04pm

Many of the world's leading universities offer free courses (without credit) in virtually any subject you can imagine. For starters here is a list of offerings in political science from MIT.

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Permalink Reply by Sagacious Hawk on February 23, 2013 at 9:33pm

For current news regarding international politics, I read Foreign Policy magazine. It comes out once every two months and is about 100 pages of nothing except text. It's expensive, but it's good.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/

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Permalink Reply by Hope on February 24, 2013 at 1:07am

Hello and welcome back Keith!

I'm sure we've all dealt with theists debating with us that communist nations such as North Korea are atheist nations and in their view that atheism can be just as fundamentalist as religion.

And here is how I argue back:

Marxist communism is not only an ideology it is a dogmatic belief exactly like religion,, and of course atheism and marxism are two different things..

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Permalink Reply by Dave Mann on February 24, 2013 at 1:58am

"Marxist communism is not only an ideology it is a dogmatic belief exactly like religion"

Bullshit.

There is nothing dogmatic about these people:
(Platypus1817)        http://www.platypus1917.org/
(Slavoj Zizek)   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QARALafdWUI 
(David Harvey)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_XqTXsGBL8&list=PL8StlnOJ9cSIoO...

Another Atheist philosophy that is unfairly mis-represented is Objectivism. Attack a philosophy for its positions not what you imagine its positions to be.

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Permalink Reply by Unseen on February 24, 2013 at 9:40am

I'm sure most of us have run into theists or New Age types who see a belief in using logic and scientific methods as following a dogma. A dogma that nothing is worthy of belief unless it is logical and can be scientifically proven.

This raises the question of whether dogma is bad per se or does it depend upon what dogmas you believe? 

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Permalink Reply by Hope on February 24, 2013 at 11:20am

Of course Marxism is a philosophy!

I'm not saying that all Marxists are dogmatic people. The dogmatic person is the one who is very strongly adheres to a philosophical view!

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Permalink Reply by Dave Mann on February 24, 2013 at 3:07pm

I guess I'm just sensitive.  Cheers.

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