[DanaC]

Oh UG....I just don't know where to start. Hang on....did a vein just pop in your temple?

Do not our foreign-policy troubles spring from the non-democracies?

I would argue the well spring is firmly located in the White House.

He's going to hurt until he renounces communism and embraces democracy

This I find particularlry chucklesome. tw has on numerous occassions demonstrated his belief in democracy. You on the other hand seem to have a problem with anybody who disagrees with the current administration, or America's foreign policy. I suggest that is just the teensiest bit anti-democratic.

Tw visibly does not wish that democracies should win out, nor prevail in conflicts between the free and the unfree.

The conflicts tw has referred to are not conflicts to decide between the free and the unfree, they are conflicts primarily based on land disputes and historic enmities. It is entirely possible for an 'unfree' people to have a genuine grievance against a 'free' people. The fact that a nation is democratised, does not automatically mean that it is always in the right. But then that's the great thing about democracies.....different opinions are welcomed and debates ensue.

How can you yourself, DanaC, not be rather disturbed at the butcher's bill the communists have rung up worldwide, just adhering to their, well, their religion, and whoring after their false prophet Marx?

This I found quite amusing, since I would say that I hold a marxist analysis on the world :P As to the butcher's bill. That bill goes firmly to several deeply flawed individuals who chose to instill themselves as all-powerful dictators. Dictators of course are to be found throughout history and across the globe in many cultures. It is not a feature of 'communism' it is a feature of misrule. Your average communist ( which as I have said elsewhere I am not) does not seek dictatorship. The fact that various countries have called themseves 'communist' and then proceeded to employ the tactics of dictatorship and violence does not mena that they actually were communist. There are nations now, who claim to be democratic, but which are patently not. These are labels nations/parties/peoples apply to themselves.

Whilst we're on to death tolls. How many people died in WW1? When the world was rocked by the clash of empires? How many died to the Nuclear devastation of Hiroshima? How many died when Britain firebombed whole cities? How many died in Vietnam to Western flames? Shall we say that such a deathtoll renders 20th century democracies evil?

Millions died in China, to the excesses of Mao and many still suffer today to the human rights abuses of the Chinese government ( not least the Falun Gong practitioners). As a socialist and a Marxist, I see this as tragic and unnecessary. That is not the result of communism, it is the result of misrule.

I also suspect you have included the dead from Germany's Holocaust in that figure. I'd like to remind you that when the fascist were building their base and the brown shirts were stalking the streets, the communist party fought pitched battles with them. There is historic and bitter enmity between fascism and communism, they are polar opposites.