Popular opinion had the same attitude towards witches. Times change.

We had the same attitude towards communists and communist sympathizers, yet its making a comeback in 'popular culture'.

America came down on the side of 'I don't agree with what you have to say, but I will defend your right to say it.'

That being said, this whole debacle is a slippery slope and that should be the key takeaway here, regardless of which way your political spectrum leans.

> America came down on the side of 'I don't agree with what you have to say, but I will defend your right to say it.'

That's a nice aphorism but isn't even slightly true given the number of wars they've been involved in (even just this century!) and regimes they've plotted to overthrow and organisations the government has infiltrated and ... etc.

For a recent example, compare and contrast the police responses to white supremacist marches vs BLM marches. If your hokey aphorism was true, both would be treated equally.

We're talking about Americans. Not other nations that cry about American imperialism out one side of their face, then demand protection, food and money out the other. If America ceased all humanitarian services and closed all military bases in other nations you would see unprecedented loss of life as we would be labeled an uncaring nation that let women and children starve.

You're right about the different police responses, though, as BLM was allowed to burn an entire city while the white people were kicked out of a park. Labeling all gatherings of white people as 'white supremacists' is disingenuous and racist in and of itself.

    >  I think popular opinion came down on the side 
    > of "hang Nazis and prevent this ever happening again."

I doubt you really believe in the "wisdom of crowds", or that the march of progress is an irreversible cosmic force, or that God will suddenly start intervening before fascism can take hold.

I don't understand what you're basing your confidence on, aside from optimism.

Insert "do all we can to" before "prevent" if you need it.

> No, there doesn't. Nazism had its chance. We fought a world war over it.

As did Communism, and we fought a Cold War over that.

A "white nationalist" (apparently) ran someone over with his car, while a communist is currently threatening to nuke the United States. Nuking a country has to be worse than running over a single person, right? If not, why not?

Maybe next we can shut down all communist web sites.

After the communists, then we can move on to socialists of any kind. Then people who don't salute the flag. Then atheists. Then people who don't go to church on Sunday. Then...

This doesn't end up where you imagine that it ends up.

For example:

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/08/14/co...

(note that I do not necessarily agree with this article)

> As did Communism, and we fought a Cold War over that.

You know this is a false equivalence - they're not even remotely comparable.

> a communist is currently threatening to nuke the United States [...] has to be worse than running over a single person

Again with the false equivalences.

Also I don't think Kim Jong-Un is a Communist - they have collective farms, sure, but the country is much more a dictatorship than anything.

> You know this is a false equivalence - they're not even remotely comparable.

"False equivalence" how? Communists have murdered way more people than the Nazis ever did.

> Also I don't think Kim Jong-Un is a Communist - they have collective farms, sure, but the country is much more a dictatorship than anything.

Can you give me an example of a Communist country that isn't a dictatorship?

The "But that wasn't real communism!" argument doesn't fly any more.

> "False equivalence" how? Communists have murdered way more people than the Nazis ever did.

Has there been a world war against the communists? Not that I am aware - your comparison of WW2 and the Cold War is false although I appreciate that you're only doing it to try and force an argument to the extremes.

(You also might want to reflect on why you're this eager to minimise the crimes of Nazism.)

> Can you give me an example of a Communist country that isn't a dictatorship?

I don't need to - it's for you to show that Kim Jong-Un is a Communist and a handful of collective farms doesn't really get you there.

If you're going to categorize him, wouldn't he fall into the "People who've controlled countries and called themselves Communist, but who I don't think should represent Communists even though every person who's controlled a country and called themselves Communist was roughly like him?"

> Has there been a world war against the communists?

Yes. It ran for 70 years, with a truce during WWII. It was called the Cold War. It was fought in Korea, Vietnam, and many other countries.

> why you're this eager to minimise the crimes of Nazism.

I'm not eager to "minimise" anything. Nazis were horrible, but Communists killed more people, and that is just a fact. Why are you so eager to defend Communism?

> it's for you to show that Kim Jong-Un is a Communist

Umm... no, it isn't up to me to prove something that's been common knowledge since the 1950s, namely that North Korea is a Communist regime.

> no, it isn't up to me to prove something that's been common knowledge since the 1950s, namely that North Korea is a Communist regime.

The DPRK was notionally Communist in the Leninist mold originally, but it was progressively recast into what its own propaganda describes as an alternative Socialism/Communism, but which expressly rejects Marxist materialism and the central role of economic relations with a central role of the individual and the single great leader. In many ways, it's more Fascist than Communist in substance (the highly centralized ideology of Juche bearing an analogous relation to the heirarchical Fuhrerprinzip as absolute monarchy does to feudalism.)

How about china?

Mao wasn't a dictator?

China has certainly made some significant steps away from dictatorship, though it's still damned authoritarian.

It's also made significant steps away from communism (I mean, it has billionaires and everything).

That's not a coincidence.

China is a communist autocracy where the leadership is a ruling counsel. It has divisions of power, and peaceful transitions of power.

It's not a dictatorship characterized of a single leader ruling by force, with no stable transitions of power.

As an aside, North Korea is a stable hereditary monarchy, and not a dictatorship. Neither him nor his father took power via force.

Now that doesn't make them "good people". Mary Queen of Scots, and King John of England, were legitimate monarchs and terrible leaders.