One of the more annoying things about modern large bookshops is that they divide the non-fiction books into a vast number of over-defined categories. This is not a huge difficulty if you are looking for a cookbook, or a book about trains, or a travel guidebook, as it is pretty clear what sections those books belong in. However, when we get to the social sciences things get hazy. If I am looking for (say) one of Ian Buruma‘s books on Asia (which are all worth a read, by the way), it is impossible to know whether the book in question will be on the shelves in “Asian History”, “Eastern culture”, “Travel writing”, “Sociology”, “Chinese History”, or one several other categories, even though if you look at all his books together they are clearly all have a very similar theme. It just does not fit into bookshop categorisation.
This is fine if you are looking for a particular book. You just ask at the information counter, they look it up in the computer and they tell you where it is and whether they have any copies. However, if you are trying to find it without help it can be close to impossible.
In any event, when I was wandering through my local branch of Books etc the other day, I found myself walking past a section I hadn’t noticed before, labelled “anti-globalisation”. That’s right, they had a section devoted to the works of Michael Moore, Noam Chomksy and the like. People who wanted to read such books can go straight to that section without having to be exposed to anything else. I’m sure they find this very convenient.
Even better, the bookshop encourages its staff to recommend books to customers. They even go to the trouble of giving their staff members little cards on which they can write down their recommendations and attach them to the shelves in the store. This is a good practice, as it may help readers find books and it also makes it clear that the booksellers are people who like to read themselves. But, even so, I had personal issues with the anti-globalisation recommendations.
Ugh.
Save me.
Seriously, I suspect that the number of people who have read Michael Moore and are not already aware of the existence of John Pilger and Noam Chomsky already is small (or perhaps I overestimate them). I think recommendations like this are better when they refer people who have read something well known to something that is both rather more obscure and also good. And Pilger and Chomsky are not especially obscure, however much I might wish it were so.
However, in the chance that there might be anyone walking through the bookshop who might have discovered Michael Moore but not Pilger or Chomsky, I thought I had a duty to save them from this (and also there was a Samizdata post in it). Therefore, although it was a bit naughty of me I removed the little cards from the shelf and walked out with them. (Yes, okay, technically I stole them. However, sometimes the ends do justify the means).
As I was walking out of the shop, it struck me that it would be kind of cool to get a few of the blank cards, write out a few book recommendations of my own, and then attach them to the shelves. However, when I thought about it some more, I realised I didn’t need anyone to supply me with a stock of blank cards. For I have the miracles of modern technology at my disposal, and I could produce some of my own. I could go back into the bookshop and leave something like this.
Or perhaps this.
The fun could be never ending. Perhaps I could attempt to send people to little sections of the bookshop they hadn’t found before. “If you have enjoyed Michael Moore, then try Brink Lindsey. He’ll help you get over it”. “If you have enjoyed Paul Erlich, then we have many equally enjoyable books in the humor section”. The potential fun is endless.
The nice irony about all this is that Borders, the American owned chain of bookstores, likes to operate a dual brand strategy. It reserves the Borders name only for its very large book megastores, and uses other brand names for smaller stores, mostly in malls. In the US, its smaller stores make up the Waldenbooks chain. In the UK, its smaller stores are called, you guessed it, Books etc. What this means is that the salaries of the people recommending the anti-globalisation books are being paid by a rapacious global bookshop brand, that is ravaging and homogenising the world (or at least the Anglosphere), destroying local cultures as they do so. Seriously, how can you possibly overstate the damage done by large, globally minded bookstore chains that provide foreign countries with far better stocked bookshops than anything they had before, in which local people can sit in nice comfortable chairs as they browse books and sip excellent espresso based coffee from the very pleasant in-store cafes. It’s clearly another cultural Chernobyl.
I mean, how can these people live with themselves?
You better go back to that store with some cards; sounds like they need them badly!
I wish I had more time to visit my local Borders store as my culture needs more pillaging…
How can you live with yourself, violating property rights, violating peoples freedom of speech, what were you thinking?
Freedom doesn’t just mean freedom for people and ideas you like.
As much as I dislike M. Moore and his odiferous ilk, I am in agreement with Della.
Put back the original cards, and then add your own recommendations.
Just as much fun, without being destructive.
Michael: one word – genius!
Well said Della
There is no point in advocating freedom of speech and getting pissed off when others use it.
As an example, the words and thoughts of a certain Louis Farrakhan are repulsive. But I am all for lifting the ban on his entering the UK.
Eamon
That was absolutely great.
But it’s just not fair: why are libertarians so much wittier than liberals?
I’m with Della and Bombadil on this. Yes, it was only “a bit naughty” as opposed to outlawing medical benefit packages [“No insurance unless you include X”], high taxes, jailing people for putting things in their mouth in their own room, etc., but the principle of the thing is the principle of the thing. Its easier to stand up against the unjust depredations of others when you don’t give in yourself.
But the card idea is cute.
In all seriousness, the bookstore itself ought to be encouraging some system for people to leave comments…a bricks-and-mortar Amazon comments system
Call me moralist. Taking the cards was wrong. But wrong can be such fun! It’s that that makes it hard to be good.
That said, it would be interesting to try slipping a few cards onto the racks (even on top of those, as long as they can still be read on demand) and see what reaction it provokes.
It reminds me of the wine stores that have the reviews in little cards racks in front of the bottles. Amazon does this virtually, dead tree shops should adapt it. They could always clean them out periodically to encourage new opinions.
Hmm, maybe Samisdata should offer logo’ed Post-It notes for sale…
Long ago I worked in a book store and the assistant manager made sure we had every available Chomsky book on our shelves. We never sold a single one. ;^)
I also think you should restore the ‘stolen’ employee picks but change the little pick axes logo into a nice hammer & sickle.
Or a finger in a nose.
Did I violate their right to freedom of speech? No, I don’t think so. At least, not any more than I would be if I bought as many copies as possible of a newspaper that said something unflattering about me in order to prevent other people from buying it. They can certainly put up another card saying the same thing, and they can continue recommending Chomsky and Pilger to other customers. I think I was more making a statement myself rather than attempting to take theirs away, particularly given that my main purpose was to scan the cards and post them to this site. As I said, I think encouraging their staff to recommend books to customers is an excellent practice. The books by Pilger and Chomsky are still there and the bookshop is quite right to stock them if it wants to and it thinks people are going to buy them (just as it should be entitled to stock really repulsive stuff like Mein Kampf or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion if it wants to). If anyone attempts to take away their right to sell whatever they want, I would certainly take their side, and pretty vehemently at that.
Did I violate their property rights? Yes, certainly. Was this wrong? Yes. Do I think that the owners of the bookshop would mind?. I doubt it. For one thing, I am a good customer of theirs. For another, I didn’t cause them any sort of financial loss. For a third, having stolen the cards I then used them to post an article in which I praised their business at length (although maybe not their employees). On the other hand, it is actually up to them and not up to me to decide what they object to, so if they chose to prosecute me, I would have to plead guilty and cop whatever they threw at me. I don’t think this is especially likely, however.
And there are degrees of bad. If I take a shortcut over the corner of somebody’s private property because I am running late and I want to save time, then yes, I am violating their property rights. Do they then have the right to shoot me? Some hard line libertarians would say yes, but I don’t personally go that far myself. (Again though, I think I would have to cop it if they chose to prosecute me for tresspass). On the other hand if I came onto their property, broke the window of their house, and entered their house with the apparent intent of committing burglary, do I think they would then have the right to shoot me. Well, frankly yes I do. Believing that everything is black and white and that there are no shades of grey is infantile. There are always shades of grey and degrees of bad. I have done worse things in my life than steal those cards, but nothing so bad that I have difficulty sleeping at night.
So do I think that what I did is a big deal? No, not especially. Still, there is something to be said for tomorrow returning the cards to the shelves. I may well do this. And yes ruprecht, I like the hammer and sickle idea, although if I did that they could no doubt get me on charges of vandalism as well as theft.
Libertarians are more ironic than liberals? I think not.
The liberals are clearly the more ironic – the managers, shop-workers etc advocating anti-globalisation through the medium of a multinational corporate bookstore! I like it.
Having said that I do agree that if anything, people should be encouraged to read differing views. Which includes most of you lot reading Pilger, Moore, Chomsky et al with an open mind. It only took me to read David Horowitz to at least understand where you right-wingers are coming from.
Delightful! This beats rearranging the Borders display where Liberty is always at the back of the magazines and Marxism Today always at the front every time I go in.
Oops! Well, I nearly managed to repeat myself!
No need to swipe their cards… with a teeny weeny bit of bluetack you can put Samizdata cards wherever you like- over the top of them perhaps!…
-or print your cards on Stick up notes!!!!
For added fun you can slip them inside the Moore, Chomsky,Pilger etc books 🙂
Isn’t “Marxism Today” an oxymoron?
Whenever I go into record stores, I always found that the popular records found the way to the front of the racks. Thank you Ian for telling me that even something as innocent as this is part of a nasty Marxist plot!
Moral: you can’t be too paranoid. The enemy is everywhere.
Culture War… that is how I see it. Don’t play fair. Fuck with their things. They want to subject you to their political control. Fuck ’em.
Bless: Which includes most of you lot reading Pilger, Moore, Chomsky et al with an open mind. It only took me to read David Horowitz to at least understand where you right-wingers are coming from.
An open mind? To regard them as anything less than flatulence would require me to have read them with no mind at all.
And who is a ‘right winger’? You seem to have mistaken us for social conservative statists.
I share your dismay at how books in the social ‘sciences’ are arranged in brick-and-mortar bookstores. My local Borders missed out on a bunch of my money last week because of it. (cash in pocket and not wanting to wait for online shipping, I had to wait).
Another interesting thing I noticed about the sections they had them divided up into: the Borders by my house now has a HUGE military history section. Pre-911 (and even last year) it was tiny, just a labelled section of one shelf in one other social science section.
That doesn’t happen in trade bookstores without a fairly massive demand shift. I take it as a positive sign that Americans are educating themselves about the issues facing us in the world.
Successful shops these days use sophisticated inventory management systems. This includes bookstores. If books on military history are selling, this is flagged on the screen of somebody’s computer, and they expand the section. This isn’t just true of bookstores, either. It is the reason why everything from Wal-Mart to your local supermarket are able to stock so many more separate lines than they used to.
I think the social sciences thing may have something to do with trying to use very similar categorisation systems to those they use with physical sciences, computer books, and the like, where detailed categorisation can make sense. However, in areas where most books are sufficiently interdisciplinary that they can arbitrarily classified into one of seven different categories, you have a problem. The categorisation needs to be much broader. “Geography” or “Economics” is about as detailed as you want.
The other things I would like to see in bookshops is computer terminals containing the store’s catalogue that customers can use. It’s often possible to access these catalogues over the internet from home, but to do so actually in the shop you have to go to an information desk and ask a staff member. (Also, libraries seem to have no difficultly providing computer catalogues for ordinary people to use. Why can’t bookshops?)
I wonder if Bless realises that some people may have become conservative or libertarian precisely because they have read Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky?
Sounds to me like the dillemma on taking the cards is whether or not you believe in eye-for-an-eye. One could argue that since those people recommending Chomsky et al are most likely hostile to private property rights, you were simply adapting to the climate they themselves endorsed…Although, on those grounds they could have you barred from the store for stealing if they felt like it, since after all it is their property. The two contradict each other: if they punish you for stealing the cards then they acknowledge they disagree with the views of those authors, if you argue that you’re taking a “when in rome…” approach then you’re in a way validating their view, both of you doing so for your own purpose.
If anything, this is a microcosm of exactly why collectivism specifically & utopian schlock in general can’t help but fail: everyone has a different interpretation of what “is”. Why else have we seen over the years communists hoarding resources from the “proletariat” and religious types killing in the name of their “god”? Any system based on an idea that everyone’s thinking to-may-toe will blow up so long as a single person exists that says to-mah-toe.
Perry,
Whilst I understand the point of this board is to be libertarian, not right wing, the place does seem to have become infested with idiot right wingers. Only today one (Liz I think) was talking about nuking Mecca, something that is not just totally unlibertarian, but also a completely stupid and evil idea….but it is the representitive of the sort of stupid and evil ideas that some right wingers have all the time.
They also have called me a left winger just because I don’t like the statist patriotism of a foreign country.
They also have called me a left winger just because I don’t like the statist patriotism of a foreign country.
Nooo…having just read the ugly little hissy fit this line was pulled from, I doubt that’s the only reason.
What is this retribution, all-is-fair crap? Is this not a private bookshop? He knew he was stealing something of value to them so there is no grey area. It was wrong.
Stealing the cards was wrong and entirely unnecessary for the purposes of writing the post seeing as you could’ve taken a picture of the cards with a digital camera.
Michael:
Here in Canada the Chapters chain has a system of customer accessed databases which allows you to search, and tells you whether the book is in stock. I had always assumed that this was true everywhere.
And I think you should return the cards. Sure, add your own, but don’t censor others.
And maybe suggest to the management that right beside the anti-globalization shelf, they add a common-sense rack.
A more effective strategy would be to pick up Moore and Pilger’s books, browse them while innocently wondering around the bookshop and replace them in the Fiction section.
I thought it was funny, a prank, in some ways like the pranks we used to play when I worked at a Barnes and Noble – like accidently shelving Tom of Finland books in the Religious book section.
“You stole private property!” Does petty larceny extend all the way down to 10 pence?
Geesh, some of y’all need to lighten up.
Michael, I’m afraid that I don’t see how this makes them hypocrites. You have to agree with all policies of your employer to work for them, or you’re a hypocrite? I don’t get it.
Perhaps the managers wouldn’t have minded your taking the cards, but you didn’t ask. They obviously went to some level of work to put them up, and presumably had the intention of them staying for a while. The hope is that they would sell more books. This seems a bit different from trespassing briefly without causing anyone any annoyance. The employees will have to replace the cards. The annoyance is minor, but people who throw stones shouldn’t live in glass houses…
Michael, yes you did wrong, I am afraid. Brilliant idea, and I love the thought that you would be giving folk the vapours, but it was technically theft. The ends don’t justify the means.
More generally though, in the BooksEtc shop near my office, I have noticed something similar. There is clearly a leftist bias in the stuff that gets recommended in the non-fiction section of a store, particularly stuff by Chomsky and Pilger. Their standing as “radicals” and so on never fails to amaze me given the utterly fraudulent nature of much of what they write.
I must agree with David Carr that it does us all some good to read some of their books from time to time, if only to remind ourselves that besides some good and honourable folk on the left, there are also writers in the so-called “radical” tradition who are, quite bluntly, evil.
David Carr wrote. I wonder if Bless realises that some people may have become conservative or libertarian precisely because they have read Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky?
Well somebody seems to have used Micheal Moore for inspiration
“You have to agree with all policies of your employer to work for them, or you’re a hypocrite?”
Of course not. But this isn’t a difference of opinion over when to take a coffe break. For a died in the wool tranzi anti-globalist, working for a big multinational corporation is comparable to clubbing baby seals during the day while scraping barnacles off the Rainbow Warrior in the evening.
Lets face it – they are working there because the money and the working conditions are better than they can get elsewhere. When you or I engage in a given economic activity because it has the greatest returns to us, we are evil capitalists raping the planet. When a sanctimonious tranzi does the same, well, that’s OK then.
That’s hypocrisy, in my book.
“And who is a ‘right winger’? You seem to have mistaken us for social conservative statists.”
It is an easy and often made mistake. I personally try to move past people’s perceptions of left and right politics, but several commentators on this blog seem to try the upmost to return the argument to this quaint but outdated mode of thought.
But it sometimes makes for an interesting discussion. After all, history is valid academic persuit.
Very funny- and all the better for the fact that Moore and Chomsky were part of a Boycott Borders (Books etc parent corp) campaign, Moore was banned from their bookshops and Borders are an anti-union Fortune 500 trans-national company..
Details on my blog….
By the way, when I was tangentially associated with American leftist circles back in the mid-1990s, Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky were extremely well known among all the young leftists, but I don’t think anybody much had heard of Pilger over here. I actually had never heard of him until after 9/11, whereas I could tick off the names of plenty of left-wing writers who labor for U.S. journals. I think this is another one of those cases in which Americans don’t bother to pay attention to an example of some media genre from another country because we’ve got our own version. You know, like how our TV networks make their own versions of British shows instead of just importing the British ones. (Is this the first time anyone has ever compared John Pilger with “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”?)
And yes, I know you were referring to a British bookstore when you figured that all the local lefties would know who Pilger was; this is just an incidental observation that popped into my head while I was reading the post…
Whilst I understand the point of this board is to be libertarian, not right wing, the place does seem to have become infested with idiot right wingers.
Wrong, Della, on two counts. This is not a board but comments section of a BLOG. Not a forum, not a chat room, not a board but a blog. Geddit?
Secondly, the point of Samizdata.net is not to be libertarian but just Samizdata.net-like. You certainly won’t find us on the totally irrelevant left-right spectrum…
Michael, again, a brilliant idea.
Comments on this post prove Alex’s post, wrong, oh so wrong, on libertarian disposition towards humour.
At the risk of sounding nationalist, Pilger is an Australian export not a British one. Tina Brown, Christopher Hitchens, you can blame us for.
Pilger has lived in Britain for a very long time and has largely made his name in the Fleet Street press and other parts of the British media though. I think you have to argue that he is at least something of a hybrid. (Certainly when he has made television programs about Australia in recent years, he has received a fair bit of justified criticism for not really understanding how the country has changed over the last three decades).
Many apologies for the length…
Mad Dog seems to have hit the nail on the head and judging by the posts from Perry de Havilland, David Carr, S. Weasel etc, it does seem that this blog (its the first one I’ve ever been on – recommended by a [libertarian/right-wing] FRIEND of mine) does have a fair number of people who are not, as Mad Dog suggests, trying to ‘move past people’s perceptions of left and right politics’.
It took my friend and I quite a while to be able to have a constructive discussion on any issue because it was just too easy for both of us to start spouting left/right wing rhetoric. It takes an effort on both parts not to continually feel the need to point out the bloodstained hands of the left/right…but it’s worth it.
This may not be the right place to do this (does anyone know where I can post a topic?), but the way that my friend and I moved forward was by trying to go back to basics and not react in any way that we thought MIGHT be inflammatory.
I started off with:
06/02/03
A: COLONISATION THROUGHOUT HISTORY
Things I would suggest we could agree on:
1. Saddam Hussein is a power mad dictator. (This is just to show you that I’m not on his side!)
2. Throughout history individuals and nations have acted selfishly and not seen any reason why they shouldn’t.
3. There is a long history of colonisation by almost every nation in the world (even the Maori wiped out the original inhabitants of New Zealand!)
4. This was mainly to grow ones’ own society by usurping the natural resources and labour of a neighbouring country – perhaps even a laudable reason back then?
5. It was once upon considered normal and justifiable to behave in this manner
6. It is no longer considered ‘acceptable behaviour’
Do you feel that it is still acceptable?
7. Because of this ‘terrorism’ has always existed – the colonised invariably fight back against the colonisers
8. Many times it would be looked on as justifiable (for example the Britons against the Romans; the Indians against the British; and most certainly the American settlers against the British)
She replied with a witty and clever response to each statement. Not what I wanted! She had actually agreed with the first 5 points but had felt the need to remind me how evil Socialists were on each point.
I explained this, she understood, and we went on to have a very fruitful exchange of ideas…
I look forward to endless wisecracks!
Perry said – “Culture War… that is how I see it. Don’t play fair. Fuck with their things. They want to subject you to their political control. Fuck ’em.”
A had a quick chuckle imagining that as a Noam Chomsky quote.
Seriously though, that kind of idea is rather worrying, and not just because it could have come out from any number of left-wing agitators from the past 150 years. Surely “playing fair” is the whole basis of civil society? Fight fire with fire by all means, but one should expose silly ideas with good ideas, not theft or destruction of property.
And yes, taking a couple of cards from a book shop is hardly a serious crime. It is an amusing prank, no more, like a drunk student leaving a traffic cone on my car bonnet. Lighten up folks!
Bless, your friend has the right idea- after point No. 5 you start to go a bit wonky… especially in points 7 and 8 (weren’t the american settlers also largely the British colonisers??) Anyway – what really intrigues me is – how are you going to get all those points unto one little book shop card?
This may not be the right place to do this (does anyone know where I can post a topic?)
Bless: If you have written something you think would make a good Samizdata post, send it to reply@samizdata.net . The editors may or may not post it, but they will at least read it and give it due consideration.
It took my friend and I quite a while to be able to have a constructive discussion on any issue because it was just too easy for both of us to start spouting left/right wing rhetoric.
Once upon a time I was a leftist. I grew away from leftist politics, at least partly because so much of the left is so anti-technology and anti-American, and I am neither of these things. For a long time, though, I retained sympathy for the left, for containing people I perceived as well-intentioned and whose hearts were in the right place. Eventually, however (around the time of the Seattle anti-globalisation riots) I concluded that a lot of the left consisted of a form of sanctimonious self-important anti-enlightenment luddites, and I lost any sympathy I had retained for the bulk of the left.
I don’t actually use the word “libertarian” to describe myself, but I am sympathetic to the libertarian position, and some of my friends with who I have relatively few political differences do describe themselves as libertarian. I am still not especially fond of conservatism, however. However, a lot of libertarian inclined people have started from the opposite side to where I started. They started off as conservatives and then moved towards libertarianism as the discovered that there were aspects of conservatism they didn’t like. (For one thing, conservatism can be as anti-technology as can left wing politics). Many I think are in the same position I once was but on the opposite side of politics. They have largely broken with the conservative position in terms of what they believe, but at the same time they still feel an attachment to it, and they are still sympathetic to the people on that side of politics. Some of them believe that conservative politics may evolve to eventually be more libertarian. I am not especially optimistic on that count, but it isn’t impossible.
People in this position may or may not break with conservative politics completely later on, and it’s up to them whether they do, but in the Samizdata comments section, I see at least a few people who I think can be categorised like this. .
I like the idea of accidentally mis-filing books. Just a little subservise but not destructive. Now I am known as being a tad compulsive about straightening up stacks of books. If I happen to accidentally bury Moore’s book under 5 copies of Dr. Phil’s latest tome, it isn’t intentional.
Sometimes, when I’m hurriedly cleaning up the Chomsky section, I accidentally place the books back in the case back to front, or spine side in. I would correct the error, but by that time I am usually late for an appointment and have to run. Oh well, I just meant to help.
And yes, taking a couple of cards from a book shop is hardly a serious crime. It is an amusing prank, no more, like a drunk student leaving a traffic cone on my car bonnet. Lighten up folks!
If he didn’t want fish then he’d not have gone fishing.
“Culture War… They want to subject you to their political control. Fuck ’em.”
“He who shall not be named” – I missed this comment first time, but having re-read it – it brought back so many memories from my day as a university student. You weren’t the one with the AK47 storming the library block, were you? :0)
And I must say I do not disagree with Mr Brights comments above. All this discussion has been quite thought provoking and I for one have gained some new insights on several things.
But I suppose “one swallow does not a summer make”, it has to end soon…
I remember once when I was at a library out of town I transfered a Chomsky book to the “juvenile fiction” section…
by accident of course ;^)
Interesting post and interesting comments. Thanks for the inspiration people.
Mr Syme, your comments to Della above got me thinking.
“Secondly, the point of Samizdata.net is not to be libertarian but just Samizdata.net-like.”
Whereas the intro page says;
“Samizdata.net Weblog:
A blog bringing you news & views from a robust critically rational libertarian perspective, updated several times daily.”
Yes, not only the words RATIONAL but also LIBERTARIAN appear in the description of the web site. Which is why I was attracted here in the first place. The “rationality” is returning after a short summer break for the war in Iraq. But it would seem that the “libertarian” ideals are still off on holiday as far as some are concerned. Even to the point of rewriting that statement on later pages by the editorial team. Social indevidualist? A rose is a rose by any other name…
” You certainly won’t find us on the totally irrelevant left-right spectrum…”
I am happy that we have been able to navigate our path away from the old constrictive dogmas to a new libertarian future. And in the process encourage others to do so.
But at least one editor appears to have problems holding the map the right way up…which probably explains our difficulty in following the plot.
I wonder how y’all would react to recommendations of Ann Coulter or some other wingnut.
Fuck ’em and their right-wing political control? I hope so.
I also wonder how some of the more rabid commentors here (which isn’t to say everyone I disagree with is rabid: most of you seem very intelligent people) would behave if you came into contact with a real, live Communist. Michael Moore? Gimme a break.
When I worked in a bookstore there was someone dedicated to putting Face on Mars books into the astronomy section. It can be very annoying.
If you do choose to reorganize the store you might want to put the Black Book of Communism in the same section with Chomsky and company so they can leaf through and see the bloody end to their little socialist dreams.
Being the rabid libertarian that I am, I have rarely made contact with a communist, though if I did, I hope I would have the self-control and good manners to address him/her in civil fashion, though if asked to comment on his/her views, would point out that communism has been responsible for the slaughters in Soviet Russia, China, Vietnam, etc, etc.
At that point I’d run off and blow a big raspberry! haha!
I wonder how y’all would react to recommendations of Ann Coulter or some other wingnut.
Fuck ’em and their right-wing political control? I hope so.
Yes, “fuck ’em” sounds about right to me.