Your assumption that marxism infects the notion , “from each according to his ability…..” is to condemn the idea without a trial.

In the first place, that expression connotes a willingness on the part of all participants not just in the FREEDOM to act, but the RESPONSIBILITY to act or not act, as appropriate. (You must love one another, as you love yourself”)

What has been missing from the American experiment in freedom is PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. When one chooses to exercise freedom only with respect to oneself, without regard to how it affects others; it is not freedom. It is tyranny. You and I make that choice on a daily basis. Voluntarily subscribing to a life of mutually assured benefits for all lifts each one and exalts none. The question of how you deal with laggards who lack any selfsame spirit is another matter. You may choose to focus on them if you wish as an answer to this. Or you may wish to address the bigger picture; personal development.

That’s enough of that for now. More later. If you wish.

As far your question goes, let’s take the saying apart:

1) From each according to his ability. What about the person’s willingness; what about choice?
If I am able to sing, must I be a singer? Can’t I be a playwright?
If I am able to drive a truck, must I drive a truck? Leon Uris write Exodus while he was a truck driver. What if he had lived in a society where he was compelled to be a truck driver? We have no Exodus, No Mila 18, No Trinity, no QB VII.

2) To each according his needs. Where do I begin? Who determines need? Who determines what is required to satisfy that need? You? Me? A committee?

What do you know about the early Christian congregation? Something written by some liberation theologian? Do you find it interesting that no one made comparisons between Communism / Marxism and early Christian living until the 1960’s? It would have been a very useful comparison in the 1850’s, wouldn’t it? Why didn’t they know about iT?

From me.

Just because I so love an argument.

Dodging the discussion. I asked you for some basis for your pejorative use of the phrase.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,

What is wrong with the concept? I do not associate the idea with Marxism, I associate the concept with that of the early Christian Congregation. It seems you have a rather narrow view of ideas in general. I am not a marxist any more than you are a nazi. I have a spectre of Socialism in my bag of ideas because I am not afraid of names. I do not like to be cubby-holed as a this, or a that. I, like my genetic gene pool, am a combination of disciplines and dogmas that changes as I learn. How do you learn? I hope one of the reasons you visit this site is to learn about the other point of view. That is why I visit Powerline. Little Green Footballs and such. Is that why you are here Frank?

Just once I would like to hear a direct answer to a direct question without all the bobbing and weaving.

The cost of  peace in our time was the bloodiest war in world history.

The cost of peace is war?

Awfully close to plagiarism, don’t you think?

Frank;

I thank God every day for those who volunteer for “The Charge of the Light Brigade” but have the maturity to call on such character only when necessary.

We should get some wingnut to post here under the handle “Asshole”. So we can have fun making statements like, “What you’re saying, Asshole, is that war is justified just because we feel like it…”

Peace, like war, has costs.

Really? And what might be the “cost” of peace?

In fact, officials at all levels of the administration tied Saddam’s non-existent WMD programs directly to the threat he posed, and hyped it as the most important reason above all others.

Sadly, it seems your non-MSM right wing sources have lied to you, Nud. But worse, the Adminstration has lied to all of us.

“No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.”
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld before the House Armed Services Committee, 9/19/02

“Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent – that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain. And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons.”
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/18/02

“This is about imminent threat.”
White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03

“This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined.”
President Bush, 9/26/02

Since 1998 there was a Congressional resolution calling for the removal of Saddam. And after the demonstration of Islamofascism on 9/11, it certainly would have cut it as a threat to the US.

You say that IRaqis were not living under the Islamofascist ideology so what did invading Iraq have to do with 9-11? After we invaded, why was there no evidence of Iraqi WMDs, or any evidence of active programs? How is Iraq different from North Korea or Iran? How exactly can spreading democracy be the primary reason for invading Iraq and yet not be reason enough? Why is Islam and Sharia law a significant part of Iraq’s new constitution if its people are so welcoming of democracy? Or to put it another way, why are Iraqi women facing less rights under the new government then they had under Hussein? Why are vast swaths of Afghanistan still largely under the control of local warlords?
Oh, and, I’m not surprised that corruption exists but I am angry about it. Why aren’t you?

and yet clearly it wasn’t. It certainly wasn’t a threat to the US in any way shape or form.

Who the hell knows what you mean by this, Nud, but when most people refer to a “reason” for war, they’re talking about the motivation among the public and the publicly stated reasons. Without WMD, though, and the repeated assertion that Iraq was a “grave and gathering” and “immediate threat,” there never could have been the public support or the Congressional resolution for war. Islamofacism, as a threat, would simply never have cut it.

Again, history reveals plenty of evidence that reality is not so simple. People do not always automatically choose democracy over dictatorship. You site WWI so you should be aware of what happened to the Weimar Republic. A significant number of Germans resented their new democracy, blamed it for the Treaty of Versaille and eventually elected, literally, to return to a non-democratic form of government.

Beyond that, if WMD was not the primary reason for invading Iraq and imposing democracy was not the agenda, what pray tell, are we doing in Iraq? Because Hussein may have one day restarted his weapons programs? Lifting sanctions did not mean lifting restrictions and inspections of Hussein’s weapons programs. You may slight the IAEA’s handling of Iran but the fact of the matter is that thanks to inspections and restrictions Iraq had no WMDs of any kind over a decade after the first gulf war.

The primary reason for attacking Iraq was that after 9/11 we realized that we can not live with Islamofascism. The goal is to transform the entire Middle East. Iraq was merely a good place to start due to ready-made causes for war.

You may slight the IAEA s handling of Iran but the fact of the matter is that thanks to inspections and restrictions Iraq had no WMDs of any kind over a decade after the first gulf war.

That is completely untrue. Even after the Gulf War Iraq continued its weapons and nuke development. In fact, Saddam’s son-in-law who fled to Jordan exposed a large part of the WMD program that was concealed from the UN inspectors. Iraq was very good at cheating and hiding its programs. The IAEA and weapons-control treaties are only good if signatories obey them. If they choose not to obey them, then no amount of inspections or monitoring will be able to stop proliferation.

And I am not saying that corruption should not be challenged, merely that we shouldnt be surprised that it exists – especially in large scale projects.

Anyone who has some knowledge of military knows that  well-planned wars do not exist.

Correct, nudnik. That’s why it’s a bad idea to fight them when there are other alternatives.