Communists

We must dance on the graves of mass murderers whose legacies continue to infect nations and foment conflicts.

Most people hate to speak ill of the dead. They look for something nice to say about even the not-so-dear departed. People’s natural imperfections usually seem to shrink when they leave this earth.

Not so with Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, as he was named at birth. He later took the revolutionary pseudonym Stalin, often translated as “man of steel.” It was all too accurate, a foreshadowing of the tragic consequences millions of people suffered under his command. He died 70 years ago, with even his closest aides wanting him dead — and they were lucky to have survived, since he may have been preparing to embark on another killing spree targeting those surrounding him.

Virginia Democrats and teachers union kill any thought of a Victims of Communism Day.

So, educating students about the dangers of communism is racist? Who knew?

Virginia Republicans recently introduced House Bill 1816 which would have declared November 7 — the anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution — Victims of Communism Day. The bill stated that the day would be “suitably observed in each public elementary and secondary school in the Commonwealth as a day honoring the approximately 100 million individuals who have fallen victim to communist regimes around the world.” In addition, the Virginia Standards of Learning for history and social science would add “the study of the dangers of communism.”

It’s entirely predictable, even inevitable, that public broadcasting would favor socialism in all its programming. But it’s a little more surprising when it openly touts The Communist Manifesto.

Since I’m a conservative glutton for punishment, I was driving on the highway on Sunday morning listening to the NPR-distributed program On The Media with host Brooke Gladstone, a longtime fixture on NPR. It was predictable when she chatted with socialist Naomi Oreskes about their mutual loathing of “free-market fundamentalism.” But the next segment was even worse. My jaw dropped.

While two in five Canadians overall subscribe to the idea of socialism—with that number even higher for younger Canadians—few are willing to pay for the tax increases required to finance such a system, says a study by the Fraser Institute.

Among 1,006 Canadians aged 18–34 surveyed, 46 percent of respondents picked socialism when asked “What is the ideal economic system.” The number drops to 43 percent among respondents aged 35–54, and to 38 percent among those over 55.

If we judge a political system purely on its promises rather than its actual consequences, why not give feudalism another shot?

The lines of ink of the Communist Manifesto, published 175 years ago today, have led to oceans of blood. Since Karl Marx issued his promise that workers who embrace communism “have nothing to lose but their chains,” regimes inspired by his philosophy have afflicted hundreds of millions of people — including the workers who are supposed to benefit from communism — with things worse than chains: gulags, famines, and firing squads.

Alas, its terrible descendants still survive in Asia.

Acentury ago, on December 30, 1922, Russia signed treaties with Ukraine, Byelorussia (now Belarus), and Transcaucasia (combining Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia) to form the Soviet Union. The latter continued to expand, reaching its apogee after swallowing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as part of Moscow’s booty from the Hitler-Stalin pact.

Of course, the 1922 treaty was not really the start of the USSR, but rather, the end of the beginning.