This superb Comment of the Day by Steve-O-in NJ, on the post, “KABOOM! At What Point Do Parents Blow The Whistle On Flagrant Ideological Indoctrination In Our Schools?,” needs no introduction.
It just needs to be read.
A USAF F-16 Fighting Falcon, mainstay of the last 12 years of the Cold War, launches to fly a patrol. In those years it could have been anywhere from Italy to Spain to Turkey, while throughout Europe squadrons of the same under allied flags kept watch. A USAF F-15 Eagle, older still (they entered service in 1976) takes to the air. In the Cold War they kept watch further north, in Germany, in England, and even at Keflavik in Iceland. Every day they drilled, every day they patrolled, every day they were ready to go into battle on command, to stop the tyrannical scourge of Soviet communism or die trying.
We’d made a deal we wished we hadn’t had to with them, because the alternative was the genocidal tyranny of Nazism. We’d either looked the other way on, or not asked and not been told about, or accepted their lies about the worst things they’d done then like the Katyn Forest Massacre. However, we’d also seen them try to starve and freeze West Berlin out, and we’d seen them roll right over Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 when they dared to try to move toward greater freedom. We would be damned if we were going to let them bring that tyranny to the Rhine or past it. We’d heard from those who escaped what the conditions were like on the other side of the Iron Curtain, and we wanted no part of them.
We wanted no part of a system where there was one political party and only one. We wanted no part of a system where those who deviated from the party line either died or disappeared suddenly. We wanted no part of a system where faith was officially disapproved of and suppressed. We wanted no part of a system where the individual was just a cog in the government machine and had no hope of doing better. The system they offered was simply antithetical to what the Founding Fathers set up for this country, and we weren’t letting them bring it here. We’d fight to prevent it, and we’d die fighting rather than surrender to it. That’s why there were these patrols, that’s why the 41 for freedom were at sea at all times, but no one knew exactly where, and that’s why the 2nd Armored Division was always ready to go and the 82nd and 101st had battalions ready to fly out on minimal notice.
Now one of our political parties is likely to nominate a man who not only went behind the Iron Curtain, but did it willingly, for a honeymoon, when most of us head to someplace with a lot of sun and sand, or a lot of palazzos and palaces if the beach isn’t our thing. Not only did he go there, but he praised what he found there, in the place where those who dared speak out vanished and a refrigerator was a luxury item, saying it was a better system than we had here. Not only did he go there and praise what he found, but he did it while Ronald Reagan was finally arm-wrestling the Soviets to their final defeat, which would lead to their dissolution 3 years later. Not only all this, but he wants to bring that failed system here, on speed, and his followers say damned be anyone who stands in his way, because cities will burn otherwise.
I don’t know what’s more ironic (though not in an amusing way), that this system no longer exists in the nation where it originated (which also doesn’t exist anymore), or that the party that’s about to nominate this man is the same party that produced Thomas Jefferson, architect of the American brand of freedom, Andrew Jackson, who decisively stopped the first attempts to tear this nation apart, FDR, whom many still count as third in the great trinity of US presidents with Washington and Lincoln, and Harry Truman, who was the first president to stand up against this system that his party now wants to bring here.
Then again, when that party has repudiated its own history, and much of the educational establishment seeks to repudiate that history, it should come as no surprise that many do not know that history and can’t put this in any kind of perspective. It should come as no surprise that they can’t grasp the significance of Thomas Jefferson as the force behind the Bill of Rights, when all they hear about is his affair with Sally Hemmings, and they think that’s all they need to hear. It should not come as a surprise that they have never heard of the nullification crisis, when all they have heard about Andrew Jackson is that he owned slaves and persecuted Native Americans, so next! It should not be odd that they don’t understand what FDR was all about when all they hear about is his heavy-handed treatment of Japanese-Americans, so nothing else need be known. It also is no surprise that they don’t know thing one about Truman and the beginning of the Cold War when they think only the last President to come out of their party matters.
History is the crucible that burns away failure, the mirror that shows bad ideas for what they are, the candle that stops the darkness of lies from closing in. That’s why the left hates it so much. They want to break the crucible, shatter the mirror, snuff out the candle, so no one will grasp what they are trying and say “no!” before it’s too late.
They rant at what happened in Charlottesville and curse that we let the cancer of neo-Nazism grow in our midst when the Greatest Generation defeated them. Strangely, no one holds up the mirror and reminds them that that generation, and two that came after, defeated the equally deadly plague of Communism, and asks “why do you want to inject us with this deadly plague?”
Don’t be fooled. Light the candle, look into the mirror, then ignite the crucible and make certain this failure is burned away before it can destroy this country.
Ethics Alarms 
The socialist radicals of the 1960s and 1970s started all this. Howard Zinn with his simplistic textbook *Peoples History Of The United States* miseducated a whole generation of students that portrayed America as a place which was deeply racist and founded on oppression. Many parents only were concerned with their kid getting into the right college where they could get miseducated some more. The rot is truly deep in the American educational system.
I dedicate this post to Adimagejim! 🙂 My beacon of mental health . . .
The radical movements in America, and the radical trends that continue today, have roots in specific American history, and according to my own studies they have a direct, undeniable root in the decision to foment a civil war in which one section attacked and more-or-less annihilated the other. One America was destroyed, and another America arose. Everyone on this blog, except perhaps one or two (who remain always tactfully silent) celebrates and defends this unreally destructive war which still reverberates and ramifies within the Republic. The beginning of American Radicalism has its origins there. And yet no one of you *sees* it.
Just above this blog entry is one *celebrating* Muhammed Ali. Who in essence defined as anti-American posture and worked to expose aspects of America’s neo-imperial policy. No one on this blog can or will admit to America having created a neo-imperial economic empire which requires political stances that completely contradict declared Republican values and indeed the essence of the Constitution, and no one will admit that this contradiction and contrast is one factor playing out as two different versions of America are now set up to battle as two Godzilla Monsters are setting themselves up to battle over ‘the meaning of America’ and ‘the Fate of the Nation’. Without wishing to offend I often sometimes cannot believe how willfully *certain* some of you seem to me! Your intelligence is never doubted but just the fact that you simply will not to see. I simply do not get it. I cannot grasp it. You have shown me how serious is this error and how it requires a dedicated individual to *participate* in a mass-lie.
American Radicalism is as alive in *you-plural* as it is in *them*. You actively participate in it. You quite literally celebrate every aspect of it and dimension of it. But what is completely extraordinary is that then you complain about all these things happening which are logical extensions of previous choices made.
Wayne makes an absolutely extraordinary statement!
The socialist radicals of the 1960s and 1970s started all this. Howard Zinn with his simplistic textbook *Peoples History Of The United States* miseducated a whole generation of students that portrayed America as a place which was deeply racist and founded on oppression.
The entire theory on which support and celebration of the War Against the South is expressed, always, through the most simplistic and binary narratives of ‘relieving oppression’ of ‘freeing the slaves’. Right there you have a theory which is completely comparable to militarized ideological view. Howard Zinn created narratives (historical interpretations) which militarized classes within America that had been, by any non-Orwellian definition, oppressed. But you linguo-magically wish to turn what was and what is into what wasn’t and what was not. And you have the most extraordinary and belligerent ways to do this: the whole pack of you teams up against any contrary view. I do not only mean those who participate here. What I mean is that this is part of what I might call *American Outlook*. It is part of a patriotic attitude which, unfortunately, situates itself like a giant wall against understanding.
So I guess you will have to rewrite American History — do it once more since it has been done so many different times before — to accord with your tendentious notions about America. But your tendentious notions about America will only stand for perhaps another generation. The New America is a new demographic of Americanism. They are going to rewrite the textbooks, not you.
OK so if that is true then the present state of America and Americanism — this radical project that each and everyone here supports, applauds and defends with ferocity — needs to be more critically examined. Its you who distort history in many ways. It is you which cannot tell the truth. It is you which concocts elaborate structures of lies so not to see *reality*. Then let history — true history — burn away that failure. I can easily agree that *the Left* has and employs destructive narratives because its absurd idealism is unreal. But you are just as much ‘leftists’ when your core tenets are examined. You express them all the time. Its like you want to have your Old Settled American cake and your New Radical Progressive American cake at the same time. You want to radically opposed lines to blend into one.
This is a core example of how Steve lies to himself. And here, encased in linguo-gymnastics, is a core group of essential lies. But they are so seductive!
The remaking of America, the remodeling of America, began with great gusto around the time of the First World War. The project which began in intellectual circles eventually became a mass-management project and was adopted at ideological levels within government-management circles. It took far more definite shape in the years after the Second World War when it became radicalized in the Sixties by people like Muhammed Ali and Malcolm X. In ways that fundamentally affected how *you* act and perceive. You are children of this, not rebels against it.
I am wondering how you explain the steady growth of the Abolitionist Movement and the appearance of Abraham Lincoln who foresaw very early the intrinsic evil of slavery. Even many of the founding fathers had second thoughts about the tolerance of slavery in the South in order to create a nation free from British Tyranny. As far as Howard Zinn, he created the false narrative that American was founded upon oppression of minorities and more recent immigrants by greedy plutocrats.
You.just.don’t.get.it. I could explain with elaborate gesticulations till I dislocated both jaw and wrists and you would.not.understand.the.points.I.make.
Therefore, I have no alternative but to convert myself into a Russian! (Now, in some years this is what people in Sanderslandia will be singing. C’mon: not that bad!) 🙂
History is the crucible that burns away failure, the mirror that shows bad ideas for what they are, the candle that stops the darkness of lies from closing in. That’s why the left hates it so much. They want to break the crucible, shatter the mirror, snuff out the candle, so no one will grasp what they are trying and say “no!” before it’s too late.
That is pretty remarkable text, even for a COTD! Well-done.
Communism is great! …On PAPER. People are what mess it up. But socialism and communism aren’t the same. Having some socialist policies won’t kill us all. Social Security, Medicare, etc. I know a lot of people don’t trust the Federal gubmint, though, so to many, it is the same because the US Fed can’t possibly handle anything that big and not screw it up. I’m not a registered Dem and I’m in a late state anyway, so I have no say in who becomes the nominee. But a little socialist policy to fix some of our woes doesn’t mean we cede everything to our own homegrown Stalin.
Yes, Becky, but a “democratic socialist” who repeatedly tells us about the “good things” Communist dictators have accomplished, and who goes to the Soviet Union to cheer on America’s adversaries. Maybe you prefer the term “Marxist.”
Bernie: “What being a socialist means is … that you hold out … a vision of society where poverty is absolutely unnecessary, where international relations are not based on greed … but on cooperation … where human beings can own the means of production and work together rather than having to work as semi-slaves to other people who can hire and fire.”
Bernie, after the Soviet Union had had invaded Afghanistan, shot down Korean Air Lines flight 007, and pushed for the institution of martial law in Poland: “A handful of people in this country are making decisions, whipping up Cold War hysteria, making us hate the Russians. We’re spending billions on military. Why can’t we take some of that money to pay for thousands of U.S. children to go to the Soviet Union?”
Bernie: “It’s funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is, that people are lining up for food. That is a good thing! In other countries people don’t line up for food: The rich get the food, and the poor starve to death.”
Bernie: In a 1985 interview he said espoused “traditional socialist goals — public ownership of oil companies, factories, utilities, banks, etc.”
Denying that he is a Communist sympathizer, apologist and admirer of its goals and objectives requires either denial or lack of necessary information.
(In the preceding few years, the Soviet Union .)
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-04-28-vw-21595-story.html
Read the whole article. Ronald Reagan was rebuilding US forces and getting ready to walk away from the table in Rekjavik, while Bernie said the US and USSR should exchange kids and “break down the walls of nationalism” and “get to know each other.” The problem wasn’t that we didn’t know each other, the problem was that we knew the other side all too well. The left at the time was trying to pull a very big gaslight job on the rest of the country.
Bernie isn’t someone looking to lean a little to the left and add a judicious dose of social democracy to fix the long-standing problems here. He’s an ideological purist, or that’s how he’s pitching himself now. He wants to create a massive welfare state, financed by new taxes and suing the fossil fuel industry into oblivion. He also wants to wipe out private health insurance and destroy the profitable pharma industry. He isn’t a proto-Stalin, he’s a proto-Lenin promising “jobs, healthcare, and debt relief,” instead of “peace, land, and bread.” How’d that work out in Imperial Russia?
The president said it best when he said that Venezuela didn’t get to where it was because socialism wasn’t done right, it got there because it was done exactly the way it was meant to be done. We don’t need our own Lenin, promising the world but not having a workable plan for delivering it. We don’t need a Salvador Allende-Gossens, stealing private property and bankrupting the place. We definitely don’t need a Castro, one day telling you he’s only going to nationalize a few key industries, and the next day saying “you work for me now.” I don’t think we’ll ever get our own Pol Pot, abolishing towns, money, religion, and private property and introducing death by bayonet and club for any reason or no reason, but you never know.
No, Becky. Communism inhibits freedom and can never be great, on paper or not. Any type of society where power is concentrated is subject to abuse. The greater the concentration, the greater the potential for abuse. Anyone who says otherwise is utterly naive.