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Are Americans Who Admire Socialism and Communism Miseducated or Stupid?
Black Community News ^ | 12/4/18 | Walter Williams

Posted on 12/09/2018 10:15:52 AM PST by Impala64ssa

A recent Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation survey found that 51 percent of American millennials would rather live in a socialist or communist country than in a capitalist country. Only 42 percent prefer the latter (http://tinyurl.com/ybsejy3f). Twenty-five percent of millennials who know who Vladimir Lenin was view him favorably. Lenin was the first premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Half of millennials have never heard of Communist Mao Zedong, who ruled China from 1949 to 1959 and was responsible for the deaths of 45 million Chinese people.

The number of people who died at the hands of Josef Stalin may be as high as 62 million. However, almost one-third of millennials think former President George W. Bush is responsible for more killings than Stalin (http://tinyurl.com/yb43dlhm). By the way, Adolf Hitler, head of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, was responsible for the deaths of about 20 million people. The Nazis come in as a poor third in terms of history’s most prolific mass murderers. According to professor Rudolph Rummel’s research, the 20th century, mankind’s most brutal century, saw 262 million people’s lives destroyed at the hands of their own governments (http://tinyurl.com/lu8z8ab).

Young people who weren’t alive during World War II and its Cold War aftermath might be forgiven for not knowing the horrors of socialism. Some of their beliefs represent their having been indoctrinated by their K-12 teachers and college professors. There was such leftist hate for former President George W. Bush that it’s not out of the question that those 32 percent of millennials were taught by their teachers and professors that Bush murdered more people than Stalin.

America’s communists, socialists and Marxists have little knowledge of socialist history. Bradley Birzer, a professor of history at Hillsdale College, explains this in an article for The American Conservative titled “Socialists and Fascists Have Always Been Kissing Cousins.” Joseph Goebbels wrote in 1925, “It would be better for us to end our existence under Bolshevism than to endure slavery under capitalism.” This Nazi sentiment might be shared by Sen. Bernie Sanders and his comrade Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Goebbels added, “I think it is terrible that we and the Communists are bashing in each other’s heads” (http://tinyurl.com/yd4lqxvs).

When the tragedies of socialist regimes — such as those in Venezuela, the USSR, China, Cuba and many others — are pointed out to America’s leftists, they hold up Sweden as their socialist role model. But they are absolutely wrong about Sweden. Johan Norberg points this out in his documentary “Sweden: Lessons for America?” Americans might be surprised to learn that Sweden’s experiment with socialism was a relatively brief flirtation, lasting about 20 years and ending in disillusionment and reform (http://tinyurl.com/lvdwzhr). Reason magazine reports: “Sweden began rolling back government in the early 1990s, recapturing the entrepreneurial spirit that made it a wealthy country to begin with. High taxation and a generous array of government benefits are still around. But now it’s also a nation of school vouchers, free trade, open immigration, light business regulation, and no minimum wage laws.” School vouchers, light business regulation and no minimum wage laws are practices deeply offensive to America’s leftists.

Our young people are not the first Americans to admire tyrants and cutthroats. W.E.B. Du Bois, writing in the National Guardian in 1953, said, “Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature.” Walter Duranty called Stalin “the greatest living statesman” and “a quiet, unobtrusive man.” There was even leftist admiration for Hitler and fellow fascist Benito Mussolini. When Hitler came to power in January 1933, George Bernard Shaw described him as “a very remarkable man, a very able man.” President Franklin Roosevelt called Mussolini “admirable,” and he was “deeply impressed by what he (had) accomplished.” In 1972, John Kenneth Galbraith visited Communist China and praised Mao and the Chinese economic system. His Harvard University colleague John K. Fairbank believed that America could learn much from the Cultural Revolution, saying, “Americans may find in China’s collective life today an ingredient of personal moral concern for one’s neighbor that has a lesson for us all.”

Are Americans who admire the world’s most brutal regimes miseducated or stupid? Or do they have some kind of devious agenda?

COPYRIGHT 2018 CREATORS.COM


TOPICS: Government; Politics
KEYWORDS: socialism; walterwilliams
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To: Little Ray

“Due to the high volume of mail that we receive from young people who are new to Satanism, we have put together some information to help answer your specific questions and concerns.” Quote from Church of Satan website.

Sounds like you are right. Of course the book Revelation in the bible predicts a great falling away of the church as the end time approaches.


41 posted on 12/09/2018 10:59:22 AM PST by antidemoncrat
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To: donna

Or mention that Stain murdered more than 69,000,000 people?

Or that Mao Tse-tung murdered more than 74,000,000 people?

Or that the Imperial Japanese murdered more than 25,000,000 people?

Or that the German NAZIs murdered more than 25,000,000 people?

Or are they just jealous and like the American Weathermen want to murder more than 25,000,000 Americans?


42 posted on 12/09/2018 11:02:48 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: PIF

Stain= Stalin opps


43 posted on 12/09/2018 11:03:17 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: HartleyMBaldwin

I’d also say they’re not Americans. They have no idea what it means to be one.


44 posted on 12/09/2018 11:04:02 AM PST by Bulwyf
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To: Impala64ssa
Karl Marx did everything in his power to deform the idea of economics away from what it really is - the natural exchange of people to get what they need in order to live.

Marx sat a London library pouring over Adam Smith to learn all he could in order to stab at the heart of this very needed and natural human function.

The miseducated and the stupid have no idea how life would be without American capitalism.

Shopping in a Soviet grocery store (about 4 minutes)

Explanation of what happened during the fall of communism (about 5 minutes)

45 posted on 12/09/2018 11:04:42 AM PST by Slyfox (Not my circus, not my monkeys)
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To: HartleyMBaldwin

Neither, just lazy aholes.


46 posted on 12/09/2018 11:05:10 AM PST by ImJustAnotherOkie (All I know is what I read in the papers.)
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To: Impala64ssa

“Are Americans Who Admire Socialism and Communism Miseducated or Stupid?”

How about evil?


47 posted on 12/09/2018 11:05:28 AM PST by sitetest (No longer mostly dead.)
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To: HartleyMBaldwin

I agree. Mis-educated and stupid aren’t mutually exclusive. Actually, they often go together.


48 posted on 12/09/2018 11:07:34 AM PST by hal ogen (First Amendment or Reeducation Camp?)
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To: cyclotic

The free side (of the Berlin Wall) was messy and loaded with multiple layers of graffiti while the dictatorial communist side was pristine clean concrete.


They either scrubbed their panels of the communist side or were picky about avoiding the panels with large blood stains ...


49 posted on 12/09/2018 11:07:47 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: joethedrummer

I agree. The sooner more realize this, the sooner it can get done.


50 posted on 12/09/2018 11:09:04 AM PST by Bulwyf
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To: Impala64ssa

Stupid people are easily indoctrinated, and we have put education into the hands of trade union thugs. Saving future generations from the hell of communism would seem like a worthwhile goal of education, but “curriculum development specialists” (example: Brenda Snipes) don’t see that as a priority.

Pervasive, nefarious conformism selects and self-selects who is “successful”. Both stupid and intelligent people pursue rewards and avoid punishment. The media culture and cult of celebrity defines what is “cool”. Only radical leftists need apply. Many jobs require spewing the PC claptrap. Those who do get ahead, those who don’t get dropped. Academia, the FBI, CIA, and most of the gov’t became a leftist lake gradually because leftists hire and promote their compadres, and blackball non-leftists.


51 posted on 12/09/2018 11:09:46 AM PST by Chewbarkah
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To: Impala64ssa
BOTH!
52 posted on 12/09/2018 11:09:58 AM PST by Rummyfan (In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel.)
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To: Impala64ssa

I think both.


53 posted on 12/09/2018 11:10:27 AM PST by gattaca ("Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives." Ronald Reagan)
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To: Impala64ssa

It is a mixture of both, but rather than say “stupid” I would say ignorant. “Stupidity” implies low intelligence, while extreme ignorance means extremely lacking in knowledge.

There two main ways knowledge is acquired; formally as through formal education and life experience, which includes not just what we do but in what ways we become “informed” beyond our own experience, and that includes what we call “the media”.

So there are also two kinds of “miseducation” - one is from academia directly and the other comes from all the forms of the media.

Very intelligent persons can be very ignorant. It is not a result of mental defect such as very low intelligence - capability for logic and reasoning, so they are not stupid. Though that is not to say SOME of the Liberal/Progressive/Left are just plain stupid. My only point is I would not lump all who are Liberal/Progressive/Left into the “stupid” category.

In some sense with many Liberals/Progressives/Leftists it is a self-imposed ignorance - as if either sometime during formal schooling, or once they Left formal schooling the impetus for self-education ended, and “knowledge” became only what was delivered to them as predetermined “expert knowledge”. Even in many intelligent Liberals/Progressives/Leftists the ability for critical thinking hit a mute button, and was replaced by a “record” button convinced to just absord and memorize what they were told. Let me call it atrophied intelligence. David Horowitz is a former Leftists who realized he had once hit the mute button, until his intellectual honesty rose up and he began again to critically look at where his own ideas had come from, and had taken him.

You can see it in “well spoken” persons who are of the Liberal/Progressive/Left. The language craft of good intelligence is still there but the material is a constant recycling of Liberal/Left shiboliths.


54 posted on 12/09/2018 11:10:34 AM PST by Wuli
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To: Impala64ssa

One of the basic principles of communism was that it would first start in the world’s most advanced country.

It didn’t.

That is a fact.

If one of the most basic principles of communism was proven wrong, AT THE START, why would anyone believe anything else about it?


55 posted on 12/09/2018 11:10:46 AM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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To: GOPJ; SaveFerris
Communists builds walls to keep people from escaping... (think of how horrible a place would have to be that YOU would risk death to escape)



Hillary Flammond: My uncle was born in America.

Nick Rivers: Oh, really?

Hillary Flammond: But he was one of the lucky ones. He managed to escape in a balloon during the Jimmy Carter presidency.

56 posted on 12/09/2018 11:13:54 AM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: HartleyMBaldwin
"Miseducated or stupid? How about both?"

I am going to guess a minimum of 99% of those who saw the headline had exactly the same initial response.

Kudo's to have the best and most succinct response.

57 posted on 12/09/2018 11:15:59 AM PST by ImpBill (Conservative little "l" libertarian)
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To: lee martell
Lenin & Stalin are being ‘misreported and wrongly vilified’

Or, "If only Trotsky replaced Lenin, instead of Stalin."

58 posted on 12/09/2018 11:16:31 AM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: Impala64ssa

Boomers and “Greatest Generation” larded their Millennial children and grandchildren with mountains of debt and now scratch their heads in puzzlement over why they’re embracing socialism.


59 posted on 12/09/2018 11:16:38 AM PST by Drew68
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To: PIF

Very few escapees got close enough to bleed on the wall


60 posted on 12/09/2018 11:19:16 AM PST by cyclotic ( Democrats must be politically eviscerated, disemboweled and demolished.)
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