Free Republic

On this date in 1950, Milada Horakova was hanged with three others in Prague’s Pankrac Prison as a spy and traitor to the Communist Czechoslovakian government. Not (yet) as internationally recognizable as Rudolf Slansky,* the Communist General Secretary in Horakova’s time who would run afoul of Stalin and die on the same gallows two years later, Horakova (English Wikipedia page | Czech | the detailed French) is a potent symbol domestically of her country’s Cold War nightmare. Lawyer, social democrat, and a prominent feminist in the interwar and postwar periods — her life’s work, rather overshadowed by an end that...

The picture above shows Milada Horakova, a really dangerous-looking elderly lady who was a Czech dissident put to death after a Soviet show trial simply for disagreeing This is just a short observation on the White House’s campaign against the citizens’ anger expressed at Town Halls this month about Obama-care. Many have pointed out in the last 48 hours that this is a page right out of the Saul Alinsky ‘community organizing’ book: attack, mock and marginalize those who might stand in your way. That’s true enough. But its similarity to another Marxist tradition rang a bell with me. In...