Free Republic

Commies at West Point? That’s not bad enough.The Washington Examiner dismantles what they call the New York Time’s worst op-ed of the year (a constantly moving target, to be sure) on how beneficial the Communist Revolution in China was for women. Think of it as revisionist history with a Feminist twist:   The main thrust of the article, which is little more than a shameful bit of apologia for Mao Zedong, who is personally responsible for more than 45 million deaths, is that Chinese women were liberated by the country's great and murderous Cultural Revolution. I recall that Anita Dunn, Obama’s...

The NY Times, the paper that ignored the crimes against humanity committed by Stalin as they were happening, is now looking to provide the same treatment retroactively to Mao Zedong. In its ongoing “Red Century” series, the Times published a piece yesterday arguing that Mao represented a great leap forward for women: “The Communists did many terrible things,” my grandmother always says at the end of her reminiscences. “But they made women’s lives much better.”That often-repeated dictum sums up the popular perception of Mao Zedong’s legacy regarding women in China. As every Chinese schoolchild learns in history class, the...

When people describe particularly evil individuals or regimes, why is it that they use the terms “Nazi” or “fascist,” but almost never “communist?” Given the unparalleled amount of human suffering communists have caused, why is “communist” so much less a term of revulsion than “Nazi?” Communists killed 70 million people in China, more than 20 million people in the Soviet Union (not including about 5 million Ukrainians) and almost one out of every three Cambodians. They enslaved entire nations in Russia, Vietnam, China, Eastern Europe, North Korea, Cuba and much of Central Asia. They took or ruined the lives of...

(CNN) — Hillary Clinton casts Bernie Sanders as an unrealistic over-promiser in her new book, according to excerpts posted by a group of Clinton supporters. She said that his attacks against her during the primary caused "lasting damage" and paved the way for "(Donald) Trump's 'Crooked Hillary' campaign." Clinton, in a book that will be released September 12 entitled "What Happened," said Sanders "had to resort to innuendo and impugning my character" because the two Democrats "agreed on so much." The excerpts represent a small number of the roughly 500-page book in which Clinton reflects on her stunning loss to...

Former Vice President Joe Biden has leveled harsh words at President Donald Trump for placing blame on “both sides” for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. In a commentary published Sunday in The Atlantic, Biden wrote: “Today we have an American president who has publicly proclaimed a moral equivalency between neo-Nazis and Klansmen and those who would oppose their venom and hate.” He said Trump has “emboldened white supremacists with messages of comfort and support.” …

'These are tactics that are well-known. You start by tearing down statues and burning books, and eventually you go after people.' Federalist senior correspondent John Daniel Davidson joined Fox News’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” to explain why the Left’s impulse to tear down Confederate monuments is totalitarian. Davidson noted that leftists calling for the destruction of statues memorializing Confederate figures has been going on for quite some time. “I remember two years ago we had the 150th anniversary of the Confederate surrender and you had people in the mainstream media at that time calling for the desecration of Confederate graves,” Davidson...

Thirty Democrats disillusioned with their party’s struggles in Middle America have unveiled a new group aimed at expanding its base beyond just the two coasts. The initiative, which comprises current and former mayors, governors, cabinet members and lawmakers, comes complete with a catchy new title, “New Democracy.” If that name sounds familiar, it’s because it was the same as that given by Mao Zedong to his theory of democracy in Communist China. “In a word, new-democratic culture is the proletarian-led, anti-imperialist and anti-feudal culture of the broad masses,” Mao wrote on New Democracy in 1940, nine years before coming to...

A Chinese professor has been sacked after he criticized Chairman Mao Zedong on his 123rd birthday in an commentary he posted online that enraged leftists. Mao, who died on Dec. 9, 1976, is still officially venerated by the ruling Communist Party as the founder of modern China, and his face appears on every yuan banknote. But he is particularly respected by leftists who believe the country has become too capitalist and unequal over three decades of market-based reforms, and attitudes towards Mao and his legacy mirror differences between reformers and traditionalists. Deng Xiaochao, 62, an art professor at Shandong Jianzhu...

I noticed that the Garden Cafe and Diner, aka Bartertown Diner, closed up shop this week after only 5 years. You could be forgiven if you thought it was due to lack of interest in it’s menu: Bartertown's initial menu was described in a 2011 MLive review as an "imaginative" array of veggie, vegan and raw dishes that came with names like Dirty Dirty Beans & Greens and Raw Trash salad. MLive But you’d be wrong. There seems to be an unrelenting demand for food that is “sustainable” and doesn’t “destroy the planet.” Sorry Bacon, that ain’t you.The closure was...

A newly released YouGov study aimed at surveying American attitudes towards socialism reveals just how little Americans know about communism and events surrounding the history of communist and socialist regimes. Among the study’s most alarming findings, one in four Americans (26 percent) believe that more people were killed under George W. Bush than under notorious Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. […] The survey focused largely millennials and found that they are severely lacking in knowledge when it comes to communism and its bloody history. The poll shows 25 percent of millennials have a favorable view of Vladimir Lenin and 42 percent...

There’s something rotten in Hillary Clinton’s world, as Wylie Mao, one of her top staffers, was caught on video saying he could sexually harass women without facing any consequences. Mao was caught with his pants down by journalists with Project Veritas, a group committed to uncovering election fraud. “In this video released by Project Veritas Action, James O’Keefe exposes the “misogynistic” nature of the Hillary Clinton campaign and its organizers, who joke about sexually harassing women and committing voter fraud on the campaign.” While sitting at a table with a group of women, the Clinton staffer said he would not...

Bo Xilai is down, but not out yet Thursday, May 31, 2012 By David Kan Ting, Special to The China Post The oft-quoted Chinese saying, “people's eyes are snow-brilliant,” (人民的眼睛是雪亮的) has a ring of truth, after all. The adage, attributable to Chairman Mao Zedong, asserts that the eyes of people are piercing and sharp, able to see the difference between right and wrong, and to penetrate the smoke and mirrors of the reactionaries and counterrevolutionaries. The chairman seems to have got it right again this time as mainland China is rocked by scandal after scandal. Time magazine called the country...

Ninety-nine years ago, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, and, after a few months of weak parliamentary rule, the Bolsheviks seized power. We call that seizure the Russian (or October) Revolution, but it might better be designated the Bolshevik coup d’état. A party of 10,000 people gained control of an empire occupying one-sixth of the earth’s land area. From the start, they made up for their small numbers with outsized violence. If at first their executions of liberals, socialists, workers who showed independence, and peasants from whom grain was seized at gunpoint seemed like a short-term necessity, it soon became evident that...

In the People’s Republic of China, archives do not belong to the people, they belong to the Communist Party. They are often housed in a special building on the local party committee premises, which are generally set among lush and lovingly manicured grounds guarded by military personnel. Access would have been unthinkable until a decade or so ago, but over the past few years a quiet revolution has been taking place, as increasing quantities of documents older than 30 years have become available for consultation to professional historians armed with a letter of recommendation. The extent and quality of the...

Nepal's parliament elected former Maoist rebel chief Prachanda, who led a decade-long insurgency that toppled a Hindu monarchy, as prime minister on Wednesday after predecessor KP Oli resigned rather than face defeat in a vote of no confidence. Pushpa Kamal Dahal, 61, who still uses a nom de guerre that means "Fierce", won 363 votes out of the 573 cast in the 595-member parliament, Speaker Onsari Gharti said. He becomes the 24th prime minister in 26 years since the Himalayan nation adopted multi-party democracy in 1990 and the eighth since the 239-year-old monarchy was abolished eight years ago. ...Political change...

I was pleasantly surprised to see the media pause for a moment last week to recall China's Cultural Revolution on the 50th anniversary of its regrettable birth. Unlike a lot of the media's silly anniversaries this one is actually worth remembering. If you aren't familiar with the Cultural Revolution just think of Stephen King's "Children of the Corn" being played out in China rather than rural Nebraska. The movement began in 1966 and lasted about ten years. Children rose up against their elders and seized for themselves the reins of power, humiliating their parents and teachers and sometimes even murdering...

Michael Crook, a Briton whose Communist father moved to China before the Second World War, was one of a handful of foreigners living in the country when Mao launched an all-out class war. snip Far from worrying that he too could come under suspicion because of his Western background, he was among the first of his classmates to sign up for the Red Guard – the fanatical student group that became the revolution’s most devoted enforcers. snipThat Mr Crook is unapologetic about the Mao era is perhaps unsurprising given his family history. His father, David, fought for the Communists in...

At the height of the frenzy of China’s Cultural Revolution, victims were eaten at macabre “flesh banquets”, but 50 years after the turmoil began, the Communist Party is suppressing remembrance and historical reckoning of the era and its excesses. Launched by Mao in 1966 to topple his political enemies after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution saw a decade of violence and destruction nationwide as party-led class conflict devolved into social chaos.

A certain current trend in auto-brainwashing is to assert that "All Wars Are Started by Religions!"But consider the actual record of killing by the messianic, atheistic, secular humanist regimes of the 20th century, as recorded at the University of Hawaii's Freedom, Democide, War, Power Kills website.Mao killed 70 million, Stalin killed 60 million, Hitler killed 20 million, the 30 Years War, brought to you by "the people who start all wars", killed: 5.75 million, 3.8% of the Big Three 20th century total.But all this is infinitesimal in comparison with the incalculable death toll of the innocent unborn—if they're not Persons,...

With all the information technology around these days, it's getting harder and harder to build a gigantic gold statue in peace. Many of you may remember the huge 37-meter (120-foot) gold colored statue of modern China's founder Mao Zedong. After all, it's pretty hard to forget the image of him politely sitting on some scaffolding, towering over the middle of nowhere. Well, it's gone now. On 9 January reports began to surface that the statue was being demolished by the Chinese authorities. The exact reason for the removal of golden Mao is unclear but there are many possibilities. Firstly, the...