Before My Head Freaking Explodes Please...(Communism Debate in Classroom)

11/03/2009

[My Favorite Headache]

I have discussed with Freepers over the last 4 months that I am back in school earning my Masters degree. Today my head about exploded when not only my professor but people (grown adults) said Communism was a fear on paper but never a real threat to the U.S.

Let me give you direct quotes taken from today's lecture.

"Exactly where does communism fit in today's classroom, newspapers, and television sets? It doesn't, only the right wing fringe in this country wants you to believe that is the case, where is the proof?

America feared communism based on it being different than what we believed to be the correct government. It was never a world wide threat and the "red" invasion was nothing more than a fear tactic designed to paint a clear target on a superpower.

Communism, as an ideology, did not present a treat to a democratic U.S. Soviet Russia endangered U.S. interest when the Red Care reflected fears that the Bolshevik revolution in Russia might spread to the United States. They were described by the post as a compound of slaughter, confiscation, anarchy, and universal disorder.

Famous journalist, Ray Stannard reported that Americans were not in favor of the war. National leaders made huge efforts to get Americans to support the way by stating this would be a benefit the economy. This was the US first major military conflict on foreign soil which changed American life. The European powers led to international tensions within Central Powers and the Allies. International Law permitted neutral nations to sell or ship war materials to belligerents. American looked to the war for economic recovery. In mobilizing for the military, the government put the economy at risk to centralized management and develops policies to control public opinion. The Allies were able to buy American goods. The order for steel explosives, uniforms, wheat and other products helped pull the country out of the recession. Due to labor shortages, the war opened the job industry for women and new job opportunities appeared for black women. Issues with the government arose and civil rights were being violated.

The fear of the Bolshevik party was fear of an unknown type of Government and being different than what we viewed as the only type of government that would work. The mounting support in Russia to a communist state worried the country. Personally I don't believe that it was justified. The fear of communism forced us to view Russia as our own great enemy through out the rest of the 1900's. Had we been a little more rational with their government we probably could have gained their trust and worked towards more diplomatic and lest costly solutions throughout the years.

[a fool in paradise]

Ask this damned fool how many nations in this world today are Communist. How many are Socialist. How many are Socialist-leaning. And how many protect the individual’s personal liberty to property and self-interest.

Not a threat?

Just because they see Marx as a god who knows best for all of us. Hanoi Jane boasted we’d all LOVE to live under Communism if we only TRULY knew what it was. Jeremiah Wright just made a similar speech.

Not a threat? Why did the Soviets bother to infiltrate our institutions then? Who gave them the bomb?

Denial ain’t a river and Stalinists lie at every turn. If they were at least HONEST about their “rah-rahing” Socialism, we could agree to disagree. They know they cannot sway the public in an honest debate so they lie. Lie about loyalty. Lie about agenda. Lie about problems. Lie about causes and solutions and costs.

Obama is on record saying that it may take 20 years to get us off of private insurance and into a public system but that is the end goal. Let’s discuss that and if he is going to deny that is where we are headed, then there must be a clause to END it if we ever DO arrive in that boat.

[jagusafr]

Same as my 20-year-old daughter’s class at UTSA - she texted me, livid, last week right after her teacher told the class: “Cuba is not communist, never has been. Chavez isn’t communist, Venezuela’s a real democracy”.

Stunning...

Colonel, USAFR

[Noumenon]

Well, I believe that it's more than that. Quite a bit more than that. Eric Blair, writing under the name of George Orwell had these monsters pretty well pegged:

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.

Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power.

What pure power means you will understand presently.

We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods,but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.

They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.

We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.

Power is not a means; it is an end.

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

The object of persecution is persecution.
The object of torture is torture.
The object of power is power".
-George Orwell, 1984

This is what most people miss. Even Richard Ellis, writing in The Dark Side of the Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism in America (American Political Thought) never quite gets around to this central fact. It is the desire, the intoxication of absolute power exercised without moral restraint or conscience of any kind that has led to this world's worst mass murder, atrocity and enslavement of humankind.

And you'd better believe that the same ideas that have animated recent history's practitioners of slaughter and slavery now have a happy home in the White house.

We now have but two choices: submit to those behind that Marxist meat puppet who occupies the White House and become slaves and cattle - OR stand up, resist, and take it back from them. And never let them near anything that even hints of power again. Whatever that takes.

You're not going to get another chance. History is my witness.

[netmilsmom]

>>Wow. That’s amazing. You’re amazing!<<

Thanks but really, it’s Bing that’s amazing.
My Goddaughter taught me that if you want to save on schoolbooks look online first.

[a fool in paradise]

Had we been a little more rational with their government we probably could have gained their trust and worked towards more diplomatic and lest costly solutions throughout the years.

Hitler butchered 10million people. Stalin butchered 20million.

Learning to "co-exist" with ruthless dictators is selling out humanity.

PS the so-called "antifascist" Communists were anything but.

CPUSA famously opposed going to war against Hitler, at least until he betrayed their beloved Uncle Joe Stalin.

Woody Gutherie's guitar didn't "kill fascism" until AFTER Pearl Harbor was bombed. He and Pete Seeger were among those who opposed going to war against Nazi Germany.

Stalinists love to revise the historical record so to appear to be on the "right" sides of all issues every time.

[Servant of the Cross]

I loved the Ronald Reagan quote that gets directly to the issue with crystal clear simplicity:

"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."

[Deb]

You’re still amazing...however you got there.

[a fool in paradise]

The Soviets almost launched a Mutually Assured Destruction attack against the United States in 1983 all on a faulty instrument reading. They punished the man who ignored the launch order. Subsequently they installed an AUTOMATED launch system (which is still online).

It's one of SEVERAL times that the Soviets brought us to the very brink of nuclear annihilation.

[netmilsmom]

:-)

[a fool in paradise]

The Communist movement was and continues to be the real Holocaust machine.

Abortion's numbers aren't shabby either. 50 million dead in America alone since Roe v. Wade.

[Deb]

I’m writing that down. Everything he said makes me cry.

[Major Matt Mason]

I was wondering when this kind of talk would openly begin. I know it has been around for years, but with a fellow traveler now the president, I think the championing of communism as a viable form of governance in this country will happen more frequently. Frankly, I think that is the goal of those in charge right now, they just don't want to come right out and say it.

[a fool in paradise]

Why do they feel compelled to bring Communism to the United States (where it is incompatible with our Constitutional limits on the powers of government) rather than moving to a Communist nation and living under glorious Communism? If the Communist nations in the world “aren’t real Communism”, why don’t they work to implement “Reform Communism” in those nations where Communism is already in place?

[Deb]

Great point. Someone should update the Black Book and include the Communist influence on abortion.

[Waco]

Please note, whenever someone is praiseing the virtue of communism, a RAT or many RATS are nearby. Wake up America!!!

[MortMan]

Communism is cancer on the body of the people of this planet. After all, cancer is just uncontrolled growth - so there must be no danger right?

Laughing in their faces is likely the best method for retaining your own sanity.

[a fool in paradise]

One of Roosevelt’s VPs saw one of Stalin’s gulags firsthand and said nothing.

[fr_freak]

Just keep in mind that you need to present a good argument to counter this idiot professor, not to convince him, but to convince a number of the other students in the class. Some kids who don't know better will accept as true things that are said and not refuted by anyone, regardless of how ridiculous they are upon inspection.

I would focus on a small number of strong points:

1) Communism has never been successful, ever. Why did the Soviet Union collapse?

2) Communism, when applied, always results in dictatorship and mass slaughter of that country's own people.

3) Communism always results in that country's aggressive empire expansion through war. One could argue that the only reason that the US has a presence in so many countries was as a reaction to the aggressive attempts of communists (Soviets and Chinese) to take over other countries.

4) Perhaps the best argument against communism is that those countries which have tried it are now abandoning it (Russia, China).

[a fool in paradise]

There is no difference between the horrors of Nazism or Communism. A neonazi and a neocommunist both espouse ugly political ideals.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Communism, in its absolute form...not some Chinese Communism-Capitalism caricature or form, has never succeeded.

I'd argue that communism, in its absolute form, has never even been attempted. It's a utopian fantasy and a convenient rhetorical rallying cry for revolutionaries to dupe masses who feel themselves oppressed into overthrowing the existing order and replacing it with a statist absolutism that consistently turns out to be worse. But that statist absolutism has very little to do with Marxist communism for the simple reason that you couldn't hold power for a week under what Marx describes.