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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: Impala64ssa

Both. Next question?


21 posted on 12/09/2018 10:33:20 AM PST by SkyDancer ( ~ Just Consider Me A Random Fact Generator ~ Eat Sleep Fly Repeat ~)
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To: Impala64ssa

many are just Ignorant by choice.. the choice of college or news source. indoctrinated like a turkey gets basted and injected ,, thoroughly.


22 posted on 12/09/2018 10:33:24 AM PST by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi - Monthly Donors Rock!!!)
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To: Impala64ssa

Their belief in socialism would last only as long as nobody took their capitalist toys away, like cellphones, ipads, etc.


23 posted on 12/09/2018 10:33:57 AM PST by LydiaLong
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To: Impala64ssa

Both. It doesn’t take much intellect to see socialism/communism doesn’t work. Maggie Thatcher succinctly described the results well, “The trouble with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of outher people’s money.”

And anyone teaching something that has proven wrong EVERY time should be laughed out of the profession. (Oh, forgot about lib arts departments - where intellect is optional.)


24 posted on 12/09/2018 10:34:47 AM PST by Da Coyote
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To: jmaroneps37
I just hope these idiots know how to read and can see what's going on in Venezuela. Kinda sad when you need soldiers to guard the shelves in a supermarket


25 posted on 12/09/2018 10:35:15 AM PST by econjack
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To: HartleyMBaldwin

Not Miseducated....

They been Maleducated..


26 posted on 12/09/2018 10:35:57 AM PST by tophat9000 (Tophat9000)
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To: Impala64ssa

Both.


27 posted on 12/09/2018 10:36:10 AM PST by Pajamajan ( Pray for our nation. Thank the Lordf for everything you have. Don't waiting. Do it today.)
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To: Impala64ssa

Both.


28 posted on 12/09/2018 10:36:23 AM PST by bgill (CDC site, "We don't know. how people are infected with Ebola.")
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To: Impala64ssa

For further commentary-—

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3710778/posts

LOL!


29 posted on 12/09/2018 10:40:07 AM PST by rktman ( #My2nd! Enlisted in the Navy in '67 to protect folks rights to strip my rights. WTH)
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To: Impala64ssa

Bfl


30 posted on 12/09/2018 10:40:17 AM PST by rlmorel (Leftists: They believe in the "Invisible Hand" only when it is guided by government.)
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To: lee martell

But, occasional cortex KNOWS how to do it right. Right? “Just pay for it.”


31 posted on 12/09/2018 10:41:20 AM PST by rktman ( #My2nd! Enlisted in the Navy in '67 to protect folks rights to strip my rights. WTH)
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To: Impala64ssa

I’ll say stupid, because the individuals supporting Socialism/Communism apparently only look at the potential of the theory ignoring (or ignorant of) the facts of history.


32 posted on 12/09/2018 10:41:24 AM PST by rockinqsranch (Dems, Libs, Socialists call 'em what you will they all have fairies livin' in their trees.)
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To: Impala64ssa

The ignorance isn’t just about history. Every time I go to a supermarket I am blown away by the bounty and diversity of the products available to all of us. When you’re in one, ponder the effort, industry and most of all the risks endured by those who give us the choices we have. It’s only possible when people are free.


33 posted on 12/09/2018 10:45:35 AM PST by Spok
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To: Impala64ssa; All
The problem with socialism and other governments is the power to tax which organized crime fights tooth-and-nail to control imo.
34 posted on 12/09/2018 10:50:27 AM PST by Amendment10
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To: HartleyMBaldwin

How ‘bout Evil?
For some reason, despite millions murdered, nobody ever proposes the obvious.


35 posted on 12/09/2018 10:50:42 AM PST by Little Ray (Freedom Before Security!)
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To: HartleyMBaldwin

If they want to live in a socialist or communist country, I suggest they emigrate to one.


36 posted on 12/09/2018 10:52:28 AM PST by neverevergiveup
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To: Impala64ssa
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)

Capitalists build walls to STOP people from breaking in... (think of how wonderful a place would be that YOU would risk death to break into)

Commies change the minute they take power - when THEY take power the first thing they do is outlaw ‘protests’. If you don't like how they treat you they'll kill you. The days of public pity parties will end the first week. If YOU object to ‘THE STATE’ you'll be put in prison or put to death..

Commies play on the greed and childishness of the young in capitalist counties... The difference is the adults in society have NOT protected this generation...

37 posted on 12/09/2018 10:56:01 AM PST by GOPJ (Term limit DC bureaucracies - a permanent unelected 'ruling class' is a threat to our democracy.)
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To: Impala64ssa

There’s a Museum in DC called the newseum. It’s a self aggrandizement museum dedicated to all the brave journalists.

In typical leftist fashion, it’s the most expensive museum in Washington and chronically short on money.

Anyway, the place is pretty marginal but they do have an excellent Berlin Wall exhibit with about 20 panels of the wall.

I suspect they were not happy with me as I loudly led my kids around and asked them which side was the free country and which was the socialistic command economy with no freedom.

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


38 posted on 12/09/2018 10:56:16 AM PST by cyclotic ( Democrats must be politically eviscerated, disemboweled and demolished.)
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To: HartleyMBaldwin

the answer: “both” os correct.

Over the years, we’ve allowed the commies to run our education system.

They have taught 3 or 4 generations how to be thoroughly stupid while believing they are smarter than your average yokel (everybody else).

Now, they’ve got enough numbers to simply make our education system pure indoctrination.

Nothing but blood can cure this now.


39 posted on 12/09/2018 10:57:21 AM PST by joethedrummer
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To: Impala64ssa; All
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.”

John K Fairbank is the greatest textbook case of how leftist academicians engaged in a symbiotic relationship with communist tyrants to both advance their careers and push a carefully modulated propaganda line designed for the American intellectual market. For several decades Fairbanks ‘The United States and China’ was probably the one book on China (other than Snow's ‘Red Star Over China’) that most US undergrads were exposed to in either a poly sci or foreign area studies class. It is a very well written conspectus of US-China relations that subtly makes the case for Mao and the CCP as the best alternative for China to deal with its massive problems and that the US by being a consistent supporter of the Nationalist produced a real ‘tragedy’ as the true interests of the US were i supporting the robust and sometimes necessarily brutal but progressive CCP. Many Americans absorbed the short lesson that ‘Well the Chicoms were dictatorial but the Nationalists were just awful, like Nazi's” This was the JKF was supposed to push quietly and sedulously. In return he was allowed to have certain access to and do research in Chinese state archives denied to other scholars who were not covert agents of intellectual subversion. Fairbank was a highly intelligent man and a fine writer and he just about dominated China studies in the US for nearly a half century. He conducted a kind of quiet campaign within his academic specialty to marginalize scholars such as Karl Wittfogel, who was more than Fairbank’s intellectual equal, who held ‘incorrect’ views. Fairbanks located himself in the center of the American intellectual universe teaching and writing his many books at Harvard. Blessed with an engaging politician like personality rather like an academic Dean Jagger he could seem reasonable in his views to even ardent anticommunists. As a agent of influence he was unparalleled and he genuinely empathized with Chinese thought processes and melded them to produce his own highly deceptive multilayer persona and in incorporating propaganda in his works on Chinese history from about the Opium War to the present in such a way as to seem moderate and convincing. His books such as East Asia the Great Tradition and The Modern Transformation, written with Edwin O. Reischauer , who wrote the sections on Japan, are excellent and still worth reading but one has to always be on the alert for any pro-communist interpretations. Fairbank became quite rich offering advice to bankers and big business after the Nixon opening of China as well as reaping large rewards from the many editions and revisions of his books and famous as well not just in academia. Unfortunately there are to many institutional barricades for his true record to be ever much known.

40 posted on 12/09/2018 10:58:27 AM PST by robowombat (Orthodox)
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