[onyx]

For crying out loud. Any attempt to humanize, sanitize or minimize the utterly contemptous Ethel and Julius Rosenberg deserves to fall on deaf ears.

I was only 5 years old, but I remember the day they were fried. Good riddance.

[Jim Noble]

friends like Osheroff who are still alive and remember a time of hunger and privation, when, as one says, "you had to be dead from the neck up not to feel radical change was necessary."

Like killing Stalin and restoring the stolen property of the farmers in Ukraine?

[driftless]

I'm sure a great number of old and new liberal "journalists" would like the whole Rosenberg affair to disappear down a black hole. It reminds them of how wrong they were about the plainly very guilty spies.

What I would like to see done are movies and tv docu-dramas not only depicting the Rosenber spy ring, but revealing all the Rosenberg sympathizers and fellow travelers in the print media who must have numbered in the thousands.

[samtheman]

Stalin killed far more people than did Hitler. And yet the leftist supported him out of a sense of "idealism". How stupid/evil is that?

[FierceDraka]

The Rosenbergs were traitorous, Communist filth, and were dealt with justly.

The only problem I have with their treatment was that their deaths did not involve more suffering than it did.

Misguided idealists or not, what they did was pure treason that potentially could have ended with their neighbors and even their own children being incinerated in thermonuclear fire.

Those who insist on defending this Communist trash and their evil deeds believe that there should be no reprisals at all against those who would sell us all into slavery or death, it seems.

In my own life, I give Progressives, Socialists, and Communists no quarter. In debate I loudly get in their faces and scream about the 100 million murders that were committed in the name of their so-called "idealism", and insist that they justify the slaughter. Not one of them can. It's always the same old "but true Communism has never been tried, it's a humane system that got corrupted by power-hungry men" pack of excuses.

This is countered with the accusation that their "humane system" has no checks or balances to keep the Communist state in line, and that those who seek absolute power will always gravitate to positions of leadership in such a system. In other words, their "humane system" is in fact a recipe for mass murder.

Usually by this point in the conversation the Red is either becoming frightened at my vehemence and wrath, or is getting angry enough to throw a punch. Either way suits me fine. Either way it goes, I assert my domination over them, and send them scurrying back to the coffeehouse to fantasize about their "perfect utopia for the downtrodden", while the rest of us work on bettering our own lives through hard work and sacrifice.

/trying to quit smoking and feeling the righteous anger! Grrrrr!

[Savage Beast]

"idealists with good intentions who sincerely believed the Soviet Union was a better way"

Yes, idealists with good intentions are still paving the Road to Hell. They never cease. And they never learn.

"to remain 'misguided idealists,' they had to have willfully blinded themselves to...reality. But human beings have a remarkable capacity to do that sort of thing."

Yes, don't they? This makes them more culpable, not less.

"Still, the fact remains that either these 'left-wing activists' were evil...or fools."

Yes, scoundrels and fools. They're still at it. They have taken over the Democrat Party, the "Liberal" enclaves of America, American academia, and the "mainstream newsmedia". It's hard to say which is more dangerous, but it's probably the fools; they are the enablers of the scoundrels, and scoundrels, at least, take a rest once in a while.

[Savage Beast]

"Our friends were dupes of the Soviets, and it turns out many of their opponents were actually smarter and more morally well-grounded than they were, but we should remember that they were just misguided idealists with good intentions"

Or in a broader context:

"Liberals", Democrats, and leftists today are scoundrels and fools who are misguided idealists, ready to pave the Road to Hell with their good intentions. MANY of their opponents are actually smarter and more morally well-grounded than they are.

[Doctor Stochastic]

As von Mises pointed out: "Nobody became a Communist because they thought that it would make them poor."