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The Moral Giant and the Leftist Creep
Townhall.com ^ | October 14, 2012 | Jeff Jacoby

Posted on 10/15/2012 4:23:07 AM PDT by Kaslin

I REGRET that it was only upon reading his obituary this month that I first learned of Nguyen Chi Thien. He was a courageous Vietnamese dissident who had spent nearly 30 years in prison for his opposition to communist repression, cruelty, and lies. Much of Nguyen's opposition was expressed in poetry, most famously "Flowers from Hell," a collection of poems he memorized behind bars, and only put down on paper after being released from prison in 1977.

The poems were published after he audaciously handed off the manuscript to British diplomats at their embassy in Hanoi, the AP obituary recalled. As he walked out of the embassy, "security agents were awaiting him, and he was promptly sent back to prison." He spent the next 12 years in Hoa Lo, the notorious Hanoi Hilton. While he was in captivity, "Flowers from Hell" was published; it earned the International Poetry Award in 1985. By the time he emigrated to the United States in 1995, his poems had achieved wide renown. His stanzas "became as familiar as songs," wrote Anh Do in The Los Angeles Times, and "continue to move the Vietnamese immigrant generation – and their sons and daughters."

By coincidence, the same newspaper page that carried Nguyen's obituary also ran a much longer story about Eric Hobsbawm, the famous British historian who died on Oct. 1 of pneumonia at age 95. The two men could hardly have been less alike.

Nguyen defied communist totalitarianism, sacrificing his freedom in defense of the truth. He refused to pretend that there could be anything noble or uplifiting – let alone ideal – about a revolutionary movement that pursued its ends through mass slaughter and enslavement. Like so many other dissidents, from Andrei Sakharov to Liu Xiaobo, he was a champion of liberty, sustaining hope and keeping conscience alive in the teeth of regime that persecutes decent men for their decency.

Hobsbawm, on the other hand, was a lifelong Marxist, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party from his teens until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Long after it was evident to even true believers that the Bolshevik Revolution had unleashed a nightmare of blood, Hobsbawm went on defending, minimizing, and excusing the crimes of communism.

Interviewed on the BBC in 1994 – five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall – he was asked whether he would have shunned the Communist Party had he known in 1934 that Stalin was butchering innocent human beings by the millions. "Probably not," he answered – after all, at the time he believed he was signing up for world revolution. Taken aback by such indifference to carnage, the interviewer pressed the point. Was Hobsbawm saying that if a communist paradise had actually been created, "the loss of 15, 20 million people might have been justified?" Hobsbawm's answer: "Yes."

Imagine that Hobsbawm had fallen in love with Nazism as a youth and spent the rest of his career whitewashing Hitler's atrocities. Suppose he'd refused for decades to let his Nazi Party membership lapse, and argued that the Holocaust would have been an acceptable price to pay for the realization of a true Thousand-Year Reich. It is inconceivable that he would have been hailed as a brilliant thinker or basked in public acclaim; no self-respecting university would have hired him to teach; politicians and pundits would not have lined up to shower him with accolades during his life and tributes after his death.

Yet Hobsbawm was fawned over, lionized in the media, made a tenured professor at a prestigious university, invited to lecture around the world. He was heaped with glories, including the Order of the Companions of Honour – one of Britain's highest civilian awards – and the lucrative Balzan Prize, worth 1 million Swiss francs. His death was given huge play in the British media – the BBC aired an hour-long tribute and the Guardian led its front page with the news – and political leaders waxed fulsome. Former prime minister Tony Blair called him "a giant … a tireless agitator for a better world."

Such adoration is sickening. Unrepentant communists merit repugnance, not reverence. Compared with a true moral giant like Nguyen Chi Thien, Hobsbawm was nothing but a dogmatic leftist creep, and the toadies who worshiped him were worse.

Nguyen knew all about such toadies, as a few tart lines from his 1964 poem, "Today, May 19th" – written about Ho Chi Minh – make clear:

Let the hacks with their prostituted pens
Comb his beard, pat his head, caress his arse!
… The hell with him!


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: communism; communistparty; leftist; marxism; nazism; vietnam

1 posted on 10/15/2012 4:23:14 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

When I was a young man and killing communists in Vietnam, we reassured one another that we had to kill them there so we wouldn’t one day have to kill them in the United States.

David Axelrod-A brief Bio

“The next time you see David Axelrod on TV or listen to him on a radio talk show defending Obama, remember who he is – and why he’s a clear and present danger to our freedoms.

Obama adviser Axelrod grew up in a home with a mother who worked for PM – a paper used by Stalinists in New York to push the political agenda of the U.S.S.R.

In the mid-1970s, Axelrod was noticed by David Canter and Don Rose. Canter’s father was a lifelong Communist who was invited to visit the Soviet Union in 1932.

Rose was a member of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam – a Communist front group – and worked for the Students for a Democratic Society – another Communist organization.

Canter and Rose mentored Axelrod to become a ruthless political operative – but they first helped him become a political writer for the Chicago Tribune – a move that launched his career.

Axelrod has since become an unprincipled political hatchet man who has a well-known reputation for being “ferocious,” and who uses “venom” to attack his political opponents. Others have described him as using “brass knuckles” to “bludgeon” his foes. After all, it’s the Chicago Way of politics.

When Obama ran for the Senate in 2004, Axelrod served as his chief advisor. Obama brags that he and Axelrod “share a basic worldview.” Axelrod agrees: “He’s not just a client. He’s a very good friend of mine. We share a worldview.”

That worldview is clearly Marxist. They hate capitalism, hate private property, hate successful businessmen, hate Christianity and seek to “redistribute” the wealth from the creators of businesses to the “workers.” Stalin would be proud of their work.

If Obama gets four more years, he’ll finish off America as a free enterprise system and the hope of the free world. He and Axelrod will have achieved their goal of destroying the greatest producer of wealth and human freedom in the history of the world.”


2 posted on 10/15/2012 4:37:03 AM PDT by DJ Taylor (Once again our country is at war, and once again the Democrats have sided with our enemy.)
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To: DJ Taylor

Damn near everyone, if not everyone, in Obama’s circle is hardcore communist.


3 posted on 10/15/2012 4:45:38 AM PDT by ETL (ALL (most?) of the Obama-commie connections at my FR Home page: http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/)
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To: Kaslin
What we need to do is educate people that Collectivism is a very bad thing and that Collectivism comes in different flavors: Marxism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Nazism, etc. The Democrat Party is a Collectivist Party. Barack Obama is a Collectivist.

Everyone hates Hitler.
Maybe everyone hates Stalin these days.

Americans ought to hate Obama with the same passion, but too many people do not understand how much he shares with those other Collectivists. Unfortunatrly, it is still considered "smart" to be a Collectivist and to praise people who "mean well".

4 posted on 10/15/2012 5:02:39 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (ua)
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To: sauropod

read


5 posted on 10/15/2012 5:05:04 AM PDT by hellinahandcart
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To: ETL

Including Elena Kagan who now sits on the SCOTUS.


6 posted on 10/15/2012 5:07:40 AM PDT by originalbuckeye
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To: Kaslin
Interviewed on the BBC in 1994 – five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall – he was asked whether he would have shunned the Communist Party had he known in 1934 that Stalin was butchering innocent human beings by the millions. "Probably not," he answered – after all, at the time he believed he was signing up for world revolution. Taken aback by such indifference to carnage, the interviewer pressed the point. Was Hobsbawm saying that if a communist paradise had actually been created, "the loss of 15, 20 million people might have been justified?" Hobsbawm's answer: "Yes."

It seems that would be Obama's answer as well.

7 posted on 10/15/2012 5:14:09 AM PDT by arasina (Communism is EVIL. So there.)
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To: ClearCase_guy
Unfortunatrly, it is still considered "smart" to be a Collectivist and to praise people who "mean well".

"It is amazing how many people mistake a certain hip snideness for sophistication."
-Dr. Thomas Sowell

8 posted on 10/15/2012 5:16:58 AM PDT by arasina (Communism is EVIL. So there.)
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To: arasina

I seem to recall Bill Ayers - maybe Alinsky? acknowledging that 20 percent of the population wouldn’t bow the knee and/or go along peacefully with the agenda; and that segment of the population would be dealt with. In Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archilapego I recall there were euphemistic labels applied to anyone who didn’t think or act correctly that were enough to get a person 10 years. If one wrote an accurate fact about the economy or economic policy one was called a doubter, denier, unbeliever or a something similar. In America we have the catchall racist or bigoted hater’s. Under their Article 58 anyone or everyone could be a counterrevolutionary; Any action or lack of action under subsection 6 was enough. Then there was a criminal code that no one had ever seen - much like maybe a new version of NDAA and other bills that have to be passed to see what’s in them.

There are so many parallels that one can easily foresee another term with the one in charge which will bring about the implementation of near genocidal policies against modern doubters and haters.

The scary comeback among ethicists and atheists of a modern eugenics movement coupled with the belief that Judeo Christian followers and noncompliants are like a spoke in the wheel hindering the future will not end well. I have no doubt many people we know and associate with are not far from acceding that those who won’t go along with the program need to be made to or simply go away if that is the only solution to not having to hear their doubts and or unbelief. Genocide will be seen as the only humane thing to do for the good of the everybody.


9 posted on 10/15/2012 6:26:31 AM PDT by Sheapdog (chew the meat and spit out the bones)
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To: DJ Taylor

If Obama gets four more years, he’ll finish off America as a free enterprise system and the hope of the free world. He and Axelrod will have achieved their goal of destroying the greatest producer of wealth and human freedom in the history of the world.”
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

That is certainly true, but some here believe it is important to vote for a 3rd party because that will teach the GOP establishment a lesson. That’s fine, but if there is no free country left, teaching such lesson doesn’t much matter, does it?


10 posted on 10/15/2012 8:17:55 AM PDT by doug from upland (I don't like RINOs, but I love my country more than I hate Romney...Muslim marxist, get out!)
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To: doug from upland
"...some here believe it is important to vote for a 3rd party because that will teach the GOP establishment a lesson"

They would have once been called "Useful Idiots."

11 posted on 10/15/2012 9:11:54 AM PDT by DJ Taylor (Once again our country is at war, and once again the Democrats have sided with our enemy.)
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To: Sheapdog
The scary comeback among ethicists and atheists of a modern eugenics movement coupled with the belief that Judeo Christian followers and noncompliants are like a spoke in the wheel hindering the future will not end well. I have no doubt many people we know and associate with are not far from acceding that those who won’t go along with the program need to be made to or simply go away if that is the only solution to not having to hear their doubts and or unbelief. Genocide will be seen as the only humane thing to do for the good of the everybody.

You and I think along the same lines, Sheapdog. People today (some in my own family included) seem to think "it" can't happen in their lifetimes. I tried to give Solzhenitzen's "Warning To The West" book to one of my sisters and she didn't want to read it because the speeches were given in the 1970s. This is an intelligent and well-read individual, mind you; she willfully donned blinders and inserted earplugs because she doesn't want to read or hear anything that might indicate to a thinking person that godbama's agenda is evil.

12 posted on 10/15/2012 2:09:25 PM PDT by arasina (Communism is EVIL. So there.)
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To: arasina

I meant to say like a stick stuck in the spokes of a wheel.

I’m in my thirties and the hatred and remarks I’m hearing occasionally from people at the bar or from a few atheist friends/ acquaintances is pretty disturbing. Bill Mahar said we need to get rid of the right people. Bill Gates advocates some crazy eugenic stuff also. The numbers of people that buy into the world being overpopulated is tremendous. This all paves the way to look at people as an arbitrary economic unit without the dignity our Judeo-Christian heritage valued.

I know many church going Christians who scoff at any hint of doom and gloom right now. As much ignorance as a desire to be blind for reasons I think are along the lines of wanting to enjoy each day without negativity getting in the way. Truth is - it’s gonna be harder on people like this.

Everyone’s different and as vessels meant for different purposes and I can’t say who is for real; I leave that for God.

It truly is like the days of Noah and if judgment begins at the house of the Lord we have a flood coming.

People are so ignorant right now I see statements where it is presumed Christians are not supposed to hate anything.

As if Christians are not supposed to hate sin - God hates sin. How unloving and unGodlike to hate something that is evil? How arrogant to suppose one can presume to judge anything in this relativistic world. Who is one to say what is sin? To pose these questions will make people grit their teeth like John McCain when he gets angry.

Enough of my rambling


13 posted on 10/15/2012 2:46:14 PM PDT by Sheapdog (chew the meat and spit out the bones)
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