Goodbye, All That: How Left Idiocies Drove Me to Flee

New York Observer ^ | 10/9/02 | Ron Rosenbaum

[Wolfstar]

"...you know, I still can understand people like Pete Seeger joining the [Communist] Party back in the 30’s during the Depression, when it looked like unregulated capitalism had cruelly immiserated America, when racism and lynchings reigned down South and it looked (looked, I said) as if the Soviet Union was the only force willing to stand up to Hitler.

While the author seems to meander kinda-sorta away from the hard left, his historical reasoning is woefully wrong. The Soviet Union was an ALLY of Hitler until Adolf made the monumentally stupid decision to attack Russia on June 22, 1941. The racism and lynchings "reigning down South" were largely the work of DEMOCRATS. The Depression was not due to unregulated capitalism, but to collapsing markets.

On the other hand, I can agree with this statement from the author: "But to cling to Marxism now, after all we've learned in the past 50 years—not just about the Soviet Union, but China and Cambodia … ?

In the 20th Century, more human beings were slaughtered at the hands of Leftist ideologues than for any other political ideology in human history. Never forget that the Nazis were SOCIALISTS, a derivative of Marxism. Nazi stands for National Socialist Party. The only difference between them and other Marxist derivatives is that they put a nationalistic gloss on the ideology, thereby giving the post-war Communists a hook on which to hang the notion that Nazis were on the right side of the political spectrum. Marxism and its derivative ideologies from Europe, to China, to Southeast Asia, and to the Americas, ALWAYS had racist, anti-religious, intolerant, and nationalist or supernationalist characteristics.

[Wolfstar]

The opposite of Marxism and derivative ideologies is not conservatism, but small 'd' democratic forms of government. The purest anti-collectivist, anti-authoritarian, anti-Leftist form of government ever devised to date is the Constitutional Republic bequeathed to us by our founding fathers. Unfortunately, even our small 'r' republican form of government was overlayed with a degree of socialism (a derivative of Marxism) in the 20th Century.

[thisiskubrick]

The Depression was not due to unregulated capitalism, but to collapsing markets.

Probably not the most airtight statement :)

[aculeus]

Better-late-than-never ping.

[dighton]

He's had and perhaps earned a bit of rough treatment here, but he's moving in the right direction.

Better-late-than-never bump.

[monkeyshine]

Paragraphs are our friends. This writer has a lot of friends.

[taxcontrol]

The hardest object in the world to look at is a mirror. I commend the author for doing so.