Free Republic

Why is communism so appealing to a certain subset of leftists? If something had a track record of 100 million dead and explicitly called for the subjugation of people, most would call it evil. Yet some people still call themselves communists and socialists. Why? It is not as if these facts about the recorrd of communism are obscure, certainly not to professors and intellects. Knowing of the gulags and famines and still advocating for what made it possible, is a singularly wicked form of evil. Clearly there is something causing these advocate to supersede common sense and decency. A recent...

A debate took place last month at the SoHo Forum. The proposition before the debaters was "Socialism is preferable to capitalism as an economic system that promotes freedom, equality, and prosperity." Arguing in the affirmative was Richard D. Wolff, the preeminent American Marxian economist. He is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. Opposing was Gene Epstein, the former economics editor of Barron's Magazine. The debate itself wasn't that interesting. Wolff is a skilled communicator and drove...

Bill Ayers. Remember him?: Unrepentant terrorist, SDS riotmaker, pal and political mentor of young Barack Obama, and putative author/ghostwriter of Obama's famous 1995 memoir, Dreams of My Father. In 2011, Ayers (shown) publicly claimed authorship of Dreams (see video of Ayers here) after Dr. Jack Cashill's forensic literary analysis - in a 2008 article and his more extensive book-length analysis in 2011, Deconstructing Obama had convincingly made the case that Ayers, a talented wordsmith, had written the book for the unskilled Obama to help launch the up-and-coming young comrade's political career. During Obama's 2008 run for the White House, his...