Captain Ed has an absolutely brilliant post on the current flap over North Koreans seeking asylum in the South where he makes one of the most well-worded descriptions of the leftist fascination with communism I’ve ever seen:
It also would put yet another nail in the coffin for the curious and deadly political system of communism, which has killed millions over the past century through starvation and outright murder. Despite being the only system of government that routinely built walls around its states to keep its population inside rather than invaders outside, it still attracts a surprising amount of sympathy from fools and left-wing idealogues such as can be found at International ANSWER, a Stalinist apologist group that provided the driving force behind the antiwar protests this past year. At some point in the future, historians (freed from the current ideological shackles found in academia nowadays) will wonder in horror that such a social experiment was allowed to continue for so long with such horrendous results. They will ask why, and all we can do is point to those apologists for people like Stalin, Brezhnev, Castro, Pol Pot, and a host of others who enslaved their own people and watched them die. We will say, “These people told us that there was no such thing as truth and objective reality, and that all things were relative,” while the mostly-unmarked graves of millions mock our empty words.
One does wonder how history will judge those who were all too willing to turn their backs on the horrors of Stalin, Pol Pot, Catro, and Hussein. Should that history be written by a free people, and it will, it will not look upon them with favor.
The political left in this country still has a fascination with communism…I remember one post on this blog from a liberal who actually criticized conservatives for criticizing Marx!
Michael Moore is in that camp…it’s interesting how his latest movie has become the favorite of Fidel Castro…amazing how that movie attracts so much support of tyrants and dictators and terrorists the world over…of course the liberal media doesn’t publicize that so much…
Let us also remember that the Dems presidential candidate, John Kerry, was the man who told us we couldn’t defeat communism and shouldn’t even try. He also stated a moral equivalence between democracy and communism, stating:
“Senator, I will say this. I think that politically, historically, the one thing that people try to do, that society is structured on as a whole, is an attempt to satisfy their felt needs, and you can satisfy those needs with almost any kind of political structure, giving it one name or the other. In this name it is democratic; in others it is communism; in others it is benevolent dictatorship. As long as those needs are satisfied, that structure will exist.”
– John F. Kerry, Congressional Testimony, April 22, 1971.
Funny how that also doesn’t get much media play.
It’s true that the horrors of North Korea are all too underappreciated by leftists who might extol possible virtues of communist government. It is true no communist state has delivere anything close to respect for working people (or any people for that matter). However, communism is gone, but despotic tyrants are not. In response to your question I would ask how will history judge those who overlooked right wing dictators just because they claimed to be fighting communists. I am ashamed to look back and think that the first man to pay George Bush a visit in 88 was Mobutu Sesoko, undoubtedly the worst kleptocrat of his day in Africa. Realpolitik might have dictated some alliances, but not full blown support and aid of many of these regimes. There are evil despots who must be confronted today, few of them are communist. All Communists were tyrants, but not all tyrants were Communists. It’s time to fight tyranny in all its forms. History will judge our nation to see if we can turn away from our mixed past record on this issue.