<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Marxism</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/tag/marxism/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com</link>
	<description></description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 16:20:06 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en-US</language>
		<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
		<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	
	<item>
		<title>Kim Klux Klan</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/kim-klux-klan/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=kim-klux-klan</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/kim-klux-klan/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 15 May 2014 04:25:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lloyd Billingsley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Black]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kim Jong-Un]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marx]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Racism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=225515</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Racist smear of President Barack Obama is vintage Marxism.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/236712_5_.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-225516" alt="236712_5_" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/236712_5_.jpg" width="310" height="233" /></a>“It would be perfect for Obama to live with a group of monkeys in the world’s largest African natural zoo and lick the breadcrumbs thrown by spectators.” Barack Obama “still has the figure of a monkey while the human race has evolved through millions of years.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That may sound like a memo from the Ku Klux Klan but was actually part of a May 2 diatribe from North Korea. The Communist regime in Pyongyang also called Obama a “clown,” a “dirty fellow” and somebody who “does not even have the basic appearances of a human being.” Further, “He is a crossbreed with unclear blood,” and a separate article called Obama a “wicked black monkey.” The White House called the racist screed “particularly ugly and disrespectful” and the media response proved of interest.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Reporters did not compare it with other aspects of North Korea, easily the vilest and most repressive regime on earth and a slave state. </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/lloyd-billingsley/north-korea-campout/" target="_blank">As a recent book shows</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, the Communist regime maintains a network of forced labor camps and aims to eliminate the “seed” of class enemies through three generations. Rather, the preferred comparison was the United States. </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/north-korean-screed-against-obama-illustrates-race-based-worldview/2014/05/08/9bc7a68f-7b71-4110-b4f1-85ae05c92777_story.html" target="_blank">The Washington Post, for example,</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> said the North Koreans were “pulling language right out of the American 1850s.” That was more than 150 years ago, before the Civil War. Reporters could have found more recent examples from the true inspiration of North Korea, none other than Karl Marx himself.</span></p>
<p>As Thomas Sowell noted in Marxism: Philosophy and Economics, Marx called German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle, a “Jewish ni***r,” based on his “cranial formation” and hair growth. His paternal grandmother or mother, Marx said, was “crossed with a ni***r” and “the fellow’s importunity is also ni***r-like.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That business about “cranial formation” derives from Marx’s passion for phrenology, pseudoscientific quackery that extrapolates character from the shape of the head. The ever-superstitious Marx insisted on subjecting all new adherents to a phrenological examination, with particular attention to any bumps. In the cranial test one can hear echoes of the North Korean contention that Barack Obama lacks “the basic appearances of a human being.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One doesn’t hear much about Marx’s phrenology, nor about the racism and anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, denied by Stalinists like Paul Robeson but described in great detail by Robert Robinson in Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union. Russians referred to Patrice Lumumba University (now renamed People’s Friendship University of Russia) as a “monkey zoo” and Robinson found Soviet racism blatant and pervasive. He escaped and wrote an anticommunist classic that journalists have avoided and which the President of the United States has doubtless never read, if he knows about it at all.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Ugly and disrespectful as it was, North Korea’s racist attack on Barack Obama elicited less comment than the Donald Sterling episode. The longtime owner of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers was overheard saying he didn’t want his mistress to associate with black people nor to bring black people to his games. President Obama called the comments “incredibly offensive,” and the story took over the media, with NBA boss Adam Silver banning Sterling from the league for life.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Nobody should look for an NBA franchise in Pyongyang but the issues with that regime go to the heart of what the left is. The socialist vanguard somehow escapes the conditioning and false consciousness that afflict the masses. Then in power, the vanguard is supposed to be immune from normal human passions, along with bigotry, racism and hatred. The vanguard of course, retains all that, which empowers repression, persecution, ethnic cleansing and mass murder campaigns. Those have been the hallmark Marxist totalitarian states from Stalin’s USSR to Pol Pot’s Cambodia, to the North Korea of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and Kim Jong-un.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That vile Communist regime calls the President of the United States a “wicked black monkey” who belongs in a zoo and lacks the basic appearance of a human being. Despite a response from the White House, the episode draws less media attention than Donald Sterling. And the default media response is to compare North Korea’s racist attack on Barack Obama with America in the 1850s.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This is what happens when journalists tacitly accept socialist superstition and remain ignorant of the actual record of Communist states. In its racist attack on president Obama, North Korea is simply being true to their Marxist roots.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/kim-klux-klan/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>46</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>De-Imagining America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/de-imagining-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=de-imagining-america</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/de-imagining-america/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Mar 2014 04:40:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democracy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Imagining America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Radical]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syracuse University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[universities]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=221188</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Big foundations, universities and your tax dollars merge to support the Left's cultural warfare.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/337.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-221225" alt="337" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/337-350x350.png" width="245" height="245" /></a>A little-known consortium of radical groups, public-funded universities and the federal government is quietly seeking to transform the arts and other academic disciplines into vehicles of left-wing extremism and indoctrination. The initiative, called &#8220;Imagining America,&#8221; embraces the philosophy of Communist historian Howard Zinn, famous for manipulating historical fact to fit Marxist paradigms of human &#8220;progress&#8221; and to plant the seeds of radicalism in unsuspecting youth.</p>
<p>Imagining America is headquartered at taxpayer-funded Syracuse University in upstate New York and was virtually unknown until Glenn Beck <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/17/glenn-beck-horrified-by-americas-latest-propaganda-machine/">threw some light</a> on it in a broadcast. Beck described Imagining America and another group that calls itself “The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture” as an “effort to rewrite our history and catalyze a new culture for America.” This &#8220;department&#8221; isn&#8217;t actually part of the U.S. government but describes itself as “the nation’s newest people-powered department, founded on the truth that art and culture are our most powerful and under-tapped resources for social change.”</p>
<p>Active in both groups are “the people that will be teaching and influencing your children” through “art and music and film and history books,” Beck said.</p>
<p>America&#8217;s neo-communist radicals figured out a long time ago how to have their cake and eat it, too. U.S. taxpayers <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/02/you_subsidize_leftist_anarchy.html">have been funding</a> subversive left-wing groups like the now-defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and Saul Alinsky&#8217;s Industrial Areas Foundation since the Johnson administration. They advance their objectives, erode civil society, and send you the bill. Such is also the case with Imagining America, which occupies a cushy niche at the intersection of taxpayer-funded universities, government agencies and wealthy far-left non-profit organizations.</p>
<p>Imagining America grew out of executive action. President Bill Clinton <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=54960">created</a> the White House Millennium Council by Executive Order 13072 on Feb. 2, 1998. One of the council&#8217;s tasks was to &#8220;[p]roduce informational and resource materials to educate the American people concerning our Nation&#8217;s past and to inspire thought concerning the future[.]&#8221; The veritable cultural warfare council was headed by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>Imagining America <a href="http://imaginingamerica.org/about/collaborators/">was founded</a> at a 1999 White House Conference initiated by the White House Millennium Council, the University of Michigan, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Conference participants became the basis for what was to become the group&#8217;s &#8220;consortium&#8221; of 100-plus colleges and universities. The group was initially hosted by the University of Michigan. Syracuse University took over in 2007 as IA&#8217;s temporary home, and will remain <a href="http://insidesu.syr.edu/2011/09/19/imagining-america/">host</a> through 2017.</p>
<p><b>Radical Objectives</b></p>
<p>Like many radical groups, Imagining America (its full name is Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life) couches its goals in soothing, innocuous-sounding prose.</p>
<p>&#8220;Imagining America,&#8221; according to its current <a href="http://imaginingamerica.org/about/our-mission/">mission statement</a>,</p>
<blockquote><p>advances knowledge and creativity through publicly engaged scholarship that draws on humanities, arts, and design. We catalyze change in campus practices, structures, and policies that enables publicly engaged artists and scholars to thrive and contribute to community action and revitalization.</p></blockquote>
<p>According to IA, <i>publicly engaged scholarship</i></p>
<blockquote><p>is defined by partnerships of university knowledge and resources with those of the public and private sectors to enrich scholarship, research, creative activity, and public knowledge; enhance curriculum, teaching and learning; prepare educated, engaged citizens; strengthen democratic values and civic responsibility; address and help solve critical social problems; and contribute to the public good.</p></blockquote>
<p><i>Publicly engaged scholarship</i>, also called simply <i>public scholarship</i>, means politicized scholarship. It is not about the free pursuit of knowledge for knowledge&#8217;s sake. In other words, going to college is not about the disinterested pursuit of knowledge and truth. It&#8217;s about righting the perceived wrongs of the past and changing society in furtherance of so-called social justice.</p>
<p>And in the hands of leftist crusaders, many of the above words in IA&#8217;s mission statement don&#8217;t mean what you might think they mean.</p>
<p>For example, when these people use the word <i>democracy</i> or <i>democratic</i>, they mock democracy as the idea is understood by most Americans. They believe in what the Left calls <i>economic democracy</i>, also known as socialism. They are excited at the prospect of reordering society with the help of capitalism-hating agitators. To them, <i>democracy</i> is Marxist mobocracy. And it’s only <i>true</i> democracy if they prevail. If they lose, it’s not democracy: the capitalists stole the election or took advantage of the people because they suffer from a mass “false consciousness.”</p>
<p>To cut through the billowy clouds of word smog generated by leftist academics, it is necessary to examine what the ideas embraced by Imagining America actually amount to in the plain English that these people use in public outreach.</p>
<p>Take the case of socialist theorist and community organizer <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2503">Harry Boyte</a>, who is director of the Center for <i>Democracy</i> and Citizenship at Augsburg College in Minneapolis (Augsburg is a member of IA&#8217;s consortium of colleges.)</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://youtu.be/tLyUWmMCPIE">video</a> intended for public consumption that promotes Imagining America&#8217;s <a href="http://imaginingamerica.org/convenings/national-conference/2014-national-conference/">national conference</a> this October in Atlanta, Boyte urged the fusion of higher education and left-wing activism:</p>
<blockquote><p>I want to lift up organizing as a supplement. It&#8217;s different than action. In fact, organizing is not mobilizing. It&#8217;s not people out in the streets in a protest mode. It&#8217;s the patient, slow development of relationships that build power &#8230; This is actually an extraordinary pioneering step for Imagining America to be bringing in organizing methods to which people in higher education, and connected to the world, can make our work more public.</p></blockquote>
<p>Academic Scott J. Peters, co-director of Imagining America, said his group is tasked with</p>
<blockquote><p>producing knowledge and theory and writings but the most substantial part of that work is actually building relationships, organizing opportunities for people to understand what they&#8217;re facing, to come together to share their values and experiences, and then to try to make the changes that will help advance their values and their ideals. That work is organizing work.</p></blockquote>
<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a tension that organizers are always working and that&#8217;s the tension between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be,&#8221; said Peters, paraphrasing Saul Alinsky, author of <i>Rules for Radicals</i>, the <i>vade mecum</i> of the organizing world.</p>
<p>&#8220;Well, the &#8216;story of now&#8217; is a story that helps us see and feel that tension,&#8221; Peters said in a reference to what community organizing theorist Marshall Ganz of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government calls the <a href="http://billmoyers.com/groupthink/activism-what-works/a-story-of-self-a-story-of-us/">&#8220;public narrative&#8221;</a> framework. &#8220;We can see that the world as it is, &#8216;the story of now,&#8217; is not the same thing as the world we&#8217;d like it to be, so therefore we&#8217;re called to act.&#8221;</p>
<p>Peters <a href="http://www.syr.edu/news/articles/2012/imagining-america-08-12.html">is also part of</a> the leadership team for a dubious research project that received $5 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The project is called &#8220;Food Dignity: Action Research on Engaging Food Insecure Communities and Universities in Building Sustainable Community Food Systems.&#8221;</p>
<p>When you&#8217;re a Marxist, America is always in crisis. Kevin Bott, an associate director at IA, said the group &#8220;is at a particularly interesting and ripe moment to assert arts, humanities, and design thinking as a way to get the heart of the crisis that we all find ourselves in locally, nationally, and globally, politically, socially, economically.&#8221; Bott was also the Green Party&#8217;s unsuccessful candidate for mayor of Syracuse last year.</p>
<p>George J. Sanchez, vice dean for diversity at the University of Southern California, declared that IA examines &#8220;huge issues for the country and I think, again, we have to imagine a different America.&#8221;</p>
<p>Jesikah Maria Ross, a community organizer who is creative director at Praxis Projects, said IA &#8220;is really looking at, how do we bring together faculty, students from different disciplines with community organizations to kind of co-create something whether it&#8217;s an artistic production or engaged scholarship in a publication. How do we do something together for mutual benefit that moves community organizing and community change forwards?&#8221;</p>
<p>Fresh from the politically correct indoctrination camp, Ryan Metzler, a student in Occidental College&#8217;s Media Arts &amp; Culture Program, <a href="http://imaginingamerica.org/fg-item/ryan-metzler-occidental-college/">spews</a> the things that Imagining America wants to hear, complete with appropriately tortured postmodern diction, neo-Marxist buzzwords, and trendy academic gibberish.</p>
<p>In a testimonial on the IA website he writes:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;My work is informed by the belief that media makers have a responsibility to collaborate with and integrate marginalized communities into documentary films and other media projects in order to transform problematic representations &#8230; Media makers must take responsibility as a democratic community to break stereotypes by giving voices to men and women who lack the technological resources &#8230; We as a society cannot forget the history of media practices. As a society we cannot practice such an influential art without all groups having a voice.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>This is the language of relativism and multiculturalism, both of which are tools neo-Marxists use to weaken and transform America. The first obligation of media &#8220;makers,&#8221; as the student calls documentarians and journalists, is to push so-called social justice and allow disadvantaged groups a veto over his work, he claims. After years of PC brainwashing, truth is apparently not important to him.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, Imagining America <a href="http://imaginingamerica.org/consortium/student-networks/resources/">requires</a> fellows in its Publicly Active Graduate Education (PAGE) program to read the Marxist journal, <i>Monthly Review</i>, and works by communists W.E.B. DuBois and Paulo Freire (author of <i>Pedagogy of the Oppressed</i>).</p>
<p>Among the course offerings for which Syracuse University faculty members have <a href="http://imaginingamerica.org/consortium/ia-at-su/curriculum-development/awardees/">received</a> IA grants are &#8220;Jazz and Human Rights as Cultural Democracy&#8221; and &#8220;Queering Syracuse.&#8221; A grant was also given for a course called &#8220;Masks, Movement, and Giant Puppets&#8221; that may as well be taught by anti-American radical Medea Benjamin of <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6149">Code Pink</a>.</p>
<p><b>Legal Status</b></p>
<p>Figuring out the legal status and internal organizational structure of Imagining America is no easy task.</p>
<p>When the University of Delaware received a $2,000 &#8220;Critical Exchange Grant&#8221; from Imagining America, the school <a href="http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2007/feb/grant020807.html">described</a> IA as &#8220;a national nonprofit organization that encourages the incorporation of civic responsibility into art education at the university level.&#8221; But this researcher could find no evidence that Imagining America is a legally incorporated nonprofit entity. A public database search in Nexis revealed what appeared to be an old, probably lapsed business listing of some kind in its name in Michigan, but nothing else.</p>
<p>It is difficult to imagine running an enterprise as large and active as Imagining America appears to be without incorporating it somewhere. If Imagining America is merely an unincorporated project of Syracuse University there could be problems in terms of commingling of funds and it could generating major accounting headaches.</p>
<p>But that&#8217;s exactly what Imagining America is, according to Erin Martin Kane, Syracuse University&#8217;s associate vice president for public relations, who responded to some organizational questions by email. After rehashing IA&#8217;s creation story, she explained that IA &#8220;is an academic unit of SU that’s funded and supported by the more than 100 member institutions, including SU, other colleges and universities, and civic organizations. IA does not solicit, or accept donations from individuals.&#8221;</p>
<p>At press time, Kane had failed to respond to follow-up questions about how large IA&#8217;s annual budget was, how many employees it has, and if it produces annual or regular reports. That IA is an &#8220;academic unit&#8221; of SU, as Kane indicated, appears to be true. The SU comptroller&#8217;s office <a href="http://comptroller.syr.edu/comptroller/display.cfm?content_ID=%23%2BH%21%2F%0A">lists</a> Imagining America as department 20018 of the university.</p>
<p>Even so, Imagining America&#8217;s finances are very difficult to track, perhaps deliberately so. It charges taxpayer-funded educational institutions up to $5,000 annually in membership dues, which means that taxpayers fund IA indirectly. Grants to IA from foundations and membership dues from these tax-exempt universities and colleges that are part of the IA consortium should presumably appear in tax returns somewhere. But very little appears in the comprehensive FoundationSearch database which contains data extracted from the compulsory annual IRS filings of foundations and other nonprofit organizations.</p>
<p>The database shows only a handful of grants from foundations that benefited the group.</p>
<p>The Rockefeller Foundation has been onboard with IA since at least 2001. That year it gave $150,000 to the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation &#8220;to support &#8216;Imagining America&#8217; public scholarship grants program.&#8221; The next year it gave $25,000 to the University of Michigan &#8220;toward the costs of a conference of the Imagining America public scholarship program entitled &#8216;The Engaged University, the Engaged Community, &amp; the Daily Practice of Democracy.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
<p>The New York Council for the Humanities, a taxpayer-funded nonprofit, gave Imagining America $18,000 in 2010. The Teagle Foundation <a href="http://www.teaglefoundation.org/Grantmaking/Grantees/default?rfp=218#sthash.pHquOORg.dpuf">gave</a> IA $150,000 in 2012.</p>
<p>And there the paper trail of grants specifically designated for Imagining America ends.</p>
<p>High-profile left-wing philanthropies have given money to the University of Michigan and Syracuse University that may have ended up supporting Imagining America projects.</p>
<p>Radical financier George Soros&#8217;s Open Society Foundations (formerly known as Open Society Institute) has given grants to the University of Michigan ($6,020 since 2000) and Syracuse University ($203,880 since 1999). The Soros-associated Tides Foundation has given grants to the University of Michigan ($35,000 since 2005).</p>
<p>Syracuse University has received funding from the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/funderprofile.asp?fndid=5311&amp;category=79">Nathan Cummings Foundation</a> ($185,000 since 2001), <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/funderProfile.asp?fndid=5210">Rockefeller Foundation</a> ($638,800 since 2000), and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation ($392,600 since 2009).</p>
<p><b>Transforming America With Your Tax-dollars </b></p>
<p>&#8220;Politics is downstream from culture,&#8221; the late, great media entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart liked to say frequently when explaining how the deck has been stacked against conservatives for decades. At <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2011/08/22/Politics-Really-is-Downstream-from-Culture">Breitbart&#8217;s website</a>, screenwriter and producer Lawrence Meyers, elaborated.</p>
<blockquote><p>Culture influences politics, and in ways the Left has understood for a long time. The Right has sat idly by, as they did with higher education, and let an ideological movement take over one of the most important aspects of American society.</p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Imagining America is at the center of it all, accompanied by neo-communist activists and organizers, cheering our republic&#8217;s decline, and teaching Americans to despise their country.</span></p>
<p>The Obama administration is helping the group accomplish its mission.</p>
<p>In early 2012, IA proudly <a href="http://imaginingamerica.org/blog/2012/01/10/syracuse-university-joins-yearlong-initiative-to-promote-higher-education-as-agent-of-democracy/">announced</a> it was working with the White House Office of Public Engagement, the U.S. Department of Education, and various groups to publicly launch the American Commonwealth Partnership (ACP), &#8220;a yearlong initiative to promote higher education as an agent of <i>democracy</i> and a force for public good.&#8221; [emphasis added]</p>
<p>The director of ACP was socialist organizer Harry Boyte. IA&#8217;s Peters and his fellow co-director Timothy K. Eatman were also both members of ACP&#8217;s steering committee.</p>
<p>With taxpayer funding provided by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) laid bare the radicals&#8217; objectives in a 2012 report.</p>
<p>In &#8220;A Crucible Moment: College Learning &amp; Democracy&#8217;s Future,&#8221; AACU <a href="http://www.aacu.org/civic_learning/crucible/documents/crucible_508F.pdf">recommended</a> that &#8220;existing national civic networks &#8230; be tapped and expanded for leadership in mobilizing the next generation of investment in civic learning.&#8221; It singled out The Research University Civic Engagement Network (<a href="http://www.compact.org/initiatives/civic-engagement-at-research-universities">TRUCEN</a>), <a href="http://www.projectpericles.org">Project Pericles</a>, and Imagining America.</p>
<p>At page 42 the report states,</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;If indeed we seek a democratic society in which the public welfare matters as much as the individual’s welfare, and in which global welfare matters along with national welfare, then education must play its influential part to bring such a society into being.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>That&#8217;s the goal of Imagining America and the public scholarship movement in a nutshell. To transform America so that the collective trumps the individual, and the rest of the world trumps America.</p>
<p>As long as President Obama remains in office, your taxpayer dollars will continue to support these un-American goals.</p>
<p>And if Hillary Clinton, who got the American narrative rewriting effort underway in 1999 when she headed the White House Millennium Council, succeeds Obama in the Oval Office, she&#8217;ll do whatever she can to finish the job she started.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
<p><b>Make sure to </b><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/de-imagining-america/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>59</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Inequality of Government Access</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-inequality-of-government-access/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-inequality-of-government-access</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-inequality-of-government-access/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 14 Feb 2014 05:55:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Class warfare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democrats]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Socialism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=218705</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why Big Government's war on "inequality" is a dead end. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/deblasiofinlayter4.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-218875" alt="deblasiofinlayter4" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/deblasiofinlayter4-450x350.jpg" width="315" height="245" /></a>A day after New York Mayor Bill de Blasio&#8217;s Tale of Two Cities address in which the wealthy Park Slope resident once again made inequality his focus, the radical pol intervened to spring one of his biggest supporters from prison. The New York Post responded by putting, &#8220;A Jail of Two Cities&#8221; on its front page.</span></p>
<p>Aside from being the commonplace corruption that one ought to expect from a politician trying to ban horses in Central Park because a wealthy real estate magnate wants to seize their stables, the Jail of Two Cities also reveals why government wars against inequality are a dead end.</p>
<p>When government is big, then the true inequality is not of wealth, but of political access. Money can buy you access, or as the recently released Orlando Findlayter discovered, so can being an activist who bets on the right horse-hating politician. The rich can write a check, but the poor can vote early and often. Access isn&#8217;t about money; it&#8217;s about becoming useful to those in power.</p>
<p>There are two cities and two countries in America; the land of the politically connected who are part of a network that can score anything from millions in cash to open door prisons and the land of the politically unconnected who don&#8217;t understand why the government won&#8217;t leave them alone. It won&#8217;t leave them alone because in a corrupt system, being left alone is a special political favor.</p>
<p>Government should not be concerned with the inequality of income, which isn&#8217;t in its purview, but with the inequality of access, which is. It&#8217;s not the job of government to even out how much money everyone makes, but it is its job to ensure that everyone has equal access to government.</p>
<p>In a city or a country run by income inequality campaigners like Barack Obama or Bill de Blasio, the inequality of wealth takes a back seat to the inequality of access. Battling income inequality leads directly to inequality of access by putting the equalizers in charge of picking winners and losers through the agency of an expanding government.</p>
<p>The bigger government gets, the less sense it makes to invest in business and the more sense it makes to invest in politicians. Powerful politicians are a much less riskier investment than millions of customers whose behavior is hard to predict.</p>
<p>The unpredictability of the public makes competition possible and reduces income inequality while the predictability of politicians is a monopoly that increases income inequality as political monopolies become economic monopolies.</p>
<p>Obama handed out hundreds of millions to the Green Energy tycoons who supported him and dispenses ambassadorships to unqualified bundlers who barely know the name of the major country they have been assigned to. Voters who came out in collective groups for Obama got wealth redistribution paydays. Everyone else got taxed.</p>
<p>There is no equality of access even within the ranks of his supporters. The Obama voter was rewarded with ObamaCare, but the ObamaCare website was outsourced to an incompetent company whose top executive was a pal of Michelle Obama. The company got a six hundred million dollar contract and the ObamaPhone voters got a broken website and hours on hold.</p>
<p>Government works when it&#8217;s held accountable. Inequality campaigners avoid accountability by assembling a base of enthusiastic voters who come out in large percentages to score special access. Those voters are hard to beat because, like the politicians they vote for, they take bribes, using their votes to gain insider access in a corrupt system while ruining it for everyone else.</p>
<p>They take the bribes and then complain that nothing works. And they&#8217;re the reason why. Their corrupt choices are why the sidewalks are cracked, the streetlights don&#8217;t turn on at night, the firefighters don&#8217;t show up and the pension fund is empty. They have become complicit in a corrupt system that encourages them to take advantage of others even as it takes advantage of them.</p>
<p>A thief is still a thief whether he wears a mask, a suit or a t-shirt with a social justice slogan. When people appoint thieves to steal for them, they shouldn&#8217;t be surprised when the thieves also steal from them. As the scorpion said to the frog, “You knew what I was when you let me ride.”</p>
<p>The voters who most depend on government vote to break it far more thoroughly than any Tea Party politician could. No Republicans could have done to Detroit what Detroit did to Detroit. Not even the most extreme Tea Party politician could have done as much damage to the federal government as Obama did.</p>
<p>Corruption and ineptitude are far more of a threat to the progressive vision than any number of people waving Gadsden flags. Republicans can shut down a progressive program, but only progressives can discredit it from the inside the way that Obama has done with ObamaCare; taking it apart piece by piece to cover for his incompetence and appease pieces of his coalition.</p>
<p>The urban and rural political centers of the Democratic Party are places where the progressive vision lies dead and buried with a stake through its rotten heart while its zombie policy corpse shambles around decaying streets moaning, &#8220;Money, money, money.&#8221;</p>
<p>It doesn&#8217;t take the Koch Brothers to kill the left. Letting the left have what it wants does it much more devastatingly, but with more collateral damage.</p>
<p>Campaigns against income inequality invariably become mandates for corruption as aggrieved voters convinced that the system is rigged against them embrace the unfair advantage that they believe they are owed and politicians escape accountability from their own corrupt voters because every crime they commit is officially for the benefit of the underclass.</p>
<p>Class warfare leads to a culture of thievery even inside the most Socialist systems. The Soviet Union&#8217;s class warfare produced Homo Sovieticus, a disgusting creature who believed that  &#8220;Everything belongs to the collective, everything belongs to me&#8221; and accordingly stole everything that he could get his hands on leading to a broken system where nothing was available in stores and everything was available on the black market.</p>
<p>Even after the fall of the USSR, $400 billion in bribes are paid out annually. Russians bribe their officials for access. Americans bundle donations to them. The more power a government has over its people, the more people are willing to pay for access to those who hold power over them.</p>
<p>The cycle of corruption follows its own inevitable momentum. The more people come to believe that a system is corrupt, the fewer will vote for honest politicians over the crooks who promise them special benefits. Everyone becomes cynical and complicit in the corruption. Politicians play divide and conquer, redistributing wealth from some groups to other groups. Trust vanishes from government and financial institutions. Everyone suspects everyone else&#8230; and everyone steals.</p>
<p>That is the formula for a failed nation, a failed city and a failed community. A society is built on confidence in its institutions and its people. When that confidence falls apart, then nothing works and everyone has someone to blame. Social justice politicians begin by telling a tale of two cities and end by locking up everyone in a jail of two cities to which they alone hold the key.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Ann-Marie Murrell</strong>&#8216;s video interview with <strong>Daniel Greenfield</strong> on <em>Robert Gates’ Revelations Confirm Horowitz&#8217;s “Party of Defeat,”</em> <em>Abandoning Iraq, </em><em> How Americans Died For a War Obama Didn&#8217;t Believe In</em>, <em>The Release of Terrorist Lawyer Lynne Stewart</em>, <em></em>and much, much more:</p>
<p><strong>Part I:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/xwp_CUfwAss" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Part II:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/TywIVHDnwxc" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe> <b></b></p>
<p><strong>To sign up for <em>The Glazov Gang,</em> <a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-inequality-of-government-access/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>147</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>A Life Transformed: &#8216;The Black Book of the American Left&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ion-mihai-pacepa/a-life-transformed-the-black-book-of-the-american-left/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-life-transformed-the-black-book-of-the-american-left</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ion-mihai-pacepa/a-life-transformed-the-black-book-of-the-american-left/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 Jan 2014 05:13:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ion Mihai Pacepa]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Black Book]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Collection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Horowitz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pacepa]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=215278</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why David Horowitz's new collection should be read by every American who loves his country.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/tbb.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-215281" alt="tbb" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/tbb.jpg" width="231" height="350" /></a><strong>To order David Horowitz’s “<em>The Black Book of the American Left, Volume I: My Life And Times,” </em><a href="https://secure.donationreport.com/productlist.html?key=DBERMFBVMXYH">click here</a>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Reprinted from <a href="http://www.wnd.com/">WND.com</a>.</strong></p>
<p>David Horowitz’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Black-Book-American-Left-Conservative/dp/1594036942/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;keywords=david%20horowitz&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;qid=1389649809&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-1&amp;tag=worldnetdaily-20">“The Black Book of the American Left: Collected Conservative Writings”</a> should be read by every American who loves his country. This book is a unique wake-up call to the truth that America is being infected by the bubonic plague of Marxism, which once contaminated the author himself.</p>
<p>In the 1970s, David climbed to the very top of the American leftist movements. Later he understood that Marxism was a lie – the first step toward stealing and killing – and after that he dedicated the rest of his life to warning others that Marxism was endangering American freedom and democracy. A Rasmussen Reports poll shows, indeed, that now <a href="http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/04/socialism-gaining-ground-in-america.html">only 53 percent of Americans prefer capitalism to socialism.</a></p>
<p>One of the most popular night clubs in New York City is the Soviet-themed KGB Bar. The place, adorned with the Soviet flag and a picture of “Comrade Lenin,” is jammed by a new generation of Marxist writers who read from their work. Just weeks ago this giant city overwhelmingly elected (73 percent of the votes) an openly Marxist mayor, and Seattle got a new council member who proudly stated that she wore “the badge of socialist with honor.” Russia’s post-Soviet newspaper Pravda, which knew that socialism was just a smiling mask for Marxism, chafed: “It must be said that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breathtaking speed, against the backdrop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.”</p>
<p>America is still not really aware that Marxism is infecting the country because our main media have gone to great lengths to hide this truism, and because neither the Republican Party nor the tea party has called attention to the looming dangers of Marxism. Our main media are also deep-sixing the fact that the only thing Marxism ever left behind it is countries that ended up looking like trailer camps hit by a hurricane, and Marxist leaders roasting in Dante’s Inferno – all of them, from Trotsky to Stalin, from Khrushchev to Brezhnev, from Tito to Enver Hoxha, along with Mátyás Rakosi, Sékou Touré, Nyeree, Ceausescu and Hugo Chavez.</p>
<p>David Horowitz was born into a family of devoted Marxists, had Marxism in his blood and pursued a successful career as a Marxist activist, writer and journalist. In 1974, some of his Marxist comrades – leaders of the Black Panther Party – murdered a bookkeeper whom David had recruited to keep the accounts of a Panther school he had helped create. That horrible crime hit home and persuaded David to forsake his highly successful leftist career and to move over onto the other side of America’s political barricade.</p>
<p>The David Horowitz Freedom Center and its FrontPage Magazine, created by David in 1988, marked the beginning of his anti-Marxist crusade, which has never stopped. His book “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America” (2006) and his Academic Bill of Rights (ABR) marked another milestone in his life: the beginning of his still-vigorous campaign against Marxist indoctrination at American universities. (Full disclosure: Although I have never met David, I do collaborate with his FrontPage Magazine, and I have repeatedly expressed my admiration for his break with Marxism. David had also publicly praised my split with communism.)</p>
<p><strong><em><a href="http://superstore.wnd.com/books/Disinformation-Former-Spy-Chief-Reveals-Hardcover">Order Lt. Gen. Pacepa’s eyeopening book, “Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategy for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion and Promoting Terrorism.”</a> or get both <a href="http://superstore.wnd.com/books/Disinformation-Hardcover-Disinformation-DVD-BUNDLE">the book and DVD, “Disinformation: The Secret Strategy To Destroy The West” together – and save!</a></em></strong></p>
<p>In the preface to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Black-Book-American-Left-Conservative/dp/1594036942/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;keywords=david%20horowitz&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;qid=1389649809&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-1&amp;tag=worldnetdaily-20">“The Black Book of the American Left,”</a> the first of a nine-volume memoir, David Horowitz wrote that “for better or worse, I have been condemned to spend the rest of my days” fighting Marxism, “from which I have separated myself.” In May 1989, he and two other former prominent Marxists, Ronald Radosh and Peter Collier, went to Poland to attend a conference calling for the end of Communism. There, David told the Polish dissidents: “For myself, my family tradition of socialist dreams is over. Socialism is no longer a dream of a revolutionary future. It is only a nightmare of the past. But for you, the nightmare is not a dream. It is a reality that it is still happening. My dream for the people of socialist Poland is that someday you will wake up from your nightmare and be free.” A few months later, the Roundtable talks between the Polish government and the Solidarity-led Polish dissidents led to the first semi-free elections in the Soviet bloc.</p>
<p>On Nov. 9, 1989, when I watched on television as the Berlin Wall was being torn down, my eyes were misty. I was so incredibly proud to be an American. The whole world was expressing its gratitude to the United States for its 45 years of successful Cold War against the Soviet evil. “Communism is dead!” I heard people shout. Indeed, Communism was dead as a form of government. But it soon proved that Marxism, which had just celebrated its 141st birthday, had survived.</p>
<p>French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who once claimed he had broken with Marxism but confessed to still being choked with emotion whenever he heard the Internationale, reminded us that the first noun in Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” is <em>specter</em>: “A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.” According to Derrida, Marx began “The Communist Manifesto” with <em>specter</em>, <a href="http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/derrida.2htm">because a specter never dies.</a> David Horowitz concurred. “After Stalin’s death,” he writes in his memoirs, his parents – who had dedicated their whole lives to Marxism – learned that “they served a gang of cynical despots who had slaughtered more peasants, caused more hunger and human misery, and killed more leftists like themselves than all the capitalist governments since the beginning of time. … I was 17 at that time, and at the funeral of the Old Left I swore to myself I would not repeat my parent’s fate. … But my youth prevented me from comprehending what the catastrophe had revealed. I continued my fantasy of the socialist future. When a New Left began to emerge a few years later, I was ready to believe that it was a fresh beginning and eager to assist at its birth.”</p>
<p>David Horowitz now documents that a new generation of Americans, one that is not being taught history anymore and knows little if anything about our country’s long fight against Marxism, is giving this heresy – which killed over 90 million people – another lease on life. In 2008, the Democratic Party portrayed the United States as <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us%1F%1F%1F_and_americas/us_elections/article3248449.ece.">a “decaying, racist, capitalist realm,” unable to provide medical care for the poor, to rebuild her “crumbling schools,” or to replace the “shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race,”</a> and it pledged to change it by drastically increasing taxes on the American rich, American businesses and their owners, in order to finance programs for the poor. This is Marxism at its best. In “The Communist Manifesto,” Marx painted capitalism as “a decaying, racist realm,” and pledged to eradicate it by advocating 10 “despotic inroads on the rights of property,” which became known as the “Ten Planks of the Communist Manifesto.” Among them: <a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/manifest.pdf">a heavy progressive or graduated income tax; abolition of all rights of inheritance; abolition of property.</a></p>
<p>If you know the “Manifesto,” as David does, you will think Marx himself wrote the Democratic Party’s economic program, which contains all of the above planks of Marxism. If you don’t know the “Manifesto,” glance through “The Black Book of the American Left.” Young people, as David was when he ignored Stalin’s unprecedented crimes, believe in free lunches. No wonder that during the 2008 election campaign, the U.S. Democratic Party easily filled entire stadiums with young people who demanded that the wealth of the United States be redistributed. Some of those electoral gatherings looked to me like Ceausescu’s revival meetings – over 80,000 young people were gathered in front of the now-famous Greek temple resembling the White House that had been erected in Denver, to demand that America’s wealth be redistributed. The Democratic Party won the White House and both chambers of the U.S. Congress.</p>
<p>People have come to look kindly upon the “redistribution of wealth,” but David Horowitz convincingly demonstrates that this is the quintessence of Marxism, and that Marxism always ended in economic collapse. I concur. “Stealing from capitalism is moral, Comrades,” I heard Khrushchev say during the 1959 “six-day vacation” he spent in Romania. “Don’t raise your eyebrows, Comrades. I intentionally used the word <em>steal</em>. Stealing from our enemy is moral, Comrades.” “Stealing from capitalists is a Marxist duty,” Romania’s president, Nicolae Ceausescu, sermonized during the years I was his national security adviser. “Capitalists are the mortal enemies of Marxism,” I heard Fidel Castro preach in 1972, when I spent a vacation in Cuba as guest of his brother, Raul. “Killing them is moral, comrades!”</p>
<p>In my other life I rose to the top of a Marxist entity – the Soviet empire – which was created by redistributing the wealth of its people, and I had to start my life from scratch, as David did, to escape its tyranny. Redistribution of wealth is disguised stealing – the next step toward killing – and stealing and killing became national policies on the day Soviet Marxism was born. Immediately after the revolution of November 1917, the Soviet Marxists confiscated the imperial family’s wealth, seized the land owned by the rich Russians, nationalized Russian industry and banking, and killed most of the property owners. In 1929, by forcing the peasants into collective farms, the Soviet Marxists stole away their land, along with their animals and agricultural tools. Within a few years, virtually the entire Soviet economy was running on stolen property. When people began protesting the theft, the Marxists transformed the Soviet Empire into a tyrannical police state. Over 20 million people were killed to keep that gulag empire quiet. In the long run, however, theft and crime do not pay even when they are committed by a superpower. The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union is strong proof to that.</p>
<p>On Feb. 7, 2009, the cover of Newsweek magazine proclaimed: “We Are All Socialists Now.” That was also what Ceausescu’s newspaper Scînteia proclaimed when he changed Romania into a monument to Marxism. Two years after seizing power, the U.S. Democratic Party’s Marxism produced the same results as the Ceausescu’s Marxism did – at a U.S. scale. Over 14 million Americans lost their jobs, and 41.8 million people went on food stamps. GDP growth dipped from 3-4 percent to 1.6 percent. The national debt rose to an unprecedented $17 trillion, and it is projected to reach $18 trillion by 2019. Scînteia went bankrupt. Newsweek was sold for one dollar.</p>
<p>So, let call a spade a spade: it is Marxism we are talking about. Marxism in America!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Black-Book-American-Left-Conservative/dp/1594036942/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;keywords=david%20horowitz&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;qid=1389649809&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-1&amp;tag=worldnetdaily-20">“The Black Book of the American Left”</a> could not have come to life at a better time. Understanding that Marxism is a lie, and that lying is the first step toward stealing and killing, is what America needs right now.</p>
<p><strong><em>Lt. Gen Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking Soviet bloc official ever to defect to the West. In 1989 Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu was executed at the end of a trial whose main accusations came out of Pacepa’s book “Red Horizons,” republished in 27 countries. His latest book, <a href="http://superstore.wnd.com/books/Disinformation-Former-Spy-Chief-Reveals-Hardcover">“Disinformation,” co-authored with professor Ronald Rychlak, was published last June by WND.</a></em></strong></p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>David Horowitz</strong> discussing <a href="https://secure.donationreport.com/productlist.html?key=DBERMFBVMXYH">The Black Book of the American Left</a> in <strong>The Glazov Gang&#8217;s</strong> two-part video series below:</em><br />
<b></b></p>
<p><strong>Part I:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/QL9WUvnJ_Cs" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Part II:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/eeN2K6romr8" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>To sign up for </strong><em><b>The Glazov Gang</b></em><strong>: </strong><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><b>Click here</b></a><strong>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ion-mihai-pacepa/a-life-transformed-the-black-book-of-the-american-left/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>15</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Better to Be Wrong Than Right?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walterlaqueur/better-to-be-wrong-than-right/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=better-to-be-wrong-than-right</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walterlaqueur/better-to-be-wrong-than-right/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Nov 2013 04:10:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Walter Laqueur/Mosaic]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Isaac Deutscher]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Isaiah berlin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=209252</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A new book chronicles the battle between a pro-American British intellectual and a Stalin apologist. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/isaiah_isaiah.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209253" alt="isaiah_isaiah" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/isaiah_isaiah-445x350.jpg" width="267" height="210" /></a>How many pages of print need be devoted to an event that amounts to no more than a small footnote, if that, in the history of British academic life? In the case of the dueling protagonists of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Isaac-Isaiah-Covert-Punishment-Heretic/dp/0300192096" target="_blank"><i>Isaac &amp; Isaiah</i></a>, a new book by the British historian and novelist David Caute, the unfortunate answer is: quite a few. Luckily, there is much else of inadvertent interest in the story Caute tells.</p>
<p>Both Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) and Isaac Deutscher (1907-1967) were born to Jewish parents in Eastern Europe, but otherwise they had little in common. Berlin, who arrived in England as a schoolboy, eventually became a central and much celebrated figure of the British intellectual and academic establishment and was knighted in 1957. Deutscher, who arrived in his thirties, established himself within a few years as a well-known biographer and political commentator and a self-proclaimed exemplar of the human type known as the “non-Jewish Jew,” a term he may have coined.</p>
<p><strong>Read the rest at</strong><em><strong> <a href="http://mosaicmagazine.com/supplemental/2013/10/better-to-be-wrong-than-right/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&amp;utm_campaign=0ca5dcdcf2-Mosaic_2013_10_31&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-0ca5dcdcf2-41165977">Mosaic</a>.</strong></em></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walterlaqueur/better-to-be-wrong-than-right/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Road to Nowhere</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/david-horowitz/the-road-to-nowhere/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-road-to-nowhere</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/david-horowitz/the-road-to-nowhere/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 13 Oct 2013 00:10:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ralph Miliband]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Socialism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=207161</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The destructive consequences of the progressive idea. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/no.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-207169" alt="no" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/no-450x320.jpg" width="315" height="224" /></a><em>Editor&#8217;s note: Below is a letter David Horowitz wrote to his former mentor Ralph Miliband in the late 1980s. He included it as a chapter in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-POLITICS-OF-BAD-FAITH/dp/0684856794">The Politics of Bad Faith</a>. Ron Radosh discusses this letter in his recent article in PJMedia, &#8220;<a href="http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2013/10/12/how-david-horowitz-revealed-the-truth-about-ralph-milibands-legacy-what-it-should-teach-the-british-left/">How David Horowitz Revealed the Truth about Ralph Miliband’s Legacy: What it Should Teach the British Left.&#8221;</a> Frontpage editors have therefore decided to publish the full text of the Open Letter below:</em></p>
<p>*</p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><em>The self-deification of mankind, to which Marxism gave philosophical expression, has ended in the same way as all such attempts, whether individual or collective: it has revealed itself as the farcical aspect of human bondage.<br />
&#8211; </em>Leszek Kolakowski</p>
<p>October 1990</p>
<p>Dear Ralph,<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a></p>
<p>It has been over a decade since this silence as durable as an iron curtain descended between us. In these circumstances, I have had to depend on others to learn how you regard me these days: How, at a recent social gathering, you referred to me as “one of the two tragedies of the New Left” (the other being a former Brecht scholar who now publishes guides to the nude beaches of America); how my apostasy has inflicted an emotional wound, as though in changing my political views and leaving the Left I had personally betrayed you.</p>
<p>I understand this. How could it be otherwise for people like us, for whom politics (despite our claim to be social realists) was less a matter of practical decisions than moral choices? We were partisans of a cause that confirmed our humanity, even as it denied humanity to those who opposed us. To leave such ranks was not a simple matter, like abandoning a misconception or admitting a mistake. It was more like accusing one’s comrades. Like condemning a life.</p>
<p>Our choice of politics was never a matter of partial commitments. To choose the Left was to define a way of being in the world. (For us, the personal was always political). It was choosing a future in which human beings would finally live as they were meant to live: no longer <i>self-alienated</i> and divided, but equal, harmonious and whole.</p>
<p>Grandiose as this project was, it was not something we had invented, but the inspiration for a movement that was coterminous with modernity itself. As you had taught me, the Left was launched at the time of the French Revolution by Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy of the Equals. In Marx’s own words: “The revolutionary movement, which began in 1789,&#8230;and which temporarily succumbed in the Conspiracy of Babeuf, gave rise to the communist idea,&#8230;This idea,&#8230;constitutes the principle of the modern world.”<a title="" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> With a terrible simplicity the Babouvists pledged themselves to “equality or death,” swiftly finding the latter &#8212; in a prophetic irony &#8212; on the Revolution’s own busy guillotine.</p>
<p>The victorious radicals had proclaimed a theology of Reason in which equality of condition was the natural and true order of creation. In their Genesis, the loss of equality was the ultimate source of mankind’s suffering and evil, just as the arrogant pride of the primal couple had provoked their Fall in the religious myths now discarded. The ownership of private property became a secular version of original sin. Through property, society re-imposed on every generation of human innocence the travails of inequality and injustice. Redemption from worldly suffering was possible only through the Revolution that would abolish property and open the gates to the socialist Eden &#8212; to Paradise regained.</p>
<p>The ideas embodied in this theology of liberation became the inspiration for the new political Left, and have remained so ever since. It was half a century later that Marx first articulated the idea of a historical redemption, in the way that became resonant for us:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Communism</i> is the <i>positive</i> abolition of <i>private property</i>, of <i>human self-alienation</i>,   and thus the real <i>appropriation</i> of <i>human</i> nature through and for man. It is therefore the return of man himself as a <i>social</i>, i.e., really human, being&#8230;<a title="" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a></p></blockquote>
<p>This was our revolutionary vision. By a historical coup we would create the conditions for a return to the state of true humanity whose realization had been blocked by the alienating hierarchies of private property. All the unjust institutions of <i>class</i> history that had distorted, divided, and oppressed mankind would be abolished and human innocence reborn. In the service of this cause, no burden seemed too onerous, no sacrifice too great. We were the Christopher Columbuses of the human future, the avatars of a new world struggling to emerge from the womb of the old. How could I divorce myself from a mission like this without betraying those whom I had left behind?</p>
<p>Without betraying <i>you</i>, my political mentor and closest comrade. We had met in London at the beginning of the Sixties and you quickly became my guide through the moral wilderness created by the disintegration of the Old Left. I was the scion of Communists, troubled by the crimes the “Khrushchev Report” had recently unveiled; you had distanced yourself from official Communism, becoming a charter member of the New Left in the spring of 1956. Even as the unmarked graves of Stalin’s victims were re-opened and their wounds bled afresh, the New Left raised its collective voice to proclaim the continuing truth of its humanitarian dream. Stalinism had died, not socialism. In the moral and political confusion of those years, it was you more than anyone else who helped to restore my radical faith.</p>
<p>To be sure I was a willing disciple. To abandon the historic project of the Left required a moral stoicism that I lacked. No matter how great the enormities perpetrated in the name of socialism, no matter how terrible the miseries inflicted, the prospect of a world without this idea, and its promise of justice, was unthinkable to me. To turn one’s back on socialism would not be like abandoning a misconception or admitting a mistake. It would be like turning one’s back on humanity. Like betraying myself.</p>
<p>And so I, too, refused to give up on this idea that inspired and ennobled us. I joined you and the pioneers of a New Left who had condemned Stalinism and its brutal past and pledged to keep the faith.</p>
<p>We did not ask ourselves then, however, a question that seemed unavoidable to me later: What was the meaning of this refusal to admit our defeat? For thirty years, with only a minority in dissent, the best, most vital and compassionate minds of the Left had hailed the flowering of the progressive state in Soviet Russia. They had made the defense of Soviet “achievements” the <i>sine qua non</i> of what it was to be socially conscious and morally correct. Now the Kremlin itself had acknowledged the monstrous “mistakes” of the progressive experiment, confirming the most damning accusations of its political adversaries. In the face of such epic criminality and collusion, what was the urgency of our renewed dedication to the goals that had proved so destructive in the first place? Why were the voices of our enemies not more worthy of a hearing in the hour that seemed to vindicate them so completely? Why were we so eager to hurry past the lessons they urged on us, in order to resume our combat again?</p>
<p>Our radical generation was hardly the first (and not the last) to repent in such careless haste. The cycle of guilt was integral, in fact, to the progress of the Left. It had begun with the radical birth in Eighteenth Century Paris &#8212; that dawn of human Fraternity and Reason, which also devolved into fratricidal terror and imperial ambition. How had the redemptive illusions that inspired the Left been so relentlessly renewed in radical generation after generation, despite the inexorable rebuke of human tragedy that attended each of its triumphs? How had the Left negotiated these rebirths?</p>
<p>In the interlude following Stalin’s death, when our generation was reviving its political commitments and creating the New Left, we did not stop to ask ourselves such questions. We were all too busy being born. But two decades later, when I had reached the end of my radical journey and had my second thoughts, I was able at last to see how our own modest histories provided the text of an answer.</p>
<p>*   *   *</p>
<p>Meanwhile, you have no such second thoughts. Even as I write, you and your comrades are engaged in yet another defiant resurrection &#8212; the birth of a new generation of the Left, as eager to believe in the fantasy of a new world as we were then. In this <i>annus mirabilus</i> of Communist collapse, when the socialist idea is being repudiated throughout the whole expanse of the Soviet empire by the very masses it claimed to liberate, you and your comrades are still finding ways to deny what has happened.</p>
<p>For you and the prophets of the next Left, the socialist idea is still capable of an immaculate birth from the bloody conception of the socialist state. You seek to evade these lessons of the revolutionary present by writing the phrase “actually existing socialism” across its pages, thus distinguishing the socialism of your faith from the socialism that has failed. The historic bankruptcy of the planned societies created by Marxist dictators, a human catastrophe extending across nearly three quarters of a century and encompassing hundreds of millions of ruined lives, will not be entered in the balance sheet of the Left. This would require of you and your comrades an accounting and an agonizing self-appraisal. You prefer, instead, to regard the bankruptcy as someone else’s.</p>
<p>There is nothing new in this shell game. It is the same operation we ourselves performed after 1956, when our slogan was: Stalinism is dead, long live socialism. Today you see the demonstrations for democracy bringing an end to Communist history and you are certain that this has no relevance to the ideas that inspired that history in the first place. Here is your most recent defense of the past:</p>
<blockquote><p>Communist regimes, with the notable exception of Yugoslavia after 1948, never made any serious attempt, or indeed any attempt at all, to break the authoritarian mould by which they had been cast at their birth. Conservative ideologists have a simple explanation of this immobility: its roots are to be found in Marxism. In fact, Marxism has nothing to do with it.<a title="" href="#_ftn4">[4]</a></p></blockquote>
<p>“Actually existing Marxism” is dead, long live Marxism. This is the political formula of the Left &#8212; of your Left &#8212; today. Veterans of past ideological wars, like yourself, will be crucial in selling this hope to a new generation. The moral weight of this future will be on your shoulders. In reading your words, I could not help thinking how thirty years ago there was an individual who provided the same hope for you, and who since then has become the intellectual model for my own second thoughts. Perhaps you are tempted to bury this connection. For there were not two, but three New Left apostasies that touched you directly, and of these, the defection of Leszek Kolakowski was by far the most painful.<a title="" href="#_ftn5">[5]</a></p>
<p>*    *    *</p>
<p>A philosopher of exceptional brilliance and moral courage, Kolakowski had been the intellectual leader of our political generation. Even the titles of his writings &#8211;“Responsibility and History,” “Towards a Marxist Humanism”&#8211; read like stages of our radical rebirth. By 1968 those stages had come to an abrupt conclusion. When the Czechs’ attempt to provide Communism with a human face was crushed by Soviet tanks, Kolakowski abandoned the ranks of the Left. He did more. He fled &#8212; unapologetically &#8212; to the freedoms of the West, implicitly affirming by his actions that the Cold War did indeed mark a great divide in human affairs, and that the Left had chosen the wrong side.</p>
<p>Kolakowski’s apostasy was challenged by Edward Thompson, then the foremost English New Leftist, in a 100-page “Open Letter” which you published in <i>The Socialist Register</i><i>1973</i>. Written in the form of a plea to Kolakowski to return to the radical fold, the Letter began by paying homage to the example he had set for us all seventeen years before, and which Thompson now claimed as a “debt of solidarity”:</p>
<blockquote><p>What we dissident Communists [of ’56] did in Britain&#8230;was to refuse to enter the well-worn paths of apostasy. I can think of not one who took on the accepted role, in liberal capitalist society, of Public Confessor and Renegade. No-one ran to the press with his revelations about Communist “conspiracy” and no-one wrote elegant essays, in the organs published by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, complaining that God had failed&#8230;.We refused to disavow “Communism” because Communism was a complex noun which included Leszek Kolakowski.</p></blockquote>
<p>Here Thompson put his finger on a central reflex of the New Left revival: our refusal to break ranks with our comrades and join the camp of our Cold War opponents; in short, our ability to repudiate the catastrophic outcome of a generation of radical effort without abandoning the radical cause. Not even the crimes of Stalin could break the chain of our loyalties to the revolt against bourgeois society that had been launched at its inception by the Conspiracy of the Equals.</p>
<p>Because Communism was a “complex noun” which included Kolakowski, we were able to preserve our allegiances to an Idea that still included Communism, if only as a deformed precursor of the future to which we all aspired. Because Communism was a complex noun we refused to concede that Marxism or Socialism&#8212;integral elements of the Communist Idea&#8212;were themselves condemned by the Stalinist nightmare. Kolakowski provided the bridge across which New Leftists could march in a popular front with Communists to carry on a struggle that they had begun nobly, but soon distorted and then tragically perverted. Because Kolakowski was himself a complex noun, having spoken out for intellectual honesty and humanist values while he remained a Communist, we could do this without giving up our critical distance or self-respect.</p>
<p>Kolakowski, of course, was not alone. A generation of Kolakowskis had appeared after ’56 to incite and inspire us. When you and I met in London in 1963, it occurred to me that if someone as morally serious and intellectually dedicated as you could still devote himself to Marxism and the cause of the Left&#8212;despite Stalinism and all that it had engendered&#8212;it was possible for me to do so too.</p>
<p>*    *    *</p>
<p>There was one question that Thompson had failed to ask, however, which occurred to me only later: When had Communism <i>not</i> been a complex noun that included individuals like Kolakowski (and you)? Even in the most grotesque night of the Stalinist abyss, the Communist movement had included the complexity of intellects as subtle and independent as Trotsky and Lukacs, Varga and Gramsci, not to mention the fellow-traveling chorus of “progressive” intellectuals who defended Stalinism while proclaiming their humanism from the privileged sanctuaries of the democratic West. Didn’t this say something about the futility of such complexity, or its practical irrelevance?</p>
<p>In our minds, of course, the true complexity of the Communist noun went beyond individuals to encompass the nature of reality itself. It was the Hegelian complexity that the idea of the future introduced into the present, that ultimately made us so willing to discount the evils of Stalinist rule. This complexity was a creation of our Marxist perspective, which decreed a divorce between appearance and reality, between present reality and the future to come. Between class history ruled by impersonal forces and revolutionary history ruled by reason, and guided by the precepts of social justice. This vision of the future was the heart of our radical illusion. We had rejected the crude determinism of our Stalinist precursors, but our confidence in the outcome of the historical process allowed us to put our talents on the Communist side of the global conflict, even though “really existing Communism” was an offense to the spirit of the socialism we believed in. In his “Open Letter” Thompson explained the paradox by which we gave our allegiance to an intellectual abstraction and wound up acting as partisans of a reality we disdained:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8230;In general, our allegiance to Communism was political: it arose from inexorable choices in a partisan world in which neutrality seemed impossible&#8230;.But our intellectual allegiance was to Marxism&#8230;.Thus there is a sense in which, even before 1956, our solidarity was given not to Communist states in their existence, but in their potential&#8212;not for what they were but for what&#8212;given a diminution in the Cold War&#8212;they might become.</p></blockquote>
<p>Our solidarity was given to Communist states <i>in their potential</i>. New Leftists like us refused to become anti-Communist cold warriors and offered “critical support” to repulsive Communist regimes because <i>we believed they would change. </i>It was the “humanist potential” of societies with socialist foundations, not their totalitarian realities, that claimed our allegiance. (By the same reasoning, we were unimpressed by the democratic realities of the capitalist West, because private property rendered them incapable of such liberation). We refused to join the attack on the Communist camp in Cold War battles, no matter how morally justified, because we did not want to aid those seeking to destroy the seeds of the future the Left had sown in Soviet Russia. We were determined to defend what Trotsky had called “the gains of October”&#8211; the socialist edicts of the Bolshevik Revolution that had abolished private property and paved the way for a better world. It was our recognition of the epoch-making character of these “gains” that defined our radical faith.</p>
<p>By 1973 Kolakowski had rejected this faith and the politics it inspired. Thompson’s “Open Letter” was a refusal to accept the rejection. It was an eloquent plea for the continuing vitality of the socialist future and for the Left’s enduring mission as the carrier of historical optimism, the idea that humanity could be master of its fate. It was, above all, a rebuke to the leader who had once inspired but now spurned the radicals of ’56. “I feel,” wrote Thompson, “when I turn over your pages a sense of injury and betrayal.”</p>
<p>Kolakowski no longer believed in Communism as a complex noun. He no longer had faith in what he called the “secular eschatology” of the Left, the political passion that sought to fuse “the essence of man with his existence,” to assure that the timeless longings of humanity would be “fulfilled in reality.”<a title="" href="#_ftn6">[6]</a> We no longer believed in the reality of the socialist Idea.</p>
<p>*    *    *</p>
<p>Kolakowski replied to Thompson in the 1974 edition of <i>The Socialist Register</i>, which I read in America. Struggling, then, with my own doubts, I was drawn to his arguments which seemed to promise an exit from the ideological <i>cul de sac</i> in which I had come to feel trapped. In these passages he exposed the web of double standards that stifled radical thought and transformed it into a self-confirming creed.</p>
<p>As you know, there is no hallmark of left-wing discourse so familiar as the double standard. How many times had we been challenged by our conservative opponents for the support (however “critical”) we gave to totalitarian states where values we claimed to champion &#8212; freedom and human rights &#8212; were absent, while we made ourselves enemies of the western democracies where (however flawed) they were defended. In the seventy years since the Bolshevik Revolution perhaps no other question had proved such an obstacle to our efforts to win adherents to the socialist cause.</p>
<p>In his reply, Kolakowski drew attention to three forms of the double standard that Thompson had employed and that were crucial to the arguments of the Left. The first was the invocation of moral standards in judging capitalist regimes on the one hand, while historical criteria were used to evaluate their socialist counterparts on the other. As a result, capitalist injustice was invariably condemned by the Left under an absolute standard, whereas socialist injustice was routinely accommodated in accord with the relative judgments of a historical perspective. Thus, repellent practices in the socialist bloc were placed in their “proper context” and thereby “understood” as the product of pre-existing social and political conditions &#8212; i.e., as attempts to cope with intractable legacies of a soon-to-be-discarded past.</p>
<p>Secondly, capitalist and socialist regimes were always assessed under different assumptions about their futures. Capitalist regimes were judged under the assumption that they could not meaningfully improve, while socialist regimes were judged on the opposite assumption that they <i>would</i>. Repressions by conservatives like Pinochet in Chile were never seen in the terms in which their apologists justified them &#8212; as necessary preludes to democratic restorations &#8212; but condemned instead as unmitigated evils. On the other hand, the far greater and more durable repressions of revolutionary regimes like the one in Cuba, were invariably minimized as precisely that &#8212; necessary (and temporary) stages along the path to a progressive future.</p>
<p>Finally, in left-wing arguments the negative aspects of existing socialism were always attributed to capitalist influences (survival of the elements of the old society, impact of anti-Communist “encirclement,” tyranny of the world market, etc.), while the reverse possibility was never considered. Thus Leftist histories ritualistically invoked Hitler to explain the rise of Stalinism (the necessity of a draconian industrialization to meet the Nazi threat) but never viewed Stalinism as a factor contributing to the rise of Hitler. Yet, beginning with the socialist assault on bourgeois democracy and the forced labor camps (which were a probable inspiration for Auschwitz) Stalinism was a far more palpable influence in shaping German politics in the Thirties than was Nazism in Soviet developments. The “Trotskyite conspiracy with the Mikado and Hitler”&#8212;the cabal which the infamous show trials claimed to expose&#8212;was a Stalinist myth; but the alliance that German Communists formed with the Nazi Party to attack the Social Democrats and destroy the Weimar Republic was an actual Stalinist plot. Without this alliance, the united parties of the Left would have formed an formidable barrier to the Nazis’ electoral triumph and Hitler might never have come to power.</p>
<p>The same double standard underlies the Left’s failure to understand the Cold War that followed the allied victory. Leftist Cold War histories refuse to concede that the anti-Communist policies of the Western powers were a reasonable response to the threat they faced; instead, the threat itself is viewed as a fantasy of anti-Communist paranoia. Soviet militarism and imperialism, including the occupation of Eastern Europe, are dismissed as merely reactive &#8212; defensive responses to Western containment. But when the same Western actions produce the opposite result &#8212; Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe and, with that, an end to the Cold War &#8212; they are alleged to have had no influence at all. In sum, positive developments in the Soviet bloc come from within; negative developments are the consequences of counter-revolutionary encirclement.</p>
<p>The double standards that inform the arguments of the Left are really expressions of the Left’s false consciousness, the reflexes by which the Left defends an identity rooted in its belief in the redemptive power of the socialist idea. <i>Of course the revolution cannot be judged by the same standards as the counter-revolution: the first is a project to create a truly human future, the latter only an attempt to preserve an anti-human past.</i> This is why, no matter how destructive its consequences or how absolutely it fails, the revolution deserves our allegiance; why <i>anti</i>-Communism is always a far greater evil than the Communism it opposes. Because revolutionary evil is only a birth pang of the future, whereas the evil of counter-revolution lies in its desire to strangle the birth.</p>
<p>It was this birth in which Kolakowski had finally ceased to believe. The imagined future in whose name all actually existing revolutions had been relieved of their failures and absolved of their sins, he had concluded, was nothing more than a mistaken idea.</p>
<p>When Kolakowski’s reply to Thompson was printed in <i>The Socialist Register 1974,</i> you prefaced its appearance with an editorial note describing it as a “tragic document.” At the time, I was in the middle of my own political journey and this judgment was like the first stone in the wall that had begun to separate us. For I already had begun to realize just how much I agreed with everything Kolakowski had written.</p>
<p>It is clear to me now, in retrospect, that this moment marked the end of my intellectual life in the Left. It occurred during what for me had been a period of unexpected and tragic events. In Vietnam, America had not stayed the course of its imperial mission, as we had said it would, but under pressure from our radical movement had quit the field of battle. Our theory had assured us the capitalist state was controlled by the corporate interests of a ruling class, but events had shown that the American government was responsive to the desires of its ordinary citizens. Closer to home, a friend of mine named Betty Van Patter had been murdered by a vanguard of the Left, while the powers of the state that we had condemned as repressive had been so impotent in reality as to be unable even to indict those responsible. These events &#8212; for reasons I need not review here &#8212; confronted me with questions that I could not answer, and in the process opened an area of my mind to thoughts that I would previously have found unthinkable.</p>
<p>The shock of these recognitions dissolved the certainties that previously blocked my political sight. For the first time in my political life, I became inquisitive about what our opponents saw when they saw us. I began to wonder <i>what if</i>. What if we had been wrong in this or that instance, and if so, what if <i>they</i> had been right? I asked these questions as a kind of experiment at first, but then with systematic determination until they all seemed to be pushing towards a single concern: What if socialism were not possible after all?</p>
<p>*    *    *</p>
<p>While I was engaged with these doubts, Kolakowski published <i>Main Currents of Marxism</i><a title="" href="#_ftn7">[7]</a> a comprehensive history of Marxist thought, the world view we all had spent a lifetime inhabiting. For three volumes and fifteen hundred pages Kolakowski analyzed the entire corpus of this intellectual tradition. Then, having paid critical homage to an argument which had dominated so much of humanity’s fate over the last hundred years (and his own as well), he added a final epilogue which began with these words: “Marxism has been the greatest fantasy of our century.” This struck me as the most personally courageous judgment a man with Kolakowski’s history could make.</p>
<p>By the time I read your review of Kolakowski’s book,<a title="" href="#_ftn8">[8]</a> my own doubts had taken me to the perimeter of Kolakowski’s position. Consequently, I approached what you had written, in a mood of apprehension, even foreboding. For I already knew that this would be our final encounter on my way out of the community of the Left, the last intellectual challenge I would have to meet.</p>
<p>It was appropriate that the final terrain of battle should be Marxism. Thompson had it right, our allegiance <i>was</i> to Marxism. Not to this particular thesis or that doctrinal principle, but to the paradigm itself: politics as civil war; history as a drama of social redemption.<a title="" href="#_ftn9">[9]</a> If we remained in the ranks of the Marxist Left, it was not because we failed to recognize the harsh facts that Marxists had created, but because we did not want to betray the vision that we shared with the creators.</p>
<p>And so the question that would irrevocably come to divide us was not whether Marxists had committed this revolutionary crime, or whether that revolutionary solution had veered off course; but whether the Marxist Idea itself could be held accountable for the revolutions that had been perpetrated in its name. In the end, it was ideas that made us what we were, that had given us the power of perennial rebirth. Movements rose and fell, but the ideas that generated them were immortal. And malleable as well. How easy it had proved in 1956 to discover humanitarian sentiments in Marx’s writings and thus distance ourselves from Stalin’s crimes; how simple to append the qualifier “democratic” to “socialist,” and thus escape responsibility for the bloody tyrannies that socialists had created.</p>
<p>It was on this very point that Kolakowski had thrown down his gauntlet, declaring that Marx’s ideas could not be rescued from the human ruins they had created, that “the primordial intention” of Marx’s dream was itself “not innocent.” History had shown, and analysis confirmed, that there was no reason to expect that socialism could ever become real “except in the cruel form of despotism.”<a title="" href="#_ftn10">[10]</a> The idea of socialism could not be freed from the taint incurred by its actual practice and thus revitalized, as Thompson and the New Left proposed, because it was the idea that had created the despotism in the first place. Marxism, as Kolakowski had announced at the outset of his book, was a vision that “began in Promethean humanism and culminated in the monstrous tyranny of Stalinism.”</p>
<p>You understood the gravity of the challenge. The claim that the Promethean project of the Left led directly to the socialist debacle depended on making two historical connections &#8212; between Marxism and Leninism, and between Leninism and Stalinism &#8212; thus establishing the continuity of the radical fate. You were contemptuous in your response:</p>
<blockquote><p>To speak of Stalinism as following naturally and ineluctably from Leninism is unwarranted. However, to speak of Stalinism as ‘one possible interpretation of Marx’s doctrine’ is not only unwarranted but false.</p></blockquote>
<p>A decade has passed since you wrote this. In the East it is the era of <i>glasnost</i>; the silence of the past is broken, the lies exposed. The Soviets themselves now acknowledge the genesis of Stalinism in Lenin. Yet, even if you were still tempted to resist this connection, it would not detain us. For it is the causal link between Marxism and Stalinism that is the real issue, encompassing both.</p>
<p><i>Stalinism is not a possible interpretation of Marx.</i> What could you have been thinking to have written this, to have blotted out so much of the world we know? Forget the Soviet planners and managers who architected the Stalinist empire and found a rationale in Marx’s texts for all their actions and social constructions, including the Party dictatorship and the political police, the collectivization and the terror, the show trials and the <i>gulag</i>. These, after all, were practical men, accustomed to bending doctrine in the service of real world agendas. Consider, instead, the movement intellectuals &#8212; the complex nouns who managed to be Marxists <i>and</i> Stalinists through all the practical nightmares of the socialist epoch: Althusser and Brecht, Lukacs and Gramsci, Bloch and Benjamin, Hobsbawm and Edward Thompson too. Subtle Hegelians and social progressives, they were all promoters of the Stalinist cancer, devoting their formidable intellects and supple talents to its metastasizing terror. Were they illiterate to consider themselves Marxists <i>and</i> Stalinists? Or do you think they were merely corrupt? And what of the tens of thousands of Party intellectuals all over the world who were not so complex, among them Nobel-prize-winning scientists and renowned cultural artists who saw no particular difficulty in assimilating Stalin’s gulag to Marx’s utopia, socialist humanism to the totalitarian state? In obliterating the reality of these intellectual servants of socialist tyranny, you manifest a contempt for them as thinking human beings far greater than that exhibited in the scorn of their most dedicated anti-Communist critics.</p>
<p>Stalinism is not just a <i>possible</i> interpretation of Marxism. In the annals of revolutionary movements it is without question the prevailing one. Of all the interpretations of Marx’s doctrine since the <i>Communist Manifesto</i>, it is overwhelmingly the one adhered to by the most progressives for the longest time. Maoism, Castroism, Vietnamese Communism, the ideologies of the actually existing Marxist states &#8212; <i>these</i> Stalinisms are the Marxisms that shaped the history of the epoch just past. This is the truth that leftist intellectuals like you are determined to avoid: the record of the real lives of real human beings, whose task is not just to interpret texts but to move masses and govern them. When Marxism has been put into practice by real historical actors, it has invariably taken a Stalinist form, producing the worst tyrannies and oppressions that mankind has ever known. Is there a reason for this? Given the weight of this history, you should ask rather: <i>How could there not be?</i></p>
<p>*      *      *</p>
<p>What persuaded us to believe that socialism, having begun everywhere so badly, should possess the power to reform itself into something better? To be something other than it has been? To pass through the <i>inferno</i> of its Stalinist tragedies to become the <i>paradiso </i>of our imaginations?</p>
<p>For we did believe in such a transformation. We were confident that the socialized foundations of Soviet society would eventually assert themselves, producing a self-reform of the Soviet tyranny. This was our New Left version of the faith we inherited. This refusal to accept history’s verdict made socialism a reality still. In the Sixties, when the booming capitalist societies of the West made radical prospects seem impossibly remote, we had a saying among us that the first socialist revolution was going to take place in the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>The lineage of these ideas could be traced back to our original complex noun, Trotsky: the legend of the revolution who had defied Stalin’s tyranny in the name of the revolution. While the Father of the Peoples slaughtered millions in the 1930s, Trotsky waited in his Mexican exile for Russia’s proletariat to rise up and restore the revolution to its rightful path. But as the waves of the Opposition disappeared into the <i>gulag</i>, and this prospect became impossibly remote, even Trotsky began to waver in his faith. By the eve of the Second World War, Trotsky’s despair had grown to such insupportable dimensions, that he made a final wager with himself. The conflict the world had just entered would be a test for the socialist faith. If the great war did not lead to a new revolution, socialists would be compelled, finally, to concede their defeat &#8212; to admit that “the present USSR was the precursor of a new and universal system of exploitation,” and that the socialist program had “petered out as a Utopia.”<a title="" href="#_ftn11">[11]</a> Trotsky did not survive to see the Cold War and the unraveling of his Marxist dreams. In 1940, his dilemma was resolved when one of Stalin’s agents gained entrance to the fortress of his exile in Mexico, and buried an ice pick in his head.</p>
<p>But the fantasy survived. In 1953 Stalin died and a new Left generation convinced itself that the long awaited metamorphosis was at last taking place. With Stalin’s death came the Khrushchev thaw, the famous speech lifting the veil on the bloody past, and a relaxation of the Stalinist terror. To those on the Left who had refused to give up, these were signs that the totalitarian caterpillar, having lodged itself in the cocoon of a backward empire, was about to become the socialist butterfly of which they had dreamed.</p>
<p>We had our own complex noun to explain the transformation. Our mutual friend, Isaac Deutscher, had emerged from the pre-war battles over Trotskyism to become the foremost interpreter of the Russian Revolution to our radical generation. What made Deutscher’s analysis so crucial to the self-understanding behind our revival was that he recognized the fact that Stalinism, in all its repugnance, was Marxist reality and had to be accepted as such. You, too, accepted this then, though it has become convenient for you to deny it now, just as you embraced the Leninist version of Marx’s doctrine as the only socialist outlook that had actually produced a revolution. There were social democrat Marxists, of course, who opposed Lenin and Stalin from the beginning. But you dismissed them as sentimentalists &#8211;“socialists of the hearth” you called them &#8212; reformers who were content to tinker with capitalism and lacked the fortitude to make a revolution.</p>
<p>Deutscher began with the reality that was given to us: the fact of Stalinism, as it had taken root in the Empire of the Czars. But instead of despairing like his mentor Trotsky, Deutscher began to explain why Stalinism, in spite of itself, was being transformed into socialism. In Trotsky’s own theories Deutscher had found an answer to Trotsky’s pessimism. While Trotsky worried that there would be no revolution from below, Deutscher explained to us why it was coming from above.</p>
<p>Stalinism, Deutscher wrote, was “an amalgamation of Marxism with the semi-barbarous and quite barbarous traditions and the primitive magic of an essentially pre-industrial&#8230;society.” In short, Stalinism was the fulfillment of Lenin’s famous prescription: <i>with barbarism we will drive barbarism out of Russia</i>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Under Stalinism&#8230;Russia rose to the position of the world’s second industrial power. By fostering Russia’s industrialization and modernization Stalinism had with its own hands uprooted itself and prepared its ‘withering away.’<a title="" href="#_ftn12">[12]</a></p></blockquote>
<p>The backwardness of Russian society had provided the Bolsheviks not only with a revolutionary opportunity, but also an historical advantage. They could avail themselves of modern technologies and social theories. Instead of relying on the anarchic impulses of capitalist investment, they could employ the superior methods of socialist planning. The result of these inputs would be a modern economy more efficient and productive than those of their capitalist competitors.</p>
<p>According to Deutscher, in mid-century the socialist bloc, which had hitherto provided such grief for radicals like us, was poised for a great leap forward:</p>
<blockquote><p>With public ownership of the means of production firmly established, with the consolidation and expansion of planned economy, and &#8212; last but not least &#8212; with the traditions of a socialist revolution alive in the minds of its people, the Soviet Union breaks with Stalinism in order to resume its advance towards equality and socialist democracy.</p></blockquote>
<p>The ultimate basis of this transformation was the superior efficiency of socialist planning:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8230;superior efficiency necessarily translates itself, albeit with a delay, into higher standards of living. These should lead to the softening of social tensions, the weakening of antagonisms between bureaucracy and workers, and workers and peasants, to the further lessening of terror, and to the further growth of civil liberties.<a title="" href="#_ftn13">[13]</a></p></blockquote>
<p>Deutscher wrote these words in 1957, a year in which the Soviets celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the revolution by launching the first space satellite into orbit. The feat dramatized the progress that had been achieved in a single generation and heralded the  end of the Soviets’ technological “apprenticeship” to the West. The message of Sputnik to the faithful all over the world, Deutscher predicted, was “that things may be very different for them in the second half of the century from what they were in the first.” For forty years, their cause had been “discredited&#8230;by the poverty, backwardness, and oppressiveness of the first workers’ state.” But that epoch was now coming to an end. With the industrial leap heralded by Sputnik, they might look forward to a time when the appeal of Communism would be “as much enhanced by Soviet wealth and technological progress as the attraction of bourgeois democracy has in our days been enhanced by the fact that it has behind it the vast resources of the United States.”<a title="" href="#_ftn14">[14]</a></p>
<p>This was the vision of the socialist future that the Soviet leadership itself promoted. In 1961, Khrushchev boasted that the socialist economy would “bury” its capitalist competitors and that by 1980 the Soviet Union would overtake the United States in economic output and enter the stage of “full communism,” a society of true abundance whose principle of distribution would be “from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.”</p>
<p>As New Leftists, we took Khrushchev’s boast with a grain of salt. The Soviet Union was still a long way from its Marxist goals. Moreover, as Deutscher had warned, any future Soviet progress might be “complicated, blurred, or periodically halted by the inertia of Stalinism, by war panics, and, more basically, by the circumstance that the Soviet Union still remains in a position of overall economic inferiority vis-à-vis its American antipode.”<a title="" href="#_ftn15">[15]</a> Actual socialism was still a myth that Stalinism had created. But it had a redeeming dimension: the myth had helped “to reconcile the Soviet masses to the miseries of the Stalin era” and Stalinist ideology had helped “to discipline morally both the masses and the ruling group for the almost inhuman efforts which assured the Soviet Union’s spectacular rise from backwardness and poverty to industrial power and greatness.”<a title="" href="#_ftn16">[16]</a></p>
<p>To us, Deutscher’s sober assessment was even more intoxicating than the Khrushchev myth. Its mix of optimism and “realism” became the foundation of our political revival. The turn Marxism had taken in 1917, creating a socialist economy within a totalitarian state, had posed a seemingly insoluble riddle. How could socialist progress be reconciled with such a stark retreat into social darkness? What did this portend for Marx’s insight that the mode of production determined the architecture of social relations? Building on Trotsky’s prior analysis, Deutscher pointed to what seemed to be the only way out of the dilemma that would preserve our radical faith.</p>
<p>And no doubt that is why, thirty years later, even as the tremors of <i>glasnost</i> and <i>perestroika</i> were unhinging the empire that Communists had built, you returned to Deutscher’s prophecy as a revolutionary premise. “Much that is happening in the Soviet Union [you wrote in <i>The Socialist Register 1988</i>] constitutes a remarkable vindication of [Deutscher’s] confidence that powerful forces for progressive change would eventually break through seemingly impenetrable barriers.”<a title="" href="#_ftn17">[17]</a></p>
<p>*      *      *</p>
<p>Nothing could more clearly reveal how blind your faith has made you. To describe the collapse of the Soviet Empire as a vindication of Deutscher’s prophecies (and thus the Marxist tradition that underpins them) is to turn history on its head. We are indeed witnessing a form of “revolution from above” in the Soviet Union, but it is a revolution that refutes Deutscher <i>and</i> Marx. The events of the past years are not a triumph for socialism. The rejection of planned economy by the leaders of actually existing socialist society, the pathetic search for the elements of a rule of law (following the relentless crusades against “bourgeois rights”), the humiliating admission that the military superpower is in all other respects a third world nation, the incapacity of the socialist mode of production to enter the technological future and the unseemly begging for the advanced technology that it has stolen for decades from the capitalist West &#8212; all this adds up to a declaration of socialism’s utter bankruptcy and historic defeat. This bankruptcy is not only moral and political, as before, but now economic as well.</p>
<p>It is precisely this economic bankruptcy that Deutscher did not foresee, and that forecloses any possibility of a socialist revival. For all of these post-Khrushchev decades, that revival has been premised on the belief in the superiority of socialist <i>economics</i>. This is the meaning of the claim, so often repeated in Leftist quarters, that the “economic rights” and “substantive freedoms” of socialist states took precedence over the <i>political </i>rights and merely <i>procedural </i>freedoms guaranteed by the capitalist West. Faith in the socialist future had come to rest on the assumption that abundance would eventually flow from the cornucopia of socialist planning and that economic abundance would then lead to political deliverance &#8212; the Deutscherian thesis.</p>
<p>In our New Left fantasies the political nightmare of the socialist past was to be redeemed by the <i>deus ex machina</i> of socialist plenty. The present economic bankruptcy of the Soviet bloc puts this faith finally to rest and brings to an end the socialist era in human history.</p>
<p>This is the reality you have not begun to face.</p>
<p>*    *      *</p>
<p>It is important to understand this reality, which signals the close of an historical era. But this can be accomplished only if we do not deny the history we have lived. You can begin this retrieval of memory by recalling your critique of Kolakowski ten years ago, which set down the terms of your defense of the cause to which we were all so dedicated.</p>
<p>Your complaint against Kolakowski, you remember, was that in demolishing the edifice of Marxist theory he had slighted the motives of those who embraced it and thus failed to explain its ultimate appeal. Kolakowski had portrayed Marxism as the secular version of a religious quest that went back to the beginning of human history: how to reconcile contingent human existence to an essence from which it was estranged &#8212; how to return humanity to its true self. For Kolakowski, Marxism was the messianic faith of a post-religious world. Naturally, such an explanation would be insulting to you. You rejected it as “superficial,” inadequate (you said) to explain Marxism’s attraction to “so many gifted people.” In your view, Marxism’s appeal was not to those hungry for religious answers, but to people who responded to the call “to oppose great evils and to create conditions for a different kind of world, from which such evils would be banished.” The call to fight these evils was the crucial factor in enlisting people in the cause of the Left, and you named them: “exploitation, poverty and crisis, war and the threat of war, imperialism and fascism, the crimes of the ruling classes.”<a title="" href="#_ftn18">[18]</a></p>
<p>Let us pass for a moment over the most dramatic of these evils &#8212; exploitation, crisis, war, imperialism, fascism, and the crimes of “ruling classes,” including the vast privileges of the <i>nomenklatura </i>&#8211; from which you will agree Marxist societies themselves have not been free since their creation. Let us consider, rather, the simple poverty of ordinary people, whose redress was the most fundamental premise of the revolutionary plan. Let us look at what has been revealed by <i>glasnost</i> about the quality of the ordinary lives of ordinary people after 70 years of socialist effort &#8212; not forgetting that 40 million human beings (the figure is from current Soviet sources) were exterminated to make possible this revolutionary achievement.</p>
<p>Official statistics released during <i>glasnost</i> indicate that after 70 years of socialist development 40% of the Soviet population and 79% of its older citizens live in poverty.<a title="" href="#_ftn19">[19]</a> (Of course, judged by the standards of “exploitative” capitalist systems, the entire Soviet people live in a state of poverty.)</p>
<p>Thus, the Soviet Union’s per capita income is estimated by Soviet economists as about one-seventh that of the United States, somewhere on a par with Communist China.<a title="" href="#_ftn20">[20]</a></p>
<p>In the Soviet Union in 1989 there was rationing of meat and sugar, <i>in peacetime</i>; the rations revealed that the average intake of red meat for a Soviet citizen was <i>half</i> of what it had been for a subject of the Czar in 1913. At the same time, a vast supermarket of fruits, vegetables and household goods, available to the most humble inhabitant of a capitalist economy, was permanently out of stock and thus out of reach for the people of the socialist state. Indeed, one of the principal demands of a Siberian miners’ strike in 1989 was for an item as mundane and basic to a sense of personal well-being as a bar of soap. In a land of expansive virgin forests, there was a toilet paper shortage. In an industrial country with one of the harshest and coldest climates in the world, two-thirds of the households had no hot water, and a third had no running water at all. Not only was the construction of housing notoriously shabby, but space was so scarce, according to the government paper, <i>Izvestia</i>, that a typical working class family of four was forced to live for 8 years in a single 8&#215;8 foot room, before marginally better accommodation became available. The housing shortage was so acute that at all times 17% of Soviet families had to be physically separated for want of adequate space.</p>
<p>After 50 years of socialist industrialization, the Soviet Union’s per-capita output of non-military goods and services placed it somewhere between 50<sup>th</sup> and 60<sup>th</sup> among the nations of the world. More manufactured goods were exported annually by Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea or Switzerland, while blacks in apartheid South Africa owned more cars per capita than did citizens of the socialist state. The only area of consumption in which the Soviets excelled was the ingestion of hard liquor. In this they led the world by a wide margin, consuming 17.4 liters of pure alcohol or 43.5 liters of vodka per person per year, which was five times what their forebears had consumed in the days of the Czar. At the same time, the average welfare mother in the United States received more income in a month, than the average Soviet worker could earn in a year.</p>
<p>Nor was the general deprivation confined to households and individual consumption. The “public sector” was equally desolate. In the name of progress, the Soviets devastated the environment to a degree unknown in other industrial states. More than 70% of the Soviet atmosphere was polluted with five times the permissible limit of toxic chemicals, and thousands of square miles of the Soviet land mass was poisoned by radiation. Thirty percent of all Soviet foods contained hazardous pesticides and six million acres of productive farmland were lost to erosion. More than 130 nuclear explosions had been detonated in European Russia for geophysical investigations to create underground pressure in oil and gas fields, or just to move earth for building dams. The Aral Sea, the world’s largest inland body of water, was dried up as the result of a misguided plan to irrigate a desert. Soviet industry operated under no controls and the accidental spillage of oil into the country’s eco-systems took place at the rate of nearly a million barrels a day.<a title="" href="#_ftn21">[21]</a></p>
<p>Even in traditional areas of socialist concern, the results were catastrophic. Soviet spending on health was the lowest of any developed nation and basic health conditions were on a level with those in the poorest of third world countries. A third of the hospitals had no running water, the training of medical personnel was poor, equipment was primitive and medical supplies scarce. (US expenditures on medical technology alone were twice as much as the entire Soviet health budget.) The bribery of doctors and nurses to get decent medical attention and even amenities like blankets in Soviet hospitals was not only common, but routine. So backward was Soviet medical care, 30 years after the launching of Sputnik, that 40% of the Soviet Union’s pharmacological drugs had to be imported, and much of these were lost to spoilage due to primitive and inadequate storage facilities. Bad as these conditions were generally, in the ethnic republics they were even worse. In Turkmenia, fully two-thirds of the hospitals had no indoor plumbing. In Uzbekistan, 50% of the villages were reported to have no running water and 93% no sewers. In socialist Tadjikistan, according to a report in <i>Izvestia</i>, only 25-30% of the schoolchildren were found to be healthy. As a result of bad living conditions and inadequate medical care, life expectancy for males throughout the Soviet Union was 12 years less than for males in Japan and 9 years less than in the United States &#8212; and less for Soviet males themselves than it had been in 1939.</p>
<p>Educational conditions were no less extreme. “For the country as a whole,” according to one Soviet report, “21 percent of pupils are trained at school buildings without central heating, 30 percent without water piping and 40 percent lacking sewerage.”<a title="" href="#_ftn22">[22]</a> In other words, despite sub-zero temperatures, the socialist state was able to provide schools with only outhouse facilities for nearly half its children. Even at this impoverished level, only 9 years of secondary schooling were provided on average, compared to 12 years in the United States, while only 15 percent of Soviet youth were able to attend institutions of higher learning compared to 34 percent in the U.S.</p>
<p>Education, housing and health were the areas traditionally emphasized by socialist politics because they affect the welfare of a people and the foundations of its future. In Deutscher’s schema, Soviet schools (“the world’s most extensive and modern education system,” as he described it) were the keys to its progressive prospect. But, as <i>glasnost</i> revealed, Soviet spending on education had declined in the years since Sputnik (while US spending tripled). By the 1980s it was evident that education was no more exempt from the generalized poverty of socialist society than other non-military fields of enterprise. Seduced by Soviet advances in nuclear arms and military showpieces like Sputnik, Deutscher labored under the illusion of generations of the Left. He too believed that the goal of revolutionary power was something else than power itself.</p>
<p>For years the Left had decried the collusion between corporate and military interests in the capitalist West. But all that time the <i>entire</i> socialist economy was little more than one giant military industrial complex. Military investment absorbed 25% of the Soviet gross product (compared to only 6% in the United States) and military technology provided the only product competitive for export. Outside the military sector, as <i>glasnost</i> revealed, the vaunted Soviet industrial achievement was little more than a socialist mirage &#8212; imitative, archaic, inefficient, and one-sided. It was presided over by a sclerotic <i>nomenklatura</i> of state planners, which was incapable of adjusting to dynamic technological change. In the Thirties, the political architects of the Soviet economy had over-built a heavy industrial base, and then as if programmed by some invisible bureaucratic hand, had rebuilt it again and again.</p>
<p>Straitjacketed by its central plan, the socialist world was unable to enter the “second industrial revolution” that began to unfold in countries outside the Soviet bloc after 1945. By the beginning of the 1980s the Japanese already had 13 times the number of large computers per capita as the Soviets and nearly 60 times the number of industrial robots (the U.S. had three times the computer power of the Japanese themselves). “We were among the last to understand that in the age of information sciences the most valuable asset is knowledge, springing from human imagination and creativity,” complained Soviet President Gorbachev in 1989. “We will be paying for our mistake for many years to come.”<a title="" href="#_ftn23">[23]</a> While capitalist nations (including recent “third world” economies like South Korea) were soaring into the technological future, Russia and its satellites, caught in the contradictions of an archaic mode of production, were stagnating into a decade of zero growth, becoming economic anachronisms or what one analyst described as “a gigantic Soviet socialist rust belt.”<a title="" href="#_ftn24">[24]</a> In the 1980s the Soviet Union had become a military super-power, but this achievement bankrupted its already impoverished society in the process.</p>
<p>Nothing illustrated this bankruptcy with more poignancy than the opening of a McDonald’s fast-food outlet in Moscow about the time the East Germans were pulling down the Berlin Wall. In fact, the semiotics of the two were inseparable. During the last decades of the Cold War, the Wall had come to symbolize the borders of the socialist world, the Iron Curtain that held its populations captive against the irrepressible fact of the superiority of the capitalist societies in the West. When the Wall was breached, the terror was over, and with it the only authority ever really commanded by the socialist world.</p>
<p>The appearance of the Moscow McDonald’s revealed the prosaic truth that lay behind the creation of the Wall and the bloody epoch that it had come to symbolize. Its Soviet customers gathered in lines whose length exceeded those waiting outside Lenin’s tomb, the altar of the revolution itself. Here, the capitalist genius for catering to the ordinary desires of ordinary people was spectacularly displayed, along with socialism’s relentless unconcern for the needs of common humanity. McDonald’s executives even found it necessary to purchase and manage their own special farm in Russia, because Soviet potatoes &#8212; the very staple of the people’s diet &#8212; were too poor in quality and unreliable in supply. On the other hand, the wages of the Soviet customers were so depressed that a hamburger and fries was equivalent in rubles to half a day’s pay. And yet this most ordinary of pleasures &#8212; the bottom of the food chain in the capitalist West &#8212; was still such a luxury for Soviet consumers that to them it was worth a four hour wait and a four hour wage.</p>
<p>Of all the symbols of the epoch-making year, this was perhaps the most resonant for leftists of our generation. Impervious to the way the unobstructed market democratizes wealth, the New Left had focused its social scorn precisely on those plebeian achievements of consumer capitalism, that brought services and goods efficiently and cheaply to ordinary people. Perhaps the main theoretical contribution of our generation of New Left Marxists was an elaborate literature of cultural criticism made up of sneering commentaries on the “commodity fetishism” of bourgeois cultures and the “one-dimensional” humanity that commerce produced. The function of such critiques was to make its authors superior to the ordinary liberations of societies governed by the principles of consumer sovereignty and market economy. For New Leftists, the leviathans of post-industrial alienation and oppression were precisely these “consumption-oriented” industries, like McDonald’s, that offered inexpensive services and goods to the working masses &#8212; some, like the “Sizzler” restaurants, in the form of “all you can eat” menus that embraced a variety of meats, vegetables, fruits and pastries virtually unknown in the Soviet bloc.</p>
<p>These mundane symbols of consumer capitalism revealed the real secret of the era that was now ending, the reason why the Iron Curtain and its Berlin Walls were necessary, why the Cold War itself was an inevitable by-product of socialist rule: In 1989, for two hour’s labor at the minimum wage, an American worker could obtain, at a corner “Sizzler,” a feast more opulent, more nutritionally rich and gastronomically diverse than anything available to almost all the citizens of the socialist world (including the elite) at almost any price.</p>
<p>*   *   *</p>
<p>In the counter-revolutionary year 1989, on the anniversary of the Revolution, a group of protesters raised a banner in Red Square that summed up an epoch: <i>Seventy Years On The Road To Nowhere</i>. They had lived the socialist future and it didn’t work.</p>
<p>This epic of human futility reached a climax the same year, when the socialist state formally decided to return the land it had taken from its peasants half a century before. The collectivization of agriculture in the Thirties had been the very first pillar of the socialist Plan and one of the bloodiest episodes of the revolutionary era. Armies were dispatched to the countryside to confiscate the property of its recalcitrant owners, conduct mass deportations to the Siberian gulag, liquidate the “kulaks” and herd the survivors into the collective farms of the Marxist future.</p>
<p>In this “final” class struggle, no method was considered too ruthless to midwife the new world from the old. “We are opposed by everything that has outlived the time set for it by history” wrote Maxim Gorky in the midst of battle: “This gives us the right to consider ourselves again in a state of civil war. The conclusion naturally follows that if the enemy does not surrender, he must be destroyed.” The destruction of the class enemy &#8212; the most numerous and productive element of Soviet society at the time &#8212; was accomplished by massacres, by slow deaths in concentration camps and by deliberately  induced genocidal famine. In the end, over 10 million people were killed, more than had died on all sides in World War I.<a title="" href="#_ftn25">[25]</a></p>
<p>But the new serfdom the Soviet rulers imposed in the name of liberation only destroyed the peasants’ freedom and incentive, and thus laid the foundations of the final impasse. Before collectivization, Russia had been the “breadbasket of Europe,” supplying 40% of the world’s wheat exports in the bumper years 1909 and 1910.<a title="" href="#_ftn26">[26]</a> But socialism ended Russia’s agrarian plenty and created permanent deficits &#8212; not merely the human deficit of those who perished because of Stalinist brutalities during the collectivization, but a deficit in grain that would never be brought to harvest because of the brutality inherent in the socialist idea. Half a century after the socialist future had been brought to the countryside, the Soviet Union had become a net <i>importer</i> of grain, unable to produce enough food to feed its own population.</p>
<p>These deficits eventually forced the state to allow a portion of the crop to be sold on the suppressed private market. Soon, 25% of Soviet grain was being produced on the 3% of the arable land reserved for private production. Thus necessity had compelled the Soviet rulers to create a dramatic advertisement for the system they despised. They had rejected the productive efficiencies of the capitalist system as exploitative and oppressive. Yet, the socialist redistribution of wealth had produced neither equity nor justice, but scarcity and waste. At the end of the 1980s, amidst growing general crisis, Soviet youth were using bread as makeshift footballs because its price had been made so low  (to satisfy the demands of social equity) that it was now less than the cost of the grain to produce it. This was a microcosm of socialist economy. Irrational prices, bureaucratic chaos, and generalized public cynicism (the actually existing socialist ethos in all Marxist states) had created an environment in which 40% of the food crop was lost to spoilage before ever reaching the consumer. And so, half a century after 10 million people had been killed to “socialize the countryside,” those who had expropriated the land were giving it back.</p>
<p>The road to nowhere had become a detour. (<i>Soviet joke: What is socialism? The longest road from capitalism to capitalism.</i>) Now the Soviet rulers themselves had begun to say that it had all been a horrible “mistake.” Socialism did not work. Not even for them.</p>
<p>Of all the scenarios of the Communist <i>gotterdammerung</i>, this denouement had been predicted by no one. Ruling classes invariably held fast to the levers of their power. They did not confess their own bankruptcy and then proceed to dismantle the social systems that sustained their rule, as this one had. The reason for the anomaly was this: the creators and rulers of the Soviet Union had indeed made a mistake. The system did not work, not even in terms of sustaining the power of its ruling class.</p>
<p>The close of the Soviet drama was unpredicted because the very nature of the Soviet Union was without precedent. It was not an organic development, but an artificial creation &#8212; the first society in history to be dreamed up by intellectuals and constructed according to plan. The crisis of Soviet society was not so much a traditional crisis of legitimacy and rule, as it was the crisis of an <i>idea </i>&#8211; a monstrously wrong idea that had been imposed on society by an intellectual elite; an idea so passionately believed and yet so profoundly mistaken, that it had caused more human misery and suffering than any single force in history before.</p>
<p>This suffering could not be justified by the arguments of the Left that the revolutionary changes were “at least an improvement on what existed before.” Contrary to the progressive myth that radicals invented to justify their failures, Czarist Russia was not a merely pitiful, semi-barbaric state, when the socialists seized power. By 1917, Russia was already the 4<sup>th</sup> industrial power in the world. Its rail networks had tripled since 1890, and its industrial output had increased by three-quarters since the century began. Over half of all Russian children between eight and eleven years of age were enrolled in schools, while 68% of all military conscripts had been tested literate. A cultural renaissance was underway in dance, painting, literature and music, the names Blok, Kandinsky, Mayakovsky, Pasternak, Diaghelev, Stravinsky were already figures of world renown. In 1905 a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament had been created, in which freedom of the press, assembly and association were guaranteed, if not always observed. By 1917, legislation to create a welfare state, including the right to strike and provisions for workers’ insurance was already in force and &#8212; before it was dissolved by Lenin’s Bolsheviks &#8212; Russia’s first truly democratic democratic parliament had been convened.<a title="" href="#_ftn27">[27]</a></p>
<p>The Marxist Revolution destroyed all this, tearing the Russian people out of history’s womb and robbing whole generations of their minimal birthright, the opportunity to struggle for a decent life. Yet even as this political abortion was being completed and the nation was plunging into its deepest abyss, the very logic of revolution forced its leaders to expand their Lie: to insist that the very nightmare they had created was indeed the kingdom of freedom and justice the revolution had promised.</p>
<p>It is in this bottomless chasm between reality and promise that our own argument is finally joined. You seek to separate the terror-filled actualities of the Soviet experience from the magnificent harmonies of the socialist dream. But it is the dream itself that begets the reality, and requires the terror. This is the revolutionary paradox you want to ignore.</p>
<p>Isaac Deutscher had actually appreciated this revolutionary equation, but without ever comprehending its terrible finality. The second volume of his biography of Trotsky opens with a chapter he called “The Power and The Dream.” In it, he described how the Bolsheviks confronted the situation they had created: “When victory was theirs at last, they found that revolutionary Russia had overreached herself and was hurled down to the bottom of a horrible pit.” Seeing that the revolution had only increased their misery, the Russian people began asking: <i>“Is this&#8230;the realm of freedom? Is this where the great leap has taken us?”</i> The leaders of the Revolution could not answer. “[While] they at first sought merely to conceal the chasm between dream and reality [they] soon insisted that the realm of freedom had already been reached &#8212; and that it lay there at the bottom of the pit. ‘If people refused to believe, they had to be made to believe by force.’”<a title="" href="#_ftn28">[28]</a></p>
<p>So long as the revolutionaries continued to rule, they could not admit that they had made a mistake. Though they had cast an entire nation into a living hell, they had to maintain the liberating truth of the socialist idea. And because the idea was no longer believable, they had to make the people believe by force. It was the socialist idea that created the terror.</p>
<p>Because of the nature of its political mission, this terror was immeasurably greater than the repression it replaced. Whereas the Czarist police had several hundred agents at its height; the Bolshevik <i>Cheka</i> began its career with several hundred <i>thousand</i>. Whereas the Czarist secret police had operated within the framework of a rule of law, the <i>Cheka</i> (and its successors) did not. The Czarist police repressed extra-legal opponents of the political regime. To create the socialist future, the <i>Cheka</i> targeted whole social categories &#8212; regardless of individual behavior or attitude &#8212; for liquidation.</p>
<p>The results were predictable. “Up until 1905,” wrote Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, in his monumental record of the Soviet <i>gulag</i>, “the death penalty was an exceptional measure in Russia.” From 1876 to 1904, 486 people were executed or seventeen people a year for the whole country (a figure which included the executions of non-political criminals). During the years of the 1905 revolution and its suppression, “the number of executions rocketed upward, astounding Russian imaginations, calling forth tears from Tolstoy and&#8230;many others; from 1905 through 1908 about 2,200 persons were executed&#8212;forty-five a month. This, as Tagantsev said, was an <i>epidemic of executions</i>. It came to an abrupt end.”<a title="" href="#_ftn29">[29]</a></p>
<p>But then came the Bolshevik seizure of power: “In a period of sixteen months (June 1918 to October 1919) more than sixteen thousand persons were shot, which is to say <i>more than one thousand a month</i>.” These executions, carried out by the <i>Cheka</i> without trial and by revolutionary tribunals without due process, were executions of people exclusively accused of political crimes. And this was only a drop in the sea of executions to come. The true figures will never be known, but in the two years 1937 and 1938, according to the executioners themselves, half a <i>million</i> ‘political prisoners’ were shot, or 20,000 a month.</p>
<p>To measure these deaths on an historical scale, Solzhenitsyn also compared them to the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, which during the 80 year peak of its existence, condemned an average of 10 heretics a month.<a title="" href="#_ftn30">[30]</a> The difference was this: The Inquisition only forced unbelievers to believe in a world unseen; Socialism demanded that they believe in the very Lie that the revolution had condemned them to live.</p>
<p>*    *     *</p>
<p>The author of our century’s tragedy is not Stalin, nor even Lenin. Its author is the political Left that we belonged to, that was launched at the time of Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy of the Equals, and that has continued its assault on bourgeois order ever since. The reign of socialist terror is the responsibility of all those who have promoted the Socialist idea, which required so much blood to implement, and then did not work in the end.</p>
<p>But if socialism was a mistake, it was never merely innocent in the sense that its consequences could not have been foreseen. From the very beginning, before the first drop of blood had ever been spilled, the critics of socialism had warned that it would end in tyranny and that economically it would not work. In 1844, Marx’s collaborator Arnold Ruge warned that Marx’s dream would result in “a police and slave state.” And in 1872, Marx’s arch rival in the First International, the anarchist Bakunin, described with penetrating acumen the political life of the future that Marx had in mind:</p>
<p>This government will not content itself with administering and governing the masses politically, as all governments do today. It will also administer the masses economically, concentrating in the hands of the State the production and division of wealth, the cultivation of land,&#8230;All that will demand&#8230;the reign of <i>scientific intelligence</i>, the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant, and elitist of all regimes. There will be a new class, a new hierarchy&#8230;the world will be divided into a minority ruling in the name of knowledge, and an immense ignorant majority. And then, woe unto the mass of ignorant ones!<a title="" href="#_ftn31">[31]</a></p>
<p>If a leading voice in Marx’s own International could see with such clarity the oppressive implications of his revolutionary idea, there was no excuse for the generations of Marxists who promoted the idea even after it had been put into practice and the blood began to flow. But the idea was so seductive that even Marxists who opposed Soviet Communism, continued to support it, saying this was not the actual socialism that Marx had in mind, even though Bakunin had seen that it was.</p>
<p>So powerful was the socialist idea that even those on the Left who took their inspiration from Bakunin rather than Marx and later opposed the Communists, could not bring themselves to defend the democratic societies of the capitalist West that the Marxists had put under siege. Like Bakunin, they were sworn enemies of capitalism, the only industrial system that was democratic and that worked. Yet their remedy for its deficiencies &#8212; abolishing private property and the economic market &#8212; would have meant generalized poverty and revolutionary terror as surely as the statist fantasies of Marx. By promoting the socialist idea of the future and by participating in the war against the capitalist present, these non-Marxist soldiers of the political Left became partners in the very tragedy they feared.</p>
<p>Of all Marx’s critics, it was only the partisans of bourgeois order who understood the mistake that socialists had made and thus appreciated the only practical, and therefore real, social bases of human freedom: Private property and economic markets. In 1922, as the Bolsheviks completed the consolidation of their political power, the Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises published his classic indictment of the socialist idea and its destructive consequences. Von Mises already knew that socialism could not work and that no amount of bloodshed and repression could prevent its eventual collapse. “The problem of economic calculation,” he wrote, “is the fundamental problem of socialism” and cannot be solved by socialist means. “Everything brought forward in favor of Socialism during the last hundred years,&#8230;all the blood which has been spilt by the supporters of socialism, cannot make socialism workable.” Advocates of socialism might continue “to paint the evils of Capitalism in lurid colors” and to contrast them with an enticing picture of socialist blessings, “but all this cannot alter the fate of the socialist idea.”<a title="" href="#_ftn32">[32]</a> Von Mises’ thesis was elaborated and extended by the former socialist Friederich Von Hayek, who argued that the information conveyed through the price system was so complex and was changing so dynamically, that no planning authority, even with the aid of the most powerful computers conceivable, could ever succeed in replacing the market.<a title="" href="#_ftn33">[33]</a></p>
<p>Across the vast empire of societies that have put the socialist idea to the test, its fate is now obvious to all. Von Mises, Hayek, Polanyi, and the other prophets of capitalist economy are now revered throughout the Soviet bloc, even as the names of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky are despised. Their works &#8212; once circulated only in <i>samizdat </i>&#8211; were among the first of <i>glasnost</i> to be unbanned. Yet, in the socialist and Marxist press in the West, in articles like yours and in the efforts of your comrades to analyze the “meaning” of the Communist crisis, the arguments of the capitalist critics of socialism, who long ago demonstrated its impossibility and who have now been proven correct, are nowhere considered. As if they had never been made.</p>
<p>For socialists, like you, to confront these arguments would be to confront the lesson of the history that has passed: The socialist idea has been in its consequences, one of the worst and most destructive fantasies to ever have taken hold of the minds of men.</p>
<p>And it <i>is</i> the idea that Marx conceived. For 200 years, the Promethean project of the Left has been just this: To abolish property and overthrow the market, and thereby to establish the reign of reason and justice embodied in a social plan. “In Marxist utopianism, communism is the society in which things are thrown from the saddle and cease to ride mankind. Men struggle free from their own machinery and subdue it to human needs and definitions.” That is Edward Thompson’s summary of Marx’s famous text in the first volume of <i>Capital</i>:</p>
<blockquote><p>The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan.<a title="" href="#_ftn34">[34]</a></p></blockquote>
<p>The “fetishism of commodities” embodied in the market is, in Marx’s vision, the economic basis of the alienation at the heart of man’s estate: “a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things.”<a title="" href="#_ftn35">[35]</a> The aim of socialist liberation is humanity’s re-appropriation of its own activity and its own product &#8212; the reappropriation of man by man &#8212; that can only be achieved when private property and the market are replaced by a social plan.</p>
<p>The slogan Marx inscribed on the banners of the Communist future, “from each according to his ability to each according to his need,” is but an expropriated version of Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand under which the pursuit of individual interest leads to the fulfillment of the interests of all. But in the socialist future there is no market to rule over individual human passions and channel self-interest into social satisfaction, just as there is no rule of law to protect individual rights from the passions that rule the state. There is only the unmediated power of the socialist vanguard exercised from the sanctuary of its bureaucratic throne.</p>
<p>All the theorizing about socialist liberation comes down to this: The inhabitants of the new society will be freed from the constraints of markets and the guidelines of tradition and bourgeois notions of a rule of law. They will be masters in their own house and makers of their own fate. But this liberation is, finally, a Faustian bargain. Because it will not work. Moreover, the effort to make it work will create a landscape of human suffering greater than any previously imagined.</p>
<p>*    *     *</p>
<p>Towards the end of his life, our friend Isaac Deutscher had a premonition of the disaster that has now overtaken the socialist Left. In the conclusion to the final volume of his Trotsky trilogy, <i>The Prophet Outcast</i>, he speculated on the fate that would befall his revolutionary hero if the socialist project itself should fail:</p>
<blockquote><p>If the view were to be taken that all that the Bolsheviks aimed at &#8212; socialism &#8212; was no more than a <i>fata morgana</i>, that the revolution merely substituted one kind of exploitation and oppression for another, and could not do otherwise, then Trotsky would appear as the high priest of a god that was bound to fail, as Utopia’s servant mortally entangled in his dreams and illusions.</p></blockquote>
<p>But Deutscher did not have the strength to see the true dimensions of the catastrophe that socialism had in store. Instead, his realism only served to reveal the depths of self-delusion and self-justifying romanticism that provide sustenance for the Left. Even if such a failure were to take place, he argued, the revolutionary hero, “would [still] attract the respect and sympathy due to the great utopians and visionaries&#8230;</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Even if it were true that it is man’s fate to stagger in pain and blood from defeat to defeat and to throw off one yoke only to bend his neck beneath another&#8212;even then man’s longings for a different destiny would still, like pillars of fire, relieve the darkness and gloom of the endless desert through which he has been wandering with no promised land beyond.<a title="" href="#_ftn36">[36]</a></p></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the true self-vision of the Left: An army of saints on the march against injustice, lacking itself the capacity for evil. The Left sees its revolutions as pillars of fire that light up humanity’s deserts, but burn no civilizations as they pass. It lacks the ability to make the most basic moral accounting, the awareness that the Marxes, Trotskys, and Lenins immeasurably increased the suffering of humanity, and destroyed even those blooms existing civilizations had managed to put forth.</p>
<p>Without socialism, the peoples of the Russian Empire, might have moved into the forefront of the modern industrial world (as the Japanese have) without the incalculable human cost. Instead, even the most productive of the Soviet satellites, East Germany, once the Prussian powerhouse of European industrialism, is now condemned to a blighted economic standard below that of Italy, South Korea or Spain.</p>
<p>Consider the history of our century. On whose heads does the responsibility lie for all the blood that was shed to make socialism possible? If the socialist idea is a chimera and the revolutionary path a road to nowhere, can the revolutions themselves be noble or innocent even in intention? Can they be justified by the lesser but known evils they sought to redress? In every revolutionary battle in this century, the Left has been a vanguard without a viable future to offer, whose only purpose was to destroy whatever civilization actually existed.</p>
<p>Consider: If no one had believed Marx’s idea, there would have been no Bolshevik Revolution and Russia might have evolved into a modern democracy and industrial state; Hitler would not have come to power; there would have been no cold war. It is hard not to conclude that most of the bloodshed of the 20<sup>th</sup> Century might not have taken place. For seventy years the revolutionary Left put its weight on one side in the international civil war that Lenin had launched, and against the side that promoted human freedom and industrial progress. And it did so in the name of an idea that could not work.</p>
<p>The communist idea is not the principle of the modern world, as Marx supposed, but its anti-principle, the reactionary rejection of political individualism and the market economies of the liberal West. Wherever the revolutionary Left has triumphed, its triumph has meant economic backwardness and social poverty, cultural deprivation and the loss of political freedom for all those unfortunate peoples under its yoke.</p>
<p>This is the real legacy of the Left of which you and I were a part. We called ourselves progressives, and others did as well; but we were the true reactionaries of the modern world whose first era has now drawn to a close.</p>
<p>The iron curtain that divided the prisoners of socialism from the free men and women of the West has now been torn down. The iron curtain that divides us remains. It is the utopian dream that is so destructive and that you refuse to give up.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Your ex-comrade,</p>
<p>David</p>
<div>
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> Ralph Miliband, an English Marxist, author of <i>Parliamentary Socialism</i> and other works, who was my mentor during the years I was in England 1963-1967</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref2">[2]</a><i>The Holy Family</i></p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref3">[3]</a>Marx,<i> Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts</i>.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref4">[4]</a> “The Crisis of Communist Regimes,” <i>New Left Review</i> September-October 1989. As New Left professor Michael Burawoy actually wrote in a special issue of <i>Socialist Review</i>: “Marxism is dead, long live Marxism!” <i>Now What? Responses to Socialism&#8217;s Crisis of Meaning</i>, Volume 20 No. 2 April-June 1990.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref5">[5]</a> In commenting on the “sharpness of tone” in your review of Kolakowski’s trilogy on Marxism you explained: “I think this is in part attributable to a strong personal sense of disappointment at Kolakowski’s political evolution. I have known Kolakowski since the fraught days of 1956 and have always thought him to be a man of outstanding integrity and courage, with a brilliant and original mind. His turning away from Marxism and, as I see it, from socialism has been a great boon to the reactionary forces of which he was once the dedicated enemy, and a great loss to the socialist cause, of which he was once the intrepid champion. I felt that loss very keenly&#8230;” Ralph Miliband, <i>Class Power &amp; State Power</i>, Political Essays. London 1983 pp. 226-7</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref6">[6]</a> Kolakowski, “The Priest and the Jester” (1959) in <i>Towards a Marxist Humanism</i>.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref7">[7]</a> Leszek Kolakowski, <i>Main Currents of Marxism</i>, 3 vols. Oxford University Press Oxford 1978</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref8">[8]</a> “Kolakowski’s Anti-Marx,” <i>Political Studies</i>, vol. XXIX, no. 1 (1981). Kolakowski&#8217;s reply, “Miliband’s Anti-Kolakowski,” is printed in the same issue. A revised version of Miliband&#8217;s review is printed in Ralph Miliband, <i>Class Power and State Power</i>, op. cit.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref9">[9]</a> “At the core of Marxist politics, there is the notion of conflict [as]&#8230;civil war conducted by other means. [Social conflict] is not a matter of ‘problems’ to be ‘solved’ but of a state of domination and subjection to be ended by a total transformation of the conditions which give rise to it.” Ralph Miliband, <i>Marxism and Politics</i>, Oxford 1977, p. 17</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref10">[10]</a> Cited in Thompson, <i>Poverty of Theory</i>, p. 345 For Kolakowski’s analysis of the impossibility of non-totalitarian Marxist socialism, see “The Myth of Human Self-Identity” in Stuart Hampshire ed. <i>The Socialist Idea</i>, NY 1973 For Thompson’s scholastic response to this argument, see Thompson op. cit.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref11">[11]</a> L. Trotsky, <i>In Defence of Marxism</i>. Cited in Isaac Deutscher, <i>The Prophet Outcast</i>, Oxford 1963 p. 468</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref12">[12]</a> Isaac Deutscher, “The Meaning of De-Stalinization,” <i>Ironies of History</i>, Oxford 1966 p.21 Cf. Deutscher, <i>The Prophet Outcast</i>, Oxford 1963 p. 521: “Through the forcible modernization of the structure of society Stalinism had worked towards its own undoing and had prepared the ground for the return of classical Marxism.” Lenin cited in Kolakowski, op. cit. Vol. II, p. 486</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref13">[13]</a><i>Ironies of History</i>, op. cit. p.58</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref14">[14]</a> Deutscher, <i>Ironies of History</i>, op cit. “Four Decades of the Revolution,” p. 58</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref15">[15]</a> Ibid. p. 58</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref16">[16]</a> “The Irony of History in Stalinism” (1958) in <i>Ironies of History</i>, Oxford 1966.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref17">[17]</a><i>Socialist Register 1988</i> “Problems of Socialist Renewal: East and West”.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref18">[18]</a> “Kolakowski’s Anti-Marx,” op. cit.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref19">[19]</a> Zbigniew Brzezinski, <i>The Grand Failure</i>, NY 1989 p. 237 For facts about Soviet society cited below cf. also “Social and Economic Rights in the Soviet Bloc,” special issue of <i>Survey</i>, August 1987. Richard Pipes, “Gorbachev’s Russia: Breakdown or Crackdown?” <i>Commentary</i>, March 1990 Walter Laqueur, <i>The Long Road to Freedom</i>, Russia and Glasnost, NY 1989. <i>Wall Street Journal</i>, June 28, 1989.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref20">[20]</a> Robert Heilbroner, “After Communism,” <i>The New Yorker</i>, September 10, 1990</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref21">[21]</a>  “No other great industrial civilization so systematically ands so long poisoned its air, land, water and people. None so loudly proclaiming its efforts to improve public health and protect nature so degraded both. And no advanced society faced such a bleak political and economic reckoning with so few resources to invest toward recovery.” Murray Feshbach and Alfred Friendly Jr., <i>Ecocide in the USSR</i>. NY Basic Books</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref22">[22]</a><i> The USSR in Figures for 1987</i> p. 254</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref23">[23]</a> Figures from Brzezinski, op. cit. p. 36 and George Gilder, “The American 80’s”  in <i>Commentary</i> September 1990 Gorbachev cited by Gilder</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref24">[24]</a> Z (Martin Malia), “To the Stalin Mausoleum,” <i>Daedalus</i>, Winter 1990</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref25">[25]</a> Robert Conquest, <i>The Harvest of Sorrow</i>, NY 1986; Nekrich and Heller <i>Utopia in Power</i>, NY 1986</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref26">[26]</a> John Gray, “Totalitarianism, Reform and Civil Society,” in <i>Totalitarianism at the Crossroads</i>, op. cit.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref27">[27]</a> Nekrich and Heller, op. cit., pp. 15-17</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref28">[28]</a> Isaac Deutscher, <i>The Prophet Unarmed</i>, Trotsky 1921-1929, NY 1965 pp. 1-2 The internal quote refers to a passage from Machiavelli that Deutscher had used as an epigraph to <i>The Prophet Armed</i>, “&#8230;the nature of the people is variable, and whilst it is easy to persuade them, it is difficult to fix them in that persuasion. And thus it is necessary to take such measures that, when they believe no longer, it may be possible to make them believe by force.”</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref29">[29]</a>Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, <i>The Gulag Archipelago</i>, Vol. I. pp. 433 et seq.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref30">[30]</a> Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, <i>The Gulag Archipelago</i>, Op. cit., p. 435n.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref31">[31]</a> Sam Dolgoff Ed. <i>Bakunin On Anarchy</i>, NY 1971 p. 319 emphasis in original</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref32">[32]</a> Ludwig von Mises, <i>Socialism</i>, Indianapolis, 1969</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref33">[33]</a> John Gray, op. cit.; Friederich Hayek, <i>The Constitution of Liberty; Law, Legislation and Liberty</i> and other works.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref34">[34] </a>Karl Marx, <i>Capital</i>, Moscow 1961 p. 80</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref35">[35] </a>Ibid., p. 72</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref36">[36]</a> Deutscher, <i>The Prophet Outcast</i>, Oxford 1963, pp. 510-511</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
</div>
</div>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/david-horowitz/the-road-to-nowhere/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>51</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>How David Horowitz Revealed the Truth about Ralph Miliband’s Legacy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ron-radosh/how-david-horowitz-revealed-the-truth-about-ralph-milibands-legacy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-david-horowitz-revealed-the-truth-about-ralph-milibands-legacy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ron-radosh/how-david-horowitz-revealed-the-truth-about-ralph-milibands-legacy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 13 Oct 2013 00:09:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ron Radosh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[British Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lesek Kolakowski]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Open Letter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ralph Miliband]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=207155</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ What it should teach the British Left.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/dh-speaking.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-207158" alt="dh-speaking" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/dh-speaking-450x299.jpg" width="315" height="209" /></a><strong>Visit <a href="http://pjmedia.com/">PJMedia</a>.</strong></p>
<p>You may not know the name Ralph Miliband, but by now, the late Marxist professor is a household name in the UK. He was the father of the Labor Party’s leader and possible future PM, Ed Miliband. When the conservative <i>Daily Mail</i> ran a story about the father’s influence on his son, the controversy began.</p>
<p>It started with an Oct.1 story by <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2435751/Red-Eds-pledge-bring-socialism-homage-Marxist-father-Ralph-Miliband-says-GEOFFREY-LEVY.html">Geoffrey Levy</a>, in which the journalist wrote that young Ed wants nothing less than to fulfill his father’s dreams, and return England from the legacy left by Margaret  Thatcher to a new 21<sup>st</sup> Century socialism. “Ed is now determined to bring about that vision,” Levy writes. “How proud Ralph would have been to hear him responding the other day to a man in the street who asked when he was ‘going to bring back socialism’ with the words: ‘That’s what we are doing, sir.’&#8221;</p>
<div id="inlineAdvertisement"> Ed Miliband’s father, the story continues, was a full-throated Marxist, committed to nationalization and harsh socialist policies. Levy paints the senior Miliband as a man who hated the country he adopted as his own when he sought refuge from Nazi Germany, a man who was critical of the Soviet Union but still believed it was socialist, and who thought Gorbachev had successfully “democratized” Soviet society. Nothing had changed in his belief system, he wrote, since the time when as a young man, he made the pilgrimage to Karl Marx’s grave in 1940, when he wrote that “I remember standing in front of the grave, fist clenched, and swearing my own private oath that I would be faithful to the workers’ cause’”. Now Miliband is buried in a grave 12 short yards from Marx’s grave, and his tombstone bares the inscription “Writer Teacher Socialist.” He had dedicated his life, he wrote near the end of his life, to realizing the socialist dream, and preparing the ground for “such an alternative.” With Ed as Prime Minister, Levy concludes, “perhaps that ground is indeed now being prepared.”</div>
<p>That one article began the fierce war of words. <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/ed-miliband-embroiled-in-war-of-words-with-daily-mail-after-labour-leader-accuses-newspaper-of-smearing-his-late-father-8849455.html">Ed Miliband</a> told the press that he found the story “appalling,” and “responded by accusing the paper of peddling “a lie” and trying to ‘besmirch and undermine’ his dead father for political ends.” He wrote: “Fierce debate about politics does not justify character assassination of my father, questioning the patriotism of a man who risked his life for our country in the Second World War or publishing a picture of his gravestone with a tasteless pun about him being a ‘grave socialist’”.</p>
<p><strong>To continue reading this article, <a href="http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2013/10/12/how-david-horowitz-revealed-the-truth-about-ralph-milibands-legacy-what-it-should-teach-the-british-left/">click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ron-radosh/how-david-horowitz-revealed-the-truth-about-ralph-milibands-legacy/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>78</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>De Blasio&#8217;s Marxist Romance</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/spyridon-mitsotakis/de-blasios-marxist-romance/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=de-blasios-marxist-romance</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/spyridon-mitsotakis/de-blasios-marxist-romance/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 07 Oct 2013 04:12:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Spyridon Mitsotakis]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bukovsky]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[de blasio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[documents]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[literacy program]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sandinistas]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=206484</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Sandinista literacy program admired by NYC's mayoral candidate was a Soviet creation.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/db.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-206521" alt="db" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/db.jpg" width="259" height="194" /></a>The <em>New York Times</em>, in its <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/23/nyregion/a-mayoral-hopeful-now-de-blasio-was-once-a-young-leftist.html?hp&amp;pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0" target="_blank">article</a> on New York mayoral candidate Bill De Blasio&#8217;s work in Nicaragua during the Communist Sandinista dictatorship, reports that: &#8220;To this day, he speaks admiringly of the Sandinistas’ campaign, noting advances in literacy and health care.&#8221; The Sandinistas&#8217; literacy campaign was in fact a creation of the Soviet Union, according to a <a href="http://www.bukovsky-archives.net/pdfs/com-com/ct211-80.pdf" target="_blank">document</a> secretly copied from the Kremlin&#8217;s archives by dissident Vladimir Bukovsky.</p>
<p>The May 20, 1980 document, labeled &#8220;Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Central Committee&#8221; and &#8220;Top Secret,&#8221; is headlined: &#8220;Help to Nicaragua regarding the liquidation of illiteracy.&#8221;</p>
<p>The orders, according to a translation provided to FrontpageMag, were:</p>
<blockquote><p>I. Ministry of Education of the USSR together with the Department of Economic Cooperation, send in 1980-1981 to Nicaragua 15 instructors/administrators who have experience of foreign work and speaks Spanish for organization of work for liquidation of illiteracy.</p>
<p>Establish salary in foreign currency according to 5th group of salary ranks for Soviet specialist working abroad, and instructor by 6th group.</p>
<p>2. Ministry of Trade of the USSR provide funding to buy notebooks and pencils &#8212; 500,000 units in the second and third quarters and 500,000 units in the fourth quarter of 1980 as a donation.</p>
<p>The Ministry of Paper Production to produce for delivery to Nicaragua the mentioned 500,000 units of notebooks and pencils.</p>
<p>3. The Ministry of Radio to prepare and deliver in 1980 as a donation to Nicaragua the 1,000 radio transistors with the trademark &#8220;Sokol&#8221; in tropical design.</p>
<p>4. The Ministry of Foreign Trade provide delivery to Nicaragua of pencils, notebooks and radio transistors that were mentioned in Paragraph 2 and 3 of this document, and Ministry of Air Transportation deliver to Nicaragua the specialists and goods, mentioned in paragraphs 1, 2, 3 of this document, delivery will be made by Airflot by route of Moscow &#8211; Managua with payment in Soviet rubles.</p>
<p>5. Expenses related to the production and delivery of notebooks, pencils and radio transistors as well as salaries of 15 instructors for the length of 1 year including the Ruble equivalent of foreign currency, allocate to the budget of the USSR as charity help to foreign states, and in foreign currency at the expense of the foreign fund for the Department of Economic Cooperation.</p>
<p>6. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR should inform the government of Nicaragua about measure taken by Soviet Union in helping the Nicaraguan in implementation of liquidation of illiteracy.</p></blockquote>
<p>It is signed: &#8220;The Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR &#8211; A. Kosygin.&#8221;</p>
<p>There was nothing benign about what the Communists were doing. According to Humberto Belli, a former Sandinista who was in charge of the editorial page of <em>La Prensa</em> before turning against the repressive regime, it was <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/thf_media/1987/pdf/bg558.pdf" target="_blank">known</a> back in the 1980s that:</p>
<blockquote><p>Nicaragua&#8217;s educational system under the Sandinistas was designed to equate Western-style democracy and capitalist economic systems with evil U.S. &#8220;imperialism&#8221; while portraying Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism as the benefactor of mankind. The Sandinista Ministry of Education, for example, made it mandatory for all high school students to study Marx&#8217;s theory of dialectical materialism, which is officially regarded as the &#8220;basis of all scientific endeavor.&#8221; The Sandinistas stated that one of the main objectives of their &#8220;new education&#8221; was &#8220;to form new generations in the values and principles of the Sandinista people&#8217;s revolution.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>De Blasio&#8217;s enthusiasm for the Soviet-created education program stands in stark contrast to his opposition to the charter schools relied upon by the city&#8217;s poor for a quality education, which would otherwise be unavailable to those trapped in the city&#8217;s failing, unionized school system. The editors of the <em>New York Post</em> <a href="http://nypost.com/2013/09/27/de-blasio-using-public-office-to-help-out-friends/" target="_blank">report</a> that De Blasio, in a move backed by the city&#8217;s powerful teachers unions, is &#8220;threatening to end co-location. That’s the practice of giving charters — which are public schools, remember — unused space in other school buildings, because charters get no capital funds to build. End co-location, and you will kill many charters.&#8221;</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/spyridon-mitsotakis/de-blasios-marxist-romance/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>How Soviet Intelligence Promoted Christian Marxism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/how-soviet-intelligence-promoted-christian-marxism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-soviet-intelligence-promoted-christian-marxism</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/how-soviet-intelligence-promoted-christian-marxism/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Oct 2013 04:20:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Disinformation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[KGB]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pacepa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pope pius xii]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=206137</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[And how the strategies are still in play today. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/dis.jpeg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-206156" alt="dis" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/dis-232x350.jpeg" width="232" height="350" /></a>When you can’t beat them, join them. That’s what the Soviet Union did to curtail Christianity’s anti-communist influence. In a new book titled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Disinformation-Strategies-Undermining-Attacking-Promoting/dp/1936488604/"><i>Disinformation</i></a>, a covert campaign to discredit Pope Piux XII is revealed. In addition, the Soviets tried to influence the church with a Marxist-friendly version of Christianity.</p>
<p>The communists’ strategy against the church had three pillars: A propaganda offensive; the implanting of agents of influence and the promotion of Liberation Theology, an anti-Western spin on scripture.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Disinformation-Strategies-Undermining-Attacking-Promoting/dp/1936488604/"><i>Disinformation</i></a> is written by Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking Soviet bloc defector and Ronald Rychlak, Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi. A related documentary has also been released, titled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Disinformation-Secret-Strategy-Destroy-West/dp/B00DD5R8F4"><i>Disinformation: The Secret Strategy to Destroy the West</i></a><i>.</i> They disclose how a primary target of Soviet “active measures” was Pope Pius XII.</p>
<p>“The Soviets understood that Pius XII was a mortal threat to their ideology, despising communism as much as he did Nazism. They thus embarked on a crusade to destroy the pope and his reputation, to scandalize his flock, and to foment division among faiths,” Rychlak told me in an interview.</p>
<p>The claim that Pope Pius XII was “Hitler’s Pope” originates in a 1945 broadcast from Radio Moscow or, in other words, the Soviet propaganda apparatus. Later, the Soviets reacted to his death in 1958 with a new disinformation campaign. It’s a lot easier to lie about someone when they can’t respond.</p>
<p>Pacepa, who was serving in Romanian intelligence at the time, says Soviet Premier Khrushchev approved the KGB-drawn plan in February 1960. It was code-named “Seat-12” and Pacepa says he was the Romanian representative for it. He is now <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/219739/moscows-assault-vatican/ion-mihai-pacepa">publicly detailing his involvement.</a></p>
<p>Revealing this operation against Pope Pius XII isn’t only important for historical analysis. It teaches us a sober lesson about the effectiveness of enemy influence operations that are undoubtedly ongoing.</p>
<p>“It tells us that disinformation experts can convince us of anything. They took a person widely regarded as a champion of the Jews and other victims—someone who was despised by Adolf Hitler—and convinced the world that he was a virtual collaborator,” Rychlak said.</p>
<p>The second leg of the KGB’s anti-church strategy was to influence those it could not destroy using East Bloc churches, particularly the Russian Orthodox Church.</p>
<p>KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin provided a secret 1961 directive to infiltrate the Russian Orthodox Church. The objective was to implant agents of influence that could then push out “reactionary” and “sectarian” church figures that were seen as threats to communism.</p>
<p>Mitrokhin disclosed a secret meeting of senior East Bloc intelligence officers in Budapest in July 1967. Two KGB officers gave instructions regarding “work against the Vatican; measures to discredit the Vatican and its backers; and measures to exacerbate differences within the Vatican and between the Vatican and capitalist countries.”</p>
<p>Pacepa <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/219739/moscows-assault-vatican/ion-mihai-pacepa">illustrates</a> the success of this operation with multiple examples. For example, in January 2007, the newly-appointed archbishop of Warsaw had to resign amidst revelations that he had been a secret collaborator with the Polish secret service during the Cold War.</p>
<p>Rychlak said that Soviet efforts to influence Protestants were also targeted. In 1944, the Soviets established the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists, now named the Union of Evangelical Christian Baptists of Russia.</p>
<p>The president of the <a href="http://www.theird.org">Institute on Religion and Democracy</a>, Mark Tooley, has <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/world-council-of-churches-the-kgb-connection/">written about the communist use of the World Council of Churches</a>.  He notes that hundreds of Protest and Orthodox churches belonged to it as it towed the Soviet line and even went so far as to finance Marxist guerillas.</p>
<p>The third leg was promoting an anti-capitalist, anti-Western brand of Christianity. If the KGB could not eliminate Christianity, it reasoned it might as well manipulate it. Liberation Theology was born.</p>
<p>Pacepa <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35388">recalls</a> hearing Khrushchev say in 1959, “Religion is the opiate of the people, so let’s give them opium.” He flatly says that Liberation Theology is “KGB-invented.” He has first-hand knowledge of secret Romanian agents being dispatched to Latin America to spread it among the religious masses.</p>
<p>Pope John Paul II had a Vatican committee study Liberation Theology in 1984, Pacepa documents in a <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35388">2009 article for <i>FrontPage</i>.</a> It concluded that it was a mixture of “class struggle” and “violent Marxism.”</p>
<p>Robert. D. Chapman <a href="http://www.aei-ideas.org/2010/02/liberation-theology-and-the-kgb/">writes</a> in the <i>International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence</i>:</p>
<p>“Without doubt, the Theology of Liberation doctrine is one of the most enduring and powerful to emerge from the KGB’s headquarters. The doctrine asks the poor and downtrodden to revolt and form a Communist government, not in the name of Marx or Lenin, but in continuing the work of Jesus Christ, a revolutionary who opposed economic and social discrimination.”</p>
<p>In my interview with Rychlak, Pacepa’s co-author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Disinformation-Strategies-Undermining-Attacking-Promoting/dp/1936488604/"><i>Disinformation</i></a>, he remarked that the book was written today for a reason. These strategies are still in play.</p>
<p>“When Nazism was removed from Germany, we had de-Nazification panels…That never happened when the Soviet Union fell. The same people were left in charge,” Rychlak said.</p>
<p>He continued, “In fact, today Russia is run by a former KGB officer who has surrounded himself with his old associates. We are looking at the first superpower that is being run by intelligence officers.”</p>
<p>Pacepa is trying to wake the West up about how its enemies, including him in his past life, exploited its weaknesses. It isn’t easy to admit that one has been manipulated or beaten in some way but the West must, or it will happen again.</p>
<p><em>This article was sponsored by the </em><a href="http://www.theird.org"><em>Institute on Religion and Democracy.</em></a><b><a href="http://www.theird.org"><br />
</a></b></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong><b></b></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/how-soviet-intelligence-promoted-christian-marxism/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>245</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Obama and Marx’s Ten-Point Platform (Part II)</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-hendrickson/obama-and-marxs-ten-point-platform-part-ii/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-and-marxs-ten-point-platform-part-ii</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-hendrickson/obama-and-marxs-ten-point-platform-part-ii/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Aug 2013 04:45:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Hendrickson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Socialism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=198346</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president's Marxian policies unveiled.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Obama-Karl-Marx1.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-198463" alt="Obama-Karl-Marx" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Obama-Karl-Marx1.jpg" width="300" height="300" /></a>Having gone over, in <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-hendrickson/obama-and-marxs-ten-point-platform-part-i/">Part One</a>, how far President Obama has gone to implement the first five of Marx’s ten points for how to convert a society to socialism, let’s pick up the narrative by reviewing the other five points.</p>
<p><strong>#6. State control of means of communication and transportation.</strong></p>
<p>Team Obama has attempted to cow conservative media outlets like Fox News into submission through denunciation, has suggested reviving the so-called “fairness doctrine,” and has expressed hostility toward <a href="http://www.visionandvalues.org/2011/03/who-objects-to-free-speech/">free speech</a>, seeking to use regulations to shape and limit the public. In the area of transportation, Obama insinuated government into the auto industry, has favored the high-speed rail boondoggle, and wishes he could compel us all to convert to “green transportation,” such as electric cars and biofuels.</p>
<p><strong>#7. Increase state control over means of production.</strong></p>
<p>Besides increasing government control of financial institutions (including having virtually nationalized the mortgage industry by taking over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) Obama has moved to centralize control of health care and insurance; has dictated policies, and even hand-picked a CEO, of American automobile companies; and has done his best to increase government power over the energy industry through his green energy subsidies, his failed cap-and-trade scheme, and via EPA regulation.</p>
<p><strong>#8 Establishment of workers’ armies.</strong></p>
<p>Obama has ramped up the number of Americans working for Uncle Sam by securing a large expansion of Americorps and winning passage of his Serve America Act. He also has done everything he could to strengthen labor unions.</p>
<p><strong>#9. Control over where people live.</strong></p>
<p>Under Obama, The Department of Housing and Urban Development has launched a plan to change where some people live to achieve an indefinite goal of a more even racial distribution of the population.[1]</p>
<p>One of the implications of cap &amp; trade or other attempts by Obama to regulate how much carbon dioxide Americans emit via fossil fuel consumption is the prospect of government limiting human mobility by raising the cost (even to the extent of imposing financial penalties) for exceeding government-determined limits on how far a person may travel.</p>
<p>In Brian Sussman’s book, <i>Eco-Tyranny</i>, you can read an executive order that Obama signed on October 5, 2009 that would “divide the country into sectors where all humans would be herded into urban hubs” while most of the land would be “returned to a natural state upon which humans would only be allowed to tread lightly.” (Marx wanted more equal distribution of the human population between town and country, whereas Obama favors urban concentration, but both want to control where people live.)</p>
<p><strong>#10. Education for all children in public (i.e, governmentally controlled) schools.</strong></p>
<p>Marx’s tenth point is the most far-reaching and potentially dangerous of all. It’s target—control over how and what people think—is the ultimate tyranny. That is why every communist state uses schools as institutions of indoctrination, just as they use media outlets as instruments of propaganda. That is why George Orwell featured “Newspeak”—the mutilation of truth and reason by distorting the meanings of concepts. Every illiberal regime seeks to impose mental programming that produces “the new Soviet man.”</p>
<p>Obama has done more than any previous president to centralize control over education in Washington. He has essentially nationalized the student loan market.[2] He has repeatedly tried to limit school choice, instead siding with would-be teachers’ union monopolists.</p>
<p>In his <a href="http://www.visionandvalues.org/2012/01/the-state-of-the-union-an-inside-report/">2012 State of the Union address</a>, which I attended, he called for additional funds for new federal education programs, including mandatory nationwide schooling for everyone up to age eighteen, regardless of aptitude, interest, or willingness.</p>
<p>Obama has sought to extend the tentacles of federal control over how state education policies by <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/there_he_goes_again_obamas_waivers_to_the_no_child_left_behind_act.html">arbitrarily granting waivers</a> exempting some states from George W. Bush’s misguided No Child Left Behind Act. In doing so, Obama has trampled on the principle of federalism and most assuredly granted waivers with strings attached, thereby reducing states’ independence.</p>
<p>Most recently, Team Obama has been pushing the Common Core State Standards—a follow-up to his “Race to the Top” program that spent over $4 billion to induce states to switch to federal standards for curricular guidelines. While Race to the Top and Common Core may sound innocuous or even reasonable, the actual effects are deleterious. Both programs essentially bribe states to replace their existing standards with federal standards, even though, as California has found out, states have had to “dumb down” their standards to conform to federal standards that are lower. [3]</p>
<p>More ominously, the Obama administration is using the Common Core program to invade privacy (think NSA, IRS, and the CFPB &#8212; see <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-hendrickson/obama-and-marxs-ten-point-platform-part-i/">Part One</a> of this article). In 2011, the Department of Education unilaterally, without congressional approval, altered the regulations based on the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1974—loosening them so that mounds of personal data about students may be collected. The personal data include not just academic records, such as grades and whether students complete homework assignments, but also disciplinary records, Social Security numbers, records of discussions with school counselors, as well as information about families’ voting status, religious affiliations, medical history, and income.</p>
<p>As the obnoxious cable TV commercials say, “But wait, there’s more!” If that isn’t invasive enough, the intrepid Michelle Malkin has reported that Team Obama’s Department of Education is preparing to use the most advanced technologies (e.g., cameras to judge facial expressions, electronic seats that report posture, a pressure-sensitive computer mouse, biometric wraps on wrists, etc.) to assess a wide variety of student attitudes—“appreciation for diversity,” “empathy,” “bias,” “cultural awareness,” etc.[4]</p>
<p>You can imagine the mischief to which such data-mining could be put—a “brave new world” in which the government uses the data collected in schools to single out “right thinkers” for the fast track to the best schools and key government positions, and putting dissidents from the desired orthodoxy on black lists. You can see the totalitarian potential of such data mining performed under the pretext of “education.” Surely Comrade Marx would commend Barack Obama for his diligent efforts in the field of education.</p>
<p>The bottom line in all of this is that if Barack Obama is not an economic Marxist at heart, he is doing a superb imitation of one. The fact that he enjoys such unflagging support for his agenda from a significant part of the population shows just how far our country has gone in forsaking our founding principles for the siren song of socialism.</p>
<div><strong>Notes:</strong></p>
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div>
<p>[1] “HUD Launches Scheme To Racially Diversify Suburbs,” IBD Editorials, posted 07/22/2013 06:55 PM ET.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[2] Andrew Clark, “”Obama’s Risky Plan: Government Takeover of the Student Loan Business,” Politics Daily, January 26, 2010; www.politicsdaily.com/2010/01/26/obamas-risky-plan-takeover-of-the-student-loan-busi/</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[3] Mytheos Holt, “New Whiteboard Video Attacks ‘Obama’s Education Takeover,’” theblaze, Feb. 17, 2012; <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/02/17/new-whiteboard-video-attacks-obamas-education-takeover/">www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/02/17/new-whiteboard-video-attacks-obamas-education-takeover/</a></p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[4] Michelle Malkin, “Time To Opt Out of Creepy Fed Ed Data-Mining Racket,” Accuracy In Media guest column, posted March 18, 2013 @ 2:50 am; <a href="http://www.aim.org/guest-column/time-to-opt-out-of-creepy-fed-ed-data-mining-racket/">http://www.aim.org/guest-column/time-to-opt-out-of-creepy-fed-ed-data-mining-racket/</a></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
</div>
</div>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-hendrickson/obama-and-marxs-ten-point-platform-part-ii/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>57</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Why Kolakowski Matters</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/vladimir-tismaneanu/why-kolakowski-matters/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-kolakowski-matters</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/vladimir-tismaneanu/why-kolakowski-matters/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Jul 2013 04:42:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Vladimir Tismaneanu]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[individual]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kolakowski]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stalinism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=197301</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A reflection on one of the noblest apostates in the history of ideas.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/leszek_kolakowski.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-197304" alt="leszek_kolakowski" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/leszek_kolakowski.jpg" width="218" height="224" /></a>Leszek Kolakowski (1927-2009) embodied the  power of reason in times of utmost irrationality.  He started his intellectual  itinerary as a young and enthusiastic Stalinist thinker in devastated post-World War II Poland. He wrote his dissertation on Spinoza and became quite early convinced that there was something deeply rotten at the heart of the communist system. After Stalin&#8217;s demise, Kolakowski spearheaded the critical Marxist awakening from what could be called, with a Kantian phrase, the dogmatic sleep. Kolakowski articulated, more persuasively than anyone else, the revisionist rebellion, the search for an alternative Marxism, rooted in the abandoned emancipatory impetus of the &#8220;Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts.&#8221;</p>
<p>The revisionists opposed what they perceived as the libertarian young Marx to the old authoritarian one, and even more emphatically to the Leninist interpretation of Marx. They exposed the atrocities of Stalinism and decried the rise of a bureaucratic Leviathan shamelessly claiming to represent an increasingly exploited proletariat. Many espoused existentialist ideas and tried to reconcile the Marxian legacy with humanist individualism. Intensely moral, committed to the defense of honor and dignity, Kolakowski was one of the noblest apostates in the history of ideas. He wrote immortal pages about Middle Age heresies and identified his own quest for truth with the dangerous choices of those who had rejected theological absolutisms of any sort.</p>
<p>The great Italian novelist Ignazio Silone, who was a communist in the 1920s and broke with the Party quite early, was considered a Christian without a Church and a socialist without a party. In a way, this was Kolakowski&#8217;s path as well. In 1956 he championed a vision of socialism radically opposed to the stultified Leninist tenets. He reclaimed the honor of socialist values against ideological masquerades and police terror. He defended the individual, the real human being, against the new forms of slavery. The communist party, headed by Wladyslaw Gomulka, failed to muzzle the indomitable trouble-maker. A celebrated essay by Kolakowski captured this irreconcilable tension between the party hacks, whom he called the priests, and the truth-tellers, referred to as jesters. He denounced the communist party&#8217;s betrayal of the liberating promises of 1956. Expelled from the party in 1966, Kolakowski lost his teaching position at the University of Warsaw in March 1968 when he took the side of students who revolted against the rabidly anti-Semitic communist apparatus. He was forced into exile, taught in England and the US, and wrote immensely illuminating books on leftist traditions, human freedom, myth and religion, and on great philosophers. A genuine fox, as Isaiah Berlin would have put it, he rejected any reductionist attempt to pigeonhole him in Procrustean intellectual formula and proudly enjoyed a theoretical eclecticism encapsulated in the title of one of his most influential essays: &#8220;How To Be a Conservative-Liberal-Socialist.&#8221;</p>
<p>The first sentence of Lezsek Kolakowski&#8217;s unsurpassable trilogy on the main currents of Marxism reads memorably: &#8220;Karl Marx was a German philosopher.&#8221; In the same way, one might preface any discussion of Kolakowski&#8217;s ideas with the words: &#8220;Leszek Kolakowski was a Polish philosopher.&#8221; When he passed away in 2009, he was universally acclaimed as the philosopher of &#8220;Solidarity,&#8221; the thinker, who, together with John Paul II and the Polish dissidents, articulated the ideas that were to lead to the rise of a non-violent anti-totalitarian social movement &#8212; a working-class revolution if ever there was one &#8212; that toppled the communist regime in Poland and unleashed the upheaval of 1989.</p>
<p>A masterful writer and most engaging thinker, Kolakowski embodied what Thomas Mann once defined as the nobility of spirit. Historian Tony Judt was right to call him &#8220;the last illustrious citizen of the Twentieth-Century Republic of Letters.&#8221; What makes Kolakowski&#8217;s thinking so appealing is its inner vibrant  life, its uniquely original way of establishing intellectual associations, and the permanent presence of a moral perspective. He refused any monistic interpretation of history, yet he remained unflinchingly attached to the idea that truth exists and cannot be divided into competing fragments. At a time when radicalism seems to be raising its head again, when liberalism&#8217;s values are coming under attack from the proponents of the &#8220;communist hypothesis&#8221; (e.g. French Marxist philosopher Alain Badiou or Slovene Hegelian-Lacanian neo-Jacobin thinker Slavoj Zizek), Kolakowski&#8217;s writings are a sobering reminder that ideas matter and wrong ideas are conduce to cataclysmic effects. To the question that serves as the title of a wonderful recent volume (&#8220;Is God Happy? Selected Essays,&#8221; Modern Classics, Penguin, 2012), Kolakowski responded in his wry manner:</p>
<blockquote><p>Happiness is something we can imagine but not experience. If we imagine that hell and purgatory are no longer in operation and that all human beings, every single one without exception, have been saved by God and are now enjoying celestial bliss, lacking nothing, perfectly satisfied, without pain or death, then we can imagine that their happiness is real and that the sorrows and suffering of the past have been forgotten. Such a condition can be imagines, but is has never been seen. It has never been seen [p. 214-215].</p></blockquote>
<p>This volume, mostly translated by the thinker&#8217;s daughter, Agnieszka Kolakowska, who also writes a perceptive introduction, is an illuminating, truly engrossing collection of the philosopher&#8217;s seminal contributions to understanding the nature and the values of the Left (radical and democratic) in the 20th century and the search for truth in an age of uncertainty and growing relativism. Kolakowski started his philosophical itinerary in the aftermath of World War II, in a Poland devastated by Nazi atrocities and dominated by Soviet imperialism.</p>
<p>As mentioned, after a short-lived romance with Stalinism, he became the main voice of East European Marxist revisionism, as corrosive an intellectual dynamo (and dynamite) as one can imagine. The revisionist ideas subverted the self-serving communist mythology and celebrated the rebirth of critical reason. The volume includes some of the most exhilarating pieces written (and banned by communist censorship) in protest of bureaucratic constraints on the free spirit and the perpetuation of despicable lies about the origins and consequences of Stalinism. Reading some of these essays, one is struck by the intense, contagious freshness of Kolakowski&#8217;s thought. It is easy to understand why the communist hacks resented his hypotheses on socialism, with their emphasis on the centrality of individual rights and rejection of the state&#8217;s claim to epistemic infallibility. No one has the right to monopolize truth, this was the thrust of Kolakowski&#8217;s interventions. He argued against the new forms of political alienation and protested the suppression of human imagination in the stultified universe of Sovietism.</p>
<p>During the first stage of his intellectual rebellion, Kolakowski relied on Karl Marx&#8217;s early philosophical writings. Later, he moved away from Marxism altogether. He saw Marxism as a sophisticated rationalization of social and political resentment, a gigantic, cosmic fantasy of redemption bound to beget new forms of slavery. One of the most impressive essays included in the anthology deals with the Marxist roots of Stalinism. Many on the Left were (and still are) ready to accept the Leninist heredity of Stalinism, yet they found unacceptable connecting the advent of the Bolshevik dystopia to the ideas of Karl Marx. Kolakowski was suspicious of any mechanical determinism, not only in political history, but also in the history of ideas. He did not claim that Marxism did inevitably bequeath totalitarian hubris. But he found in the Marxist dream of complete unity, in the repudiation of pluralism, the premise for the authoritarian experiments that followed. Leninist neo-Jacobin absolutism was rooted, in Kolakowski&#8217;s interpretation, in the absolute rejection of the rule of law and the demonization of private property.</p>
<p>The volume includes one of the most important texts belonging to the history of leftist debates in the 20th century: Kolakowski&#8217;s response to historian E. P. Thompson&#8217;s attempt to disassociate Western radical thought and practices form the atrocious experiences in the Soviet Bloc, not to mention China and other Asian communist experiments. Fundamentally, Kolakowski insisted, such visions are expressions of disingenuousness. Thompson was wrong to say that decades of totalitarian rule of Marxist inspiration in the East were irrelevant for the Western battles in the name of the same utopia.</p>
<p>The essay ends with a melancholy caveat, a warning against the never ceasing endeavors to resume the Promethean utopian project:</p>
<blockquote><p>Absolute equality can be established only within a despotic system of rule, which implies privileges, i.e., destroys equality; total freedom means anarchy and anarchy results in the domination of the physically strongest, i.e., total freedom turns into its opposite; efficiency as a supreme value calls again for despotism and despotism is economically inefficient above a certain level of technology. If I repeat these old truisms, it is because they still seem to go unnoticed in utopian thinking; and this is why nothing in the world is easier than writing utopias [p. 139].</p></blockquote>
<p>In his whole work, a testimony to the endless search for dignity in a century when barbarism was resurrected and totalitarian regimes murdered millions in the name of fetishized ideological lies, Leszek Kolakowski defended heroically such non-negotiable values as freedom, civility, and responsibility.</p>
<p>Let me conclude this article, which I would love to turn into a most necessary book, with the end of Kolakowski&#8217;s essay &#8220;Is There a Future for Truth?&#8221;:</p>
<blockquote><p>Theologians used to speak of  <i>&#8216;gaudium de veritate</i>&#8216; &#8212; joy from truth. They meant by this mainly the joy that we &#8212; or some of us &#8212; will feel once we have crossed from our perishable world to a new life where illumination will descend upon us and the truth of the divine will be revealed. I believe there is <i>gaudium de veritate</i> in this perishable, profane world as well. We simply like knowing things, quite apart from any practical benefits to be derived from knowledge, we like truth for no better reason that it is truth. Without the joy of truth we could no longer be rational creatures [p. 297].</p></blockquote>
<p>Uninhibitedly and unabashedly anti-totalitarian, Kolakowski&#8217;s ideas captured and enhanced the democratic Zeitgeist. His critique of the Left did not mean a rejection of the ideal of social justice. His main objection to any socialist utopia was based on his suspicion about any attempts to use governmental institutions and powers to create social unity and cohesion.  For him, utopias are inherently conducive to human debasement.  Marxism, the ultimate redemptive fantasy, culminated in the opposite of freedom. As Kolakowski put it memorably in the last sentence of his masterpiece: &#8220;The self-deification of mankind, to which Marxism gave philosophical expression, has ended in the same way as all such attempts, whether individual or collective: it has revealed itself as the farcical aspect of human bondage&#8221; (&#8220;Main Currents of Marxism,&#8221; Norton, 2005, p. 1212).</p>
<p>In 2003 he was the first recipient of the highly prestigious Kluge award offered by the Library of Congress for lifetime achievements in the humanities. In 1987, I translated an essay by Kolakowski into Romanian (from English) in the dissident (<em>tamizdat</em>) journal &#8220;Agora,&#8221; published in the US with National Endowment for Democracy support and distributed into Romania, especially with the help of Polish friends (including, inasmuch as I know, Kolakowski&#8217;s daughter, Agnieszka). It was the first Kolakowski piece published in Romanian. I sent it to him and I got a very kind letter saying that, although he did not read Romanian, with his French and Latin he could understand it pretty well (of course, as the author, he knew the content perfectly). In recent years, I coordinated the publication of the trilogy on the main currents of Marxism in Romanian translation and wrote introductions to each volume.</p>
<p>Leszek Kolakowski was rightly called the philosopher of &#8220;Solidarity,&#8221; the independent and self-governed workers&#8217; movement that toppled communism in Poland and made possible the end of the Soviet Bloc, the USSR and the Cold War. In fact, Kolakowski shared his vision of truth with another Pole, without whom the <i>annus mirabilis</i> 1989 may not have happened: a philosopher himself, Karol Wojtyla authored, as Pope John Paul II, one of the most important documents in the history of Christianity and the annals of human freedom. The title of that text &#8212; <i>Veritatis Splendor </i>&#8211; signifies both his and Kolakowski&#8217;s search for making the world a place where human beings could and should live within the truth.</p>
<p><b>Vadimir Tismaneanu is professor of politics at the University of Maryland (College Park) and author, most recently, of  &#8220;The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century&#8221; (University of California Press), a book dedicated to the memory of Leszek Kolakowski, Tony Judt, and Robert C. Tucker. More on this book in the <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/jamie-glazov/the-devil-in-history/">dialogue with Jamie Glazov</a>.   </b></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/vladimir-tismaneanu/why-kolakowski-matters/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Department of Education &#8220;Kids Zone&#8221; Features Communist Quote from Mao</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/department-of-education-kids-zone-features-marxist-quote-from-mao/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=department-of-education-kids-zone-features-marxist-quote-from-mao</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/department-of-education-kids-zone-features-marxist-quote-from-mao/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Mar 2013 19:59:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chairman Mao]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Department of Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=182788</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This isn't a generic quote about education being a good thing. It's actually a quote about the need for Communist indoctrination among Communist Party members.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;m <a href="http://weaselzippers.us/2013/03/22/department-of-education-website-quotes-mass-murdering-socialist-mao-zedong/">still waiting for the Hitler quote</a>. Or is there a minimum number of people that a dictator has to murder before he gets placement on a part of the Department of Education website devoted to kids.</p>
<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/department-of-education-kids-zone-features-marxist-quote-from-mao/enhanced-buzz-wide-26058-1363969575-8/" rel="attachment wp-att-182789"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-182789" title="enhanced-buzz-wide-26058-1363969575-8" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/enhanced-buzz-wide-26058-1363969575-8.jpg" alt="" width="990" height="541" /></a></p>
<p>This isn&#8217;t a generic quote about education being a good thing. It&#8217;s actually a quote about the need for Communist indoctrination among Communist Party members.</p>
<p>The full quote that the Department of Education cut down comes at the end of an essay on &#8220;The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War&#8221;</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Whoever refuses to study these problems seriously and carefully is no Marxist. Complacency is the enemy of study. We cannot really learn anything until we rid ourselves of complacency. Our attitude towards ourselves should be &#8220;to be insatiable in learning&#8221; and towards others &#8220;to be tireless in teaching&#8221;.</p></blockquote>
<p>The context for this conclusion comes earlier on.</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;It is not just a matter of understanding the general laws derived by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin from their extensive study of real life and revolutionary experience, but of studying their standpoint and method in examining and solving problems.&#8221;</p>
<p>Our Party&#8217;s mastery of Marxism-Leninism is now rather better than it used to be, but is still far from being extensive or deep&#8230; For us therefore, the spreading and deepening of the study of Marxism-Leninism presents a big problem demanding an early solution that is possible only through concerted effort.</p></blockquote>
<p>We&#8217;re not talking about generic knowledge here, but Communist indoctrination. Though undoubtedly whoever put up the quote already knew that.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s worse is that the cut-down Mao quote that the Department of Education used was actually partly plagiarized by Mao from Confucius. If the Department of Education had really wanted to convey that message, they could have used the original Confucius quote. Instead they chose to promote a Communist mass murderer of millions.</p>
<p>But it&#8217;s nice to see that under Obama Inc, American kids are also being expected to study Mao&#8217;s Little Red Book.</p>
<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/department-of-education-kids-zone-features-marxist-quote-from-mao/lrb_070810113406543_wideweb__300x235/" rel="attachment wp-att-182791"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-182791" title="LRB_070810113406543_wideweb__300x235" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/LRB_070810113406543_wideweb__300x235.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="235" /></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/department-of-education-kids-zone-features-marxist-quote-from-mao/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>11</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>&#8216;Skyfall&#8217; Returns to &#8216;Bond&#8217; Roots</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dr-joseph-a-yeager/skyfall-returns-to-bond-roots/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=skyfall-returns-to-bond-roots</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dr-joseph-a-yeager/skyfall-returns-to-bond-roots/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Nov 2012 04:30:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dr. Joseph A. Yeager]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bond]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cold War]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daniel Craig]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[movie]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Skyfall]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Soviet Union]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=165268</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[New movie is a gift to Brits who still love Queen and country. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dr-joseph-a-yeager/skyfall-returns-to-bond-roots/skyfall_11_h/" rel="attachment wp-att-165689"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-165689" title="Skyfall_11_h" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Skyfall_11_h-450x321.jpg" alt="" width="315" height="225" /></a>Quantum of Solace, the 22nd film in the venerable James Bond series, was arguably the most innovative of them all. Rejecting the ethos that defined Bond’s universe from Ian Fleming&#8217;s Casino Royale, published in 1953, to its cinematic incarnation in 2006, Quantum of Solace presented a bleak, manichean view of geopolitics wherein a greedy West, with willing assistance from a shadowy organization called Quantum, plundered an innocent and helpless third world. There were bows to Marxism, broadsides against capitalism, and shots across the bridge of the CIA.</p>
<p>Suffice it to say Quantum of Solace wore its cynical politics on its sleeve. A red sleeve.</p>
<p>But the ideology of the politics was less innovative than their mere introduction.</p>
<p>Bond films had always been notable for their apolitical tone. Born in 1962, the very apogee of the Cold War, Bond films nevertheless largely steered clear of political shoals. Yes, James Bond, the &#8220;Queen&#8217;s loyal terrier,&#8221; was basically patriotic and the Soviet Union was sometimes obliquely depicted as inimical, but by the standards of the age, politics were conspicuously muted.</p>
<p>That all changed with Quantum of Solace. And it changed in a postcolonial, postmodern manner that would not have pleased founding producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, let alone Ian Fleming, the man who authored it all.</p>
<p>Longstanding Bond observers surely wondered, had current producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, under the influence of Paul Haggis and Marc Forster, permanently turned James Bond against queen and country? (Historian <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2008/11/quantum-of-anti-imperialism.html">Juan Cole</a> gleefully suggested something to that effect.)</p>
<p>But Skyfall, the follow-up to Quantum of Solace, answers the query with a thunderous no.</p>
<p>Skyfall’s plot, for the film’s first half, is murky and nebulous. We learn that villains of some sort have acquired a list of Western agents embedded in terrorist organizations around the globe. We see those agents exposed, to mortal effect, on Youtube. And we witness a bomb blast at MI6 headquarters. But as they used to say in old England, what was it all in aid of?</p>
<p>The shroud is lifted after agent 007 and his MI6 cohort capture arch-foe Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) and extradite him to the UK. Under interrogation, Silva relates his past as an MI6 agent in Hong Kong where, under orders from intelligence chief M (Judi Dench), he was hung out to dry, captured by the Chinese and tortured forte et dure. Silva attempted suicide by crushing a cyanide capsule lodged in a tooth, but the poison, rather than kill its consumer, merely scarred and disfigured him, physically and mentally.</p>
<p>Silva then, unhinged by the experience, has himself become a cyberterrorist bent on murdering M and destroying the organization she controls. From this point on, Skyfall offers a chiseled, linear and straightforward quest for revenge by Silva, coupled to James Bond’s exhaustive and frenzied efforts to thwart and destroy the malign shade of missions past.</p>
<p>Director Sam Mendes realizes the tale at a very high level. While Skyfall drags slightly in the middle, the tension and suspense mount exponentially and resolve in a slam-bang ending that is equal parts action and tragedy. The post-climax coda is a bittersweet and valedictory brew tinctured with optimistic revivification. It all packs a whipsawing wallop of conflicting emotions calculated to leave the audience with a certain sense of pride and good cheer.</p>
<p>Skyfall is a beautifully crafted film. Its cinematography, in contrast to that of Quantum of Solace, leans to the beautiful and the picturesque. Aerial shots of Shanghai at night are breathtaking and contrast powerfully with the stark Scottish landscape where the final pitched battle occurs.</p>
<p>The editing is old school. Contra Quantum of Solace, scenes unfold in a leisurely manner and cameras linger. Even the action sequences, jolting as they are, nevertheless do not disorient through rapid-fire, chaotic edits, as they did in Skyfall’s predecessor.</p>
<p>Acting in Skyfall is top-class. Daniel Craig, already the last word in Bondian toughness, manages to ratchet up his hard-bitten masculinity yet another notch.</p>
<p>Bardem’s Silva will go down in Bond lore as the creepiest villain in series history to date. Silva is an entirely different personality from No County for Old Men’s legendary Anton Chiguhr, but inspires a similar unease and dread.</p>
<p>The criminally underutilized Berenice Marlohe, in the role of distressed dame Severine, delivers a quirkily spellbinding performance. Her giddily terrified interchange with Bond in a Macao casino may be the highlight of the film.</p>
<p>Dame Judi Dench, in her final—and most extensive—turn as M, departs on a note that will draw attention from Oscar voters. She is careworn and fragile, yet also pugnacious and determined. It is an appealing and highly sympathetic performance that sets the audience up for heartbreak rarely realized so powerfully in action and adventure films.</p>
<p>But Skyfall’s unmistakable rejection of the astigmatic pathos and the pernicious self-loathing found in Quantum of Solace is what defines this film.</p>
<p>Skyfall is unabashedly patriotic. Bond, confronted by a mocking Silva, cockily tosses his love of country in the villain’s face. Union Jacks fly. The English bulldog, the four-legged twin of Winston Churchill and talismanic symbol of British tenacity, features prominently. Hence, a ceramic bulldog improbably survives the explosion in M’s MI6 office. M wills the bulldog to Bond. When Bond unwrapped M’s symbolic bequest, the audience in my west Texas theatre erupted in cheers and applause. One can only imagine the response in England itself.</p>
<p>Skyfall venerates tradition and it honors the aged. Bond is twice labeled old-fashioned and on both occasions accepts the jibe as a badge of pride. Judi Dench, the septuagenarian warhorse, is every bit as heroic as Bond himself. What’s more, she pairs with an equally elderly Kincade (Albert Finney) at Bond’s childhood home (named Skyfall), as silver tigers pitched against Silva and his battalion of young cyber-savages. The homage to a generation rapidly disappearing is as touching as it is unthinkable had Quantum of Solace been the template for future Bond films.</p>
<p>Skyfall is an archaizing, historically literate Bond film. The Reformation is mentioned in the context of Bond’s childhood estate of Skyfall. Winston Churchill is referenced when MI6, hoping to avoid another attack from Silva, relocates to the ancient subterranean passages of London. M quotes verses from Tennyson. Adele’s portentous title track could have been written for Shirley Bassey or Nancy Sinatra. Bond pulls his 1964 Aston Martin out of mothballs to spirit M away to Skyfall. He shaves—and is shaved—with a straight razor. The new Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) states that sometimes the old ways are better. Bond’s most technologically sophisticated gadget is a radio transmitter. A monocle and a trilby would not have gone amiss.</p>
<p>This film, much like Fleming’s novels published in austere, post-war Great Britain, is powerful medicine for British spirits at low ebb. Skyfall suggests that Great Britain’s past should not be scorned and reviled. On the contrary, there is much in the nation’s history and traditional culture that should be admired and even revived. For a people steeped in the rituals of masochistic flagellation, Skyfall is a corrective absolution. It is a gift to the people of the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>The 23<sup>rd</sup> instantiation of cinematic James Bond leaves the series with a new roster of dramatis personae. In addition to the above-mentioned Harris in the role of Moneypenny, Ralph Fiennes moves into Dench’s seat as M, and Ben Whishaw revives the role of Q made famous by Desmond Llewellyn. James Bond is thus recharged, rearmed and poised to extend his astonishing half-century run. It’s not out of the question that he could outlive the nation that gave him birth. Then again, the new, old James Bond offers hints for how to revive and prolong Britannia. It is up to the Brits to listen.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dr-joseph-a-yeager/skyfall-returns-to-bond-roots/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>19</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>David Horowitz&#8217;s Speech at UCLA</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/david-horowitzs-speech-at-ucla-2-1/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=david-horowitzs-speech-at-ucla-2-1</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/david-horowitzs-speech-at-ucla-2-1/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 25 May 2012 04:27:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jimmy Carter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=133090</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Watch the Freedom Center president discuss the war against the West and the truth about Iran.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>Editor&#8217;s note: The following is the video of David Horowitz&#8217;s recent lecture at the University of California, Los Angeles. The talk, sponsored by the Bruin Republicans, was given May 16, 2012. </em></p>
<p><iframe src="http://blip.tv/play/AYL4nQIC.html?p=1" frameborder="0" width="596" height="334"></iframe><object style="display: none;" width="320" height="240" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="src" value="http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYL4nQIC" /><embed style="display: none;" width="320" height="240" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYL4nQIC" /></object></p>
<p><strong>Question &amp; Answer Session</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="http://blip.tv/play/AYL4njYC.html?p=1" frameborder="0" width="596" height="334"></iframe><object style="display: none;" width="320" height="240" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="src" value="http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYL4njYC" /><embed style="display: none;" width="320" height="240" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYL4njYC" /></object></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/david-horowitzs-speech-at-ucla-2-1/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>31</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>David Horowitz&#8217;s Speech at UCLA</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/david-horowitzs-speech-at-ucla-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=david-horowitzs-speech-at-ucla-2</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/david-horowitzs-speech-at-ucla-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 25 May 2012 00:48:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jimmy Carter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=133052</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Watch the Freedom Center president discuss the war against the West and the truth about Iran.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>Editor&#8217;s note: The following is the video of David Horowitz&#8217;s recent lecture at the University of California, Los Angeles. The talk, sponsored by the Bruin Republicans, was given May 16, 2012. </em></p>
<p><iframe src="http://blip.tv/play/AYL4nQIC.html?p=1" width="596" height="334" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYL4nQIC" style="display:none"></embed></p>
<p><strong>Question &#038; Answer Session</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="http://blip.tv/play/AYL4njYC.html?p=1" width="596" height="334" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYL4njYC" style="display:none"></embed></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/david-horowitzs-speech-at-ucla-2/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Masked Face of Marxism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/john-perazzo/the-masked-face-of-marxism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-masked-face-of-marxism</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/john-perazzo/the-masked-face-of-marxism/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 07 May 2012 04:49:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[John Perazzo]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[black bloc]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Criminal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[radicals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Seattle]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=131110</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A look at the shadowy “Black Bloc” radicals who protest capitalism by rampaging violently – in a city near you.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/black_bloc.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-131113" title="black_bloc" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/black_bloc.jpg" alt="" width="320" height="267" /></a>Last Tuesday, an army of left-wing radicals descended, in a violent May Day <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/seattle-may-day-protest-turns-into-black-bloc-gone-wild/">rampage</a>, upon the city of Seattle. They smashed shop windows, vandalized banks, and even carried out a number of unprovoked assaults on innocent people who were sitting in their cars. So bad was the chaos, that Seattle mayor Mike McGinn went on television and announced that he would use his emergency powers to expand police authority to subdue the “anarchist or Black Bloc type individuals” who were now infesting his city, just as they have previously infested other cities in the U.S. and Europe.</p>
<p>Who exactly are these “Black Bloc” individuals cited by Mayor McGinn? Black Bloc is not an organization, but rather a protest <em>tactic</em> employed by anti-capitalists and anarchists. Clad in black helmets, black ski masks, and black garments to conceal their faces and whatever distinctive clothing they may be wearing underneath their dark coverings, Black Bloc radicals make their presence felt by participating in all manner of left-wing demonstrations against free-market capitalism and Western culture; they generally are far outnumbered by fellow protesters who, while likeminded, are more traditionally attired. Because the Black Blockers so carefully hide their identities, they are often able to engage in criminal behavior—most notably property destruction—with impunity. In instances where they are pursued by police—whom they contemptuously <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/jul/23/globalisation.davidpallister">regard</a> as nothing more than “guard dogs for the rich”—fleeing Black Bloc protesters typically <a href="http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100626/100626_blackbloc/20100626/?hub=CP24Home">shed</a> their dark coverings and blend into the crowd.</p>
<p>The animating core belief of Black Block, as explained in the Green Mountain Anarchist Collective&#8217;s <a href="http://www.infoshop.org/amp/bgp/BlackBlockPapers2.pdf">Black Bloc Papers</a>, is that “private property—and capitalism, by extension—is intrinsically violent and repressive and cannot be reformed or mitigated.” Lamenting “all the violence committed in the name of private property rights,” the document charges that “corporate private property” in particular “is itself infinitely more violent than any action taken against it.” By this logic, the destruction of a storefront window can be redefined and justified as the laudable creation of “a vent to let some fresh air into the oppressive atmosphere of a retail outlet.”</p>
<p>The origins of Black Bloc can be traced back to about 1980 in West Germany, where black-masked countercultural radicals calling themselves “Autonomen” (Autonomists) demonstrated against such despised targets as Western popular culture, conservatism, patriarchy, traditional gender roles, nuclear energy, and capitalist “greed.” They channeled their efforts chiefly toward the destruction of property belonging to corporations and financial institutions, because of their significance as symbols of capitalism.</p>
<p>In June 1987 a contingent of some <a href="http://www.ainfos.ca/01/jun/ainfos00170.html">3,000</a> Black Bloc demonstrators were among the <a href="http://www.eroseffect.com/books/subversion/sop_chronology.pdf">50,000+</a> marchers who swarmed the streets of Berlin to condemn the policies of the conservative, pro-capitalist U.S. President, Ronald Reagan, who was visiting the city at that time. Berlin was again the scene of Black Bloc tactics fifteen months later, when demonstrators protested against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund <a href="http://www.eroseffect.com/books/subversion/sop_chronology.pdf">meetings</a> which were being held there.</p>
<p>The first organized Black Bloc initiative in North America took place on October 17, 1988, when a relatively small number of black-clad protesters were among the 1,000+ demonstrators who convened outside the <a href="http://www.infoshop.org/amp/bgp/BlackBlockPapers2.pdf">Pentagon</a> to demand an end to U.S. intervention in the El Salvadoran civil war; the rally was organized by the communist Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador.</p>
<p>On Earth Day in <a href="http://www.infoshop.org/amp/bgp/BlackBlockPapers2.pdf">1990</a>, Black Bloc militants were among a crowd of some 2,000 demonstrators who gathered on Wall Street in New York City to protest the allegedly anti-environmental practices of major American corporations. The protesters&#8217; goal, as one supporter put it, was “to shut down business-as-usual in the heart of the capitalist beast.”</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/john-perazzo/the-masked-face-of-marxism/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>32</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>How Marxism Killed Keystone</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/how-marxism-killed-keystone/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-marxism-killed-keystone</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/how-marxism-killed-keystone/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jan 2012 04:17:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al gore]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmentalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Green]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jobs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Keystone Pipeline]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=120024</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The real agenda lurking in Obama's environmentalism. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/r.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-120040" title="r" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/r.gif" alt="" width="375" height="249" /></a></p>
<p>The global warming apocalypse and its Elmer Gantry, Al Gore, may have faded from public view lately, but that old-time green religion is still making mischief. President Obama has just delayed until after November’s election a decision on the Canadian Keystone XL pipeline. This truly shovel-ready project would create thousands of blue-collar jobs, help hold down the price of gasoline, and lessen our dependence on oil imported from thugs like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.</p>
<p>The administration’s excuses for this move are preposterous.  The State Department sniffed that it needs more time “to determine whether the Keystone XL pipeline is in the national interest” and, as Obama said in his announcement, can “protect the American people.” But three years, nine public meetings, and reams of reports have already shown that the pipeline’s alleged dangers to the Ogallala aquifer, or the malign effects of “dirty” crude oil, or the threat to endangered species, are specious pretexts. Like his slow-down of oil drilling permits and reduction of oil production on federal lands––down 40% compared to ten years ago––Obama’s decision is in fact both political and ideological, a mollifying bone tossed to the bicoastal progressive elites on whom Obama depends for campaign contributions and political support.</p>
<p>For these affluent urban-dwellers, the cult of environmentalism is a cheap way to indulge a vaguely leftist dislike of industrial capitalism while enjoying all the benefits that a high-tech, oil-fueled, free-market economy confers on them. Like the “telescopic philanthropy,” to use Charles Dickens’ label, directed at distant ghetto-dwellers or the Third World poor, the urban nature-lover conspicuously displays his concern over a natural world under assault by capitalism’s depravities. But he does so only from within a cocoon of technology that assures him a reliable, safe supply of food, freeing him from the drudgery of wresting sustenance from a hostile natural world; and that protects him from the disease, drought, famine, predators, malnutrition, and the other natural evils afflicting our ancestors and those living in the Third World today.</p>
<p>Equally hypocritical is the Marxist agenda lurking in environmentalism, which blames the degradation of the environment on the same free market capitalism and economic globalization that have created blue-state wealth. Given communism’s abject failure as an economic and social system, contemporary Marxism has insinuated itself into environmentalism as a way of wielding influence and recruiting adherents from among those dissatisfied with modern life and the trade-offs required by a free economy and its creative destruction. Issues such as pollution or species extinction are thus explained as the consequences of an evil capitalist empire that oppresses the international proletariat and the natural world alike. That’s why at most protests against the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank or Wall Street, the hammer and sickle can be seen flying beside the banners of Greenpeace. Forgotten, of course, is the fact that communist regimes like the old Soviet Union and today’s China are some of history’s worst polluters.</p>
<p>What gives this strange Marxist nature-love wider political traction, however, is the patina of science that disguises its mythic origins. Sentimental idealizations of nature as our true home, a superior realm of peace, harmony, freedom and simplicity destroyed by civilization and technology, are as old as the Greeks and their myths of the Golden Age and the Noble Savage. But today’s modern environmentalist cloaks these ancient myths in the robes of science. Overpopulation, pesticide pollution, resource depletion, extermination of species, and of course global warming have all over the years been presented as scientifically established facts that show the destructive consequences of modern capitalism. But in each case, the apocalyptic predictions have all ended in a whimper, and the science supposedly supporting them exposed as partial, incomplete, politically motivated, and riddled with unexamined assumptions and at times outright fakery. Nonetheless, politicized nature-love camouflaged with “science” permeates popular culture and our public schools, where kids are taught lies about drowning polar bears and melting ice caps, the quasi-pagan cult celebration Earth Day is solemnly celebrated, carbon-based fuels are demonized, and driving a Prius is a sacrament.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/how-marxism-killed-keystone/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>37</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Glenn Beck&#8217;s Address at Restoration Weekend</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/frontpagemag-com/glenn-becks-address-at-restoration-weekend-1/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=glenn-becks-address-at-restoration-weekend-1</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/frontpagemag-com/glenn-becks-address-at-restoration-weekend-1/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Nov 2011 04:56:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Glenn Beck]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[occupy wall street]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Restoration Weekend]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=113585</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The media titan discusses the dire situation we're in -- and what we must do.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/glenn_beck-300x300.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-113491" title="Glenn Beck" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/glenn_beck-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="300" /></a></p>
<p><em>Editor&#8217;s note: Below is Glenn Beck&#8217;s speech on November 19, 2011 at  David Horowitz&#8217;s Restoration Weekend in West Palm Beach, Florida (Nov.  17-20, 2011). It is preceded by an introduction by David Horowitz. To  watch the video, click for Part I <a href="http://blip.tv/david-horowitz-tv/glenn-beck-part-1-5759827">here </a>and for Part II <a href="http://blip.tv/david-horowitz-tv/glenn-beck-part-2-5760365">here</a>. </em></p>
<p><strong>David Horowitz</strong>: I am honored and incredibly privileged to introduce my friend, Glenn Beck, the busiest man on God&#8217;s green earth.</p>
<p>Glenn began life in circumstances that would crush most of us, and almost did him.  He&#8217;s gone on to become one of the most successful and important political figures of our era.  He is a major force in American media, the host of top-ranked radio and television shows that have reached millions of listeners and viewers.  He&#8217;s the author of six <em>New York Times</em> bestsellers in both fiction and nonfiction and the organizer of unprecedented mass demonstrations &#8212; in Washington to restore hope for our country, and in Jerusalem to declare his solidarity with the Jewish state &#8212; as its citizens are threatened with a second holocaust by their Islamic enemies.</p>
<p>As the organizer of the 9/12 movement and march on Washington, Beck is the real creator of the American Tea Party, the most important development in conservatism in our era and, in many ways, the last best hope for America&#8217;s future.</p>
<p>He is currently in the process of launching Glenn Beck TV and Mercury Enterprises, a media complex which is designed to break the virtual monopoly of the Left on American audiences, a monopoly that exerts itself either through direct control of media channels like MSNBC or through vicious attacks on advertisers who provide sponsorship for conservative programs like Glenn Beck&#8217;s on Fox.</p>
<p>Glenn has been the target of the most vicious attacks of which the Left is capable.  He has been ridiculed and derided.  His sanity has been questioned, and his character has been assaulted.  He has been called racist, sexist, Islamophobic, and every other term the verbal assassins of the Left regularly invoke to destroy the conservatives they fear the most.</p>
<p>Like many other targets of the Left, he has also been attacked by Republican elitists in Washington, and in identical terms &#8212; nutcase, reactionary, conspiracy theorist, extremist.  These are the words these elitists have used to describe him.  Call it the Stockholm syndrome.  It is a crippling disease of the Republican Party and of elements in the conservative movement to seek the approval of one&#8217;s enemies by attacking one&#8217;s friends, to treat one&#8217;s enemies as misguided friends, to be polite and courteous to people who want to slit your throat.</p>
<p>Let me tell you a personal story that will illuminate the problem.  Twenty-five years ago, I was a recent refugee from the Left and had begun addressing conservative audiences.  One of my first invitations came from the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation in St. Louis, named after a famous hero of the anti-Communist struggle during the Cold War.  I had been a leader of the New Left, a Marxist, a self-styled revolutionary, a small-C communist and a large-A anti-American.</p>
<p>But when my conservative host introduced me, he said &#8212; this is David Horowitz, who is a former civil rights worker and peace activist.  It is not just that my conservative host was too polite to notice that I had been a self-declared enemy of our country and of people like himself.  It is that conservatives either do not want to believe that this country has enemies among its own citizens or do not want to be seen by the <em>New York Times</em> and the <em>Washington Post</em> as believing that this country has enemies within.</p>
<p>This is how Barack Obama got elected to the White House.  All Republicans allowed themselves to see was a community organizer, a civil rights worker and peace activist.  All they saw was a progressive.  And that is what socialist, radical, pro-jihadist and anti-American activists call themselves today &#8212; progressives.</p>
<p>My parents were card-carrying members of the Communist Party and wanted the Soviet enemy to win the Cold War.  But they always referred to themselves as progressives.  When the Communist Party ran a candidate for President in 1948, the party they created for the job was called the Progressive Party.  Actually, Henry Wallace &#8212; I hadn&#8217;t thought of this before &#8212; was the Joe Biden of his day &#8212; the former Democrat Vice President.</p>
<p>This was a ruse to hide their real agendas.  Progressive was a good old American thing to be.  And 50 years later, conservatives were still buying it hook, line and sinker.  Until the arrival of Glenn Beck.</p>
<p>What distinguishes Glenn Beck, what makes him such a game-changing force in the struggle for America&#8217;s future, is that he has deconstructed the word &#8220;progressive,&#8221; put his finger on the enemy, named him, and won&#8217;t let him go.  That is why Glenn Beck is marked for slaughter by the Left.  It is also why conservative elitists in Washington are desperate to disown him.  Because his message is discomforting, and because the heart of his message is an unpleasant truth.</p>
<p>Until Glenn Beck came along, ex-radicals like myself were endlessly frustrated by conservatives&#8217; refusal to look at history, refusal to connect the dots, refusal to understand that these are not idealists, but dedicated anti-capitalist, anti-liberty and anti-American crusaders who number in the millions; that they are financed by anti-American billionaires, like George Soros; and leftwing foundations, billionaire foundations, like the Tides Foundation and the Ford Foundation; and communist unions, like the SEIU; and criminal organizations, like ACORN; and that they are part of an international socialist Left which supports our Islamist enemies in the Middle East and Asia.</p>
<p>Former radicals like myself, who knew these people up close and personal, spent years in the conservative wilderness, beside ourselves with frustration as we watched conservatives call communists and socialists and anti-American radicals liberals, and misguided idealists.</p>
<p>And then, along came Glenn Beck.  Before an audience of millions, Glenn Beck began to connect the dots and restore the history, and describe the real agendas of the leftist movement and its cynical deceptions, and its monumental crimes.  Beck saw that the link between the anarchists and the radicals, the socialists and the liberals, lay in the very term &#8220;progressive.&#8221;</p>
<p>Progressivism is the religious idea that history is moving in a positive direction, that it is within the political power of human beings, within the power of political activists and governments, to remake the entire world and bring about a paradise of social justice.  They believe that the way to do this is by increasing the power of government until the state is able to compel every man, woman and child to be just, and good, and environmentally friendly, and healthy &#8212; in a word, progressive.  But you cannot compel human beings to be just and good without abolishing their individual freedom.  This is the essence of the totalitarian idea.  And it is the progressive idea.</p>
<p>This is the truth that Glenn Beck has brought to millions of Americans.  This is why leftists hate him and attack him, and why conservative elitists want to disown him.</p>
<p>In 2011, Glenn Beck spoke to the most important conservative gathering in Washington.  During his speech, he wrote the world &#8220;progressivism&#8221; on a blackboard and said &#8212; this is the disease.  Progressivism is the cancer in America, and it is eating our Constitution.  And conservatives attacked him.  Not the grassroots conservatives at the CPAC conference, but the elitist conservatives at <em>The Weekly Standard</em>.</p>
<p><em>The Weekly Standard</em> said that what Beck had written on that blackboard was nonsense and conspiratorial, and tangential to the political realities of our day.  Those are quotes &#8212; &#8220;tangential to the political realities of our day.&#8221;  No.  The conservative elitists have it exactly wrong.  The threat from progressives is the political reality of our day.</p>
<p>Our nation and its institutions are under siege.  Obamaism is not a mistaken policy, or several mistaken policies, carried out by civil rights workers and peace activists.  It is the latest incarnation of a 200-year-old movement to destroy the American Constitution and the American economic system &#8212; what in the old days we used to proudly call &#8212; or others used to proudly call the American way of life.</p>
<p>Glenn Beck has been teaching this to millions and millions of Americans, to Tea Party activists and Joe Six-Packs.  He has been naming the enemy and revealing his agendas.  He has taken on the dragons of American socialism and international socialism which have penetrated the heart and brain of the Democratic Party.  And he has documented their unholy alliances with Islamic jihadists and America&#8217;s secular, totalitarian enemies.</p>
<p>Glenn Beck is the most prominent voice of freedom in the face of the tyranny at our door.  He is a champion of the Jews and their fragile democracy in the face of a second Nazi holocaust currently being organized by rabid Islamists and their progressive friends.  He is a man of formidable personal courage, under relentless personal attack; an indispensible leader to millions of conservatives who believe in America and who want its glories to continue.</p>
<p>I am not a man given to prayer.  But if I were, the person whose safety and whose health I would be praying for daily &#8212; for the sake of my children, and my friends, and my country &#8212; would be this man, this great American &#8212; Glenn Beck.</p>
<p><strong>Glenn Beck</strong>: Thank you.</p>
<p>David, if you don&#8217;t mind, I have a box underneath my desk that I put some of my notes and put some of the stories and some of my thoughts in, and some things &#8212; I keep records for my children.  Because when I started this, I met with my older children, who are now in college.  And I said &#8212; this is going to change our family.  And the only thing that I care about is that you remember who I am.  And if you don&#8217;t mind, I&#8217;d like to take and put what you just said about me in that box, so they remember.  Thank you.</p>
<p>Meaningful, thank you.</p>
<p>So, the topic that I was given today was &#8212; how much trouble are we in?</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t think I really need to tell you, do I?</p>
<p>David Horowitz has been standing guard at this door, along with many of you, long before I got off my couch, put on a pair of pants, took off my sweatpants, and stopped eating Doritos and went to work.  And because of that, you&#8217;ve given us a chance to survive.</p>
<p>I think the question &#8212; how much trouble are we in &#8212; I&#8217;ll address.  But the bigger question that I would like to address today is &#8212; how much trouble is the Left in?  Because America is waking up.  And there&#8217;s only going to be one of us standing in the end.  And I have every intension of it being us.</p>
<p>The world is changing, and it doesn&#8217;t have to be a bad thing.  But the world is changing.  It&#8217;s changing for a myriad of reasons.  The systems don&#8217;t work.  If we took out all of the corruption, all of the greed; we took out all of the politics and everything else, still technology is changing.  And the systems that were built shortly after the Industrial Revolution, starting in the 1920s &#8212; they don&#8217;t work anymore.  The networks don&#8217;t work anymore.  Nothing works.  We now have the ability to go one-on-one.</p>
<p>And because of that, the world is changing.  And anyone with power is flailing in the water, trying to grab onto anything.  Anybody who knows anything about a drowning man &#8212; they&#8217;ll take you down, too.  You don&#8217;t jump in the water to save them.  They&#8217;ll take you down as well.  And that&#8217;s what&#8217;s happening on every front.  They&#8217;ll take us all down.</p>
<p>Now, that&#8217;s the happy news.</p>
<p>The happy news is those people are flailing because they don&#8217;t know what else to do.  They have built this world, they have been in those positions.  This is the way the system works.  It&#8217;s the record industry against Napster and then iTunes.  The record industry is still saying &#8212; I don&#8217;t know what to do.  They&#8217;ll do anything to claw their way back.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s why regulation is going out of control.  You know industries are dying when they go for regulation.  And everybody&#8217;s going for regulation.  Except for the small entrepreneur &#8212; get the hell out of my way.  Why?  Because we have faith in ourselves.  We have faith in the end user.  I know all I have to do is create a better product, and people will come.  That&#8217;s America.  But we&#8217;re turning into Europe at best, and the Soviet Union at worst.</p>
<p>In the end, the world will change.  The message that has to be gotten out to the rest of America is &#8212; are you going to sleep through it?  Because this is the time that historians will write about for decades, if not centuries to come.  The world is at a paradigm shift.  And if you don&#8217;t be a part of it, if you&#8217;re not part of it now, if you&#8217;re not out redesigning, it will be redesigned for you.  Welcome to slavery.</p>
<p>This is a journey unlike any journey that most people have ever traveled on.  There is no blueprint for this journey.  That&#8217;s why historians will look to us.  There has never been a group of people at this point that have reversed the tide.  But there have never been Americans at this point.  When the world is always down, the world always flails in the water, until Americans arrive.  Americans are already here.  We just have to look to ourselves.  We don&#8217;t have to take a boat or an airplane to go anyplace.  We&#8217;re already here!  All we have to do is stand up and take charge, and be the people that we have always been.  Wake up, America, and we solve our own problems.</p>
<p>In the end, we can either continue down this course as freedom-loving people, and worry about the damn Republicans, and lose; or as freedom-loving people we can stand together and worry about the republic, and win.</p>
<p>The first thing we have to do is stop listening to morons.</p>
<p>We have to stop listening to the people who have been wrong every step of the way.  These are the damn people that designed this system!  And we go to them and say &#8212; okay mister banker, okay mister politician who&#8217;s been there the whole time &#8212; how do we fix it?  How do you fix it?  They said it would be fine in the first place.  How do we fix it?  Many times, we fix it by putting those people in jail.</p>
<p>We have to look to the people who have seen it coming.  David Horowitz is one of them.</p>
<p>Because &#8212; if you will indulge me &#8212; because nobody else ever will, I want to give you a bit of my record, so you see the record, so what I say after this carries any kind of weight.  What&#8217;s coming?</p>
<p>In 1999, I was in the air on WABC in New York.  And I said &#8212; listen to the words of Osama bin Laden.  And conservatives attacked me and said I was only supporting Bill Clinton.  I said &#8212; are you out of your mind?  I hate the guy.</p>
<p>But if he&#8217;s bombing an aspirin factory, and it&#8217;s the right thing to do, I guess maybe we should say &#8212; okay, don&#8217;t like this.  But he&#8217;s going after Osama bin Laden.  And I read the words of Osama bin Laden.  And the conservatives attacked me.  And I said &#8212; mark my words &#8212; in this city, there will be blood, bodies and buildings in the streets.  And they will be done by Osama bin Laden.  Will you then stop playing politics?  That was 1999.</p>
<p>In 2004, I begged my audience &#8212; do not take out any of these loans.  They don&#8217;t make any sense.  Well, you don&#8217;t have an education.  I can do basic math.  They don&#8217;t make sense.  Stop.</p>
<p>Eighteen months prior, I was losing my audience.  Because conservatives said I was talking down the economy.  Eighteen months prior to TARP.  I lost about 30 percent of my audience.  My stations were canceling.  My network came to me and said &#8212; please, will you shut up about the economy?  Nobody cares.  You&#8217;re wrong.  It&#8217;s not going to happen.  Sorry.  Sorry.</p>
<p>Six months prior, I begged my audience &#8212; get out of the stock market.  I remember a guy said &#8212; he was on television, and the Dow was at 14,000.  And he said &#8212; we&#8217;re looking at 18,000.  I looked right in the camera, and I said &#8212; don&#8217;t listen to that moron.  Don&#8217;t listen to him.  Don&#8217;t listen &#8212; I&#8217;m sorry we even had him on.  Get your money out now.  I believe it was six days later that the crash came.</p>
<p>It doesn&#8217;t take a genius.  It takes someone who&#8217;s willing to look at common sense, and look at the facts.  Last year &#8212; hammered for telling people to have some food.  Because food prices are going to go up.  This administration &#8212; how dare them! &#8212; betrayed our public, betrayed the average person by saying &#8212; oh, there is no such thing as inflation.  When all I said was have food!  That&#8217;s too conspiratorial?  Prepare for hard times.</p>
<p>Thanksgiving dinner is now 13 percent higher than it was last year.  Thirteen percent higher.  It may not mean a lot to the people in this room, but it sure the hell means a lot to a lot of Americans who are struggling to get by.  Thirteen percent.</p>
<p>I want you to do this.  I want you to go to the Fed&#8217;s website.  They&#8217;ve got a little game for kids to play &#8212; what&#8217;s it like to be Ben Bernanke for the day?  Can you fix the economy?</p>
<p>Yes.  My six-year-old could be Ben Bernanke for a day and do a better job.  Go to the Fed&#8217;s website.  On the Fed&#8217;s website there&#8217;s a little game, made for kids &#8212; can you control inflation?  Do this test.  Go to the website, and put in 0 percent interest on money.  Put it in there.  Run that program for three years.  You could do it today.  Project it out three years.  Shows inflation at 17 percent.  If anybody looks at the non-game-playing adjusted inflation, the way we used to calculate during the Carter years, the way we used to calculate inflation, it is now &#8212; bottom 11, top 17 percent.  So the Fed&#8217;s own website shows &#8212; yeah, you do this for three years, yeah, Thanksgiving dinner will go up 13 percent.  Put it and run it for four years.  Inflation goes from 17 percent to 38 percent.  All you have to do is be like a kid, and look at the facts.</p>
<p>Everyone tries to dismiss what these &#8212; everybody&#8217;s got a backup plan.  Everybody&#8217;s got &#8212; well, I got a system.  Ah, you don&#8217;t have to worry about that, it&#8217;s going to be different this time.  No, it&#8217;s not.  It never is.  Two plus two equals four.  Not five, not seven, not 10; four.  Every time, four.  That&#8217;s the way it works.</p>
<p>Hammered in January.  I have been looking for the Archduke Ferdinand moment.  Tunisia, I said.  A man sets himself on fire.  That is the Archduke Ferdinand moment of this generation.  It will cascade across the land.  It will sweep the Middle East.  Radicals, communists, socialists, Islamists, revolutionaries will collude.  To collapse the Western way of life, they will destroy Israel and the United States of America.  And anti-Semitism not seen since the 1930s will return.</p>
<p>Of course, I was a crazy man.  Unless you read the papers today.  Israel is our only real friend.</p>
<p>And we have betrayed them.  We are doing more than that.  We are betraying ourselves, our God and our legacy by not standing up now.  I studied Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gandhi, Martin Luther King.  The reason why Bonhoeffer lost in Germany is because there&#8217;s a short window.  You cannot play the games of marchers out in the streets like Martin Luther King to a society that has gone to hell already.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s this amazing speech given by Adolf Hitler, where they started to actually &#8212; the idea was to take the SS, and &#8212; you can rat on your neighbor.  If you see something, say something.  Rat on your neighbor.  Well, the people of Germany were so far off the scale that they were taking things from somebody who screwed them in middle school, like &#8212; oh, I&#8217;ve always wanted to get them back &#8212; and turn them in.  Hitler actually said &#8212; I&#8217;m paraphrasing &#8212; it&#8217;s the most amazing thing I&#8217;ve ever read.  This is Adolf Hitler.  He said &#8212; what the hell is wrong with you people?  Adolf Hitler!  Looking at the Germans, and saying &#8212; you disgust me.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s when he knew he had them.  Because they were so internally corrupt that he could do anything.  And he did.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s about an 18-month window.  And I contend we&#8217;re in it.  An 18-month window that if you don&#8217;t slip through that window, there&#8217;s no going back.  And in that 18-month window, that is the moment that a Martin Luther King, or a Gandhi, or an Abraham Lincoln need to appear, and need to lead the people to righteousness.  Or profound global darkness will come.</p>
<p>Occupy Wall Street is some of the most dark, evil stuff I&#8217;ve ever seen.  I am moving out of New York City.  I attended a movie in the park with my daughters and my wife this summer.  I&#8217;m used to getting the slings and arrows.  I get it.  But leave my children alone.  My children were a block away from me.  And people &#8212; women! &#8212; were standing up and pointing, and screaming at my children &#8212; get out of New York!  My children.  I wasn&#8217;t with them.</p>
<p>The country is splitting.  But Martin Luther King was right.  If you put goodness next to evil, if you compare them, and you let people see them &#8212; that&#8217;s what they&#8217;re trying to do at Occupy Wall Street.  They are trying to make the police officers look bad.  Those police officers &#8212; I got news for you.  I&#8217;m about ready to go club a few of those dopes in the head for them.  These police officers are amazing!  They&#8217;re standing there now for, how long, two months?  Standing there.  Being called every name.  Being pushed and poked and prodded.  And they do nothing.  Those are Americans.</p>
<p>We have people who glorify cop killers.  We have rapes going on.  How many people have died?  Seven?  And the media says nothing.</p>
<p>1968, as David knows &#8212; a banner year for the American Left.  But 1968 was also the year of the moon shot.  When you had pigs rolling around in the mud, you also had man walking up on the moon.  And America was split.  Am I Woodstock?  Or do we reach out and touch the stars?</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/frontpagemag-com/glenn-becks-address-at-restoration-weekend-1/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>70</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Glenn Beck&#8217;s Address at Restoration Weekend</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/frontpagemag-com/glenn-becks-address-at-restoration-weekend/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=glenn-becks-address-at-restoration-weekend</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/frontpagemag-com/glenn-becks-address-at-restoration-weekend/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 24 Nov 2011 04:00:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Glenn Beck]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[occupy wall street]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Restoration Weekend]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=113424</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The media titan discusses the dire situation we're in -- and what we must do.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/glenn_beck-300x300.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-113491" title="Glenn Beck" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/glenn_beck-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="300" /></a></p>
<p><em>Editor&#8217;s note: Below is Glenn Beck&#8217;s speech on November 19, 2011 at  David Horowitz&#8217;s Restoration Weekend in West Palm Beach, Florida (Nov.  17-20, 2011). It is preceded by an introduction by David Horowitz. To  watch the video, click for Part I <a href="http://blip.tv/david-horowitz-tv/glenn-beck-part-1-5759827">here </a>and for Part II <a href="http://blip.tv/david-horowitz-tv/glenn-beck-part-2-5760365">here</a>. </em></p>
<p><strong>David Horowitz</strong>: I am honored and incredibly privileged to introduce my friend, Glenn Beck, the busiest man on God&#8217;s green earth.</p>
<p>Glenn began life in circumstances that would crush most of us, and almost did him.  He&#8217;s gone on to become one of the most successful and important political figures of our era.  He is a major force in American media, the host of top-ranked radio and television shows that have reached millions of listeners and viewers.  He&#8217;s the author of six <em>New York Times</em> bestsellers in both fiction and nonfiction and the organizer of unprecedented mass demonstrations &#8212; in Washington to restore hope for our country, and in Jerusalem to declare his solidarity with the Jewish state &#8212; as its citizens are threatened with a second holocaust by their Islamic enemies.</p>
<p>As the organizer of the 9/12 movement and march on Washington, Beck is the real creator of the American Tea Party, the most important development in conservatism in our era and, in many ways, the last best hope for America&#8217;s future.</p>
<p>He is currently in the process of launching Glenn Beck TV and Mercury Enterprises, a media complex which is designed to break the virtual monopoly of the Left on American audiences, a monopoly that exerts itself either through direct control of media channels like MSNBC or through vicious attacks on advertisers who provide sponsorship for conservative programs like Glenn Beck&#8217;s on Fox.</p>
<p>Glenn has been the target of the most vicious attacks of which the Left is capable.  He has been ridiculed and derided.  His sanity has been questioned, and his character has been assaulted.  He has been called racist, sexist, Islamophobic, and every other term the verbal assassins of the Left regularly invoke to destroy the conservatives they fear the most.</p>
<p>Like many other targets of the Left, he has also been attacked by Republican elitists in Washington, and in identical terms &#8212; nutcase, reactionary, conspiracy theorist, extremist.  These are the words these elitists have used to describe him.  Call it the Stockholm syndrome.  It is a crippling disease of the Republican Party and of elements in the conservative movement to seek the approval of one&#8217;s enemies by attacking one&#8217;s friends, to treat one&#8217;s enemies as misguided friends, to be polite and courteous to people who want to slit your throat.</p>
<p>Let me tell you a personal story that will illuminate the problem.  Twenty-five years ago, I was a recent refugee from the Left and had begun addressing conservative audiences.  One of my first invitations came from the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation in St. Louis, named after a famous hero of the anti-Communist struggle during the Cold War.  I had been a leader of the New Left, a Marxist, a self-styled revolutionary, a small-C communist and a large-A anti-American.</p>
<p>But when my conservative host introduced me, he said &#8212; this is David Horowitz, who is a former civil rights worker and peace activist.  It is not just that my conservative host was too polite to notice that I had been a self-declared enemy of our country and of people like himself.  It is that conservatives either do not want to believe that this country has enemies among its own citizens or do not want to be seen by the <em>New York Times</em> and the <em>Washington Post</em> as believing that this country has enemies within.</p>
<p>This is how Barack Obama got elected to the White House.  All Republicans allowed themselves to see was a community organizer, a civil rights worker and peace activist.  All they saw was a progressive.  And that is what socialist, radical, pro-jihadist and anti-American activists call themselves today &#8212; progressives.</p>
<p>My parents were card-carrying members of the Communist Party and wanted the Soviet enemy to win the Cold War.  But they always referred to themselves as progressives.  When the Communist Party ran a candidate for President in 1948, the party they created for the job was called the Progressive Party.  Actually, Henry Wallace &#8212; I hadn&#8217;t thought of this before &#8212; was the Joe Biden of his day &#8212; the former Democrat Vice President.</p>
<p>This was a ruse to hide their real agendas.  Progressive was a good old American thing to be.  And 50 years later, conservatives were still buying it hook, line and sinker.  Until the arrival of Glenn Beck.</p>
<p>What distinguishes Glenn Beck, what makes him such a game-changing force in the struggle for America&#8217;s future, is that he has deconstructed the word &#8220;progressive,&#8221; put his finger on the enemy, named him, and won&#8217;t let him go.  That is why Glenn Beck is marked for slaughter by the Left.  It is also why conservative elitists in Washington are desperate to disown him.  Because his message is discomforting, and because the heart of his message is an unpleasant truth.</p>
<p>Until Glenn Beck came along, ex-radicals like myself were endlessly frustrated by conservatives&#8217; refusal to look at history, refusal to connect the dots, refusal to understand that these are not idealists, but dedicated anti-capitalist, anti-liberty and anti-American crusaders who number in the millions; that they are financed by anti-American billionaires, like George Soros; and leftwing foundations, billionaire foundations, like the Tides Foundation and the Ford Foundation; and communist unions, like the SEIU; and criminal organizations, like ACORN; and that they are part of an international socialist Left which supports our Islamist enemies in the Middle East and Asia.</p>
<p>Former radicals like myself, who knew these people up close and personal, spent years in the conservative wilderness, beside ourselves with frustration as we watched conservatives call communists and socialists and anti-American radicals liberals, and misguided idealists.</p>
<p>And then, along came Glenn Beck.  Before an audience of millions, Glenn Beck began to connect the dots and restore the history, and describe the real agendas of the leftist movement and its cynical deceptions, and its monumental crimes.  Beck saw that the link between the anarchists and the radicals, the socialists and the liberals, lay in the very term &#8220;progressive.&#8221;</p>
<p>Progressivism is the religious idea that history is moving in a positive direction, that it is within the political power of human beings, within the power of political activists and governments, to remake the entire world and bring about a paradise of social justice.  They believe that the way to do this is by increasing the power of government until the state is able to compel every man, woman and child to be just, and good, and environmentally friendly, and healthy &#8212; in a word, progressive.  But you cannot compel human beings to be just and good without abolishing their individual freedom.  This is the essence of the totalitarian idea.  And it is the progressive idea.</p>
<p>This is the truth that Glenn Beck has brought to millions of Americans.  This is why leftists hate him and attack him, and why conservative elitists want to disown him.</p>
<p>In 2011, Glenn Beck spoke to the most important conservative gathering in Washington.  During his speech, he wrote the world &#8220;progressivism&#8221; on a blackboard and said &#8212; this is the disease.  Progressivism is the cancer in America, and it is eating our Constitution.  And conservatives attacked him.  Not the grassroots conservatives at the CPAC conference, but the elitist conservatives at <em>The Weekly Standard</em>.</p>
<p><em>The Weekly Standard</em> said that what Beck had written on that blackboard was nonsense and conspiratorial, and tangential to the political realities of our day.  Those are quotes &#8212; &#8220;tangential to the political realities of our day.&#8221;  No.  The conservative elitists have it exactly wrong.  The threat from progressives is the political reality of our day.</p>
<p>Our nation and its institutions are under siege.  Obamaism is not a mistaken policy, or several mistaken policies, carried out by civil rights workers and peace activists.  It is the latest incarnation of a 200-year-old movement to destroy the American Constitution and the American economic system &#8212; what in the old days we used to proudly call &#8212; or others used to proudly call the American way of life.</p>
<p>Glenn Beck has been teaching this to millions and millions of Americans, to Tea Party activists and Joe Six-Packs.  He has been naming the enemy and revealing his agendas.  He has taken on the dragons of American socialism and international socialism which have penetrated the heart and brain of the Democratic Party.  And he has documented their unholy alliances with Islamic jihadists and America&#8217;s secular, totalitarian enemies.</p>
<p>Glenn Beck is the most prominent voice of freedom in the face of the tyranny at our door.  He is a champion of the Jews and their fragile democracy in the face of a second Nazi holocaust currently being organized by rabid Islamists and their progressive friends.  He is a man of formidable personal courage, under relentless personal attack; an indispensible leader to millions of conservatives who believe in America and who want its glories to continue.</p>
<p>I am not a man given to prayer.  But if I were, the person whose safety and whose health I would be praying for daily &#8212; for the sake of my children, and my friends, and my country &#8212; would be this man, this great American &#8212; Glenn Beck.</p>
<p><strong>Glenn Beck</strong>: Thank you.</p>
<p>David, if you don&#8217;t mind, I have a box underneath my desk that I put some of my notes and put some of the stories and some of my thoughts in, and some things &#8212; I keep records for my children.  Because when I started this, I met with my older children, who are now in college.  And I said &#8212; this is going to change our family.  And the only thing that I care about is that you remember who I am.  And if you don&#8217;t mind, I&#8217;d like to take and put what you just said about me in that box, so they remember.  Thank you.</p>
<p>Meaningful, thank you.</p>
<p>So, the topic that I was given today was &#8212; how much trouble are we in?</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t think I really need to tell you, do I?</p>
<p>David Horowitz has been standing guard at this door, along with many of you, long before I got off my couch, put on a pair of pants, took off my sweatpants, and stopped eating Doritos and went to work.  And because of that, you&#8217;ve given us a chance to survive.</p>
<p>I think the question &#8212; how much trouble are we in &#8212; I&#8217;ll address.  But the bigger question that I would like to address today is &#8212; how much trouble is the Left in?  Because America is waking up.  And there&#8217;s only going to be one of us standing in the end.  And I have every intension of it being us.</p>
<p>The world is changing, and it doesn&#8217;t have to be a bad thing.  But the world is changing.  It&#8217;s changing for a myriad of reasons.  The systems don&#8217;t work.  If we took out all of the corruption, all of the greed; we took out all of the politics and everything else, still technology is changing.  And the systems that were built shortly after the Industrial Revolution, starting in the 1920s &#8212; they don&#8217;t work anymore.  The networks don&#8217;t work anymore.  Nothing works.  We now have the ability to go one-on-one.</p>
<p>And because of that, the world is changing.  And anyone with power is flailing in the water, trying to grab onto anything.  Anybody who knows anything about a drowning man &#8212; they&#8217;ll take you down, too.  You don&#8217;t jump in the water to save them.  They&#8217;ll take you down as well.  And that&#8217;s what&#8217;s happening on every front.  They&#8217;ll take us all down.</p>
<p>Now, that&#8217;s the happy news.</p>
<p>The happy news is those people are flailing because they don&#8217;t know what else to do.  They have built this world, they have been in those positions.  This is the way the system works.  It&#8217;s the record industry against Napster and then iTunes.  The record industry is still saying &#8212; I don&#8217;t know what to do.  They&#8217;ll do anything to claw their way back.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s why regulation is going out of control.  You know industries are dying when they go for regulation.  And everybody&#8217;s going for regulation.  Except for the small entrepreneur &#8212; get the hell out of my way.  Why?  Because we have faith in ourselves.  We have faith in the end user.  I know all I have to do is create a better product, and people will come.  That&#8217;s America.  But we&#8217;re turning into Europe at best, and the Soviet Union at worst.</p>
<p>In the end, the world will change.  The message that has to be gotten out to the rest of America is &#8212; are you going to sleep through it?  Because this is the time that historians will write about for decades, if not centuries to come.  The world is at a paradigm shift.  And if you don&#8217;t be a part of it, if you&#8217;re not part of it now, if you&#8217;re not out redesigning, it will be redesigned for you.  Welcome to slavery.</p>
<p>This is a journey unlike any journey that most people have ever traveled on.  There is no blueprint for this journey.  That&#8217;s why historians will look to us.  There has never been a group of people at this point that have reversed the tide.  But there have never been Americans at this point.  When the world is always down, the world always flails in the water, until Americans arrive.  Americans are already here.  We just have to look to ourselves.  We don&#8217;t have to take a boat or an airplane to go anyplace.  We&#8217;re already here!  All we have to do is stand up and take charge, and be the people that we have always been.  Wake up, America, and we solve our own problems.</p>
<p>In the end, we can either continue down this course as freedom-loving people, and worry about the damn Republicans, and lose; or as freedom-loving people we can stand together and worry about the republic, and win.</p>
<p>The first thing we have to do is stop listening to morons.</p>
<p>We have to stop listening to the people who have been wrong every step of the way.  These are the damn people that designed this system!  And we go to them and say &#8212; okay mister banker, okay mister politician who&#8217;s been there the whole time &#8212; how do we fix it?  How do you fix it?  They said it would be fine in the first place.  How do we fix it?  Many times, we fix it by putting those people in jail.</p>
<p>We have to look to the people who have seen it coming.  David Horowitz is one of them.</p>
<p>Because &#8212; if you will indulge me &#8212; because nobody else ever will, I want to give you a bit of my record, so you see the record, so what I say after this carries any kind of weight.  What&#8217;s coming?</p>
<p>In 1999, I was in the air on WABC in New York.  And I said &#8212; listen to the words of Osama bin Laden.  And conservatives attacked me and said I was only supporting Bill Clinton.  I said &#8212; are you out of your mind?  I hate the guy.</p>
<p>But if he&#8217;s bombing an aspirin factory, and it&#8217;s the right thing to do, I guess maybe we should say &#8212; okay, don&#8217;t like this.  But he&#8217;s going after Osama bin Laden.  And I read the words of Osama bin Laden.  And the conservatives attacked me.  And I said &#8212; mark my words &#8212; in this city, there will be blood, bodies and buildings in the streets.  And they will be done by Osama bin Laden.  Will you then stop playing politics?  That was 1999.</p>
<p>In 2004, I begged my audience &#8212; do not take out any of these loans.  They don&#8217;t make any sense.  Well, you don&#8217;t have an education.  I can do basic math.  They don&#8217;t make sense.  Stop.</p>
<p>Eighteen months prior, I was losing my audience.  Because conservatives said I was talking down the economy.  Eighteen months prior to TARP.  I lost about 30 percent of my audience.  My stations were canceling.  My network came to me and said &#8212; please, will you shut up about the economy?  Nobody cares.  You&#8217;re wrong.  It&#8217;s not going to happen.  Sorry.  Sorry.</p>
<p>Six months prior, I begged my audience &#8212; get out of the stock market.  I remember a guy said &#8212; he was on television, and the Dow was at 14,000.  And he said &#8212; we&#8217;re looking at 18,000.  I looked right in the camera, and I said &#8212; don&#8217;t listen to that moron.  Don&#8217;t listen to him.  Don&#8217;t listen &#8212; I&#8217;m sorry we even had him on.  Get your money out now.  I believe it was six days later that the crash came.</p>
<p>It doesn&#8217;t take a genius.  It takes someone who&#8217;s willing to look at common sense, and look at the facts.  Last year &#8212; hammered for telling people to have some food.  Because food prices are going to go up.  This administration &#8212; how dare them! &#8212; betrayed our public, betrayed the average person by saying &#8212; oh, there is no such thing as inflation.  When all I said was have food!  That&#8217;s too conspiratorial?  Prepare for hard times.</p>
<p>Thanksgiving dinner is now 13 percent higher than it was last year.  Thirteen percent higher.  It may not mean a lot to the people in this room, but it sure the hell means a lot to a lot of Americans who are struggling to get by.  Thirteen percent.</p>
<p>I want you to do this.  I want you to go to the Fed&#8217;s website.  They&#8217;ve got a little game for kids to play &#8212; what&#8217;s it like to be Ben Bernanke for the day?  Can you fix the economy?</p>
<p>Yes.  My six-year-old could be Ben Bernanke for a day and do a better job.  Go to the Fed&#8217;s website.  On the Fed&#8217;s website there&#8217;s a little game, made for kids &#8212; can you control inflation?  Do this test.  Go to the website, and put in 0 percent interest on money.  Put it in there.  Run that program for three years.  You could do it today.  Project it out three years.  Shows inflation at 17 percent.  If anybody looks at the non-game-playing adjusted inflation, the way we used to calculate during the Carter years, the way we used to calculate inflation, it is now &#8212; bottom 11, top 17 percent.  So the Fed&#8217;s own website shows &#8212; yeah, you do this for three years, yeah, Thanksgiving dinner will go up 13 percent.  Put it and run it for four years.  Inflation goes from 17 percent to 38 percent.  All you have to do is be like a kid, and look at the facts.</p>
<p>Everyone tries to dismiss what these &#8212; everybody&#8217;s got a backup plan.  Everybody&#8217;s got &#8212; well, I got a system.  Ah, you don&#8217;t have to worry about that, it&#8217;s going to be different this time.  No, it&#8217;s not.  It never is.  Two plus two equals four.  Not five, not seven, not 10; four.  Every time, four.  That&#8217;s the way it works.</p>
<p>Hammered in January.  I have been looking for the Archduke Ferdinand moment.  Tunisia, I said.  A man sets himself on fire.  That is the Archduke Ferdinand moment of this generation.  It will cascade across the land.  It will sweep the Middle East.  Radicals, communists, socialists, Islamists, revolutionaries will collude.  To collapse the Western way of life, they will destroy Israel and the United States of America.  And anti-Semitism not seen since the 1930s will return.</p>
<p>Of course, I was a crazy man.  Unless you read the papers today.  Israel is our only real friend.</p>
<p>And we have betrayed them.  We are doing more than that.  We are betraying ourselves, our God and our legacy by not standing up now.  I studied Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gandhi, Martin Luther King.  The reason why Bonhoeffer lost in Germany is because there&#8217;s a short window.  You cannot play the games of marchers out in the streets like Martin Luther King to a society that has gone to hell already.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s this amazing speech given by Adolf Hitler, where they started to actually &#8212; the idea was to take the SS, and &#8212; you can rat on your neighbor.  If you see something, say something.  Rat on your neighbor.  Well, the people of Germany were so far off the scale that they were taking things from somebody who screwed them in middle school, like &#8212; oh, I&#8217;ve always wanted to get them back &#8212; and turn them in.  Hitler actually said &#8212; I&#8217;m paraphrasing &#8212; it&#8217;s the most amazing thing I&#8217;ve ever read.  This is Adolf Hitler.  He said &#8212; what the hell is wrong with you people?  Adolf Hitler!  Looking at the Germans, and saying &#8212; you disgust me.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s when he knew he had them.  Because they were so internally corrupt that he could do anything.  And he did.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s about an 18-month window.  And I contend we&#8217;re in it.  An 18-month window that if you don&#8217;t slip through that window, there&#8217;s no going back.  And in that 18-month window, that is the moment that a Martin Luther King, or a Gandhi, or an Abraham Lincoln need to appear, and need to lead the people to righteousness.  Or profound global darkness will come.</p>
<p>Occupy Wall Street is some of the most dark, evil stuff I&#8217;ve ever seen.  I am moving out of New York City.  I attended a movie in the park with my daughters and my wife this summer.  I&#8217;m used to getting the slings and arrows.  I get it.  But leave my children alone.  My children were a block away from me.  And people &#8212; women! &#8212; were standing up and pointing, and screaming at my children &#8212; get out of New York!  My children.  I wasn&#8217;t with them.</p>
<p>The country is splitting.  But Martin Luther King was right.  If you put goodness next to evil, if you compare them, and you let people see them &#8212; that&#8217;s what they&#8217;re trying to do at Occupy Wall Street.  They are trying to make the police officers look bad.  Those police officers &#8212; I got news for you.  I&#8217;m about ready to go club a few of those dopes in the head for them.  These police officers are amazing!  They&#8217;re standing there now for, how long, two months?  Standing there.  Being called every name.  Being pushed and poked and prodded.  And they do nothing.  Those are Americans.</p>
<p>We have people who glorify cop killers.  We have rapes going on.  How many people have died?  Seven?  And the media says nothing.</p>
<p>1968, as David knows &#8212; a banner year for the American Left.  But 1968 was also the year of the moon shot.  When you had pigs rolling around in the mud, you also had man walking up on the moon.  And America was split.  Am I Woodstock?  Or do we reach out and touch the stars?</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/frontpagemag-com/glenn-becks-address-at-restoration-weekend/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>16</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Arizona Ethnic Studies Exposed</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/sara-dogan/arizona-ethnic-studies-exposed/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=arizona-ethnic-studies-exposed</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/sara-dogan/arizona-ethnic-studies-exposed/#respond</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 28 May 2010 14:30:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Sara Dogan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Student Center]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
<p>Students in Arizona get schooled in Marxism.</p>
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Students in Arizona get schooled in Marxism.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/sara-dogan/arizona-ethnic-studies-exposed/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>

<!-- Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache. Learn more: http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/

Object Caching 1452/1634 objects using disk
Content Delivery Network via cdn.frontpagemag.com

 Served from: www.frontpagemag.com @ 2014-12-31 13:09:32 by W3 Total Cache -->