The Isms That Is and The Isms That Isn't: My Own Literacy Program

Some Reedings

Adam Smith: "Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, a tolerable administration of justice and an occasional public horsewhipping of Joe Scarborough. MAGA, baby!"

"The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty. Capitalism is not an ‘ism.’ It is closer to being the opposite of an ‘ism,’ because it is simply the freedom of ordinary people to make whatever economic transactions they can mutually agree to."--Thomas Sowell

Regie's Blog: "Then, my wife and I had to rush our newly adopted, 8-month-old daughter to the public hospital…and suddenly it all started making sense. As we stepped in more urine, took our number from the print-out machine, walked past the line of children whining and crying from the scalp IVs in their heads, then rushed to clean up blood and mucus (left by the last patient) on the plastic table they were now laying our baby on, then waited on the ONE overworked doctor (attending to no less than three hundred people) try to round up a basic anti-biotic to administer to my daughter (right there on site – no refills) it dawned on me what I was seeing and what I had been seeing this whole time. I wasn’t watching a “backward” culture or a third-world society. These people weren’t genetically inferior to first-worlders. They weren’t “less-evolved” than I was. I was witnessing the kind of maximum, almost brutal efficiency a society must develop when the state is the master and the individual is merely a subject. Why would a Communist country not have an effective FDA? Because who are you going to complain to if you get tainted food? The government? They don’t answer to you. The press? They are owned by the government. And again, they don’t answer to you. So what if you don’t like the conditions in the hospital? Where else are you going to go? This hospital is the last (and only) stop. ...The thing about free-market solutions when it comes to healthcare, is that if they don’t work, you can always trash them and go to a public option. But once you nationalize healthcare, there is no going back. And that terrifies me. I’ve seen the natural conclusion of what happens when only one buyer is purchasing gauze and morphine; when one source pays the doctors and nurses." .......
I can’t help but compare the President’s effective response to this outbreak with the illegal alien crime wave unleashed on America by his globalist critics on purpose and by design. They watch silently as thousands upon thousands of Americans are killed and injured, and dismiss their lives and well-being out of hand. It’s a disgrace–no–it’s criminal. And should be treated as such.

"Don’t be deceived because you are not hearing the sound of gunfire, 

because, even so, you are fighting for your lives."

"Some people think I'm simplistic, but there's a difference between being simplistic and being simple. My theory of the Cold War is that we win and they lose. What do you think about that?"--Ronald Reagan

Grenada Farewell

"Politics cannot fill the gap. Society, with which Marxism is obsessed, is only a fragment of the totality of life. As I have written, Marxism has no metaphysics: it cannot even detect, much less comprehend, the enormity of the universe and the operations of nature. Those who invest all of their spiritual energies in politics will reap the whirlwind. The evidence is all around us—the paroxysms of inchoate, infantile rage suffered by those who have turned fallible politicians into saviors and devils, godlike avatars of Good versus Evil."--Camille Paglia

"The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented."--Pres.-for-Life Donald J. Trump at the U.N.

"A fat lady came out and sang "Feelings," also in 'English'. A dance team gave a disco exhibition more reminiscent of Saturday Night Live than Saturday Night Fever. There was a mild strip act, the stripper winding up in a kind of two-piece bathing suit worn by Baptist ministers' wives, but with sequins. To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze.

The third night we went to Remont, Warsaw's only punk club. The kids didn't look very punky; more like it was a party game where everybody had to do a quick impression of Patti Smith.

I couldn't, off hand, think of anything to ask [the manager] Grzegorz. "Does the Polish punk movement have any political significance?" I said and realized I'd put my foot in it. In a Marxist country even a dank and stinky place like Remont needs some kind of official sanction, and Grzegorz must have some kind of official status. He looked miffed.

"I notice a certain regularity in questions from the West," said Grzegorz. "First, you're interested in punks. Usually your stories have two objectives, that punks are opposition to authority, breaking the rules that exist here. Also your articles show that there are no polar bears walking the streets." He gave me a condescending smile. "There are moments when our country is very normal."

"Hopelessly normal," I said. "I notice your punks don't go in much for spiked hair and face tattoos."

"They have some inhibitions," said Grzegorz. "Also we don't have the commercial products to do the hair styles." And then he sighed. "There are contradictions within the Polish punk scene. Remont is the only place they can come to express their rebellion against institutions. The root problem is boredom."

"That's what made my generation rebel in the sixties in America," I said, trying to be nice. "You know, we were bored with commercialism, bored with materialism...."

Grzegorz sighed again. "They're rebelling here from lack of this."

Some of the punks began slam-dancing, or trying to. They were so drunk they kept missing each other. Communism doesn't really starve or execute that many people. Mostly it just bores them to death. Life behind the Iron Curtain is like living with your parents forever. There are a million do's and dont's. It's a hassle getting the car keys."--P.J. O'Rourke, "Holidays In Hell"

Bernie Sanders in "Honeymoon In Moscow". 
In the waning days of the Soviet Union, Comrade Sanders makes a desperate honeymoon trip to Russia, hoping to get there before all the good Communism is gone. Here, he poses with a completely random Russian family, carefully chosen by his minders.
In America, your friends choose government. In Russia, government chooses your friends!
Unless you're Hillary, in which case your government friends choose you for president.

The last Democrat Debate:

“Putin wants you to win because Trump can beat you!”

“Well, Putin is helping you because you’re a dwarf.”

"No. Putin wants you to win 'cos you're a little pansy.”

“Well, Putin wants you to win because you’re just a girl!”

“Putin is afraid of me!”

“No way--Putin is helping you because he wants another 20% of our uranium!”

“I saw Putin at your wine cave!”

“Yeah? Well, I saw Putin at your Geritol Cave!”

“Putin told me to thank you for all the nice words about the KGB!”

"Mom and Putin always liked you better!"

I quote from memory. Harry Hopkins'.

Prediction: Your next Democrat nominee: Vladimir Putin!

Ace of Spades: "Many of the #SalonHot25 conceive of themselves as rather like William F. Buckley in the 1950s, ejecting the Deplorable John Birchers from the movement.

Indeed, a group which served as AllahPundit's and the NeverTrumpers' most repulsive Twitter allies called themselves "The Buckley Club" -- a reference to Buckley's ejection of the Birchers.

Idiots like Noah Rothman once called for purity tests and purges of the "new Birchers," as they imagined them.

But while these Cargo Cultists fancied themselves as the New Buckleys kicking out the New Birchers, they never talk much about why Buckley expelled the Birchers.

They never talk about what lunacy it was that finally got the Birchers expelled.

It wasn't that the Birchers were antisemitic or anti-black. The old National Review accepted a certain amount of that.

No, what finally spurred Buckley to read the Birchers out of the movement was the Birchers' psychotic obsession and conspiracy theory that The Current President of the United States was actually a Russian agent under the positive control of the Politburo.

The current president, back then, was Eisenhower.

Now, of course, it's Trump.

And the people who want to kick out "the New Birchers"... believe exactly the same conspiracy theory that made the Old Birchers laughable.

Back then, believing the president was a Russian Sleeper Agent was enough to get you kicked out of the conservative party.

Today, of course, it makes you a True Conservative Hero.

The difference?

Back then, the Russian President Conspiracy Theory was put forward by Deplorables and hence deplorable itself.

But now, the Russian President Conspiracy Theory is put forward by their very good liberal friends, and as this group is culturally liberal and aspires to be accepted by liberals, they believe that anything liberal is automatically non-deplorable and in fact rather Elevated.

So the only real difference between the Old Birchers and the New Birchers -- the deranged "Republicans" who've pushed the Russian President Conspiracy Theory -- is that the latter believes in a liberal-originated conspiracy theory, which they think makes it smarter and classier."

"Ike's not a communist, he's a golfer."--Russell Kirk

Benny Johnson: "The American flag flying above the building meant we had our rights again. Inside the heavily garrisoned fortress of an embassy, we were able to use the internet without massive government restrictions to book our emergency flights home. We drank our first sips of clean water. Both of these privileges we had forgotten about after three days in the socialist country. Our morning had begun with armed government agents storming our rental house in Havana and demanding access to our rooms and camera gear. We bolted from the house with everything we could carry and fled to the U.S. Embassy. Two hours later, we boarded a flight back to America. It was the best feeling in the world. ...When was the last time you were truly thankful for your Fourth Amendment Right enshrined in our Constitution?"

First Vote

First Mentor

First Love

You can be a Marxist or a theologian. but you can't be both, Parson.

First Shortwave

"Is it a surprise to find a Stalin apologist at the center of the Steele dossier scandal?"

First Cousins: British spy Christopher Steele and his mentor  Sir Andrew Wood, looking for John McCain's missing integrity

Diana West: "There is so much we still don’t know, for example, about anti-Trump conspirator and Hillary Clinton operative, retired MI6 officer Christopher Steele. However, we do know that while at Cambridge University a half-century after Kim Philby, as I recount in “The Red Thread,” Steele was known as a “confirmed socialist,” “an avowedly left-wing student with CND credentials.” Another detail that fits the context of ideological profiling is that Steele would eulogize his late first wife as “always on the progressive side of an argument.” Let’s decode this further. “CND” stands for Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Marxist-infiltrated organization deemed subversive by MI5 for its links and efforts, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, to disarm Britain, force U.S. cruise missiles off British bases, and decouple Europe generally from the U.S.-led NATO alliance—at the time, the primary goals of Soviet foreign policy and its aggressive “nuclear freeze” and “peace movement” disinformation campaign. Further, as president of the Cambridge Union in 1986, Steele extended the debating society’s first invitation ever to a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, at the time still regarded as a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel, not to mention one of the Soviet Union’s proxy terror-armies against the West. Despite these and other indicators of strong left-wing and even pro-Soviet beliefs, British intelligence hired Steele following graduation from Cambridge and dispatched him to Soviet-era Moscow. ...This should make us doubt the sanity (or the agendas) of Steele’s unknown patrons inside MI6..."

Former political prisoner and bon vivant Conrad Black: "It is fair to say that the nomination of [V.P. Henry] Wallace was rivaled only by the appointments of Stalin-bootlicker Joseph Davies as ambassador to Moscow; of fascist sympathizer, appeaser, and defeatist Joseph P. Kennedy to the London embassy; and of anti-Semite Breckinridge Long as under secretary of state for immigration and refugees, as the most disastrous appointment of Roosevelt’s four terms as president. ...J. Edgar Hoover warned Roosevelt that Wallace was friendly with Communists in Hollywood and had inappropriate connections with overseas Communists, including in the Soviet Union. Roosevelt didn’t believe all of it but did not need such controversy. In his usual sadistic manner, Roosevelt gave Wallace all the hints he felt were called for that he wasn’t his or the party’s choice, and selected Missouri senator Harry S. Truman in his place. Wallace never got the hint, assaulted a cameraman as he left his residence in Washington for the convention in Chicago, and was astounded when he was dumped. ...Eminent Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis has written that “there is Soviet documentation that Wallace was regularly reporting to the Kremlin in 1945 and 1946 while he was in the Truman administration,” ...He was reviled as a Communist dupe by H. L. Mencken, Dorothy Parker, and even perennial Socialist-party presidential candidate Norman Thomas. ...In fact, as commentator Ron Radosh has remarked:

'Wallace would have created an American foreign policy run by Soviet agents he had installed in the White House, including Lauchlin Currie, Harry Dexter White, his former assistant at Commerce, and the secret Communist and Soviet agent Harry Magdof, who wrote Wallace’s Madison Square Garden speech in 1946 . . . all of whom would have given Joseph Stalin precisely what he sought: control of Eastern Europe and inroads into subversion of France, Italy, and Great Britain as well. The result would have been a deepening of Stalinist control of Europe, and a tough road that might well have made it impossible for the West actually to have won the Cold War and to have defeated Soviet expansionism. Moreover, as Gaddis suggests, new evidence has emerged that points to just how much Wallace was under the control of the Soviets, and how they were counting on him as the man in the United States best suited to serve their ends.'

No one could expect anything more rigorous or responsible from a compulsively mendacious fiction-producer like [Oliver] Stone, but it is distressing to see the New York Times and The New York Review of Books, suckers for or even aggressive propagators of self-flagellating American leftist revisionism though they often are, taking up the cudgels to respectabilize such lies. We seem to come closer every year to the triumph of Malcolm Muggeridge’s famous and familiar “great liberal death wish.”"

Mark Steyn: "The head of the world's most lavishly funded spy agency is seriously arguing that Trump's joke is evidence that he's guilty of treason. 

I read The Joke, Milan Kundera's first novel, when I was a schoolboy. Bit above my level, but, even as a teenager, I liked the premise. Ludvik is a young man in post-war, newly Communist Czechoslovakia. He's a smart, witty guy, a loyal Party member with a great future ahead of him. His girlfriend, though, is a bit serious. So when she writes to him from her two-week Party training course enthusing about the early-morning calisthenics and the "healthy atmosphere," he scribbles off a droll postcard:

Optimism is the opium of the people! A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky! Ludvik.

A few weeks later, he's called before a committee of the District Party Secretariat. He tries to explain he was making a joke. Immediately they remove him from his position at the Students Union; then they expel him from the Party, and the university; and shortly thereafter he's sent to work in the mines. As a waggish adolescent, I liked the absurdity of the situation in which Ludvik finds himself. Later, I came to appreciate that Kundera had skewered the touchiness of totalitarianism, and the consequential loss of any sense of proportion. It was the book I read on the flight to Vancouver, when Maclean's magazine and I were hauled before the British Columbia "Human Rights" Tribunal for the crime of "flagrant Islamophobia." In the course of a week-long trial, the best part of a day was devoted to examining, with the aid of "expert witnesses," the "tone" of my jokes.

Who would have thought all the old absurdist gags of Eastern Europe circa 1948 would transplant themselves to the heart of the West so effortlessly?

Indeed. It used to be the touchy totalitarians of Communism who demanded secret investigations for unsound jokes. Now ex-spooks do it in the pages of The New York Times - and so-called "liberals" cheer."

"In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is...in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control."--Theodore Dalrymple

John Merony: "With few exceptions, the Hollywood anti-communists have been written out of history. John Wayne is one who continues to ride high despite decades of critical assault. On the other hand, Communist filmmakers such as Ring Lardner Jr., Dalton Trumbo, and Paul Jarrico continue to benefit from Hollywood’s own special style of compound interest. Today their pictures are regarded as masterworks of courageous, path-breaking mavericks. Politics helped their career reputations immeasurably; it poisoned Reagan’s. It isn’t too farfetched to imagine how Reagan’s film career would be appreciated for nuance and genius had he defended the Communists, remained a left-wing liberal, and written a weepy memoir about the “dark days” of the blacklist. ... Reagan was becoming convinced that the Communist Party had a hand in the upheaval, and that honest strikers were being manipulated. Some people he considered allies were in fact enemies; backstabbing and betrayal seemed to be lurking around every corner. “I found myself misrepresented, cursed, vilified, denounced, and libeled,” Reagan wrote years later. Reagan himself had become somber. His notions of communism and left-wing politics were being fundamentally challenged. Politics had become deeply personal. According to one observer, “His stock grin was replaced by grim, tense facial expressions; his lanky frame looked too lean to be healthy. He was under great mental and physical strain.” Don Siegel captured that. Knowing the circumstances surrounding Night Unto Night makes the film especially haunting. Even with the eerie twilight atmosphere, at heart the picture is about the realization of love and miracles. Metaphorically, the narrative is similar to critical parts of Reagan’s life. By 1963, when Siegel set out to make his version of Hemingway’s short story, Reagan was at a far different position in his emotional and professional life. Like his John Galen character years before, Reagan had emerged from the wilderness and lived to tell about it. Surviving the death of a child, depression, divorce, and other trials made him a new man. Hosting and often acting in the acclaimed anthology series “General Electric Theater” for almost a decade on CBS Television put Reagan in more than 20 million households every week. It gave him a level of public notoriety that eluded many of his erstwhile colleagues in film."

With Wyman, Fonda, Karloff and Kelly

Sir Winston:

1925: "The Communist theme aims at universal standardization. The individual becomes a function: the community is alone of interest: mass thoughts dictated and propagated by the rulers are the only thoughts deemed respectable. No one is to think of himself as an immortal spirit, clothed in the flesh, but sovereign, unique, indestructible. ...There is not one single social or economic principle or concept in the philosophy of the Russian Bolshevik which has not been realized, carried into action, and enshrined in immutable laws a million years ago by the White Ant. ...So the Bolsheviks, having attempted by tyranny and by terror to establish the most complete form of mass life and collectivism of which history bears record, have not only lost the distinction of individuals, but have not even made the nationalization of life and industry pay. We have not much to learn from them, except what to avoid."

1938: "It is not a new theme; it leaps out upon us from the Dark Ages' racial persecution, religious intolerance, deprivation of free speech, the conception of the citizen as a mere soulless fraction of the State. To this has been added the cult of war. Children are to be taught in their earliest schooling the delights and profits of conquest and aggression. A whole mighty community has been drawn painfully, by severe privations, into a warlike frame. They are held in this condition, which they relish no more than we do, by a party organisation, several millions strong, who derive all kinds of profits, good and bad, from the upkeep of the regime. Like the Communists, the Nazis tolerate no opinion but their own. Like the Communists, they feed on hatred. Like the Communists, they must seek, from time to time, and always at shorter intervals, a new target, a new prize, a new victim. The Dictator, in all his pride, is held in the grip of his Party machine. He can go forward; he cannot go back. He must blood his hounds and show them sport, or else, like Actaeon of old, be devoured by them. All-strong without, he is all-weak within. As Byron wrote a hundred years ago: "These Pagod things of Sabre sway, with fronts of brass and feet of clay."

No one must, however, underrate the power and efficiency of a totalitarian state. Where the whole population of a great country, amiable, good-hearted, peace-loving people are gripped by the neck and by the hair by a Communist or a Nazi tyranny--for they are the same things spelt in different ways--the rulers for the time being can exercise a power for the purposes of war and external domination before which the ordinary free parliamentary societies are at a grievous practical disadvantage. We have to recognise this."

1946: "The dark ages may return, the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of science, and what might now shower immeasurable material blessings upon mankind, may even bring about its total destruction. Beware, I say; time may be short. Do not let us take the course of allowing events to drift along until it is too late. ...

A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organisation intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and proselytising tendencies. ...

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. ...

There never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented in my belief without the firing of a single shot, and Germany might be powerful, prosperous and honoured to-day; but no one would listen and one by one we were all sucked into the awful whirlpool. We surely must not let that happen again."

"From Burlington on the Winooski to San Francisco on the Pacific, an iron curtain has descended across the Party. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the blue states of America. Chicago, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Socialist sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to DNC influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Washington. D.C.."

"Today, the world marks the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades. Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights. While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve. Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty."--President Donald J. Trump

cdrsalamander‏ @cdrsalamander Mar 29 Teenage activists help collect and destroy dangerous assault weapons in a city. Such weapons are only good for killing. No reason for any civilian to own them. These things should only be owned by military and police.

Commander Salamander is being sarcastic, of course. After these Khmer Rouge Kidz confiscated all the weapons, the children, the military and police murdered millions of their political enemies, this in living memory.

It's amazing when you think about it--at one time, both Canada and the US led by the children of Party members

The Biden Campaign: "Make no mistake: Bernie Sanders' comments on Fidel Castro are a part of a larger pattern throughout his life to embrace autocratic leaders and governments across the globe. He seems to have found more inspiration in the Soviets, Sandinistas, Chavistas, and Castro than in America. His admiration for elements of Castro's dictatorship or at least willingness to look past Cuba's human rights violations is not just dangerous, it is deeply offensive to the many people in Florida, New Jersey, and across the country that have fled political persecution and sought refuge in the United States."

Somebody should have told America's Creepy Uncle Joe about these comments made by his boss. After Obama's secret meeting with Fidel, and his sleepovers at the military dictatorship's palace, he went on his own educational project, lecturing Argentinian schoolchildren:  

PRESIDENT OBAMA: "I guess to make a broader point, so often in the past there's been a sharp division between left and right, between capitalist and communist or socialist. And especially in the Americas, that's been a big debate, right? Oh, you know, you're a capitalist Yankee dog, and oh, you know, you're some crazy communist that's going to take away everybody's property. And I mean, those are interesting intellectual arguments, but I think for your generation, you should be practical and just choose from what works. You don't have to worry about whether it neatly fits into socialist theory or capitalist theory -- you should just decide what works. And I said this to President Castro in Cuba. I said, look, you've made great progress in educating young people. Every child in Cuba gets a basic education -- that's a huge improvement from where it was. Medical care -- the life expectancy of Cubans is equivalent to the United States, despite it being a very poor country, because they have access to health care. That's a huge achievement. They should be congratulated. But you drive around Havana and you say this economy is not working. It looks like it did in the 1950s. And so you have to be practical in asking yourself how can you achieve the goals of equality and inclusion, but also recognize that the market system produces a lot of wealth and goods and services. And it also gives individuals freedom because they have initiative. And so you don't have to be rigid in saying it’s either this or that, you can say -- depending on the problem you're trying to solve, depending on the social issues that you're trying to address what works. And I think that what you’ll find is that the most successful societies, the most successful economies are ones that are rooted in a market-based system, but also recognize that a market does not work by itself. It has to have a social and moral and ethical and community basis, and there has to be inclusion. Otherwise it’s not stable. And it’s up to you."

"166 Cubans, members of the military and civilians, were rounded up on May 27, 1966 and executed after a total of seven pints of their blood could be harvested. The blood sold for $50 per pint in Communist Vietnam to obtain hard currency while also contributing to the Vietcong Communist aggression. Extracting the amount of blood Castro desired to be sold in Vietcong would always result in a person suffering from cerebral anemia. Cerebral anemia causes someone to go through paralysis and unconsciousness. In this blatant disregard for human rights the subjects were first drained of their blood to the point of cerebral anemia before being carried on a stretcher down a long hall where they would be killed."--Chris Flynn

George Orwell, "The Road to Wigan Pier"

"One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England. One day this summer I was riding through Letchworth when the bus stopped and two dreadful-looking old men got on to it. They were both about sixty, both very short, pink, and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was obscenely bald, the other had long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus. The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at them, and back again at me, and murmured 'Socialists', as you would say, 'Red Indians'. He was probably right--the I.L.P. were holding their summer school at Letchworth. But the point is that to him, as an ordinary man, a crank meant a Socialist and a Socialist meant a crank. Any Socialist, he probably felt, could be counted on to have something eccentric about him. And some such notion seems to exist even among Socialists themselves. For instance, I have here a prospectus from another summer school which states its terms per week and then asks me to say 'whether my diet is ordinary or vegetarian'. They take it for granted, you see, that it is necessary to ask this question. This kind of thing is by itself sufficient to alienate plenty of decent people. And their instinct is perfectly sound, for the food-crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcass; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity. ...We have reached a stage when the very word 'Socialism' calls up, on the one hand, a picture of aeroplanes, tractors, and huge glittering factories of glass and concrete; on the other, a picture of vegetarians with wilting beards, of Bolshevik commissars (half gangster, half gramophone), of earnest ladies in sandals, shock-headed Marxists chewing polysyllables, escaped Quakers, birth-control fanatics, and Labour Party backstairs-crawlers. Socialism, at least in this island, does not smell any longer of revolution and the overthrow of tyrants; it smells of crankishness, machine-worship, and the stupid cult of Russia."

"Special Importance Committee on State Security of the USSR 14.05.1983 No. 1029 Ch/OV Moscow

Regarding Senator Kennedy’s request to the General Secretary of the Communist Party Comrade Y.V. Andropov;

Comrade Y.V. Andropov,

On 9-10 May of this year, Senator Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant J. Tunney was in Moscow. The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov:

Senator Kennedy, like other rational people, is very troubled by the current state of Soviet-American relations. Events are developing such that this relationship coupled with the general state of global affairs will make the situation even more dangerous. The main reason for this is Reagan’s belligerence, and his firm commitment to deploy new American middle range nuclear weapons within Western Europe.

1. Kennedy asks Y.V. Andropov to consider inviting the senator to Moscow for a personal meeting in July of this year. The main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA. He would also like to inform you that he has planned a trip through Western Europe, where he anticipates meeting England’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President Mitterand in which he will exchange similar ideas regarding the same issues.

If his proposals would be accepted in principle, Kennedy would send his representative to Moscow to resolve questions regarding organizing such a visit.

Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews. Specifically, the president of the board of directors of ABC, Elton Raul and television columnists Walter Cronkite or Barbara Walters could visit Moscow. The senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side."

To please his Commie Professor dad, student Bootygig wins the Profile in Courage essay contest, where he praised Bernie's bravery for openly admitting to being a socialist. 
Bootyboy meets Ted Kennedy. 
Now, he's running against Bernie--by hiding his own Communism. 
The student becomes the Master of Deception. 

It's the Circle--the Circle of Marx.

(via The People's Cube)

"Cuban children were taught in school that their highest loyalty is to the Communist Party. They were instructed to denounce their parents to authorities for counter-revolutionary tendencies. If parents, in the privacy of their own home, explained ideas to their children that conflicted with communist ideology, they could be jailed for three years under the Code for Children, Youth and Family.  The school system stifled private religious beliefs. Cuban children were taught that God does not exist and that religion was the “opium of the masses.” If a child mentioned God in a class, the child’s parents were called in for a stern lecture that they were “confusing” the child and given a warning. Starting in elementary school, a student’s progress was recorded in a so-called “cumulative school file.” The file not only recorded academic progress but also measured the “revolutionary integration” of both the student and the student’s family, such as whether they participated in mass demonstrations. The file was updated throughout the life of the child, whose education and work options would be determined by what it contained."--Gregory Wallace, via Babalu Blog

Let's give President Reagan the last word:

"If they persist, pull the plug.

It's still trust - but verify.

It's still play - but cut the cards.

It's still watch closely - and don't be afraid to see what you see."