When Did Leftism Go Bad, or Was it Ever Any Other Way?

Below is the latest in an occasional series of essays on the Left by our English correspondent Peter.

The Red Evolution II: When did leftism go bad, or was it ever any other way?

by Peter

I was amazed last August when the head of the Roman Catholic church, His Holiness Pope Francis, asserted that the most dynamic and rapidly growing religion in the last 100 years has been neither Christianity nor Islam but leftism. Leftism? When I got over the shock I had to ask why the demented old buffer chose to make this outrageous statement at all, never mind that it was only a matter of days after two Muslims slit the throat of a French Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. Jacques Hamel, 85, while he was saying Mass in his church. I am still at a loss.

I have no doubt at all that leftists believe in nothing, represent nothing and support nothing. They will bitch, bellyache, gripe and grouse for hours telling you what they are against, i.e. democracy, capitalism, Christianity, Western culture, nation states, conservatism; in fact everything that we in the West hold sacred. And they will overwhelm any contradicting view with raging torrents of well-rehearsed, high-decibel gobbledygook, generally as a diversionary tactic to prevent their victims from asking questions or, indeed, articulating any form of coherent riposte.

So how did leftism, progressivism, communism, liberalism, radicalism or whatever else you choose to call it become such a malign and malevolent force? It is commonly believed that the basis of Leftism evolved from The Enlightenment, but if so, how did such high-minded and principled people such as John Locke, Charles-Louis Montesquieu, Isaac Newton, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Francois-Marie Voltaire and many others associate themselves with a movement that would degenerate into so much evil? Many leftists deny the malignancy of the movement of which they have become part, but that is only to be expected. To the rest of us, the evil of leftism is only too clear.

The era of the Enlightenment ended with two momentous revolutions, both of which significantly and irrevocably changed the world. The American Revolution was a war fought against a colonial power by colonists who demanded and gained the right to self-determination and, in so doing, created a nation that would eventually become the figurehead of the free world. In contrast, the French Revolution in many ways became an inspiration to those who would enslave that world and, in the process, substantially undermine any meaningful discourse.

A great deal has been written about the French Revolution, and I do not propose to add to it. The revolution covered a period from 14 July 1789 until 27 July 1794, beginning with the storming of the Bastille and ending with the execution of Maximilian Robespierre. In between there occurred the Reign of Terror, a five year blood-bath, in which the royal family, so-called counter revolutionaries, moderates, reformers, priests, aristocrats along with anyone else whose face didn’t fit or who was adjudged to have looked sideways at a member of the Committee of Public Safety, were systematically put to death. Following the death of Robespierre, those who remained alive and in power decided, purely on the grounds of self-preservation, that the Reign of Terror had run its course and something approaching normality should now return. It has been estimated that 17,000 people went to the guillotine as the result of the terror, while over 100,000 were imprisoned after being denounced as counter-revolutionaries. This was relatively small beer when compared with the later excesses of Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, the Kim dynasty and Mao but it was clearly enough to shock the rest of the population into submission.

While the revolution was at its height, those who were engaged in its pursuit thought that not only was it a good thing to cut off the heads of their own erstwhile rulers and anyone else who incurred their ire, they should spread their new-found wisdom to their European neighbours, encourage them to decapitate their rulers, too, and ally themselves with France to form a coalition of like-minded nations — rather like today’s European Union. Unfortunately for the French, the leadership of the rest of Europe did not share their revolutionary zeal, especially the part about having their heads cut off. As a result of their attempts to export their revolution, the newly established Gallic collective found itself at war with Austria, Prussia, Holland, Spain and, the old enemy, Great Britain.

The prime movers in the revolution were, inter alia, the “Sans-Culottes”, the masses, along with the Girondins a radical group and the Jacobins, a revolutionary political movement led by Robespierre. The Jacobins were members of a political club that met at the Parisian Dominican convent in the Rue St. Jacques — Jacobus in Latin — from which they derived their name. It was they who set up the revolutionary dictatorship that dominated the Committee for Public Safety and the French Parliament, and it was they who instigated the reign of terror. It has been argued that the Jacobins were the forefathers of today’s political militants, and that the French Revolution itself was the birth of today’s leftist movement. Indeed, the behavior of the Jacobins bore a striking similarity to that of groups such as Antifa and Unite Against Fascism, who have assumed the right to assault and physically damage anyone who expresses thought processes incongruent with their own leftist template. The Jacobins were not very nice people but neither were the Herbertists, a radical revolutionary group that also played a significant role in the Revolution. They were fiercely anti-Christian, and actively supported the proposal later attributed to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon that “all property is theft,” using that premise to enforce state seizure of goods, often for their own enrichment. Their leadership went to the guillotine on 24th March 1794, following that of the Girondins, and nobody was sorry to see them go.

The year 1848 was ultimately referred to as the year of Revolution, as people rose up all across Europe and parts of South America to take part in the most widespread series of revolutionary actions in European history. Although this had all but fizzled out within a year, at its height, over fifty countries were affected and were changed significantly by events. At the same time tens of thousands of people were killed, and many more forced into exile. The revolutions were most important in France, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Italy, and the Austrian Empire, and resulted in significant lasting reforms, including the abolition of serfdom in Austria and Hungary, the end of absolute monarchy in Denmark, and the introduction of parliamentary democracy in the Netherlands. Curiously enough, none of this had anything whatsoever to do with Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels, but their time would come.

In February 1848, while much of Europe was erupting into violent revolution, Marx and Engels delivered the document that would be published as the Manifesto of the Communist League to a printer in London, just three months before Marx’s thirtieth birthday. It is unlikely that either the Jacobins or the French Revolution were directly responsible for the ideologies of Communism or socialism, but they surely contributed to the political and social environment that nurtured and developed both, and it is unlikely that Marx or Engels would have reached their conclusions without them.


In the years prior to 1848 Marx completed his education and gradually developed his understanding, analysis and assessment of the world around him. He had been born into a wealthy middle class family in Trier, Prussia, the son of a successful lawyer. Through his Dutch mother, Henrietta Pressburg, he was related to the Philips family that later founded the Philips electronics conglomerate in Eindhoven. The connection proved to be beneficial to Marx in later years, as he was able to obtain loans from his maternal uncle Lion Philips at times when his family was experiencing financial difficulty in London.

In October 1835 Marx entered the University of Bonn to study law, but as he did not appear to be taking his studies seriously, his father transferred him to Berlin the following year, where he ultimately gained a law degree. He subsequently secured his doctorate from the University of Jena in 1841, with a paper entitled The Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature. Presumably the faculty of the University of Jena understood what this was about, but I suspect they were in a minority and a lot further up their ivory tower than anyone else.

Much has been made of the contention that Marx was born Jewish, though these days this is often a device utilized by leftists to deflect criticism of Marxism by accusing detractors of anti-Semitism. His father, Heinrich (formerly Hershel) renounced Judaism in favour of Lutheranism before Karl was born and his son was baptized into the Lutheran faith. When Marx married the minor aristocrat Jenny von Westphalen, he did so in a protestant church in Kreutznach. They must have made a striking couple, the beautiful aristocratic Jenny and the incredibly hirsute Karl, who, even then, resembled a cross between a werewolf and a lavatory brush. When he declared himself later to be an atheist, it was not Judaism that he renounced, but Christianity.

As a post-graduate Marx became interested in the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel while writing prolifically both fiction and non-fiction. In 1842, he became a journalist in Cologne writing for a radical paper known as Rheinische Zeitung (Rhineland News), producing articles that were critical of not only of European right-wing regimes but also of those on the left that he and his colleagues considered to be insufficiently radical. The writings and other activities of Marx and his associates soon drew the attention of the authorities, and Rheinische Zeitung was subjected to close scrutiny and censorship before being banned altogether by the Prussian Government under pressure from the Russian Czar, Nicholas I. At this point Marx decided to relocate to Paris. It was here that he met his future friend and long-time collaborator Friedrich Engels.

While he was in Paris, Marx continued to study intensely while writing a number of significant volumes, including The Holy Family, published in 1845. He also became co-editor of the leftist Parisian newspaper the Deutsch Franzosische Jahrbucher (German-French Annals). Only one issue was ever published, but it had to be considered worthy of note since it was instantly banned by the German states although imported copies were circulated secretly and read widely. After the closure of the Annals, Marx started to write for the only uncensored far left journal in Paris, Vorwarts (Forward). This paper was connected with the self-styled League of the Just, a clandestine, utopian socialist organization with whom Marx considered himself a close associate and fellow traveller. In the meantime, his activities and writings were still being monitored, this time by the French authorities, who closed down Vorwarts at the request of the King of Prussia and in February 1845 expelled Marx from their country.

Having just upset the King of Prussia, Marx did not feel that a return to Germany was a good idea, so he made the comparatively short journey to Brussels where he continued to study capitalism and economics. Two months later he was joined by Engels and a growing number of exiled socialists from all over Europe in addition to many members of the League of the Just. In order to obtain permission to remain in Belgium, Marx had to give an pledge to the authorities that he would refrain from publishing anything that was controversial or politically sensitive, but that did not guarantee that he would be left alone or that he would not write anything that could be published later. In November 1847 he and Engels started to write what would ultimately become known as the Communist Manifesto. Now, all he needed was a group of people to energize the working classes into a mass movement, and he approached members of the League of the Just to undertake this role. Initially they were reluctant to do this, as up until then they had been a secret organization and, for obvious reasons, the membership did not want to reveal themselves, especially in the prevailing political climate. However, Marx proved to be very persuasive, and by June 1847 he had convinced them to come out of the shadows and form a new political party to be called “The Communist League”.

Later the following year, 1848, after he had published the Communist Manifesto Marx was on the move again, having been accused by the Belgian Ministry of Justice of funding the supply of arms to a section of Belgian workers to enable them to stage a revolutionary uprising. While he might well have sympathized with such activities and, due to a substantial legacy, he had the means to provide them with funding, there was no evidence to prove that he was actually guilty of the charge, but he knew he was a marked man and he briefly fled back to France before moving on to Cologne, where he continued to work on behalf of the Communist League in the hope that the Europe-wide revolution would spread to Germany. With that in mind, he launched the publication of a new newspaper, Neue Rheinische Zeitung (New Rhineland News).

While he was in Cologne, Marx was continually harassed by the police. On several occasions, he was arrested and tried on trumped-up charges, the contemporary equivalent of Hate Speech and incitement, but was acquitted each time. Following a change of government in Prussia, pressure was being applied to left-leaning activists and, following the enforced closure of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung by the Prussian state Marx returned to Paris, only to find himself expelled from there, too, as a political undesirable. Having run out of all other available options, he sought sanctuary in London, where he remained until his death in 1883.

While he was in London, Marx achieved a great deal and wrote prolifically thereby enhancing his reputation as a philosopher, economist, sociologist, political theorist and, above all, a revolutionary socialist. Yet there was no working class uprising in England, a situation which led to Marx’s being branded as a failure by certain historians. This has been compounded by the fact that much of his writing, including the final two volumes of Das Kapital, were only published after his death. However, the assertion that Marx had in some way failed was refuted by Eric Hobsbawm, the late leftist historian, who pointed out that while Marx had not achieved a large following in his lifetime, his writings and theories remained an influence long after his death and they continue to be such, though he did not earn a great deal of money from them. However, the true measure of a man should not be represented by the amount of wealth he managed to accumulate during his lifetime, nor has it been with Marx, who died a pauper.

Whatever one might feel about Marxism — and I am by no means a supporter — it is beyond dispute that Marx never killed anyone neither did he order anyone’s death or imprisonment. It might be argued that by making statements to the effect that the bourgeoisie must overthrow the aristocracy before the proletariat could overthrow the bourgeoisie and impose a proletarian dictatorship, his writings had been an incitement to violence. That such violence did subsequently occur in a multitude of uprisings and revolutions involving millions of deaths instigated by others in the name of Marx cannot be directly laid at his door. But for all that, Marxism was a failure.

Most of those countries whose economies were based on Marxist theories, such as the former Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites, reverted to democracy and capitalism after the Marxist experiment collapsed. Indeed, any political, social or economic system that has to be imposed and maintained by compulsion, violence and fear is eventually destined to fail.

My own theory on why Marxism failed so spectacularly is quite simple: his writings lacked clarity. Some months ago I purchased a copy of Marx’s and Engels’ Communist Manifesto. Containing a mere 44 pages of narrative, I thought I would get through it in a couple of hours but I was mistaken. It was forbidding enough that the front cover flaunted photographs of both hirsute authors each exuding an air of icy malevolence, but the content also proved to be a challenge, rather like dissecting a corpse with a set of chopsticks. What antagonized me most was the reluctance of either Marx or Engels to present any cogent, well-presented or reasoned argument to support what was little more than a convoluted list of unsubstantiated statements, many of which have subsequently been disproved.

I bought the book for the same reason I once bought The Observer’s Book of Reptiles before I left the UK for India, that is, to know my enemy. However, all I succeeded in doing was to reinforce my original view that Marx lacked clarity. Marx’s written works have been translated into every known language, even though most are difficult for the non-academic or the layman to decipher and, for that reason, probably lost a little of their meaning each time they were translated. This would explain a lot. For example, take a country such as Albania, officially the poorest country in Europe by the time it abandoned Communism. The whole place had been laid waste politically, socially and economically under the paranoid leadership of Enver Hoxha, who suppressed dissent and banished dissenters to a series of prison camps modeled on Soviet gulags, where they were forced to work in government-controlled mines or on construction projects, and a great many of them died as a direct result of the atrocious and inhumane conditions. The people who were not confined to camps fared little better in a climate of endless political murders, chronic food shortages and little contact with the outside world. The citizens lived under intense state scrutiny. There was a general disregard for their well-being, not to mention the rule of law by the elite, which brought about realistic comparisons with North Korea, give or take a few nukes.

When the Albanian communist system finally collapsed, people were leaving in droves by ship, ferry, rowing boat or raft, and, missing out Yugoslavia, which had troubles of its own, they headed straight for Italy any which way they could. The Albanian economy had become so bad that, even if the entire workforce had sat down, lit up a cigarette and done absolutely nothing for the previous fifty years, the country could not have been left in a worse state. Yet they claimed to have used Marxism as their blueprint.

Maybe they had the Bulgarian version.

As for Marx, himself, I suspect he was less of a blazing beacon for the repression that came after him and more of a scapegoat. Either way, Marxism certainly got the blame. However, none of the above addresses my original question, that is: when did leftism go bad, or was it ever any other way? I do not claim to have an answer, only another theory. Leftism turned bad when it divorced itself from the moral constraints imposed by Judeo-Christianity. It lost its compass, its compassion and its humanity, ultimately leading to the atrocities committed by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Castros and the Kim dynasty. Clearly there were many others but these were the worst of the worst.

At this point, I was about to illustrate the contrast between the Victorian Christian Philanthropists and the burgeoning trade union movement operating in western countries at around the same time, but I fear I might have already strained the attention span of those readers who are still with me. Instead, I will conclude by quoting my favourite definition of a Communist. It comes not from a politician, cleric or philosopher but from a long-dead English music hall entertainer by the name of Charlie Chester.

He said that a Communist is a man who wants all the money in the world shared out equally among all the people in the world… and when he has spent his, he wants it all shared out again.

Peter is an English expatriate who now lives in Thailand.

Previous posts:

2014   Sep   19   Why I Left England’s Mean and Unpleasant Land
    Oct   5   Pakistan I: The Blasphemy Laws
        6   Pakistan II: The Hudood Ordinances
        13   Bradistan: Importing a Culture Gap
        18   “I’m As Mad As Hell and I’m Not Going to Take This Any More”
2015   Feb   9   Iran: Strangled by a Gordian Knot
    Jul   30   Another Leftist Smear Job
2016   Jan   3   All Talk and No Action: The Local Authority Malaise
    Feb   15   How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Loathe the Left
 

58 thoughts on “When Did Leftism Go Bad, or Was it Ever Any Other Way?

  1. A good read! I don’t believe anyone can accurately pinpoint your question as there are so many trails that shoot off into so many possibilities.

    My own observation on why the Left eventually descended into evil is due to the ‘movement’ and its own realization, that if God was not abandoned then its goals could never be attained. And I believe it is a given, that once God is denied then the only authority on Earth then becomes Man who is answerable only to himself.

    You have left some clues – intentionally? As to some aspects of Marx’s life but do not go into any detail concerning his ‘educators’ and his ‘benefactors.’

    I believe Rothschild was a benefactor and the Jesuit brand of how the world should function, one of his educators.

    Maybe Marx’s lack of depth in detail of how his brand of ‘Utopia’ could come about may have been more to do with his lack of interest in that 44 page book and more to do with what the writing of it would personally reward him with?

    Eustace Mullins, among others, has much to say about that.

  2. One of the things about the left is that they claim to represent the workers yet are nearly uniformly themselves from the middle and upper classes.
    It’s a simplistic observation, but leftism appears to be nothing more than unexceptional people who have discovered that if they cajole enough poorer people to their cause, they can get the power that otherwise would elude them.

  3. Today’s leftists are mentally inferior to the 60’s radicals. Don’t know if it’s attributed to paint chips, drugs or lead poisoning, but it’s nearly impossible to get through to them.

      • Kerry’s generation, yes. The younger ones, no. They are cheap wannabe’s, saw them in school a few yrs ago. The young girls run around calling themselves hippie chicks, until I reminded them that was all part of the VN anti-war movement, and they were not hippie chicks. Even that is something that was earned by being there.
        These brainless twits aren’t part of MY generation. Smoking pot and acting like an idiot doesn’t automatically make you such, nor does the 45 yr age difference. These lost souls are trying to latch onto some form of identity, and to them, the hippie movement was way cool. So between the brain dead rednecks and the wannabe hippies, we’re right back to where we where when I was a teenager, except the politics of the VN era and today are not the same. The VN protestors believed in their cause, many were stirred up by the returning vets, these kids today don’t even know what they’re screaming about, except that everyone else is doing it too.

        • I can’t agree with your disgust at today’s youngsters.

          I lived in the Vietnam era, was in the anti-war protests, and was drafted for two years in the army, though not in Vietnam.

          I don’t think you’re distinguishing between the leftists and the conservatives. The leftists are at least as passionate about destroying the country now as they were then. More so, as the stakes today are the actual existence of the country, while during Vietnam, nobody thought that even a complete North Vietnamese victory would present any danger to the US itself. In spite of the fact that Johnson managed to get 58,000 of our best people killed in a war he didn’t want to fight and certainly didn’t want to win.
          https://www.amazon.com/Dereliction-Duty-Johnson-McNamara-Chiefs-ebook/dp/B004HW7834/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483414158&sr=1-1&keywords=dereliction+of+duty

          Brain-dead rednecks? You mean, the ones who voted for Trump? You can talk to them. Have you tried talking to the leftist demonstrators?

          Today is a much more exciting time than during Vietnam…a much more dangerous time as well. We’re in the final act. The election of Hillary was supposed to be the last nail in the dissolution of the idea of the US as a nation. We’re fighting a rear-guard action, we do have some artillery on our side, but it’s going to be close in any case. You couldn’t ask for better people than the Trump youth and Trump supporters.

  4. Here’s a clue “dictatorship of the proletariat”. A dictatorship in involuntary, and thus, immoral. A dictatorship is political rape and socialism is economic rape – all evil because they are involuntary/non-consensual.

    Stefan Molyneaux shows the real character of Marx, as lazy, wastrel, unfaithful [disgusting worthless creature] who invented socialism as a means of justifying his cadging of others. Just like his followers.

    “The Truth About Karl Marx”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA2lCBJu2Gg

    Fundamentally Leftism is about State Power and uses coercion instead of persuasion to implement its goals. Because coercion means there is no feedback loop, there is no evolutionary improvement of its policies based on empirical proof, hence it never gets better – and, because sociopaths are drawn to the coercive power, it inevitably gets co-opted by the most ruthless and least empathetic – which is why is destroys societies and commits democide one way or another.

    Collectivism Kills.

  5. I am a proud liberal or lefty, as some people refer to us, but in my little corner of the world it stands for something very simple: Workers’ Rights and Good Pay. I’m ticked that such a basic belief has morphed into something unrecognizable.

    As I’ve said many times, once we can all pay our mortgages with plenty of cash left over in the bank, pay for any illness that may come our way, and afford fun vacations for the children, we can then squabble about restroom designations and indulge in other frivolous pursuits.

    Until then, let’s try to stay out of wars of choice.

    • There’s nothing wrong with wanting working class people to have a decent life and to have some say in their own working conditions. You’re not the only union member here.

      However, the temptation for some appears to be that they hijack people’s good and reasonable intentions, so that they are regarded as some kind of saviours, who have the power and (in their own opions) the intellect to run everything in a ‘fairer’ way.

      Churchill said in a speech once that socialism may have started out with the sentiment that what’s mine is yours … a well meaning effort to share resources so that everyone was better off … but it became a nasty philosophy that rests on the idea that what’s yours is mine … and there is only one group of people who knows how to re-distribute everyone else’s wealth and resources … obviously people can’t be trusted to do that for themselves, they need to be told how it should be done. That is to say: everything and everyone must be controlled.

      That right there – that is the root of all evil.

      It’s all a total scam though – these people are power hungry incompetents who don’t have the intellect or the personal integrity to be left alone in charge of anyone else’s affairs.

    • Maybe it’s time to re-examine exactly what you are supporting and why you identify with them. Trump more than anyone else in the election appeared to be the champion of the worker, witness the jobs he preserved even prior to taking office. There is no workers utopian paradise, other than some fantasy that exists in peoples minds. There is only economic reality, which will never make more than 50% of the population happy (probably even less). Hilary was pushing the same tired pandering lies that the Democratic party spews out to idiots. Actions, not words are what is important. We will see what actions Trump does, and ignore what he says. I also would not call the war on Islamic fundamentalism a war of choice. You may or may not believe in Christianity, but you need to support it and it’s ideals as a matter of survival. The multiculturalism of the left is suicide for the majority of us.

    • if you believe in sharing the wealth why don’t you join together with all the other leftists and do it, nobody will stop you. at least not here in the united states. you say your for the working people, well the guy that owns the business is a worker too. if you are for the working people why is that everything you do is to help the people that don’t work at the expense of the people that do.
      maybe if you didn’t embrace an economic system that offer no incentive to people to work you might be more successful.

      • I did not vote for Clinton, and my husband and I are not union members although many of our friends and family are.

        We own several retail stores and weathered the banks’ crash because we would not lay anyone off. We took the hit and came back stronger than before. We also pay for health care and give bonuses when the stores profit. There is no turnover.

        You sound as shrill and accusatory of the people you condemn, and jump to conclusions about people you never met. Please stop.

        Happy New Year.

  6. The “Left” is a collection of utopians who are too ignorant and dim to see the impossibility of their dreams and schemes . . . but also too proud and stubborn to learn anything of use to humanity and nature. They become dangerous when they insist on being correct, and that everyone else agree with them.

    They will not change in 2017.

    • I see the left as a collection of failed, rejected misfits who hate each other as much as they hate conservatives. They have nothing of value to add to any political discussion as all they truly desire to do is to destroy the existing order. They have nothing to offer in terms of viable alternatives.

  7. My mother’s version of Chester’s saying is:
    “What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is mine.”

    It’s years ago that she defined communism thus to me, and it took quite a long time to fully sink in how right she is!

    • Well, at least they are honest about property being theft . . . when they’ve stolen the property through the force of the state.

  8. Apart from the occasional useful but thoroughgoing idiot and those who have mistaken slogans for intentions, I don’t believe that there has ever been anything actually good about any aspect of the left, anywhere, at any time.

    Much is made of the way they appoint themselves protectors of whoever and whatever. But if you pay any attention you notice that people very very rarely call for the assistance of the serious left. They just show up where there is suffering and claim to be the saviors. Then they take over.

    Let’s pretend that the salvation is real, just for a moment. If I wash your car without your permission does it become MY car? I think not. And then, there is never any salvation forthcoming anyway.

    In point of fact, none of the icons of the left, from the earliest utopians right up to Obama and Bernie Sanders has ever produced anything of lasting value to anybody.

    We make much of Rousseau, but on close inspection there’s not really much there there. Phenomenal conceits. But not much of use in the real world.

    For my money “leftism” or whatever you want to call it (of late I have been referring to them privately as the Borg) is nothing more or less than primitive tribal savagery trying to reassert itself over the civilized world. And that, aided, most unfortunately, by extremely well trained, impressively clever but deeply corrupted minds.

    With the left, calm and comity today, always means unspeakable suffering later on.

    I do not believe that tolerance and civility are wise choices when dealing with the left.

    • I generally agree with what you have written here, but I find that lumping those who cannot think out the repercussions of accepting at face value the empty words from those who promise much but deliver little as being inhabitants of the Left, is just too convenient.

      I am guilty of this ‘pigeon holing’ myself.

      At any time throughout history there have always been those who will accept false promises when they are at a point in their lives where they have nothing left to lose. A graphic example of that kind of thinking would have be the reason the Russian revolution was so successful, the success being largely due to the Russian peasant class who ran with it. Lenin’s Globalist Revolution would never have succeeded in other countries where the peasant class had been mostly replaced by a middle class as throughout the West at the time.

      They tried it in Germany during the 1920s, but there was enough resistance from the more affluent and middle classes that rejected Communism for National Socialism on the rise of Hitler and although both ideologies are different sides of the same coin, at least National Socialism permitted private property rights while Communism confiscated it.

      Much of the rise of the middle class was due to the Union movement which soon became hijacked by those intent on political control, not just of the Unions they were part of, but the whole political system within the countries that permitted Unions to operate as representatives of the worker.

      Idealists will tend to surface everywhere and any place and promise much in return for political support – Van Jones comes to mind here – but when put to the hard questions by those who can see through such idealism will tend to reveal their intolerance for being exposed to such questioning knowing full well that they will never stand up to honest scrutiny of what they push.

      It is generally those who think with their heart and not with their logic who will always fall for such idealism. So should we blame them all for that?

      • I think you’re on to something. Leftists have a different thought pattern. I don’t know if it’s inherited, learned, or developed, but leftists actually think differently.

        You can read the chapter on Marx that MC linked to for an exposition of the thought processes of Marx, such as they were. I found the description of Marx’s relationship with reality to be eerily close to the thought patterns of my Marxist relative.

        • My sister in- law is a great example of that kind of thinking. While she gets to exercise her thoughts on ‘current affairs’, whenever I question her stance or exercise my own thoughts – I am the one who is attacked by her, by my daughter and my wife who soon joins in, as being intolerant or whatever they happen to run with at the time.

          I think her and Marx would have made a great couple!

          But on Marx’s thinking – which was heavily influenced by his father – it also seems that Karl’s marriage to Jenny Weisphalt? was a very opportunistic move for him as it got him introduced to some very influential people who in turn moved with other and more influential people.

          I don’t believe it was Marx whose thoughts went into that book but someone else’s. And someone/somepeople of high prominence who had a big agenda.

          It’s a bit of maze in figuring out, but I believe Marx became a pawn for those people of influence in the writing of that book and when one understands the difficulty in having any book published at that time, then one soon realizes that a very prominent ‘benefactor’ was almost a necessity to put one’s ideas into print.

  9. “Leftism” went bad after the publication of certain Jewish texts that provide a roadmap into the psyche of man that were previously transmitted orally from master to student.

    [redacted. An almost-thousand-word comment, mostly off-topic, is too long by about 700 words. You might try breaking it up into four or five comments, each dedicated to one of the subjects mentioned.]

    • @Sally

      You need to also mention the other Jewish texts:

      1. There is one LAW for all

      2. Human life is precious

      Without these two Hebraic principles YOU would be a barbarian too.

      • So was my post publicly redacted yet privately sent to your correspondent to comment on publicly? Sort of, if calling me a barbarian counts as a comment. Seems odd.

        To MC: Obviously I’m referring to the Zohar, Sefer Yetzirah and a few other fragments, as you well know.

        To GoV: My comments are not so much “off-topic”, as led beyond the realm of what you’re comfortable defining here. I completely understand as this is your gig. For some reason, the vibe here really does inspire my whole mind. From now on, I’ll keep my ideas to myself since I think they’re more valuable that way anyway. So Thanks. I know.

        But really, we can’t move forward unless we dip into the left for what it is. And here’s a poor bloke trying to understand it in terms of received internet widsom, and he does come across as excusing Marx and his “great accomplishments”. I meant to caveat that without criticism. The left is poetry. And what I wrote makes more sense to many that much of the poetry you post here. It’s meant to deepen the conver. Sorry you don’t relate. I think you’re short-sighted in not leaving it up for others to synapse-fire.

        • It is not that we are “uncomfortable” with your content, but that you hold forth at such great length. It’s not appropriate to leave thousand-word comments that are not quite on-topic.

          If you want to write at that length, I suggest that you do it on your own blog, and then leave the link here. That’s perfectly acceptable.

        • “And here’s a poor bloke trying to understand it in terms of received internet widsom, and he does come across as excusing Marx and his “great accomplishments”.

          Sally, this comes over as a hideously patronising and offensive comment as well as being unbelievably arrogant. I hope you do not propose to continue in this mode.

        • Just for the record, Nobody called you a barbarian except yourself, and the Baron did not send me the text of your post, your first paragraph said it all.

  10. I believe the left right division comes from the Bible, and thus the Left is always bad, like righthanded man’s left hand, or necessary evil bad… It looks the same, but is not the same, because it is flipped, and the left also does not have the same capabilities and potential as the right. Yet when you have to shovel some dirt, even the left hand comes handy 🙂

  11. I always admire the left’s ability to control history; Joos are Nazis, Stalin was a good family man, AH was an ultra-conservative.

    Somehow they get intelligent people believing their fake history, and never, ever, checking the facts. I read Gulag Archrrlrgo when it came out, it shocked me, but the left quickly encapsulated it and moved it to a political area 51.

    They also manage to control the history here in Israel. Israel was the product of Christian thinkers in 19th century UK, It has been sustained by Christians in the USA. The left somehow manages to encapsulate islamic terrorism in Israel as ‘Freedom fighting’ whilst in the rest of the world it is because muslims are treated unfairly blah blah and should be welcomed into our society but not theirs notice).

    Any discussion of ‘settlements’ must be preceded by a bit of research into whom the land actually belongs to. If it is Palestinian land then at which point in the short history of modern day Palestine (since 1963) did the illegal occupiers, Egypt for Gaza, and Jordan for Judea and Samaria, actually cede the land to them, or, like Kosovo, did they occupy the land by stealth, cunning and Clinton?

  12. Communist: “Property is Theft”

    Libertarian: “Taxation is Theft”

    Other than those polar opposites, read Charles Murray’s “The Bell Curve”. IQ will always separate peoples and nations. Equally distribute all property, let things go and in a generation or two the wealth disparity will be where it started before the equal distribution. This is assuming people live in a free enough society that what you make of yourself is pretty much what you are putting into it with your own effort and IQ.

    Let’s look at the religion most aligned with Communism in actual results and lack of prosperity: Islam. 1.6 billion Muslims and in 110 years only (2) Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry and Medicine vs. 165 Jewish Nobels in these three disciplines with 16 million Jews, a number that is precarious as Muslims and the International/National Socialists are always murdering them. By the way 1.6 billion Communist Chinese have (1) Nobel in these disciplines.

    95% of the rest of Nobels in the hard sciences were won by Christians or people in historically Christian countries. Point out these differences in 99% of today’s colleges and universities (you know, the institutions most resembling the Socialist way of life in the West) and you will thrown out for hate speech,

    • Interesting about the Chinese and Nobel prizes–we tend to forget the Chinese, yet their I.Q’s are supposed to be right up there….

      Just goes to show, I.Q. is only a very rough guide and has very little to do with inventiveness, e.g..

      • ” I.Q. is only a very rough guide…”

        Exactly so.

        Eugenics is the very sensible notion that the quality of the population is largely determined by genetics, and that scientific knowledge should be applied to enhance the quality of the population.

        But, any eugenics program mandated or enacted by a government will end in the sheerest disaster. The most obvious reason is that government will look for an easy measure like IQ. Assuming the government is able to selectively modify the population, you’ll wind up with a large group of highly-verbal sociopaths, which looks remarkably like almost any present-day government bureaucracy.

        What we are actually practicing now is a counter-eugenics program. Large government resources are taken from productive people to support the offspring of people who are too unskilled, too stupid, too lazy or simply too evil, to engage in any productive, socially=enhancing activity. The obvious result is that productive people are discouraged fro9m having many children, while non-productive people are rewarded.

        The high-IQ Chinese have their uses, but imaginative and productive creativity is not part of those uses.

        • as cogent a post on the state of the union as I have read.

          We have a group of highly-verbal sociopaths who hijacked a free market for the interests of a few, and gave capitalism a bad name.

          When I see ads to “Feed the Children” – I am repulsed. Each time we send vaccines and penicillin to the 3rd world we hasten the demise of every bird and butterfly.

          The music is slowing and there are not 7 billion chairs.

          World populations with a mean IQ below 90 are not capable of self governance. Yet those are the very people we feed, house, and nurture beyond their capacity to then fend for themselves.

          I do fear it’s kill or be killed time, yet we are unprepared for the carnage that will be necessary to save a thousand years of Western Civilization, not to mention our oceans, rivers, plants and animals.

          Last year, no one reported the disappearance of the dogs and cats along the Hungarian/Serbian razor wire fence. Thousands of Muslims backed up at that border roasted the area pets over campfires while Serbs cowered in their homes.

          Gardens were denuded, trees plucked clean – and the local population was without a voice in the European press.

          The Guardian ran 1 story on the strange disappearance of cats in Austria. I was in Hungary at the time. The locals I spoke to were ready to kill every Muslim invader with their bare hands… starting with the toddlers tossed over the razor wire fences.

          It’s genocide or doom. And few are listening.

          • It’s hard to think of Serbs, the tenacious fighters against the Ottomans, Nazis, and the Bosnian and Kosova militias, as cowering in their homes. And yet,the totally-unjustified Clinton bombing campaign and a NATO-approved Serbian government seems to have tamed the Serbs quite nicely.

            In truth, I do see a path to population control and even population enhancement that doesn’t involve totalitarianism or mass starvation. Simply allow wealthy individuals or organizations to give away money on their own terms. They could commit themselves to supporting incompetent individuals in a comfortable style for the rest of their lives in the conditions they become sterile.

            The individuals involved would be free to decline the offer, and either support themselves or seek unconditional support from another wealthy individual.

            You could have the same conditions involving aid to other countries, again by individuals. Bill Gates would be free to require the recipients of his aid to undergo sterilization…or, he could continue to give unconditional aid and vaccinations. But, his beneficiaries would eventually face a pretty uncomfortable death.

            Concerning the thesis of the article, the leftists would never consent to anything like this. The reason, as Peter described, is that ” leftists believe in nothing, represent nothing and support nothing…”

            Leftists would certainly not support a scheme based on individual choice, designed to maintain social institutions, and possibly resulting in comfortable lives for most of the people on the planet.

      • Literacy for Chinese is heavy sledding. It’s a difficult language to read and write. I think it limits the numbers who can become intellectuals. Many do become intellectuals but there are many who don’t.

        In the 60s the government had a goal of teaching everyone at least 2,000 characters. 5,000 are needed to read newspapers and novels . . . .

    • I am by no means very intelligent – definitely no genius. Yet, in my life I have created/invented many things that nobody taught me how to do; nor did I read a recipe or manual in the execution of the process. Of course, I hold no patents; and I later find that many other people had arrived at similar inventions and solutions. How and why . . . ? The answer lies in our common culture, much of which we ingested through good, useful education. As Westerners – of the older, waning variety – we had been exposed to ways of thinking, believing and valuing. Not all cultures have this content. Not all cultures are the same.

  13. If we examined, say, a thousand post-hunter-gatherer societies since the dawn of man, wouldn’t we find that they all go through a sort of base-line capitalism stage? as a default?: they all have to trade, barter, invent money, develop legal arrangements for handling disputes, figure out how to borrow, charge for the use of money (interest), protect their disabled, the aged or the sick, do health care, protect themselves from outside invaders by inventing armies….on and on.

    In other words, there is a sort of universal evolution that must occur in all groups of people that is a default, that is pretty much capitalistic, that has developed by gradual incremental agreements among the participating humans–not through coercion or compulsion or force, and that is probably universal in all societies at some stage.

    When this evolution is forced or coerced or speeded up by war or revolution or dictatorship or ideology, then this default and peaceful pathway has been short-circuited and denied.

    When this forcing is new, it is leftism. When it is old, previously used, old hat staid compulsion, then it is called reactionary or far right.

    Anytime there is this experimental politics based upon ideology and forcing, this is a brand of leftism. If it is not experimental and simply old tyranny, it is far right.

    It is probably true that it is dangerous to try to make man into something that you think is going to be a new and better man.

    • You raise some good points, however, your comment does not explain why there are still some cultures (Australian Aboriginal, Pacific Islander/New Guinea and South American) that are still very much of the ‘stone age’ in their hierarchical structures and thinking that precludes them ever becoming part of the modern world unless enticed via various means or even forced to assimilate.

      When one understands what ‘money’ is and how it is utilized to not only achieve a desired economic outcome that is beneficial to all but can also be used in an underhanded way to control who and what receives the ‘benefit’ and what government will rise and fall according to those who control the money spigot, then one may begin to comprehend how this world in controlled by the use of money.

      Politics is for the masses to keep them under control and from finding out who really controls the world.

      G. Edward Griffin has much to say on that.

  14. The lefts ideas are based on the premise that individuals don’t have unique personal interests that cannot be controlled. I will give my life to preserve my freedom but I will not give it to the collective because of some pretext.

  15. This is a great article. thanks Peter. I believe that when men and women no matter how smart or intellectually superior they may feel that they are, if they choose to directly rebel against the basic commandments that God provided, they are in for a world of hurt and “go bad”. Take for instance these basics of the 10 commandments:
    • dont envy
    • dont lie or bear false witness against your neighbor
    • dont steal
    • dont covet
    • honor your parents
    • dont murder
    and as Jesus added, “love your neighbor as yourself”
    Communism fails on all of these fronts as the manifesto and revolution oppose all of these. I believe this is the basic reason the left is evil. The 2nd reason is documented by the communist imprisoned Romanian pastor Richard Wurmbrand is that leftists break a further command of God to not have worship other gods. Pastor Wurmbrand wrote a small book called Marx & Satan describing his direct experiences with communists and what fueled their ideologies—its not atheism, but direct Satanic worship. If you have not read it, you are in for an eye-opening exposure to what is the “story behind the story” of the roots of russian communism and it is not atheism or materialism alone that historians want us to believe. A tremendous darkness occurs when men intentionally rebel against God and his laws.

    • I like to think of the Great Commandment(s) as two points on a map. If what you are doing or your societies laws line up with that things can be good. If they don’t they won’t but it may not be immediate. The love your neighbor part I also take to mean don’t hurt one to help another. eg. Don’t put your grandchildren and beyond into debt that can never be repaid. Don’t starve a nation to feed another.

  16. Very good essay. I particularly liked the emphasis on Marx dying a pauper. A failure at life, yet he influenced many other to evil actions.

    Maybe, just as the fall of the Easter Roman Empire helped spark the Renaissance via the skilled refugees of Constantinople, the triumph of Trump and serious men in charge can reinvigorate the Western World. THere are leaders who get it around, and perchance they can light a spark.

    Otherwise, it’s about time to start playing Cowboys vs. Muslims.

  17. I would have to make the same judgment of Peter’s essay that he makes of Marx’s writings. It is fuzzy and not concrete enough to say yah or nay.

    I tend to look to systems for reasons that individuals, groups, or countries become dysfunctional. There is no greater document than the US Constitution, which attempted to create a system of checks and balances, to prevent a federal government from overriding the independent existence of the states and to prevent the government from amassing too much power in itself.

    One question I would have concerning the question of the inherent evil of the left is…What about a system which permits the unlimited concentration of government power, and the continual dissolution of the rights of individuals? If you have such a system, does it really matter whether the leaders espouse a leftist philosophy or not?

    Doing some thought experiments of my own, I would assert that the biggest threat to freedom is the deterioration of the right of free association. I am an atheist. Yet, I maintain, it is extremely important to maintain our country to allow Catholics the right to hire only Catholics for their businesses and churches, to not supply medical insurance for abortions or birth control, or whatever else they wish. Similarly, for other religions. I assert the right of whites to hire whites, blacks only blacks (as the Nation of Islam does), and Jews, Jews.

    The reason why freedom of association is so important is that it is the group, or organization, that provides protection for individuals and ideas. The church that hires only its own members has a huge advantage in maintaining its identity and philosophy, and not incidentally, in fighting off attempt to weaken its message through government coercion.

    Having freedom of expression without freedom of association is exactly like having freedom of the press with only socialized media. You can write a letter to the editor, but you will be prevented from developing any actual means of spreading your message.

    The other huge threat to a country or people is the physical growth of government and the expansion of the boundaries of control. The larger the government, the less responsive it is to any feedback from its constituents. Without the EU, Merkel could ruin Germany, but the damage would be limited to the physical borders of Germany. Of course, the leaders of England, France, Germany, Holland, Sweden, and Belgium could simultaneously act to ruin their countries with Muslim immigration, but at least whoever is funding such a project would have to have an independent campaign for each country. As it is, all that has to be done is to get to the bureaucracy and leadership of the EU to achieve the bulk of ruining European civilization.

    It is my belief that the framers of the US Constitution could not even imagine a situation where government bureaucracies would be devoted to dictating the personnel of businesses, churches, voluntary clubs, and political organizations. This is why the freedom of speech and press was explicitly protected, but freedom of association was not.

    • I’ll second some aspects of this. Anti-discrimination is just another word for anti-choice.

      But I’ll not let anyone in the US get away with saying that breaking up the EU into 28 separate states is a good thing – unless they agree that breaking up the US into 50 would be even better. Europeans know that the US is our rival, politically and commercially, and wants us weakened. The only reason I work with Americans is that unlike the jihadis they don’t actually want us killed.

  18. Ronald, you are quite right about my essay, when I got to the part about reaching a conclusion, I found that there wasn’t one – for – like Legion, there were many and I was writing an essay rather than a book. I confess that I started out with the intention of Lampooning leftism and mocking Marx, but the more I found out about the man, himself, the more sympathetic I became, although I still find the conclusions he reached and the ideologies he espoused to be at least misguided and at worst abhorrent.

    Moving on to your comments, the right of free assembly, free choice and freedom of expression have been under severe pressure for some considerable time, mostly from islam and its leftist enablers and we must not allow the powers of totalitarianism to undermine them further.

    • Peter,

      Thank you for the response.

      I had a double stroke of luck. I had read the chapter on Marx in Johnson’s book “Intellectuals” that MC has linked to. I also managed to just now find the book and reread the chapter. Johnson’s essay is fully consistent with a completely different view of Marx and leftism.

      1) Marx was a quack scholar mystic. He never had the slightest interest in the truth. He claimed to have improved on the dialectics of Hegel, came to some a priori conclusions, and doctored and misrepresented actual reports and just flat-out lied to support his a priori conclusions. He rejected all offers to personally investigate working conditions and in fact despised and denounced the members of his groups who were actually working people who could make a living. He never produced an actually coherent thesis…leading to

      2) Marx was actually a violent bully who explicitly supported violent revolutionary activity, any violent revolutionary activity. He denounced opponents to the secret police on several occasions and routinely bullied associates by yelling at them or publicly denouncing them.

      3) To elaborate on 1) Marx routinely used phony statistics and knowingly and persistently flat-out lied about actual working conditions in England and elsewhere. Marx did not just leave out contradictory information to support his thesis: he lied and claimed that information supported his point of view when the information plainly contradicted his point of view.

      I won’t even go into Marx’s abominable personal habits.

      In my opinion, Marx did not develop his thesis over a period of time. His personality was that of a sloppy, lying, violent, envious sociopathic bully, and he organized his life and his writings around his personality.

      This brings me to my thesis. Leftists have a different thought process than, say, most readers of GoV and similar blogs. This is why Merkel continues to defend the devastating immigration into Germany. The very obvious consequences of the migration is simply not on her radar, except as talking points when she is forced to make some sort of statement.

      Similarly, it’s difficult for some people to wrap their heads around the obvious fact that the President of the US is in no way concerned with the safety, security, and culture of the people of the US. I never expected to see the blatant unreality and obstructionism shown by Democrats and some neocons after a legitimate election of a President they don’t like. But, they simply have their own logic (or non-logic) and point of view, and it has almost no overlap to mine.

      So, my thinking right now is that leftism, and its attendant thought processes, is a stable and probably heritable trait of the individual. Marxism does not so much produce leftism as give it a framework for expression. The framers of the Constitution were perfectly aware of the drive for power and treachery in many individuals. Their answer was to craft a system which had a built-in barrier to tyranny and the concentration of power.

      The specific mechanism of the Constitution are becoming less effective, but the idea is sound: craft a system to obtain your objectives, in spite of the worst will possible from large components of the polity (Democrats).

  19. I am in Santa Fe. Outside Magazine is published here, so it’s routine to have friends who work for that publication. It’s a decidedly leftist, environmentally friendly adventure guide – but for its philosophy on HUMAN POPULATIONS, who impact their favorite haunts, and animals.

    This is where the ‘humanity’ of the left collides with the reality of misanthropic environmentalism. The left hates people. Mostly white people – confining their harshest critiques for the “high carbon footprint” populations of Western Culture…. But beneath the veneer of politically correct position papers on diminishing resources and quality of environments – is an across the board hatred of all things homo sapiens.

    Pick up a copy and read about diminished habitat for Cheetahs and Giraffes., Sloths and Monkeys. The left doesn’t want development for Africans or Asians, Brazilians or Chinese. But their private solutions don’t match their published chagrin and lamentations over the harmful advance of mankind.

    Privately the left wants birth control, contraception, abortion and even sterilization for populations emerging from a hunter gathering economy.

    There is special disdain for Western Technologies in the hands of low IQ Africans and Indonesians, who fish bomb the reefs and sea life across a swath of our oceans.

    And the solutions of the left are a CULL. But not of Africans or Brazilians. They want to be sure that when the “event” occurs, plenty of pastie white Wal Mart shoppers go the way of Eritreans and Javanese.

    Some say this is part of the mass migration movement. The introduction of a super bug – and Ebola or Zika type virus – is going to take out at least half of humanity… leaving a good genetic mix on every continent when the die off begins in earnest.

    Sound Loony? You haven’t been to enough social events in Jackson Hole or the Bohemian Grove – Gstaad or Dresden.

    There are some heavy hitters in Santa Fe and the surrounding mountains. After enough Pisco or Cuban Rum – the conversation routinely turns to the “die off’ and teh relative merits of each method advanced at these various meetings of great minds.

    Chew on that awhile… I love the idea of a die off… the right has the same idea… but for very very different populations. I predict a far left and far right coalition for a false flag against humanity of epic proportions. The only thing left on the table is

    Who matters? Who does not?

    • Paradoxically, once populations reach a certain stage of technological advancement, their main problem becomes replacing themselves rather than over-population.

      The over-population problems of advanced countries stem pretty much from the huge migrations into them from the areas of the globe with exploding populations, like sub-Sahara Africa and parts of Mexico and Latin America. The advanced native populations, left to themselves, would stabilize or shrink.

      I have not experienced the crazy notions of the leftists, as you have, but I have no doubt they harbor hatred for everyone and for every social institution. Note that the entire two terms of the Obama administration has focused on demolishing internal security, border security, and individual choices in medical care, education and the characteristics of one’s neighborhood. So, no solution to the population problem involving the protection of existing social structures and the enhancement of the individual will be accepted by the left.

      You yourself pointed out we’re in a game of musical chairs, and we don’t have seven billion chairs. The implication is, some people are going to starve to death or die from treatable disease, maybe a lot of people. We’re going into a “lifeboat” mentality, where we in a life raft do not pick up the people floating in the water because to do so would mean our deaths as well as theirs.

      I think our ethics would impel us to provide choices to the people involved, even if they are unwilling to take those choices.

    • I’ve seen a tiny bit of that revulsion toward humans. One person I encountered was an ardent environmentalist, pro-abortionist, and ZPGer. China’s one-child and forced abortion policies were A-OK. Interest in the Constitution? Zero.

      Your experience is far more interesting.

  20. Interesting essay, Peter, but it seems mainly concerned with the negative effects of “leftism” when it’s imposed on people.

    Democratic Sweden chose a socialistic model which worked well for decades; they produced a surplus, mainly from manufacturing goods which people wanted, and willingly paid high taxes to provide generous benefits; the system has only started to collapse since they imported large numbers of immigrants who were unable or unwilling to contribute. (This is to ignore the social problems generated, which are well known to all here, but I believe are a separate, though related, issue).

    • I remember PJ O’Rourke once wrote that filling out a tax return in Sweden was like getting a divorce in the US. Both were expensive.

  21. Communism, socialism or any other form of forced collectivism, is non-functional because it is not an economic system. It is (they are) a control mechanism and as such, they function perfectly. Economics be damned. Prosperity be damned. The poor? [expletive] ’em. Control is the game, to the hilt, and to the end. That is why socialists never try anything different. That is why they cling to is so fervently in the face of it’s failure (presuming their STATED goals).

    When did it go bad? There was never any good in it.

  22. “It might be argued that … his [Marx’s] writings had been an incitement to violence.”

    It has been, it was from the beginning, and it still is. There is no such thing as attaining utopian equality without resorting to some degree of violence, whether by a threat of incarceration or a bullet to the skull at the edge of a pit.

    Marx is up to his earlobes in blood. So is Lenin. Mao, Stalin, Castro, Obama, and Hillary.

    And so–if you are currently a Leftist—are you.

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