Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes a Vietcong terrorist, February 1968.
Salon.com’s Jesse Myerson (@JAMyerson) says “misconceptions” about Communism are the real problem, although survivors who escaped Communist regimes might beg to disagree.
Personally, I think the main problem with Communism is that we haven’t shot enough evil lying Commie scum:
Five years after the Bolshevik Revolution, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises predicted that the Soviet project was doomed to fail. In his classic work Socialism, Mises explained that the attempt to replace the market system with central economic planning could not succeed, because the planners could not possibly have the information necessary to make all the decisions which, in a market economy, are made by individuals whose needs and desires are reflected in prices: “The problem of economic calculation is the fundamental problem of Socialism.”
“Everything brought forward in favour of Socialism during the last hundred years,” Mises wrote in 1922, “in thousands of writings and speeches, all the blood which has been spilt by the supporters of Socialism, cannot make Socialism workable. …. Socialist writers may continue to publish books about the decay of Capitalism and the coming of the socialist millennium; they may paint the evils of Capitalism in lurid colours and contrast with them an enticing picture of the blessings of a socialist society; their writings may continue to impress the thoughtless — but all this cannot alter the fate of the socialist idea.”
Undeterred by Mises’ criticism, the Soviet Union spent the next seven decades proving his prediction correct. By the time the Communist utopia collapsed in bankruptcy and disgrace, it seemed that everyone with two eyes and a brain understood the lesson: The Marxist-Leninist project was a complete failure and, as historians documented in The Black Book of Communism, tens of millions of people had died for this mistake, deliberately starved or slaughtered by totalitarian Communist governments.
The persistence of Marxist-Leninist regimes in Pyongyang and Havana notwithstanding, socialism has been utterly discredited in exactly the way Mises prophesied in 1922. . . .
Read the whole thing at The American Spectator. It’s already a Memeorandum thread, linked by Instapundit and Patterico — thanks! — and to answer the question, “How much do you hate Commies?”
Probably not as much as you should.
The Commie refrain: “It just didn’t work because they didn’t do it my way.”
This fool claims the purpose of taxation is ‘economic fairness.’
I’m sorry, but it is for funding services that cannot be divided into individual bits, or things that must apply equally to everyone.
I’ve fought for decades against the all-too-prevalent view among conservatives that “the only good commie is a dead commie.” My position is that dead commies aren’t good; they are just as evil, just less dangerous.
These little Salon twerps are just the latest in a long line of naive fools. The American “progressives” defended Stalin with passion right up until Khrushchev gave his “Crimes of the Stalin Era” speech. Pete Seegar was against US aid to Britain against Hitler right up to the moment Germany broke the pact and invaded the USSR, when he became anti-Hitler and pro-war.
I recently read an account of a cultural exchange mission where most of the Americans were liberal academics who argued vociferously for the superiority of the Soviet system on the trip. The writer noted “they all still brought their own toilet paper, though.”
Communism has led directly to deaths of 100 million people. Mao and Stalin both killed more people than Hitler. Only those who never experienced the reality of a totalitarian state could possibly support it. But then, anyone dumb enough to read Salon, much less write for it, would be likely to believe anything.
Quite right. Taxation is the revenue need of government. Redistribution distorts not only the tax code, but the economy. It costs lives in the long run. Always.
Jesse Myerson’s logic is that since Karl Marx didn’t actually rise from the dead and beat those people to death with a copy of Das Kapital, Communism didn’t actually kill 100 million people.
There is a phrase I predict will be very rarely seen: “Jesse Myerson’s logic.”
Technically yes, but the President of the United States disagrees with you on this point.
My position is that dead commies aren’t good; they are just as evil, just less dangerous.
Dead commies are “good” because once you heap up a few of their bloody corpses in the street, it kind of sends a valuable message to the ones you haven’t shot yet. I’m telling you, General Nguyen’s example deserves praise. Jack Ruby also knew what to do with a Commie
LESS THAN ONE MINUTE! Don’t turn your smartphone on! NBC: All Visitors to Sochi Olympics Immediately Hacked
http://commoncts.blogspot.com/2014/02/nbc-all-visitors-to-sochi-olympics.html
[…] Stacy McCain has this post at TOM and this story at American […]
It’s closely linked with “Charlie Sheen’s ‘winning'”.
If people are only against violence, exploitation, and murder if they are committed by communists, that signals major ideological blinder problems.
If we killed enough commies, there wouldn’t be a Dimocrat Party anymore.
Any political or economic philosophy predicated upon violation of the Tenth Commandment is bound to fail.
100 million dead bodies, piled up in a great heap. Can your pointed little head wrap around that? Many were simply starved to death. Do you know what it’s like to starve to death? Have you ever tried to eat wallpaper? Communism is human slavery. They use food as their weapon. While millions were starving to death all over Russia, many high level communists were building beautiful dachas in Sochi.
…wherein they pedicate and irrumate little white boys to death, then eat them!
We tend to misunderstand what marxism and its derivatives really are – a primitive counter-Christian religion.
Perhaps the most common thread found across marxists, socialists, communists, and the intellectual vanguard of today’s liberalism is their profound hatred of Christians and Christianity.
Marxism is systematically organized evil.
Well, we don’t have to live with the intentions of the marxist ideology, we have to live with its consequences. ☠
Wealth cannot be redistributed. It can only be destroyed.
In their war against Western civilization, today’s liberals use three main attack vectors:-Attacking the family-Attacking private property-Attacking Christianity
Your scope is too narrow. Socialist dislike belief systems that put anything above the State. They don’t like Buddists, Jews, or Muslims either unless they are under the complete control of the State.
Absalom built support for himself among the populace by promising justice for all “if only I were appointed judge in the land”, and by showing humility by kissing those who approached him rather than accepting supplication.
“Violence[against the innocent], exploitation and murder” are equally bad regardless of who’s doing it. Commies get singled out for special criticism because their political system is impossible without these things.
Oh, do I need to ETA?
If people are only against violence, exploitation, STARVATION and murder if they
are committed by communists, that signals major ideological blinder
problems.
If a child in a capitalist country starves to death – does your little head wrap itself around that or are you just too heartless to do so?
And I do hope that you have given lots of your capitalist money to save lots of children from starving, because otherwise it seems like you and those horrible communists aren’t much different. Excuse me, but the majority of “capitalist country people” I know of has not and will never save any starving child from starvation – whether the child is in a communist or capitalist system.
Excuse me if I may observe that we don’t have any innocent system on the planet.
Colour me surprised! All too soon, everyone of us will be on the dole, living in counsil housing, sending our wee ones to private schools. and getting our daily dose of Soma through the NHS… Nasty Labour bastards!
What are you are indulging in is moral equivocation, a past time generally reserved for lefties and/or pacifists. Pardon me if I am not surprised to hear that coming from you.
Yes, all governments have committed acts of violence. But some of the questions you are failing to ask are:
1. Why were those acts committed?
2. Were the innocent targeted deliberately or without concern?
3. Was there any attempt to avoid the violence?
In the case of communist governments, history proves they have a definite disregard for human life. Indeed, if you include the environmental disasters associated with communist governments, it’s apparent that they hold all life (save their personal hides, natch) in contempt.
Yet you give them a pass. That says a lot about you, and none of it good.
“Yet you give them a pass.”
I don’t them give them a pass at all. But it seems you give capitalist governments a major pass for any and all violence, oppression, starvation, and atrocities they have committed.
I’m sure he’ll have more very deep thoughts on that when he relaxes in his million-dollar Chicago home between chartered jet flights to paid speaking engagements under lifetime Secret Service protection after he retires.
It’s like talking to a 60’s NY liberal: “Why punish the criminals we capture when there are other criminals still roaming the streets?”
You deliberately misread the comments in order to display your self-invoked sanctimony. Of course, no human ordained institution is perfect. No one is maintaining otherwise, and no one is maintaining that liberal democratic republics founded upon personal autonomy and the God-given dignity of every human have not, on occasion, screwed things up. That said, the foundational assumptions of any statist political philosophy presuppose that the collective is greater than the sum of its parts. Because of that, atrocities against individuals are statistically much more likely. History bears that out. To point out those historical facts is not giving capitalism or other institutions a “pass.” Rather, it is expressing a judgment of which is better on the spectrum. Your continued attacks are quite wearisome and do nothing to advance the debate.
I would say, however, that the left’s special loathing is reserved for Christianity. The reason for this is the Christian message alone presupposes an overriding dignity of the individual and (with apologies to our Calvinist friends) a responsibility to exercise one’s free will for good or ill without the interference of the state. Less so, the other religions you mention.
Nice try. I never gave anyone a pass. Indeed, I said, “…all governments have committed acts of violence.” And I went on to point out that there can be moral differences between government induced violence.
That’s why I said you are indulging in moral equivocation. So much for you reading comprehension, hmmmm?
I certainly implied that there are cases where government violence is acceptable. But I did not defend any specific government, noting only that communist governments generally don’t offer morally acceptable answers to those questions.
All governments are inherently evil, but big governments (which is what communism is all about) are uncontrollably evil. Small government (a rare phenomenon these days) are equally evil, but lack the means to apply their evil indiscriminately. Ergo, communist governments, no matter how benign they or their followers clam (which is the whole point of Stacy’s article) are evil.
Really, all you are doing here is concern trolling, whether you are a leftie or a pacifist. .I just wanted to see what your response would be. And, yep, about what I figured.
This is what you said:
“Yet you give them a pass.”
This is what I said:
“Excuse me if I may observe that we don’t have ANY innocent system on the planet.”
A little too Illiterate perhaps?
Modern agriculture was built by capitalists. So, yes, capitalism has save millions from starvation. One of communisms major flaws is its idea that large communities can be run through centralized planning by so called experts that probably have little to no idea what work is involved in accomplishing what they plan. (As a micro case see Occupy Wall Street. Those guys wanted to tell people how to run a government but couldn’t even plan a camp out in a city park). This results in poor output from crops and poor distribution of what product is grown. Capitalism, by contrast, has incentives for people to work more efficiently to maximize profits. Therefore there is incentive to grow larger crops and distribute them quicker and more efficiently than the other guy so you can do so cheaper and sell more. There are flaws but keeping people poor isn’t one of them. After all, poor people don’t have nearly the buying power of the rich or middle class.
I’d like to see Alessandra unequivocally, and without tu quoque condemn Communism with oh, 100 times the enthusiasm she has for Capitalists, since the Commies are AT LEAST that much better at evil.
“Personally, I think the main problem with Communism is that we haven’t shot enough evil lying Commie scum.”
Spoken like a true fascist.
And you must be lying commie scum running scared.
Never apologize to a Calvinist. Free will is a fact, even if they don’t like that fact.
What does…
Never mind. I once asked what MILF meant and regretted the answer.
I shot at you in 1969, I missed!!! My Bad.
Spoken like a true fascist.
Spoken like someone without a sense of humor.
Capitalist governments haven’t murdered 100 million of their own citizens. Communist governments have.
equivalence fail.
Aren’t much different?
Brazen lie.
Is there an English translation of your comment?
Pip… pip… pip…
Ssshhhh! I’m messin’ with teh troll…
Pip… pip… Priyom…
the idea is that it would work if only we tried harder. There is no limiting principle, they’d expend all of human creativity on that one endeavor, fail, and still think, if only there had been just a little more.
Not much different than people trying to build perpetual motion machines. Less likely to actually work, though.
HET!
Fascists WERE and ARE leftists, son. The “struggle” between Communism and Fascism was a turf war, nothing more.