The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Reality 1, Feminism 0

Posted on | February 11, 2014 | 14 Comments

Ideologues fetishize intellectual abstractions to the point that real life confuses them. Lori Gottlieb is therefore stunned:

The more traditional the division of labor, meaning the greater the husband’s share of masculine chores compared with feminine ones, the greater his wife’s reported sexual satisfaction.

So says an academic study, at least, and therefore the science is settled. The problem — maybe Gottlieb doesn’t understand this — is that feminism is an ideology developed by lesbian Marxists who hate men. Feminist ideology is therefore not about improving relationships between men and women; it’s about teaching women to hate men, so that all women can become Marxist lesbians.

One way to undermine the heteronormative patriarchy is to prevent men from becoming the kind of men that women love, i.e., successful, confident, masculine-type men. This is why schools have been re-organized to punish boys for acting like boys. As men become increasingly demoralized, disempowered and dysfunctional, they are simply less attractive (and less valuable) as mates.

And feminists say, “Hooray, equality!”

Feminists cheer this trend because feminists are Marxist lesbians, and every bad thing that happens to men is good news to them.

Fish, bicycle, some assembly required.

 


Category: Feminism

LIVE AT FIVE: 02.11.14

Posted on | February 11, 2014 | Comments Off on LIVE AT FIVE: 02.11.14

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Ambassador Powell Makes A U-Turn

Chief Minister Narendra Modi (BJP-Gujarat)

Decision to meet BJP contender for PM marks reversal of US policy
AAP Shifts Focus, Levels Corruption Charges Against Modi




EU Alarmed At Swiss Immigration Vote
Swiss, European leaders react warily to vote

White House Delays Employer Mandate
McConnell calls on Administration to throw out all of the ACA’s mandates



POLITICS
Nevada Drops Defense Of Gay Marriage Ban As Utah Picks Up Allies

Nevada governor Brian Sandoval

Nevada’s Democratic AG opines that recent decisions by Supremes make state law indefensible

Obama Outpaces Predecessors In Appointing Donors To Plum Posts

Eric Holder Reportedly To Step Down This Year

Administration Debates Drone Strike Against U.S. Citizen Working With Al-Qaeda In Pakistan

Target Of Wisconsin “Secret” Probe Files Suit, Claims Prosecutors Punishing Walker Allies

Democrats Enjoy Cash Advantage Over GOP Challengers

GOP May Call Debt Ceiling Vote Tomorrow

NJ Panel Approves More Subpeonas In Christie Bridge Probe



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
WTI Waits Above $100 For Yellen, Brent Dips Slightly: NYMEX $100.01, Brent $18.65
Dollar Retreats Ahead Of Yellen Remarks
Wheels Fly Off GM CEO’s Pay Story
Icahn Drops Apple Campaign
Justice Department Sued Over $13 Million JPMorgan Pact
B&N Slashes Jobs After Nook Holiday Sales Decline
Bill Gates Explains His New Role At Microsoft
Apple Loses Bid To Boot Court-Appointed Antitrust Monitor
Nokia Reportedly Preparing Android Smartphone
Google To Restore Hangar One, Operate Runways At Moffett Field
Virgin Atlantic Puts On Google Glasses



SPORTS
Celtics Pull Away In Fourth, Cruise Past Bucks 102-86

The Bucks’ Pachulia tries to block the Celtics’ Jeff Green in the first half

Green scores 19 of 29 in second half, leads Boston to victory

Rockets Cruise Past Timbermutts, 107-89

#8 Lady Vols Breeze Past Vanderbilt 81-53


Richard Petty: Danica Could Win “If Everyone Else Stayed Home”

Sochi Games Draw Sparse Crowds, Organizers Fill Seats With Volunteers

Pacers Rebound, Crush Nuggets 119-80

Grambling State Breaks 45-Game Division I Losing Streak

Nationals Sign Tyler Clippard To One-Year Deal, Avoid Arbitration



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Girl On The Edge

Kristen Stewart

The Marie Claire interview

Pillow Tweets (some pix NSFW)

Chris Kattan Busted For DUI

“Bachelor” Alum Shayne Lamas Hospitalized After Miscarriage

Samuel L. Jackson – I’m Not Lawrence Fishburne, You Moron!

L.A. DA Has Video Of Bieber Egging Neighbors’ Houses

Julia Roberts’ Half-Sister Found Dead In Apparent Suicide; Family Says Death Due To OD

Max George Dumps SI Model Nina Agdal

Jessica Gomes Treats Fans To A Sneak Peek At Her Lingerie Shoot

Michael Stipe Moves To Berlin

Mariah Carey Sizzles In “Jessica Rabbit” Dress

Dennis Rodman Boozing Just Three Days After Rehab Exit



FOREIGNERS
Kabul Records First Polio Case Since 2001
Holland Visit Opens Up Diplomacy For Business Amid Gossip
Iran Test-Fires Ballistic Missiles Ahead Of Nuke Talks
PRC, Taiwan Hold Talks In Nanjing; First High-Level Talks In Over 60 Years
Brazilian Cameraman Declared Braindead After Protest Injury
Former Guatemalan Commando Officer Loses US Citizenship, Gets Ten Year Sentence For Lying About 1982 Massacre
Thai Caretaker Government Says It lacks Authority To Resume Rice-Buying Scheme
Spanish Court Signs Arrest Warrant For PRC Leaders Over Tibet
South Sudan Rebels Say They’ll Boycott Latest Talks
Arrests, Online Criticism After PRC Prostitution Expose
US Considers Waiting On Security Pact Until Karzai Leaves Office



BLOGS & STUFF
Proof Positive: Obamacare Illustrated
First Street Journal: Even The Liberals Can Understand Some Economics…
American Power: Glenn Greenwald Launches “The Intercept” – A Pathetic Diversion Against Impending Criminal Charges
Doug Powers: Another Day, Another Obama Mandate Delay
Twitchy: NYC Mayor Di Blasio’s Inaugural Speech Would Make Lenin Proud
Blackfive: Book Review – The Counterfeit Agent
The Necropolitan Sentinel: Obamacare Watch – Obamacare To Be Destroyed With Bang Or Whimper?
Conservatives4Palin: Happy 50th Birthday, Governor Palin!
Jammie Wearing Fools: Endangered Dem On Obama – “I Don’t Care To Have Him Campaign For Me”
Joe For America: The Ignorance And Hypocrisy Behind Oil Export Bans
JustOneMinute: Hand That Man Another Nobel!
Pat Dollard: Al Qaeda Instructor Accidentally Blows Up His Entire “How To Become A Suicide Bomber” Class
Protein Wisdom: Second Verse…Same As The First
Shot In The Dark: Chanting Points Memo – “It’s The Retirees, Stupid!”
The Jawa Report: Second Jihadi Work Accident In Somalia Kills 11
The Lonely Conservative: Obama Shafted Families Of Legal Immigrants To Amnesty Illegals Before 2012 Election
This Ain’t Hell: Prostituting Science
Megan McArdle: What AOL’s Tim Armstrong Got Right


Casey Neumiller’s Destiny’s Heir is on sale today!


Category: Live at Five

Can You Make #ObamaCare Other Than History’s Most Expensive Pile Of Bollocks?

Posted on | February 10, 2014 | 12 Comments

by Smitty

This petulant assertion would come close to funny, if it didn’t come from a guy so mired in thuggish scandals. The GOP should get the audio and run that in a fundraising loop. This November isn’t an election; it’s a pre-impeachment vote.

Category: Barack Obama

Illegal Alien Suspected in 3 Dallas Rapes

Posted on | February 10, 2014 | 13 Comments

Jesus Adalid Madrid-Dubon is suspected of being a serial rapist and also a general all-around criminal dirtbag:

Dallas police say the Irving man they arrested Friday in connection with the rape of a 16-year-old girl earlier this week is connected to at least two other sexual assaults.
Jesus Adalid Madrid-Dubon, 27, has been charged with aggravated kidnapping, a first-degree felony. Police said Madrid-Dubon, who investigators already suspected in an August rape, will be charged in connection with a January rape . . .
The two most recent known rapes both occurred at a parking lot in the 7600 block of Sovereign Row, near Mockingbird Lane and John Carpenter Freeway in the Stemmons Corridor, according to police reports.
A 16-year-old girl was raped at gunpoint there Tuesday, police said.
On Jan. 7, a 20-year-old girl who was talking to Madrid-Dubon on a social media site agreed to meet him at the location, police said. She was raped there, too, police said. . . .
He was identified as a suspect in the rapes through a photo lineup. Police said they obtained physical evidence in both cases and are awaiting the results.
Madrid-Dubon was arrested without incident early Friday morning at his Irving home. He was booked into Dallas County jail on Friday evening in lieu of $1 million bail.
He was also already known to police as a possible suspect in an Aug. 24 sexual assault along the 1000 block of R.L. Thornton Freeway as well, Garza said Friday, but police didn’t have enough evidence to make an arrest at the time. . . .
Madrid-Dubon was arrested in 2007 in Dallas County on a felony marijuana possession charge, which records show was later dismissed.
He was also arrested in 2011 after he was accused of a misdemeanor family violence assault.

Notice that story says nothing about Jesus the Serial Rapist being an illegal alien. However, in a Monday update, reporting the details from police documents in the case, wwaaayy down near the bottom of the story, we find this:

Madrid-Dubon was arrested Friday, the day after the 16-year-old girl identified him as her attacker out of “a double blind, sequential photo line-up,” police said. He remained in Dallas County jail on Monday. His bail was set at $100,000 for the felony charge, but he also has several holds for outstanding warrants and for living in the country illegally.

What the hell? Three rapes, including a 16-year-old raped at gunpoint, and he’s “living in the country illegally” — and you don’t think that’s worth mentioning until the ninth paragraph of the story?

That’s just journalistic malpractice. Innocent people are made to suffer — a 16-year-old raped at gunpoint, hello? — at the hands of criminals who should not even be here, because government officials are unwilling to enforce our immigration laws. This is a serious public safety issue, and no amount of political correctness can justify journalists helping hide the problem by pretending it doesn’t exist.

 


Category: Crime, Immigration, Texas

Australia Worries About Racial Tension After Six Men Gang-Rape Girl, 14

Posted on | February 10, 2014 | 17 Comments

The failures of multiculturalism are a global problem:

Community leaders have warned of possible reprisal attacks by Blacktown’s Pacific Islander community targeting young African-Australian men in the wake of the gang-rape attack on a 14-year-old Islander girl. . . .
Blacktown Uniting Church Reverend Liva Tukutama said it was vital he and other Pacific Islander leaders reached out to African leaders to stop the young men of their communities seeking vengeance.
Meanwhile the victim’s mother says her daughter has been “broken into pieces” after what police described as a “horrendous” sexual assault by up to six men.
With tears welling in her eyes, the mother of the girl said she . . . wanted to kill the attackers who had left her daughter traumatised beyond words.
“I’m feeling angry and disgusted at what’s happened to my daughter and I want to catch those mongrels and kill them,” the girl’s mother said. . . .
[The victim] was reportedly “hanging out” with two friends in Bill Colbourne Reserve, Doonside around 11pm on Saturday night when the trio noticed “five or six” African-Australian men drinking alcohol. . . .
At 11pm that night the teenage girl became the victim of a prolonged gang rape described by Superintendent Gary Merryweather as “horrendous” and “unprovoked”. . . .
The girl’s friend said the men were known drug dealers and that that the third friend in the group had intended to make a purchase. . . .
[Reverend Tukutama] said he could not dismiss “the possibility of negative repercussions” in the community. “It would be like adding fuel to already tense relations between the young Islanders and the Africans,’’ he said.
Mr Tukutama said in times of crisis the church was the first port of call for Pacific Islander families and he was doing everything he could to reach out to the girl’s family to offer support.
Thursday night in Blacktown was “fight night” with as many as 2000 youths congregating in the [central business district], former Blacktown police commander Mark Wright said in 2012, and many gangs were divided along African and Pacific Islander lines. . . .
[L]ocals said they were so used to hearing screams from the littered, dimly lit park where Saturday night’s shocking gang rape took place, they wouldn’t know if an attack was actually taking place.
Resident Elaine Peteolo gave the shocking assessment of Bill Colbourne Park, where graffiti adorns run-down pathways amid smashed beer bottles and drug paraphernalia.
“It’s shocking, we’re so used to hearing screams from the park you wouldn’t know it was an attack,” Mrs Peteolo said.
“There’s always people in there screaming in the middle of the night, we’re so used to hearing screams from the park … I thought gosh, maybe we moved to the wrong area.”
Many of her neighbours said the park was “notorious” for violence.

This is terrible for Australia, but probably even worse for MSNBC, because they can’t find a way to blame it on Republicans.

 

Category: Australia

Intellectuals and the Total State: @JAMyerson’s Dilettante Marxism

Posted on | February 10, 2014 | 108 Comments

Left to right: Leon Trotsky, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Lavrenti Beria.

“Lenin, at every passing opportunity, emphasized the absolute necessity of the terror. . . .
“We heard such tirades from him a dozen times a day and they were always aimed at some one among those present who was suspected of ‘pacifism.'”
— Leon Trotsky, Lenin (1925)

“Socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement. . . . It is a construction of theorists, deriving from certain tendencies of abstract thought with which for a long time only the intellectuals were familiar . . .”
— F.A. Hayek, “The Intellectuals and Socialism” (1949)

Marxism envisions the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” so that there can be no Marxism without violent terror, and self-described communist Jesse Myerson must fail in his attempts to evade this truth.

Ever since his Rolling Stone article advocating the abolition of private property provoked a furious reaction last month, Myerson has sought to evade the consequences of his ideas by employing rhetorical tactics familiar to anyone who has long studied the Left. His Salon.com article last Sunday was a particularly tedious exercise in these methods, and inspired me to remind readers of how Ludwig von Mises had described the ultimate futility of socialism:

“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.”

Myerson’s fanciful blather about a “far more open, humane, democratic, participatory and egalitarian” communism in the future, which would somehow miraculously avoid the monstrous evils of previous communist regimes, signified his own ignorance of history. Myerson’s response, however, is to accuse communism’s opponents of being ignorant: He is knowledgeable and wise; we are McCarthyite fools.

Typical of his puerile irresponsibility, when Myerson appeared on MSNBC with Chris Hayes last month, the former Occupy Wall Street spokesman declared that his #FULLCOMMUNISM Twitter hashtag was “sort of a tongue in cheek, post-Occupy joke.”

Translation: “Haha! Stupid right-wingers don’t get the joke!”

As I said Saturday, “Myerson’s intellectual superiority to others is both the premise and conclusion of his every argument,” but these gestures of his — narcissistic poses intended to elicit admiration of his cleverness — only expose his own superficiality. Does he suppose that jokes will bring about the dispossession of the 1% he advocates? Is Myerson’s idea of communism as a “utopian aspiration” intended to result in any actual policy, or is it all just droll chatter?

These are not rhetorical questions.

If Myerson seriously wishes to advocate for specific policies, then those policies may be examined and criticized according to their likely consequences, on the basis of evidence and historical precedent. If not — if Myerson is just playing tongue-in-cheek word games — then we may rightly depict him as a clown in red nose and floppy shoes. The latter approach was preferred by Jonah Goldberg:

Myerson’s essay captures nearly everything the unconverted despise about left-wing youth culture, starting with the assumption that being authentically young requires being theatrically left wing.
Writing with unearned familiarity and embarrassingly glib confidence in the rightness of his positions, Myerson prattles on about how “unemployment blows” and therefore we need “guaranteed work for everybody.” He proceeds to report that jobs “blow” too, so we need guaranteed universal income. He has the same disdain for landlords, who “don’t really do anything to earn their money.” Which is why, Myerson writes, we need communal ownership of land, or something.
One wonders why he bothered to single out landlords, since he calls for the state appropriation of, well, everything. Why? Because “hoarders blow,” and he doesn’t mean folks who refuse to throw away their Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets and old Sharper Image catalogs. He means successful people who “hoard” the wealth that rightly belongs to all of us.

Myerson’s ideas deserve such ridicule because they are, in fact, ridiculous. Why, then, do so many young people take these ideas seriously? It is not merely because they are ignorant — although they are — but that they have been deliberately miseducated.

What kind of books do young people read nowadays?

In most cases, the answer is “none.” Except for what they are assigned to read in school, young people today typically never read any books at all, instead filling their minds with junk TV, videogames and Internet porn, when they’re not too busy attempting to hook up via text message: “ur so hot. call me 2nite. i wanna get w u.”

We are descending steadily into a post-literate culture, and increasingly young people learn only what they are taught.

Autodidactic curiosity — the impulse to educate yourself about the world, for the sheer satisfaction of knowing — is utterly dead in the current generation of youth. They may complete the assigned readings in school, in order to obtain good grades, but this activity is just an exercise in jumping through hoops in the pursuit of credentials that will qualify them for lucrative careers. Therefore, what today’s youth know about history is entirely a function of what they were required to learn in order to get a diploma. They feel no embarrassment at all about their vast and general ignorance, because none of their peers know anything, either.

The three most recent books I’ve read are Peter Collier’s Political Woman: The Big Little Life of Jeane Kirkpatrick, Paul Kengor’s The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor, and Robert Service’s Trotsky: A Biography.

Actually, I was re-reading the Trotsky book, which I first read in 2011:

Trotsky was inarguably the most intellectually gifted of the Bolshevik leaders, and his talent as a writer earned him the nickname “The Pen.” Certainly anyone who has read Trotsky’s work appreciates his subtlety as a writer in comparison to the blunt formulations of Lenin. I had often wondered how much of Trotsky’s reputation as a writer in the English-speaking world was due to the talents of his translator Max Eastman, but Service makes clear that Trotsky’s ability won him admiration among Russian radicals long before anyone in the English-speaking world had ever heard of him.

What makes Trotsky so endlessly fascinating is that such a civilized person could have become part of the brutal Soviet dictatorship.

No less than any of his comrades did Trotsky embrace the Red Terror unleashed against opponents of the Bolshevik regime. Indeed, as the People’s Commissar for Military Affairs, it was Trotsky’s leadership of the Red Army that saved the Bolsheviks and made possible their absolute dictatorship.

Not less essential to the Bolshevik dictatorship was the Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, the dreaded secret police known as the Cheka. Led by Felix Dzerzhinsky, the Cheka carried out mass arrests, torture and summary executions with no regard for “bourgeois” notions of civil rights. Indeed, individual guilt or innocence was irrelevant to the purposes of the Cheka’s depredations. The aim of the Red Terror was simply to inspire fear among the regime’s potential opponents, and to excite revolutionary zeal by inflicting violence on demonized enemies, who were labeled “counter-revolutionaries” and “saboteurs” (with about as much accuracy as today’s leftists denounce Republicans as “racists” and “sexists”).

Trotsky “fully endorsed the Red Terror,” as his biographer says, and Trotsky justified this policy in his 1920 book Terrorism and Communism:

We were revolutionaries in opposition, and have remained revolutionaries in power. To make the individual sacred we must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And this problem can only be solved by blood and iron. . . .
The Red Terror is a weapon utilized against a class, doomed to destruction, which does not wish to perish. . . .
The man who recognizes the revolutionary historic importance of the very fact of the existence of the Soviet system must also sanction the Red Terror.

This, you see, is an unashamed  doctrine of deliberate violence, as expressed by one who — even as those words were written — was chief among those tasked with carrying out the Red Terror.

Can Jesse Myerson possibly be ignorant of this? Was this not among the lessons he learned while studying human rights at Bard College (annual tuition $45,730)? How can Myerson, self-declared communist, describe his project as proposing “to construct a set of social relations based on fellowship and mutual aid”? That’s not communism, that’s Kumbayah.

However, as I say, the point of Jesse Myerson’s arguments is always the same, i.e., the intellectual superiority of Jesse Myerson.

The whole purpose of his Salon.com article was to demonstrate how much smarter he is than everyone else, because “most of what Americans think they know about capitalism and communism is arrant nonsense.” You don’t actually know anything, you just think you know, and that’s why you stupid Americans need Jesse Myerson to tutor you about your “huge misconceptions.”

There is no antagonist whose arguments Myerson respects. If you don’t agree with Myerson, you are inferior, even if you happen to be a professor of political science like Donald Douglas:

Really? Hobbes and Locke were “classical political economists”? But never mind that, let’s talk about Ellen Meiksins Wood and her book,  The Origin of Capitalism. She is a Marxist historian whose late husband, Neal Wood, was likewise a Marxist historian. Together, they published such books as Class Ideology and Ancient Political Theory: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in Social Context, and Neal Wood’s final book was Tyranny in America: Capitalism and National Decay, published in 2004:

The US has been subjected to the ruthless and unrelenting tyranny of the world’s most advanced capitalism, permeating every aspect of American life. The chief difference from other tyrannies is its facelessness, its dependence on impersonal coercive power more than on direct violence and terror against its subjects. . . .
America is an inegalitarian class society with an ever-growing chasm separating a minuscule minority of the very rich from the poor and moderately well-off. . . . American society is a culture of rapidly proliferating violence, rampant consumerism, mindless entertainment, and freneticism, while its political culture, grounded in an eighteenth-century constitution that was never intended to create a democracy is ever more hollow and undemocratic.
Tyranny in America, written in the spirit of Tom Paine and inspired by Karl Marx, scathingly addresses the chief maladies afflicting the US and forcefully argues that fundamental change is necessary if moral, political, and social implosion is to be avoided.

Neal Wood hated America because he hated capitalism, which he considered a “ruthless and unrelenting tyranny” of “impersonal coercive power.” One rather suspects that he spent the Cold War cheering for America’s enemies. His widow’s book, recommended by Jesse Myerson, comes with this description:

In this original and provocative book Ellen Meiksins Wood reminds us that capitalism is not a natural and inevitable consequence of human nature, nor is it simply an extension of age-old practices of trade and commerce. Rather, it is a late and localized product of very specific historical conditions, which required great transformations in social relations and in the human interaction with nature.
This new edition is substantially revised and expanded, with extensive new material on imperialism, anti-Eurocentric history, capitalism and the nation-state, and the differences between capitalism and non-capitalist commerce. The author traces links between the origin of capitalism and contemporary conditions such as ‘globalization’, ecological degradation, and the current agricultural crisis.

This reflects the Marxist idea of historical materialism. You perhaps will not be surprised to learn she is also author of a 1995 book, Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism:

Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that with the collapse of Communism the theoretical project of Marxism and its critique of capitalism is more timely and important than ever. In this book she sets out to renew the critical program of historical materialism by redefining its basic concepts and its theory of history in original and imaginative ways, using them to identify the specificity of capitalism as a system of social relations and political power. She goes on to explore the concept of democracy in both the ancient and modern world, examining the concept’s relation to capitalism.

“Marxism — now more than ever!” Just as Hayek said, “a construction of theorists, deriving from certain tendencies of abstract thought” among intellectuals who, even with the castastrophic ruin of the Marxist dream staring them in the face, continued to insist that “the theoretical project of Marxism and its critique of capitalism” was still “timely and important.” No matter how much their ideas fail in practice, these intellectuals remain committed to Marxism in theory.

Left to right: Josef Stalin, Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov.

“That socialism can be put into practice only by methods which most socialists disapprove is, of course, a lesson learned by many social reformers in the past. The old socialist parties were inhibited by their ideals; they did not possess the ruthlessness required for the performance of their chosen task.”
— F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944)

This is a historic truth Jesse Myerson endeavors to evade by the smug cleverness of his “tongue-in-cheek” communism: Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky were not mere intellectuals offering a “critique of capitalism.” They were socialist revolutionaries deeply committed to the violent overthrow of bourgeois democracy, which they aimed to replace with the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Citing the work of academic Marxists like  Ellen Meiksins Wood “cannot alter the fate of the socialist idea,” to borrow Mises’s phrase, yet Myerson would have us believe that it is our “huge misconceptions about communism” which are the problem.

Did Leon Trotsky have “huge misconceptions about communism”?

The intellectual who became commander of the Red Army and advocated revolutionary terror — “blood and iron. . . . a weapon utilized against a class, doomed to destruction” — was ultimately on the receiving end of that terror. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin assumed power and within a few years, Trotsky was purged from the Bolshevik leadership, exiled and eventually assassinated.

By the time Ramon Mercader buried an ice-ax in Trotsky’s skull, the Soviet “experiment” had already killed millions of people whose misfortune it was to live and die under Stalin’s rule. The forcible collectivization of agriculture and the accompanying terror campaign against the kulaks (peasants whom the Soviets blamed for the failure of collectivization) produced a famine that killed millions of Ukrainians — estimates vary between 5 and 10 million — and many millions more elsewhere in the U.S.S.R. The truth about the horrors inflicted by Stalin’s policies was concealed for decades; there was no freedom of the press under Soviet rule, and many Western journalists like Walter Duranty of the New York Times were willing dupes of Stalinist propaganda.

After the death of Dzerzhinsky in 1926 — the Cheka commander died of a heart attack after a speech denouncing Trotsky — suppression of dissent continued under the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (known by its Russian acronym, NKVD), whose leadership was a series of murderous monsters. Genrikh Yagoda was the active manager of the NKVD during the years of the Ukrainian terror-famine and began the subsequent “Show Trial” purge of Bolshevik leaders viewed as potential rivals by the paranoid Stalin.

Yagoda supervised the arrest and executions of Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev in 1936, but did not live to complete the purge, because he himself fell victim to it. Stalin announced that Yagoda had “proved unequal to the task of exposing the Trotskyite-Zinonievite bloc” and he was replaced as head of the NKVD by Nikolai Yezhov. Only five feet tall, Yezhov made up for his small size by his slavish devotion to Stalinism and a psychopathic tendency toward sadism.

Claiming that targets of the purge were “Fascist agents,” Yezhov did not deny that some innocent people were imprisoned or executed: “Better that ten innocent people should suffer than one spy get away. When you chop wood, chips fly.” Among the victims of the purge under Yezhov’s direction were a majority of top Soviet leaders, including generals in the Red Army. Yezhov specialized in the falsification of “evidence” again his victims and the extraction of “confessions” by torture. Yezhov personally tortured Yagoda, who was stripped naked and beaten before finally being shot to death in 1938.

The humiliation Yezhov inflicted on his predecessor was exceeded by the fate reserved for Yezhov when he was in turn disgraced, purged and replaced by Lavrenti Beria. In addition to implicating himself and others in fictitious espionage plots, Yezhov was forced to confess in detail his “longtime vice of homosexuality.” He was convicted in a secret trial, dragged away screaming and crying, and executed in February 1940.

Perhaps the reader is beginning to notice a pattern here.

Although the Soviets managed to keep details of many of their atrocities secret for decades, the general pattern of totalitarian brutality drew the attention of Friedrich Hayek:

There are strong reasons for believing that what to us appear the worst features of totalitarian systems are not accidental byproducts but phenomena which totalitarianism is certain to sooner or later produce.
Just as the choice architect who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans, so the totalitarian dictator would soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary morals and failure.
It is for this reason that the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more “successful” in a society tending toward totalitarianism.

Jesse Myerson and other neo-communists certainly must understand this, but cannot admit it: Marxism requires coercive violence — systematic terror — and the people most likely to lead such a violent enterprise are not timid intellectuals, but amoral brutes, the “unscrupulous and uninhibited.” Bad causes attract bad people and communism is “The Worst Idea in the World.”

Interestingly, many historians believe Nikolai Yezhov’s confession of his “vice of homosexuality” was true. Stalin’s spies were everywhere, and Yezhov’s vulnerability in this regard may have made him a convenient tool for Stalin’s purposes. Certainly, no one could imagine that the man who succeeded Yezhov as commissar of the NKVD was a paragon of virtue. Lavrenti Beria was a notorious sexual predator who routinely raped women, with an especial appetite for teenage girls, several of whom he reportedly strangled and buried in the garden of his Moscow villa:

“Sometimes he would have his henchmen bring five, six or seven girls to him. He would make them strip, except for their shoes, and then force them into a circle on their hands and knees with their heads together.
“He would walk around in his dressing gown inspecting them. Then he would pull one out by her leg and haul her off to rape her. He called it the flower game.”

Protecting Stalin’s dictatorship, the ruthless Beria was protected in turn. He managed to stay in power for some 15 years, during which time he oversaw the Soviet espionage project that obtained atomic weapon secrets from the United States, as well as supervising imposition of communist rule in Eastern Europe after World War II.

Stalin’s death in 1953, however, inevitably made Beria a target of Stalin’s successor, Nikita Kruschev, who feared the murderous NKVD commissar would seize power. Beria was arrested along with six of his subordinates. They were all sentenced to death by Soviet Supreme Court on Dec. 23, 1953, and the verdict was carried out the same day. It is said Beria, who never showed mercy for his own victims, cried and begged for his life before he was shot to death.

Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin — all of them understood that communism could only be implemented by the violence of revolutionary terror. The preservation of the Soviet regime was therefore dependent on the merciless savagery of monsters like Dzezhinsky, Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria, whose crimes were not an accident of history, but were implicit in the Marxist ideology that academics like Ellen Meiksins Wood wish to rescue from the ruins of the Evil Empire it created.

Under the influence of such academic impostors — for it is the habit of latter-day Marxist intellectuals to deny the centrality of violent terror to their doctrine — the young fool Jesse Myerson supposes he is qualified to enlighten us, correcting our “huge misconceptions about communism.”

His dishonesty exceeded only by his selfishness, Myerson does not seriously advocate any policy, and his pseudo-radical poses are intended only to make himself an object of admiration. Communism cannot possibly succeed as an actual economic policy, and the only way it could ever be attempted is under the absolute authority of The Total State, where there can be no democracy, no rule of law, and no civil rights.

Were it not for the fact that millions would suffer under any future communist regime, just as they have suffered under previous communist regimes, one might almost hope that Myerson could have his wish. Sooner or later, the ruthless men who would govern in any communist state would tire of Myerson’s glib chatter, and he would almost certainly be tortured before he was executed.

Instead, Myerson tortures us with his “tongue-in-cheek” communism and, if citizens of a free society can ignore Myerson, we cannot ignore that such young fools are increasingly common, and that a majority of young voters elected Obama president.

 

 

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Category: Culture, Economics, Education, History, Intellectuals

LIVE AT FIVE: 02.10.14

Posted on | February 10, 2014 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Iranians Send Warships Into Atlantic Near U.S. For First Time

Iranian vessels patrol in the Sea of Oman

Iranians say deployment in response to USN ships in the Persian Gulf

Rand Paul Launches Preemptive Strike On Bill Clinton
Taking the #waronwomen home to the Big He

Obama Changes Rules For Refugees
Now, limited support for terrorists is okay!
House GOP objects



POLITICS
The Obamacare Parallel

Veteran helping veteran at the Midwest Shelter For Homeless Veterans in Wheaton, IL

Veterans Benefit Management System failures presaged problems with Obamacare site

Schumer: Pass Immigration Now, Leave Implementation For Obama’s Successor

Charter Schools May Leave NYC In Response To Tighter Restrictions

Democrats Distance Themselves From Obama By Moving Left For 2016

Lawsuit Challenging AZ Gov. Brewer’s Medicaid Plan Dismissed



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Mixed On Lousy US Jobs, Winter Storm Worries: NYMEX $100.01, Brent $109.32
Dollar Weakens As Markets Look Forward To Yellen
AOL Reverses Unpopular Retirement Move
Nissan Willing To Lose Market Share To Ensure Profit
ISS Recommends “No” Vote On Icahn’s Plan For Apple
The Life And Death Of Flappy Bird
First Windows 8.1 Update Coming March 11?
Yahoo To Partner With Yelp On Local Search
Snapchat Token Bug Creates DoS Attack For iOS, Android
California Pushes For Cellphone Kill Switch



SPORTS
It’s Kevin Durant’s World; We’re Just Living In It

Durant ends just one assist shy of a triple-double as the Thunder destroy the Knicks

Durant scores 41, makes strong case for MVP as Oklahoma City humiliates New York 112-100

Missouri Defensive End Comes Out As Gay, Sports Press Wets Itself With Joy

Kings Can’t Beat The Wiz

Gold Medal In Figure Skating Caps Big Day For Russia At Winter Olympics

Chris Paul Returns As Clippers Destroy Sixers 123-78


The Potemkin Olympics: Sports As National Infomercial

NHL Players Begin To Arrive In Sochi

Truck Day Signals Return Of Spring To Boston

John Force Wins Season-Opening Winternationals

Top-Ranked Lady Huskies Crush #4 Louisville 81-64

Pistons Fire Coach Cheeks

Baseball Arbitration: Winners And Losers

Mason Plumlee Scores Career-High 22 As Nyets Beat Pelicans

Dodgers Sign Maholm To One-Year Deal

Top Five Spring Training Storylines: Espi vs. Rendon



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Ashley Benson, Heroin Chic…

…or creep?

TMZ asks readers: Too soon?

Mark Zuckerberg Is America’s #1 Philanthropist

IRS Goes After Michael Jackson’s Estate For $702 Million, Accuses Trustees Of Undervaluing Assets


George Zimmerman/DMX Celebrity Boxing Match Scratched

t.a.T.U Reunites For Olympic Opening Ceremony

Woody Allen Speaks Out…

…And Dylan Farrow Responds

Marc Anthony, GF Chloe Green Split After One Year

Farrah Abraham – Vivid Tried To Backdoor Me On Sequel



FOREIGNERS
Toyota To Close Australian Auto Plants By 2017
Japan Posts Record-Low Current Account Surplus
Swiss Voters Back Limit On Immigration
New Round Of Syria Peace Talks To Begin In Geneva
Rice Farmers Protest As Thai Government’s Funding Woes Mount
Norks Rescind Invite To Seek Bae Release
70,000 Rally In Fresh Kiev Protest
Nepal Parliament Ends Deadlock, Elects Social Democrat As Prime Minister
Boat Capsizes In Indian Reservoir, 22 Drown
Baluchi Rebels Blow Up Three Pakistani Gas Pipelines



BLOGS & STUFF
American Power: Smokin’ Conservative Michelle Malkin Girds For 2014 GOP Civil War
American Thinker: The Final Constitutional Option
Blackfive: Palate Cleanser – Gunny Bryan Wallgren’s John Glenn Speech
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Trans Woman Manages To Make Piers Morgan Look Sympathetic
The Necropolitan Sentinel: Obamacare Watch – Sure, We’ll Take THESE Federal Funds, But Not Those
Conservatives4Palin: Another Democratic Congressman Abandons The Sinking Ship
Don Surber: Robert Reich Knows Nothing About The Middle Class
Jammie Wearing Fools: Sudden Convert To Open Carry Wendy Davis Tried To Block “Campus Carry” Law In 2011
Joe For America: Backlash Against Immigration Floods Boehner’s Website
JustOneMinute: Righties Gone Wild
Pat Dollard: IRS, FBI Conduct Raid On “Machine Gun Preacher” Sam Childers; Charity Shipment “Totally Destroyed”
Protein Wisdom: Oh, The Irony!
The Jawa Report: Red On Red Continues In Syria
The Lonely Conservative: Democrats Now Officially The Anti-Jobs Party
This Ain’t Hell: Wanted – William Derek Church
Megan McArdle: Is There A Right Time To Raise The Minimum Wage?


Category: Live at Five

Der Geisterfahrer

Posted on | February 9, 2014 | 11 Comments

by Smitty

A great German word, meaning “motorist driving against the traffic on motorways“. Literally, “ghost driver”. This post is in response to “11 dead after wrong-way car crashes in Florida and California“.
Let’s trot out the original Ghost Riders in the Sky:

Category: Uncategorized
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