Daughter of Communist Refugees Wonders Why Ivy League Communism Is Now Hip and Chic
[guest post by JVW]
Credit where it’s due: I came across this thanks to a tweet from the often insufferable Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times. This remarkable piece ran in The Harvard Crimson last month and was written by a sophomore majoring in applied mathematics (note: not some grievance-mongering studies discipline).
In 1988, my twenty-six-year-old father jumped off a train in the middle of Hungary with nothing but the clothes on his back. For the next two years, he fled an oppressive Romanian Communist regime that would kill him if they ever laid hands on him again.
My father ran from a government that beat, tortured, and brainwashed its citizens. His childhood friend disappeared after scrawling an insult about the dictator on the school bathroom wall. His neighbors starved to death from food rations designed to combat “obesity.” As the population dwindled, women were sent to the hospital every month to make sure they were getting pregnant.
My father’s escape journey eventually led him to the United States. He moved to the Midwest and married a Romanian woman who had left for America the minute the regime collapsed. Today, my parents are doctors in quiet, suburban Kansas. Both of their daughters go to Harvard. They are the lucky ones.
Those of us of a certain age are likely to forget that today’s college student, likely born sometime between 1995 and 2000, has no direct experience with large-scale communism of the sort practiced in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries in the latter half of the past century. Their view of communism is skewed by countries like China and Vietnam who have blended some capitalist practices with authoritarian central government to create a system where the government picks and chooses who gets rich and how much they can keep (ironically enough, this is the same system that seems to hold a great deal of appeal to the Barack Obamas and Hillary Clintons of the world). Or else they view communism through the prism of Cuba, a small and poor island nation with catchy rhumba and mambo music and cool classic cars prowling the streets. But the author, Laura Nicolae, is here to set her schoolmates straight:
Roughly 100 million people died at the hands of the ideology my parents escaped. They cannot tell their story. We owe it to them to recognize that this ideology is not a fad, and their deaths are not a joke.
[. . .]
Walk around campus, and you’re likely to spot Ché Guevara on a few shirts and button pins. A sophomore jokes that he’s declared a secondary in “communist ideology and implementation.” The new Leftist Club on campus seeks “a modern perspective” on Marx and Lenin to “alleviate the stigma around the concept of Leftism.” An author laments in these pages that it’s too difficult to meet communists here. For many students, casually endorsing communism is a cool, edgy way to gripe about the world.
After spending four years on a campus saturated with Marxist memes and jokes about communist revolutions, my classmates will graduate with the impression that communism represents a light-hearted critique of the status quo, rather than an empirically violent philosophy that destroyed millions of lives.
I was in college in the very waning days of Soviet communism (the Berlin Wall came down the summer after my freshman year). Back then the campus radicals were circumspect enough not to climb aboard the broken-down Marxist-Leninist bandwagon (well, except for Van Jones who is a whole separate category of nutjob), and most of them gravitated more towards anarchism, which after all, they liked to say, was what Trotsky understood was the real future all along. But today’s college kids, not even old enough to recall very clearly the first stirrings of Islamofascism, now find old Uncle Joe Stalin to be a benign figure, just as clueless fellow travelers did a century earlier. The estimable Ms. Nicolae is having none of it:
Many in my generation have blurred the reality of communism with the illusion of utopia. I never had that luxury. Growing up, my understanding of communism was personalized; I could see its lasting impact in the faces of my family members telling stories of their past. My perspective toward the ideology is radically different because I know the people who survived it; my relatives continue to wonder about their friends who did not.
The stories of survivors paint a more vivid picture of communism than the textbooks my classmates have read. While we may never fully understand all of the atrocities that occurred under communist regimes, we can desperately try to ensure the world never repeats their mistakes. To that end, we must tell the accounts of survivors and fight the trivialization of communism’s bloody past.
There’s more, so do read the whole thing, but it does my grumpy and worried heart a world of good to know that Harvard has at least some sensible students like Laura Nicolae to counter the baneful effects of the Bernie Sanders-worshipping modern campus Marxist.
– JVW
Hi everyone. Sorry I have been so scarce around these parts recently.
JVW (42615e) — 12/30/2017 @ 7:32 pmBoth ideologies abolished freedom and resulted in the murder of millions but the difference between communism and naziism is that you never hear people say: “well, they just haven’t done naziism correctly yet”.
You can tell she hit a nerve of truth because the lefty hate for her is crazy.
harkin (8256c3) — 12/30/2017 @ 7:54 pmThanks, JVW, it’s always good to hear the truth from one who experienced it.
I had a Romanian student who wrote her thesis on The American Dream and how it is real. No matter what her professors told her. She told me about the forced pregnancies, to make more comrades for Ceaucescu. And when you stood in one of many lines all day to get bread or food or permission to do something, you had to smile. If you did not smile, it meant you were unhappy with the revolution and were a traitor. You would be dragged in to the police if you were caught…not smiling.
Horrendous.
Patricia (5fc097) — 12/30/2017 @ 7:55 pmJVW, I’m no communist, but where in Marx’s philosophy is violence advocated? There may be violence advocated in the form of a revolution, but as far as I know, Marx did not advocate mass murder. In fact, communism is mainly a economic system, it has no real bearing on anything else (unless you think that money is all that matters in the world – a materialist).
You can’t blame the actions of dictators on communism. If so, Jim Jones and every other evil “Christian” would similarly condemn Christianity. (Dictators, such as Lenin, are antithetical to communism in the first place.)
I wouldn’t say anything, but I’m tired of people who give weak criticisms such as this. Since it is almost totally just an economic system, it’s tantamount to saying something like “The Free Market killed millions of people …” It doesn’t even make sense.
I majored in liberal arts and have never heard anyone praise Lenin. I seriously question that anyone would. (Oh, I’m sure you can find a handful – you can find plenty who idolize Hitler, unfortunately.)
Tillman (a95660) — 12/30/2017 @ 8:01 pmTrump’s fault somehow
Mitch (57a593) — 12/30/2017 @ 8:06 pmTillman, you’re a tool.
Rev.Hoagie (6bbda7) — 12/30/2017 @ 8:08 pmLenin knew the people would not rise up on their own. So he created an elite, the vanguardhe also
narciso (d1f714) — 12/30/2017 @ 8:10 pmrealized it was very hard for an uprising to happen in major industrialized countries so he chose a half feudal nation like Russia, china was much the same way, but gramsci and the Frankfurt school still persisted, one might alinski of the former approach. We know how the holomodor claimed
Lives in the caucasus how the cultural revolution reaped nearly as bloody a crop. Nazis really benefited by Stalin targeting his ire at the social democrats in Germany and other venues
communism isn’t cool
you would have to be a fool
to want to live under that rule
read about it then you’ll see
the best system for you and me?
it’s our own robust democracy!
happyfeet (28a91b) — 12/30/2017 @ 8:12 pmAnyone who has read the histories of the Soviet Union and Communist China and fails to realize that communism was the driving force as well as the excuse for the terrors is helpless.
harkin (8256c3) — 12/30/2017 @ 8:13 pmYes, Mr. Tillman, sir, Communism is only an economic system. Which can only exist in a totalitarian state without individual freedoms or individual anythings. Good grief, you’re a goof!
nk (dbc370) — 12/30/2017 @ 8:19 pmI knew he was a blithering idiot,…china nominally under the communist model, in practice emulates its predecessor kuomintang regime to a degree, Vietnam is still clinging to the debris of commynusm. The transition in the soviet union, directed in large part by summers and Sachs did taint classical liberalism to a degree.
narciso (d1f714) — 12/30/2017 @ 8:22 pmThis is a recent example, Venezuela is another:
https://babalublog.com/2017/12/30/healthcare-in-castros-cuba-debunking-the-myth-that-cubans-have-superior-healthcare/
narciso (d1f714) — 12/30/2017 @ 8:31 pmSure am happy commie Clinton is not president.
mg (8cbc69) — 12/30/2017 @ 8:35 pmTillman, taking away freedom is an act of violence. More your take away the more violent. That is Leftism. Trump gets it, Moron Republicans don’t.
Clown Car (c587a1) — 12/30/2017 @ 8:36 pmBut you Trumpers, don’t pat yourselves on the back too much. For a lot of so-called Communists, its attractiveness was The Revolution. The overthrow of the existing order. Not the dreary police state which followed. Isn’t that what you like about the Trump Revolution, too? The overthrow of the existing order?
nk (dbc370) — 12/30/2017 @ 8:47 pmNice try, but no dice, this is a thermidorean reaction against a regime that went bananas
narciso (d1f714) — 12/30/2017 @ 8:51 pmAs in ‘underwear worn on the outside’
So good to read a post from you, JVW, and what a great post it is. I fear Laura Nicolae is so beyond the average students’ understanding of communism that she’s likely to be ignored or written off as a loon. If Nicolae were an invited guest speaker at Harvard, students would protest in an uproar and she would have her invitation rescinded.
Patricia, my God, can you imagine the constant state of fear one lived under during the time of Ceaușescu? I wonder when college students will wear t-shirts with his face plastered on it…
Dana (023079) — 12/30/2017 @ 8:57 pmThey mostly did that soltzhenutsyn in 78, its like we’ve done a timewarp of stupidity, a staninch abtticomunist and scholar of the form of Lenin ended up in the Reagan nsc and was derided by the likes if strobe talbott, so was the late general Edward Rooney, his very in your face arms negotuatir
narciso (d1f714) — 12/30/2017 @ 9:01 pmGreat post, JVW. Sorry for putting you after Tillman.
nk (dbc370) — 12/30/2017 @ 9:05 pm“ Isn’t that what you like about the Trump Revolution, too? The overthrow of the existing order?”
Trump’s election is a side effect, a bi-product of the implosion of the ‘existing order’ of the DC swamp as representative of the people’s interest and the media as trusted news source.
It’s not a revolution – it’s a severe check to a gross imbalance with potential for the restoration of norms.
harkin (8256c3) — 12/30/2017 @ 9:23 pm“But today’s college kids, not even old enough to recall very clearly the first stirrings of Islamofascism, now find old Uncle Joe Stalin to be a benign figure, just as clueless fellow travelers did a century earlier.”
They all have futures at the NY Slimes. Incredible how smart kids go to college to become stupid.
Bill M (906260) — 12/30/2017 @ 9:50 pmWell Carlos slims is jumping ship, so they’ll have to another sucker, I mean part in add to that the endowment tax.
narciso (104f4d) — 12/30/2017 @ 9:56 pmGreat post, JVW.
felipe (023cc9) — 12/30/2017 @ 10:35 pmMarx, 1848:
The philosophy of Marxism that makes violence necessary is explained here.
DRJ (15874d) — 12/30/2017 @ 11:56 pmHaving walked along the Berlin Wall in 1989, a few short months before it came down, seen the guard towers, and here and there the names of those who failed to make it to safety, I shudder every time I hear someone say “Real communism hasn’t been tried.”
I hope the day comes when Communists are treated as Nazis are, and that Che t-shirt is a fast track to ostracism.
Kevin M (752a26) — 12/31/2017 @ 2:08 amI majored in liberal arts and have never heard anyone praise Lenin. I seriously question that anyone would.
I worked with a guy who wore a Mao cap every day, complete with the little red star. When KAL 007 was shot down, it took him about 12 seconds to say “They were probably spying!”, as though that excused killing hundreds of people.
I have never ever seen someone wear a swastika to work.
Kevin M (752a26) — 12/31/2017 @ 2:13 amhttp://www.breitbart.com/radio/2017/12/30/john-zmirak-nevertrump-national-review-licked-the-mud-off-of-george-w-bushs-boots-while-he-allowed-iraqs-christians-to-be-ethnically-cleansed/
mg (8cbc69) — 12/31/2017 @ 2:14 amMore information on why the globalist booshes are pathetic.
Poland and Hungary need a 2nd Amendment. Talk to them Mr. President.
mg (8cbc69) — 12/31/2017 @ 3:32 amI hope she’s looking over her shoulder for antifa goons, and has good paperwork on her non-STEM courses.
Richard Aubrey (10ef71) — 12/31/2017 @ 3:43 amOn her STEM courses, too. STEM departments also have their fair share of dipsticks. Although this is Harvard and not some taxpayer-funded state
nk (dbc370) — 12/31/2017 @ 3:56 amacademic jobs programuniversity and she may have some intelligent professors and TAs.Whoever her professors are, they have a dossier 2 feet thick on why they are the most important professor in the world. Having done business with a few, they just don’t shut up about themselves.
mg (8cbc69) — 12/31/2017 @ 4:02 ama dossier 2 feet thick
It’s called a curriculum vitae, you uncouth deplorable.
nk (dbc370) — 12/31/2017 @ 4:06 amgun loving uncouth deplorable of the silent majority, if you please.
mg (8cbc69) — 12/31/2017 @ 4:29 amNever had to have one of them thar curriculum vitae experiences, I just show people my finish work.
nk
mg (8cbc69) — 12/31/2017 @ 4:31 amWorking for some retired liberal Ma. state senators is exhausting.
And yet thanks to this barbarian they celebrated Christmas in Nineveh the Assyrian capital which converted first to Jonah then thomas.
narciso (104f4d) — 12/31/2017 @ 6:30 amSo you “majored” in liberal arts? What did that prepare you to do in life beside troll conservative blogs? Be a red hat lady at afternoon tea? An Uber driver? A Starbucks barista? The fact you admit to such an education and are so lacking in self awareness that you haven’t figured out the reason you never heard your fellow illiberal arts students praise Lenin is because they didn’t have to. It was understood. Silly tool. There is estimated to be about 9,000 admitted Nazi’s in the US but the CPUSA boasts 3.5 million and even a cursory perusal of college campuses clearly indicates more. Perhaps instead of illiberal arts you should try economics and learn a tad of critical thinking.
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-onWvFSqDbAs/WYurJOnt0zI/AAAAAAABLuE/HVQCKT-HybEjnQf1dqY6oj7oLqMGoDWAQCLcBGAs/s640/1%2B1%2B1ninetymilesssT4Y1tt9211o1_1280.jpg
Rev.Hoagie (6bbda7) — 12/31/2017 @ 6:41 amHoagies dream thread
Livin in the Past
Dem commies!
Admiral Ben Bunsen Burner (69b6bd) — 12/31/2017 @ 7:20 am@Kevin M,
“I have never ever seen someone wear a swastika to work.”
Sadly, I have. The day after 9/11 a young man came to work at an ice cream parlor near my work wearing a t-shirt bearing the image of a United States flag won which the stars had been replaced with swastikas. I found out about this because, when his employer told him to take it off, he declined to do so. At the top of his lungs.
He was fired on the spot. In New Hope, a town steeped in Leftist idiocy, there was absolutely no sympathy for the moron.
I note that the person who had the bad taste to wear a swastika to work was a Leftist.
C. S. P. Schofield (99bd37) — 12/31/2017 @ 8:14 amDana – “I fear Laura Nicolae is so beyond the average students’ understanding of communism that she’s likely to be ignored or written off as a loon.”
That’s the scariest part, it isn’t complicated.
But because of the complete perversion of the educational system this opinion is not even recognized as brutal truth and common sense but instead a toxic, dangerous opinion masking the inherent racism and white male patriarchy of capitalism and colonialism…….that’s really how they talk.
If you even attempt to point out that capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty with the least amount of corruption and violence, their eyes roll back and their hair alights.
And they don’t consider her so much a loon as a threat.
harkin (8256c3) — 12/31/2017 @ 8:18 am37.
“Erasin’ the Past
Dem commies!”
fyp
harkin (8256c3) — 12/31/2017 @ 8:24 amTeh WALL!
Metaphorical? Figurative? Literal?
Can conservatives separate the meanings?
Admiral Ben Bunsen Burner (69b6bd) — 12/31/2017 @ 8:29 amRevising History, one tyrant at a time.
Admiral Ben Bunsen Burner (69b6bd) — 12/31/2017 @ 8:30 am“as far as I know, Marx did not advocate mass murder.”
“… there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.” – Marx
==
“Erasin, revisin’, erasin’, revisin, let’s have them all bumped off” –
harkin (8256c3) — 12/31/2017 @ 8:50 amThank you for the post JVW.
This young woman brings hope for the future. Hopefully she can reach others to see the truth.
NJRob (b00189) — 12/31/2017 @ 8:58 amAlready drunk harkin?
Admiral Ben Bunsen Burner (69b6bd) — 12/31/2017 @ 8:58 amAdmiral,
Those are Marx’s own plublished (translated) words.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/11/06.htm
You don’t have to be drunk to find such information… But it probably does help to read it.
BfC (5517e8) — 12/31/2017 @ 9:17 amYou could say the same about Adolph.
Communism is not “mainly an economic system” you idiot, that’s socialism. Communism is a form of government disguised as an economic system and that form of government is a dictatorship. Or are you aware of any communist states that weren’t? You probably believe islam is a religion too. It’s not. Again it’s a form of government, a theocracy, dressed up as a religion.
Ahh… yes we can. Communism creates dictators in case you haven’t noticed. Jim Jones BTW, gave up on Christianity and became communist and loyal supporter of Marxism, communism and socialism. Dictators such as Lenin are not antithetical to communism, they personify communism in the first place. Christianity on the other hand is antithetical to communism as in Christianity you cannot place the State above God which communism requires. Gee, do you think that may be why communist countries are atheist too?
You shouldn’t say anything since you don’t know what you’re talking about. But a documented 100-200 million deaths by communism in the last century can’t change your mind about it.
And when you make a comment like: “I majored in liberal arts and have never heard anyone praise Lenin. I seriously question that anyone would. (Oh, I’m sure you can find a handful – you can find plenty who idolize Hitler, unfortunately.)” one can only surmise you are a useful idiot of the left. Groomed and saturated in leftism by leftists to the point you actually believe you can “only find a handful” of communists but Nazi’s lurk behind every tree.
Learn from one who lived it: “A Marxist system is recognized by the fact that it spares the criminals and criminalizes political opponents.” Solzhenitsyn
You’re not a fool, Tillman. You’re a tool. But you don’t have to stay one.
Rev.Hoagie (6bbda7) — 12/31/2017 @ 9:29 amHe is,uncommonly ignorant, but that’s just a day ending in y.
narciso (104f4d) — 12/31/2017 @ 9:39 amJim Jones was well connected to the local progressives in San Francisco/California. I worked on office equipment a couple of times there in my youth. They where very worried about security (had iron gates and two people–usually women?–as gate keepers). They seemed to be very sincere in their beliefs and nice. In the front lobby was a glass case filled with certificates from many local politicians and even state bodies.
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=14024 (follow link to actual material)
well connected:
BfC (5517e8) — 12/31/2017 @ 9:56 amhttp://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=14017
Very insightful observation. I guess I’m a bit older than you – my first year in college was 1980, and I got to spend an afternoon visiting East Berlin in 1987, when the Wall was still very much a real thing. Such a different world then.
Reagan kept his promise and realized the vision he described, speaking at Westminster in 1982:
One could say Reagan was too successful, in that virtually no trace of the Lenin/Stalin/Brezhnev system remains today, apart from North Korea. The fact that a significant fraction of the world, including almost half of Europe, was at one time organized and run on the same principles as today’s North Korea, is now almost impossible to comprehend.
Dave (ee4aca) — 12/31/2017 @ 10:08 am“The Gulag Archipelago” should be required reading in every Freshman Orientation class, on every campus, every year – and then should be required again for every entering Post-Grad Student.
askeptic (8d10f9) — 12/31/2017 @ 11:09 amGood idea, askeptic. Jordan Peterson also recommends this.
Patricia (5fc097) — 12/31/2017 @ 11:22 am“The Gulag Archipelago” should be required reading in every…….”
Along with Homage To Catalonia -George Orwell and The Great Terror by Robert Conquest.
harkin (8256c3) — 12/31/2017 @ 11:28 amI read homage on recommendation of a friend, its a rather quick read, lets see if i can find a link. Orwell really believed in the republic, but he saw how it was consuming itself under stains leadership
narciso (d1f714) — 12/31/2017 @ 11:33 amThis version doesn’t have footnotes:
narciso (d1f714) — 12/31/2017 @ 11:34 amhttps://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79h/contents.html
@4. Ignorance is bliss, hence reactionaries make for happy campers, Tillman. It’s ‘All in the Family’ – communism is the bastard child of capitalism and when the middle gets squeezed and shrinks as the bottom grows to benefit the top, renewed interest in alternatives always resurfaces. To a fresh generation, the sheep have been sheared too close.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 12/31/2017 @ 12:13 pmPut the lampshade away disco, commnisn is a restatement of the first heresy ‘yes shall be a goods’ promulgated by alinskis first rebel lucifer it has had many guises before then.
narciso (d1f714) — 12/31/2017 @ 12:18 pmyou don’t have to be drunk to find such information… But it probably does help to read it.
What are you in about?
Admiral Ben Bunsen Burner (69b6bd) — 12/31/2017 @ 12:18 pmIn reply to (I guess):
Or this?
Something else?
BfC (5517e8) — 12/31/2017 @ 12:22 pm@57. See. Don’t worry. Be happy.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 12/31/2017 @ 12:23 pmNo Sammy. Nothing else is required of you. Go suck on a rock.
Admiral Ben Bunsen Burner (69b6bd) — 12/31/2017 @ 12:30 pm“as far as I know, Marx did not advocate mass murder.”
He killed doing ‘You Bet Your Life.’
DCSCA (797bc0) — 12/31/2017 @ 12:35 pmWho is Sammy?
BfC (5517e8) — 12/31/2017 @ 12:40 pmTotalitarian regimes have the same death throws
https://mobile.twitter.com/ThomasWictor/status/947372567907598336?p=v
narciso (d1f714) — 12/31/2017 @ 12:43 pmEvery time BfC vacated Sammeh appears. Similar styles..sockpuppet afoot.
Admiral Ben Bunsen Burner (69b6bd) — 12/31/2017 @ 12:44 pmNo he is quite to the point, unlike sammehs excessive sicratic stylings
narciso (d1f714) — 12/31/2017 @ 1:00 pmOr we are interested in different subjects. And both of us have real lives.
Ask Patterico. He has my credit card information from my donation.
Real person asking you real questions. You seem to deflect in a conversation.
Even if I was “sammy”, are those not your quotes?
Bill (my real name)
BfC (5517e8) — 12/31/2017 @ 1:01 pmBfC,
You’re giving Burnie Boy too much credit trying to have a discussion with him. He’s here to troll and throw feces around. Nothing added, nothing gained.
Capitalism has created such a comfortable life in our society that fools can benefit from those comforts while trying to overthrow it and attempting to impoverish everyone in the name of equality.
NJRob (f3b511) — 12/31/2017 @ 1:41 pmI know Rob.
Ben actually admitted a day or so ago that he was wrong about an Obama fact.
I thought i would try to avoid snark with him.
Snark can be fun, but a little goes a long way.
BfC (5517e8) — 12/31/2017 @ 1:54 pm24. DRJ, I suppose that’s a fair enough statement. If you superficially look at Marx, that’s what you’ll see with pop philosophy here in The States.
But to dig a little deeper, Marx was very influenced by Hegel. Now Hegel, essentially the philosopher of history, is famous for the “Hegelian Dialectic.” So, according to Hegel, human history flows in the form of Thesis, Anti-Thesis, Synthesis. Nothing stays the same, often the opposite is introduced in reaction to whatever has occurred before. After Synthesis, there is Thesis, completing the circle so it goes on infinitely.
Marx was not so much advocating for communism, but thought that he had predicted its coming. It was inevitable. It is the antithesis to capitalism.
Marx does criticize capitalism, but since he was influenced by Hegel, I think he realized that we couldn’t proceed past capitalism without first having it. In that light, and others, he realized that capitalism isn’t all bad (as pop philosophy would have you believe).
The author in that post you quote doesn’t know much about Marx, I can tell. Keep in mind that was Marx writing almost 200 years ago, well before America’s Democracy was much other than a curiosity at best. Marx was mainly against the few earning a living off of the work of the many, so I can’t imagine him not liking Democracy since it lets everyone participate (even if now the rich get to buy more “free” speech than us mere wage-earners).
Yes, Marx thought that the revolution would be bloody. But wasn’t ours?
Tillman (a95660) — 12/31/2017 @ 2:59 pmA liberal arts major… I said light cream in my Americano, Tillie!
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 12/31/2017 @ 3:05 pm@14 Tillman, taking away freedom is an act of violence. …
I don’t totally agree with this, but from within the Marx’ system, someone else making a living off of my labor is violent too, to a degree. A friend of mine, who owns his own business, says, “You’ll never get paid what you’re worth unless you own your own business.” Well that’s right, because business owners are making a profit off of your labor.
Tillman (a95660) — 12/31/2017 @ 3:08 pmHegel re Karl poppers evisceration was not keen on inalienable rights, so the declaration didn’t make sense to him. This view which is antithetical to limited govt was ubiquitous in vermin academic circles, it permeated the statism of Wagner and moller, common in Austrian circles to the fall of the creditanstalt and the rise of dollfuss. John Hopkins drank deep of this drought as did their star pupil Woodrow Wilson. The progenitor of the welfare state.
narciso (d1f714) — 12/31/2017 @ 3:13 pmMeanwhile, at a Chili’s off Times Square near AC’s CNN broadcast nest:
“Hello, my name is Kathy and I’ll be your waitress this evening.”
DCSCA (797bc0) — 12/31/2017 @ 3:23 pm@56. You always find a way to convey ideas better than I can DCSCA.
Tillman (a95660) — 12/31/2017 @ 3:26 pmHegel was a philosopher, an idea man, while Marx believed that changing the material world was the goal. It wasn’t a theoretical exercise to Marx, and he wanted to destroy most of what Western Civilization stood for. America may have been a new player in Western Civilization then, but the ideas Western Civilization stood for were well known.
DRJ (15874d) — 12/31/2017 @ 3:26 pmBfC any snark from you would be pedestrian. Save yourself the embarrassment. I would suggest advising your peers but that’s no help.
Admiral Ben Bunsen Burner (69b6bd) — 12/31/2017 @ 3:34 pmAs soon as as he finds his arse with both hands…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/graham-urges-trump-to-clarify-iran-strategy/2017/12/31/14f7bb0c-ee4f-11e7-97bf-bba379b809ab_story.html
Admiral Ben Bunsen Burner (69b6bd) — 12/31/2017 @ 3:39 pmyes, but the essence of his philosophy needs to be understood, he is antithetical to any notion of western liberty, hence varying degrees of welfare statism, fascism, and communism, this critique of hegel by karl popper, who George soros seems to have seriously misunderstood, was cited by mark Levin, in his last book
narciso (d1f714) — 12/31/2017 @ 3:40 pmWe’re talking about Lesbian Graham, right?
Admiral Ben Bunsen Burner (69b6bd) — 12/31/2017 @ 3:43 pmIf you don’t want to believe right wing “reactionaries”, believe leftist fellow traveler Susan Sontag: “Communism is in itself a variant, the most successful variant, of Fascism. Fascism with a human face.”
“Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Reader’s Digest between 1950 and 1970, and someone in the same period who read only The Nation or The New Statesman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of Communism? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?”
random viking (d78021) — 12/31/2017 @ 3:51 pmDRJ, do you think that people in communist countries no longer have families? Some of the ideas that Marx predicted were not accurate. Although it looks like the family unit is going through some rough spots here, come to think of it.
Tillman (a95660) — 12/31/2017 @ 3:54 pmTheoretical Communism is the opiate of the dipsh!t.
nk (dbc370) — 12/31/2017 @ 4:04 pmI think Marx and Engels wanted to abolish families, as do some Americans.
DRJ (15874d) — 12/31/2017 @ 6:01 pmAsk the zeks from lubyanka to kolyma how much of a human face, communism has the only one we actually is the one crushed by o’briens boot forever, those that yelp about gitmo forget villa barista (g2)
narciso (d1f714) — 12/31/2017 @ 6:09 pmMazorra (psychiatric hospital for dissidents) la cabana, preferred firing squad venue) rancho boyeros (airbase that was also a detention facility.
DRJ (15874d) — 12/31/2017 @ 6:01 pm
I completely agree.
felipe (023cc9) — 12/31/2017 @ 6:11 pmI wad relating, on the other thread, that the people that our media has relegated to dinosaurs were men like Perez roura who briefly served the Castro regime, the late agustin tamargo of bohemian tuber mates a grizzelled former militia men, imprisoned for 20 years.
narciso (d1f714) — 12/31/2017 @ 6:14 pmWhile Fascism is definitely an ideology of the Left (see Jonah’s Liberal Fascism for a brilliantly written account), I think Sontag gets it very much backward.
Hitler and Mussolini were following Lenin, and later Stalin, not the other way around. Since Communism arose under Lenin before Fascism, and Stalin paid scant attention to events beyond his own borders, it’s pretty hard to see how the precursor (Communism) can be a “variant” of the derivative (Fascism)…
Dave (ee4aca) — 12/31/2017 @ 6:22 pmI note that the person who had the bad taste to wear a swastika to work was a Leftist.
A very long time ago, some guy came to the house to take my kid sister out on a date. He was wearing a number of symbols, including a swastika on his jacket. I shut the door in his face after saying no sister of mine would be seen with a swastika.
He came back and apologized, saying he had no idea that it was about Communism. I said “OK, then” and let it go.
Kevin M (752a26) — 12/31/2017 @ 6:26 pmThose of us of a certain age are likely to forget that today’s college student, likely born sometime between 1995 and 2000, has no direct experience with large-scale communism of the sort practiced in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries in the latter half of the past century.
So what? An educated person ought to have at least a passing understanding of the world as it was before his birth. Perhaps things that are beyond living memory (e.g. Why were the Whigs so upset with Jackson?) can be excused, but there are millions of survivors of Soviet Communism. Go and ask them.
Kevin M (752a26) — 12/31/2017 @ 6:36 pmThe who Left vs Right, Hitler vs Stalin vs Mao thing is a poor argument.
Try Statist vs Individualist and you can see clearly who is on which side.
Kevin M (752a26) — 12/31/2017 @ 6:39 pmKevin M (752a26) — 12/31/2017 @ 6:26 pm
Yeah, I remember that. You had told us this before. Good story.
felipe (023cc9) — 12/31/2017 @ 6:57 pmThey didn’t have any kids, did they, Kevin?
nk (dbc370) — 12/31/2017 @ 7:12 pmSister had kids. Not with him.
Kevin M (752a26) — 12/31/2017 @ 7:18 pmShe married a rock musician instead. TSOL if that means anything to anyone.
Kevin M (752a26) — 12/31/2017 @ 7:19 pmNo longer a requirement for being elected president, apparently.
(It helps if you believe history began on the day you were born, I guess.)
Dave (445e97) — 12/31/2017 @ 8:14 pmThank You for the article and letter from the Harvard student. It is always difficult to convince people who have their minds made up that you are not trying to scam them but convince them that communism is wrong in so many ways; number one being; we were created to be free and communism is the loss of freedom.
Norm and Clay Churr (70ea5c) — 12/31/2017 @ 8:36 pmThanks for this post, JVW.
Patterico (45a4d7) — 12/31/2017 @ 8:41 pmI scrupulously avoid discussing politics (or other controversial topics) in any form with my undergraduate students (it will not help them learn physics, and it makes me nervous in an unequal student/professor relationship).
Doctoral students working with me are more like colleagues, so I feel more comfortable around them (my own doctoral advisor and I had friendly arguments about politics all the time).
One of my graduate students used to wear the infamous Che Guevara T-shirt. I once lightly pressed him about how much he knew about the man whose face he was wearing around, and the answer turned out to be essentially “nothing”. He seemed to have a vague impression that Che was a Latino version of Gandhi and was shocked when I pointed out that he was a mass murderer.
Dave (445e97) — 12/31/2017 @ 8:53 pmIf you want to see the result of a pure communist society, undisturbed by politics and class consciousness, look at Robert Owen the Welsh social reformer and his communities in Indiana in the mid-19 the century. He created two communities with the hope of building the perfect capitalist-free utopia. People would work as needed without salary and were given everything necessary to live. Unfortunately, fallen human nature being what it is, it didn’t take long before many in the commune just didn’t like working every day and so they stayed home, while still being sustained by the community. Needless to say it didn’t last long and the whole thing eventually collapsed from it’s own weight. Come to think of it that sounds a lot like our welfare and entitlement programs where a great number of Americans can stay home, or go to college and receive money; food stamps; free housing; free medical; free phones; free college; etc. What could go wrong?
Norm and Clay Churr (70ea5c) — 12/31/2017 @ 9:08 pmWith a handle like that, you should know why. The nomenklatura will have a use for them when organ transplants are perfected in the near future. Researchers suffered a horrible setback when they created HIV (the AIDS virus) in their quest for a permanent solution to rejection, but they have since recovered and made tremendous advances.
nk (dbc370) — 12/31/2017 @ 9:14 pmThe siloviki (among the military and security services) and the oligarchs are two halves of the former nomenklatura, sometimes one comes from the other wing,
narciso (d1f714) — 12/31/2017 @ 9:19 pmTake this fellow, who mssr Simpson had a certain fucpxation on, re the lee Smith series, there is a certain gap in his CV:
narciso (d1f714) — 12/31/2017 @ 9:27 pmforeignpolicy.com/2014/03/19/married-to-the-ukrainian-mob
So hold up, firtash was extradited because allegedly he paid bribes in India, how is that our business?
narciso (d1f714) — 12/31/2017 @ 9:43 pmDRJ, actually,
http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ma-Mo/Marx-Karl.html
They also had children, so he obviously did not disdain family.
I think you hate him, and it’s understandable. But think of him as someone sort of possessed with what he thought was his crystal ball into the future and who had a very narrow interpretation of the world. Lucky for us, money (and capital) isn’t everything, or he would have been correct about a lot of what he said.
Tillman (a95660) — 12/31/2017 @ 10:14 pmHe wee a punk, who was supported by his rich friend, Friedrich Engels, he was a jerk whose concoction brought the deaths of tens if not a hundreds millions. Of course he didn’t think these rules applied to him. But he thought the state knew best for the paroles he turned in some interesting writing re the civil war anpng others but Henry Mayhew had a better analysis of Victorian era poverty.0
narciso (d1f714) — 12/31/2017 @ 10:20 pmWhat he was most was shortsighted. He thought the Industrial Revolution would create some kind of steampunk dystopia that would be fertile ground for his revolution. Instead, in the industrialized West, it improved the condition of the ordinary working man and broke down the economic and class barriers, and his theories only took hold in feudal, primitive-agrarian sh!tholes.
nk (dbc370) — 12/31/2017 @ 10:31 pmPossibly, pure Marxist now think having reached the requisite level of accumulation, Russia is roe for a real revolution this time, for cereal, they also believe the part about the matrix and human batteries
narciso (d1f714) — 12/31/2017 @ 10:39 pmnk, here are 5 of Marx’s predictions that have come true, just for your education, since you are obviously lacking in that department (among many others).
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/marx-was-right-five-surprising-ways-karl-marx-predicted-2014-20140130
Tillman (a95660) — 1/1/2018 @ 9:04 amGood grief! Have a Happy and Healthy New Year, Mr. Tillman.
nk (dbc370) — 1/1/2018 @ 9:07 amLook, kid, if you’re serious about this stuff, read people who implemented Marxism and knew what they were talking about. For example:
Josef Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.
Mao Tse-tung, The Little Red Book
Stalin’s really is worth reading, even if you are not a Communist.
nk (dbc370) — 1/1/2018 @ 9:27 amThanks for the New Years laugh, Tillman.
mg (8cbc69) — 1/1/2018 @ 9:29 am@107,
A lot of people mistook what they saw in the cities during the Industrial Revolution for abject poverty, ignorance , and so on. What it took historical research to show was that the Indistrial workers were better fed and less,ignorant than their rural forebears. Not WELL fed or WELL educated, but better.
C. S. P. Schofield (99bd37) — 1/1/2018 @ 9:47 am@111
“It was as the supreme expression of the mediocrity of the apparatus that Stalin himself rose to his position.” – Leon Trotsky, My Life (1930)
Dave (9aedfd) — 1/1/2018 @ 10:40 amYes that probably got trotsky killed,
narciso (d1f714) — 1/1/2018 @ 10:44 amTrotsky was an animal. He conducted the slaughters after the Communists won the revolution. He did not know when to stop killing and start rebuilding.
nk (dbc370) — 1/1/2018 @ 11:24 amsomeone stuck the business end of an ice axe in his head is what i heard
happyfeet (28a91b) — 1/1/2018 @ 11:26 am“ouch!” exclaimed Mr. Trotsky. “Cut it out!”
happyfeet (28a91b) — 1/1/2018 @ 11:29 amI believe it was an ice pick at the base of his little commie brain. Good. But the leftists think they’re the smart ones.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ad33149cfd96ee177499cc825c454052f25b09ab6d5593dc949bba21fd281dd1.jpg?w=600&h=634
Rev.Hoagie (6bbda7) — 1/1/2018 @ 11:42 amWell I wish you good health and a happy new year too, nk.
I read a few pages of Stalin for philosophy. I wasn’t impressed, but if I remember correctly, I was a little horrified by his disregard for human life.
“Stalin’s really is worth reading, even if you are not a Communist.”
Stalin was about the same, and it pays to know your enemy, so I won’t disagree with that. I would say that Marx had more interesting ideas, in part since he often tried to back them up with empirical evidence (e.g., the history of industry and economics).
From a philosophical standpoint, what is interesting about Republicans is that they like Ann Rand. But she stole most of her ideas from Nietzsche, who is also to blame for some of Hitler’s atrocities – or at the very least he was cited as being an influence to him. What Marx is to the likes of Stalin, Nietzsche was to Hitler, and yet Republicans don’t bother to demonize Nietzsche.
Tillman (a95660) — 1/1/2018 @ 12:34 pm*Ayn Rand
Tillman (a95660) — 1/1/2018 @ 12:35 pmThey stem from the same well of evil
http://.oxfordscholarship.com/mobile/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656059.001.0001/acprof-9780199656059-chapter-2
narciso (d1f714) — 1/1/2018 @ 1:00 pmThe problem was Russia had few classical adherents sans perhaps the kadets
https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2017-spring/ayn-rand-contra-nietzsche/
narciso (d1f714) — 1/1/2018 @ 1:03 pmMarx’s ideas about overproduction led him to predict what is now called globalization – the spread of capitalism across the planet in search of new markets. “The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe,” he wrote. “It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.”
?? What conservative tickle bone does this reach Tillman..coccyx?
They are so anal
Admiral Ben Bunsen Burner (69b6bd) — 1/1/2018 @ 1:29 pmNo longer a requirement for being elected president, apparently.
Never was. The whole of the Democrat base thinks socialism can work.
Kevin M (752a26) — 1/1/2018 @ 1:40 pmGet help, Ben
Kevin M (752a26) — 1/1/2018 @ 1:43 pmYeah, thank God the Democrats no longer have a monopoly on ignorance!
Dave (9aedfd) — 1/1/2018 @ 2:24 pmAre you a liberal conservative or a conservative liberal, Dave.?
Goldwater conservative left of Hubert Humphrey?
Admiral Ben Bunsen Burner (69b6bd) — 1/1/2018 @ 2:43 pmTillman, I don’t think Marx was the family man you portray him as.
DRJ (15874d) — 1/1/2018 @ 2:48 pmAt least you support FDR idea of WPA?
Admiral Ben Bunsen Burner (69b6bd) — 1/1/2018 @ 2:49 pmI have read everything by Nietzsche, including Nietzsche Contra Wagner and The Gay Science. (That second got me strange looks when I took it out on the subway in 1976.) The Nazis’ ideas, especially the anti-Semitism, were not Nietzsche’s, they were Wagner’s with Nietzschean labels such as ubermensch and Triumph of the Will. As for Rand and Hayek, the less said about those dodos the better. (Friedrich Hayek, that is, not Salma who is one hot babe.) Warmed over pap for pudgy young men with complete comic book collections.
nk (dbc370) — 1/1/2018 @ 5:04 pmGuess which one is the leftist democrat.
Rev.Hoagie (6bbda7) — 1/1/2018 @ 5:07 pmhttp://www.gaypatriot.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/DSCraivX0AAjvs6.jpg
DRJ, I don’t want to keep arguing over whether Marx was anti-family. The only reason I brought his family up was that I remembered that he had one. I don’t think it’s very consequential whether was anti-family or not.
Tillman (a95660) — 1/1/2018 @ 5:13 pmFamily is here and in communist countries, and as far as I know, no country is discouraging family since they provide stability and encourage employment. Stability and working, in turn, promotes more tax income for the state. Countries don’t want to discourage that.
nk, I’m glad to hear you’re no Randian.
Tillman (a95660) — 1/1/2018 @ 5:23 pmOn racist ideas, you are correct. They did not come from Nietzsche. But the idea of the Overman was, and Will to Power – as if it was the only meaning in the world, and a very strict anti-pity stance was there. Reading Nietzsche, you get the idea that any sort of government assistance whatsoever would be sickening to him (but that’s probably not quite fair). There are other positions he had and the Nazi’s adopted that I can’t think of off-hand.
In Marxist country there is not freedom of religion, there is freedom of worship, you are state property and any contrary belief is circumscribed.
narciso (d1f714) — 1/1/2018 @ 5:24 pmT
DRJ (15874d) — 1/1/2018 @ 5:38 pmYou may not be interested in the family, Tillman, but Marx was. Communism and Marxism believes in the abolition of bourgeois groups and values. The family was and is the bedrock of bourgeois values.
For a fact, Nietzsche was non-egalitarian and contemptuous of popular rule and popular/ist leaders.
nk (dbc370) — 1/1/2018 @ 5:46 pmI am a Reagan conservative, probably a bit more moderate than Reagan on some social issues, but only a bit (I am not a believer in God, although I respect people of faith).
The WPA was an emergency measure intended to respond to a unique crisis. In collapsed economy, paying unemployed people to do (sometimes) useful work is arguably better than paying them not to work at all (or letting them starve). On the other hand, only the private sector can provide a real basis for long-term economic recovery. FDR’s programs like the WPA ameliorated some suffering during the great depression, but they failed utterly at rebuilding the economy.
The Gipper, as usual, got it about right:
nk went on to beclown himself thusly:
We certainly agree about Salma, but not Friedrich. I’m aghast that you would slander such a brilliant man. His insights into the nuances of prices, and how planned economies cannot, even in principle, ever hope to work are pure genius. If he’s good enough for Thomas Sowell, he’s good enough for me. (And no, I do not own any comic books…)
Dave (9aedfd) — 1/1/2018 @ 6:11 pmSpecially when you consider that Hayek and before that Von mises, chief opponent, was not Keynes but Warner and miller, the statistics sorcerers apprentice since the 1880s
narciso (d1f714) — 1/1/2018 @ 6:17 pm136. That’s not what I said, DRJ. I’m not very interested in Marx’s views of family. I don’t believe that everything he said was (or is) highly revered as if he were some kind of deity anyway. I may be wrong, but I don’t think that even communist countries revere him as some kind of deity. Maybe his ideas of communism are, but not footnotes like this.
Tillman (a95660) — 1/1/2018 @ 6:19 pmIf you’re thinking that somehow he helped cause the “sexual revolution” of the 60’s, I don’t believe so. Reliable birth control and being able to cure all STDs at the time were the main drivers there, not as much any leftist philosophy.
I hate Marxism with every fiber of my being, but that is because I understand it, and what it has wrought, Russia china Kampuchea Ethiopia (yes the little ditty Michael Jackson was warbling about wee because of mengistus engineered famine)
https://revisesociology.com/2014/02/10/marxist-perspective-family/
narciso (d1f714) — 1/1/2018 @ 6:26 pmHis insights into the nuances of prices, and how planned economies cannot, even in principle, ever hope to work are pure genius.
The knocking down of strawmen. Cocktail party small talk like theoretical Marxism is. In a more scholarly guise than Ayn Rand’s fiction, that’s all.
nk (dbc370) — 1/1/2018 @ 6:51 pmOne female member of a bourgeois family having the deep love of family explained to her by a government specialist.
Rev.Hoagie (6bbda7) — 1/1/2018 @ 6:56 pmhttp://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/2997/8051/original.jpg?w=800&h
Filthy Keynesian.
Dave (9aedfd) — 1/1/2018 @ 11:18 pmArmchair anarchist!
nk (dbc370) — 1/2/2018 @ 3:48 amThere is a real threat to the thousand of women marchers gathering in Washington in support of the #womenofiran. They gather to protest the treatment of the women who themselves are victims of their own protests against their oppressive government. Scores of American feminists are expected to gather in the cold and blistering wind of Washington, DC to show their undying support for all oppresses women of the world. They happily join President Trump, PM Netanyahu and other conservative leaders worldwide to denounce the government of Iran.
Sorry, wrong women. As Dianny wrote at Patriot Retort:
“I just went over to the Women’s March Twitter page to see what pearls of wisdom they had about the uprising in Iran.
Guess what?
They haven’t said a word.
But I’m not surprised.
Although these women bleat endlessly about oppression, they don’t know what real oppression is. And they’re too damn self-absorbed to realize it.
To them, women in America are oppressed because their insurance might not cover contraceptives.”
I guess these “powerful women” are just too busy to march for women actually being killed. Or maybe they just refuse to join Trump. Either way they show their true colors. The way they did in support of Kate Steinle:
Rev.Hoagie (6bbda7) — 1/2/2018 @ 6:09 amhttps://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CuMqgtXdpw0/Wix3sNqwTCI/AAAAAAABSsw/URRTgGfaOeUik4hqo0QH3X3eoKXrnZBhQCLcBGAs/s640/1_190m_p0gq1t0EP11urmckio1_540.jpg
@146. Keep driving away women Hoagie. Good boy. You get a big ol’ pat on the head.
Tillman (a95660) — 1/2/2018 @ 6:52 amIf you really want the type of air-headed leftist women I described Tillman you’re welcome to them. I prefer women with intelligence and dignity that don’t parade around dressed as vaginas, wear pussy hats and cry about $10 contraception. In short, you mistake “driving” those types away with “keeping” those types away. Besides, they are your style, enjoy them. They prefer leftist pajama boys.
Rev.Hoagie (6bbda7) — 1/2/2018 @ 7:19 amI am fortunate – put 2 kids through college without getting a snowflake.
mg (8cbc69) — 1/2/2018 @ 7:24 amNow to the important stuff: We have an all SEC championship game because, as usual, OU chokes in bowl games. I thought it might be a Stoops thing but apparently it’s all OU.
DRJ (15874d) — 1/2/2018 @ 7:31 amWho would want Mayfield in the NFL?
DRJ (15874d) — 1/2/2018 @ 7:31 amHoagie really has a bun on for Wimmens and non-whites…commies, leftists and chirren.
Admiral Ben Bunsen Burner (69b6bd) — 1/2/2018 @ 7:47 amI dont think he much likes the white catholics either, but the travails of running a business one step ahead of both the man and the mob in Philly will do that to you.
urbanleftbehind (5eecdb) — 1/2/2018 @ 7:57 amAs buckley sagged Fidel got his job through them:
https://babalublog.com/2018/01/02/new-york-times-really-outdoes-itself-this-time-claims-modelo-prison-on-cubas-isle-of-pines-but-only-under-batista-then-castro-liberated-the-prisoners-and-closed-it-down-for-good/
narciso (104f4d) — 1/2/2018 @ 7:58 amDraft-wise Mayfield may be a beneficiary of Josh Rosen being seen as a sort of subversive element and the rest of the Pac-12/western group (Darnold, Falk, Browning, Rudolph, Josh Allen) being exposed in the bowl games.
urbanleftbehind (5eecdb) — 1/2/2018 @ 8:01 amHoagies Bar and Grill services all comers.
Admiral Ben Bunsen Burner (69b6bd) — 1/2/2018 @ 8:02 amPerhaps, I’d like to test it out, but I’m “Genos Steak-compatible” and thus might not be the perfect test case.
urbanleftbehind (5eecdb) — 1/2/2018 @ 8:05 amHoagie, I’ll throw you one bone here… Women have felt almost powerless here until now. If you were a woman, would you think it would do any good to speak out about the likes of distant lands with weird, regressive religions like Iran’s, when you can’t even get much traction here? Nope, ‘don’t think so. It’s not that they don’t care, it’s that it’s fruitless. Plus, women have spoken out about it.
Tillman (a95660) — 1/2/2018 @ 8:09 amBut RH’s rejoinder about Steinle is valid and could be applied to groups like MADD and SADD.
urbanleftbehind (5eecdb) — 1/2/2018 @ 8:13 amYes, as I sat at my dining table at Christmas with my family and friends I looked around at six Asians, two blacks, one mulatto, and two whites and seven of the group were women. Yep, ole’Hoagie’s a hater, he is. But I do hate leftists and commies since they are the same thing. Or are you aware of some difference I’m not?
Where do you get that from? My father was a Catholic, and I have nothing but respect for Catholicism. The current pope is another story. And why do you think I was “one step ahead of the man and the mob” by owning restaurants in Philly? Never had a problem with either in my life and both frequented my restaurants and I was pals to both.
Rev.Hoagie (6bbda7) — 1/2/2018 @ 8:22 amGuys, guys, guys! Women not getting along with other women — in fact resenting each other more than anything else — is the biggest defense men have. God help us should they ever agree on anything and gang up on us.
nk (9651fb) — 1/2/2018 @ 8:24 amTillman, if women have “felt almost powerless” here until now it’s their own fault. Where I come from women run the family and everyone knows it. Women may feel powerless when they’re trying to do something for which they are not suited. So what? Everybody feels powerless about something at some time or another. Get over it. Women have a very important position in culture, society and nature and ignoring that by trying to be something they are not is not empowering, it’s cultural suicide.
The failure of the left to realize different sexes, races, ethnicities are better and worse at different things is one of their great failings. People don’t have to be equal at everything to be equal as humans.
If you can’t see that then you need to sit at a Christmas dinner table like mine.
I got a doc appt. TTFN.
Rev.Hoagie (6bbda7) — 1/2/2018 @ 8:31 amHoagie, you conveyed a sense of at least “wonderment” about police and how they get nice toys at 80K/year and also some skepticism about them being ultimately loyal to their government patron (if not their union), I figured there had been some needling about codes, fees and “other things” (i.e. shakedowns, thus the mob reference) that would generate that.
urbanleftbehind (5eecdb) — 1/2/2018 @ 8:35 amI prefer women with intelligence and dignity that don’t parade around dressed as vaginas, wear pussy hats and cry about $10 contraception
I know plenty of women like that. And guess what? All of them were disgusted by Trump from the beginning of his candidacy. Some of them voted for Hillary, and the rest voted third party or NOTA.
Come to think of it, I must live a sheltered life. I don’t know anyone who dresses up as internal organs or wears pussy hats. They do get aggravated over prescription prices, but it’s not $10 contraceptive pills that worry them.
I got a doc appt. TTFN.
[Couldn’t you find a better way to start off the new year?] May you have a healthy year, and may your grandson get some sense into his head this year.
kishnevi (bb03e6) — 1/2/2018 @ 8:49 amGood health to you, hoagie,
narciso (d1f714) — 1/2/2018 @ 9:06 amTillman’s first post in this thread, #4 near the top, is a pristine example of the often technically accurate but all-so-twisted pseudo-cognoscenti double-speak so rampant on campus and the media now. Are you being ornery, too clever by half, or are you so clueless as to believe that Communism would ever work in a society larger than a few hundred dedicated persons? You buried the irony in your argument, but Free Markets work because they are free, and it took only a few months for Communists to figure out that Marxist economics don’t work unless they are unfree, viz. enforced with the use of violence. “From each according to his ability” ..and all that, just won’t get the creative juices flowing and never has.
Kevin Conway (c3d6c5) — 1/2/2018 @ 11:07 amBy the way, Another red herring often used by the perennially unhappy ingates on the Left is the false comparison of Marxist violence with Christian violence, which though regretably plausible on the surface, is not really close to accurate either. Christianity grew and thrived without violence many, many places and times, even though human nature has distorted it many other times; anyway, however tough one is on Christian history, it can not compare with the 100% empiracal failure of Communism!
… it can not compare with the 100% empiracal failure of Communism!
Better check where you SmartPhone is assembled; Chinese ‘communism’ has been propping up western ‘capitalism’ for a while now– along with the rent in Trump Tower.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 1/2/2018 @ 11:49 amChinese communism is as genuine as jumbo dhrimp, disco, the play ruling council basically cashed in their markers.
narciso (d1f714) — 1/2/2018 @ 12:12 pm@68. Selling the rope, narciso, just selling the rope.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 1/2/2018 @ 12:20 pm^@168.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 1/2/2018 @ 12:20 pm