Beetle Bailey on communism

I was telling a friend tonight about where I am with my writing at the moment: the book, getting back into the swing of op-ed writing, what have you.  He asked me why am I writing at all: for fame and fortune or to get a message out that's burning my bosom up from the inside.

I want a bit of all of that, to be honest.  After half a lifetime of battling demons, I still hope to find a little success as a writer.  It doesn't have to be an awful lot of fame or acclaim.  That's never been what this blog is about or anything else I've put my hand to for that matter.  I suppose if there is a gauge I'm going by, it's that I wind up feeling like Dad would be proud of me.  He never gave up on me and I want to do right by that.

Anyhoo, my friend said that if there was a message to be shared, that a true writer would get it out there.  Even if it meant making graffiti art of it.  That reminded me of this Beetle Bailey cartoon from several years back.  Amazing how much wisdom there is to be found in a comic strip...

(Click image to embiggen)

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The Berlin Wall fell 30 years ago today

Here's my piece of it:

The slab of it at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum (photo taken December 21, 2016):

Oppression never lasts forever.

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Karl Marx's real gift to the world...

Perhaps if Ambrose Bierce were still with us (and who knows, we don't know what became of him since he disappeared somewhere in Mexico during its revolution) he might have made the following addition to his famous work The Devil's Dictionary:

COMMUNISM, n.
A simple idea, that with innocent charm and seductive promise makes monsters of men.

"It just hasn't been attempted correctly!"  How many times are we going to hear that one?  Looking around the past few days at the celebrations of the 200th birthday of Karl Marx, my head cannot but shake in disbelief.  That even today, there are many who will scream that communism will not only work but be a raging success... if the right people could be in charge of it.  And of course they will claim that they are the very "right people" who should be at the controls and trusted to guide the people into a bright and shining socialist utopia free of hunger and suffering.

Except, it has never worked out that way.  And it never can work out that way.  And every time that Marxism in whatever form it takes has been attempted, the result has invariably been the same: a small oligarchy at the top of the heap living in excess at the expense of "the workers".  You know, the very same ones who were promised that utopia to begin with.

It never happens.  But would you like to know what might happen, what will probably happen given enough time and what HAS happened?

Thousands if not millions dead from starvation, political purges and outright incompetence.  And often even armed conflict with neighboring countries or countries thousands of miles across an ocean basin away.

I'm historian enough to admit: no social system is perfect.  No legal system is perfect.  No system of government at all is perfect.  But at least some of them allow for a striving toward that perfect ideal within the boundaries of human dignity and the acknowledgement that life is sacred and worth defending for its own sake.  That the individual deserves a chance to be successful, even if that success doesn't work out as it was envisioned.

Communism, and socialism in general for that matter, brooks no favor for that.  It is an ideology for its own sake.  To its adherents, other people are grist for the mill on the way to that glorious promised paradise.  And it tolerates no dissent or individual effort.  Try to break away from the will of the masses as determined by those few at the top, and you'll end up with a bullet in the skull, or smothered with a plastic bag, or wasting away from caloric intake being rendered zero, or sent off to fight and die for the good of the state.

In short: communism can never improve on itself, as is possible with republican government and capitalist economy.  Communism can do nothing except stave off the inevitable demise of the countries that have adopted it... and in the end, none can be spared from its death throes as it desperately tries to survive at all costs.

All of this and more stems from the "radical and revolutionary" philosophies of Karl Marx.

How this merits commemoration as a virtue of societal evolution, is something that boggles my mind and no doubt forever will.

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Americans according to North Korea: "Buying guns to kill each other" and drinking coffee made from snow...

There is some question about whether or not this is real. Having watched numerous propaganda films made behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, my gut tells me that it's legit. That, and because this video does have that "Dear Leader/all others are inferior" tone which is a hallmark of North Korea's regime.

It's allegedly a propaganda video made by the North Korean government depicting life of the downtrodden proles in the United States.  Here in America we drink coffee made from snow (which is said to be in "abundance"), there are few birds because the starving masses living in tents have caught and eaten nearly all of them, dead bodies are piled up all over the place, Potemkin-ish cities disguised to look like those of Eastern Europe, unsuccessful Republican candidates are reduced to scrounging in the garbage, and it's only because of aid from North Korea that we're able to survive at all.

This is one of the most hysterically funny "real" videos that I've ever seen!  I hope y'all aren't drinking anything that could get snorted onto your monitor as you watch it...


Tip o' the hat to the inimitably awesome Erik Yaple for finding this!

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The Berlin Wall came tumbling down twenty years ago today

It was built by the East German government in 1961.

It completely encircled what was then West Berlin.

It was one of the most tangible symbols of the Cold War.

It was declared by communists throughout the world that the wall would last forever.

I know of no better additional commentary that can possibly be made besides this picture of the chunk of the Berlin Wall that I have owned since 1993...

Read more about the Berlin Wall on Wikipedia.

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A more realistic political spectrum

One of the people that in the long run has most influenced and impacted my political beliefs is, without a doubt, Matt Mittan: host of the extremely popular show Take A Stand! on the radio and streaming on the Internet every Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. I count myself as a very fortunate person for getting to work under Matt when he was the editor of The Asheville Tribune. And I'll never forget the first time I came into his office and he showed me what his weekly newsmagazine was all about...

"Most people think of the political spectrum like this," he said, drawing a horizontal line on a dry erase board and labeling the ends "liberal" and "conservative". "But that's wrong," Matt went on. "It's really like this!" And he then drew another line: this one going up and down, with the state/government at the top and the individual at the bottom.

"It's really about the state having the power versus the one person having the power." And Matt continued to talk about how at one far end there is totalitarianism and fascism, and at the other wild extreme there is total anarchy.

And that's when I realized, for the very first time in my life, that the whole "conservative and liberal" thing is a con job. It's a fraud, that regardless of which "party" is in control of Washington or the states its only real purpose is to give more and more power to government. I don't want a totalitarian state and neither do I desire a completely lawless land. But in between, Matt suggested, there can indeed be a "happy medium" that upholds personal liberty while avoiding reckless abandon.

That's never going to be a cut-and-dried thing. But ever since then I have come to still believe in it enough to pursue it, with whatever talents and devices I might ever have on hand. Matt opened my eyes wider than he ever knew that day, and I've been praying since that others might come to realize it as well on their own.

Maybe that's starting to finally happen. David G. Muller Jr. has written an article for American Thinker called Rethinking the Political Spectrum, in which he also argues that the traditional "conservative versus liberal" paradigm is outdated and horribly flawed. And while he doesn't abandon the "left/right" model, Muller's model is quite similar to what Matt Mittan showed me in 2000...

Personally, I think this is a much greater and more accurate take on modern politics. It squarely places both liberalism and conservatism as less free mindsets than libertarianism: a school of thought which is enjoying considerable growth even if the party bearing its name has not of late. However, I would extend this range a bit further to the right and put "anarchy" on that fringe. In my mind, that is the ideal: personal liberty that stops short of all-out chaos. "Voluntary order", as V puts it in the graphic novel V for Vendetta.

Regardless of minor details, this is still a much better portrait of political reality than is the tired and obsolete version that most of our politicians and media and too many businesses (and more than a few religious folks) expect us to buy into.

But then: most of them have a vested interest in keeping the status quo going, aye?

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Fifty years ago today: The "Kitchen Debate" between Nixon and Krushchev

On July 24th, 1959, one of the more unusual events of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union took place. At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, visiting U.S. Vice-President (and future President) Richard Nixon accompanied Russian Premier Nikia Krushchev on a tour of a model "typical" American house, complete with all the modern conveniences of the late Fifties. It was meant to be a goodwill gesture on the part of both countries... but soon devolved (or escalated) into a rambunctious argument between Nixon and Krushchev about the pros and cons of their respective countries' systems of capitalism and communism. The impromptu discussion reached its climax in the kitchen of the model house, where Nixon enthusiastically pointed out American household appliances such as an automatic dishwasher.

And so it was that the "Kitchen Debate" received its more-or-less formal moniker.

Here's a newsreel clip of the event...

Fifty years ago, our country's leadership was arguing against government-run industry. A half-century later, and our "leaders" seem hellbent on running as much industry as they possibly can.

Kinda makes you pine for a simpler time, don't it?

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Russian media observes America embracing Marxism

You know what I find most ironic about this essay?

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

(snip)

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

This is an op-ed piece from Pravda (that's the Russian word for "truth"). Anyone old enough to remember the Cold War will recollect that during the days of the Soviet Union, Pravda was the official publishing propaganda mouthpiece of the Communist Party running that country. Those of us in the U.S. used to joke back in the day about how you couldn't believe anything if it was printed in Pravda.

But my oh my, how the times have changed...

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