I was once talking to a wise old friend about communism – specifically about its enduring nature in the imaginations of men. “The problem,” I said, “is that, unlike the Nazi ideology which we defeated forty years earlier and then relegated to the waste bins of the human mind as an aberration, for some reason we let the equally evil ideology of communism off easy. We never engaged in the destruction of the idea, when the regimes that defended it had fallen away. Why do we have Holocaust museums, but no Cultural Revolution ones? Why have we preserved Auschwitz in horror but not the gulags of Siberia in equal disgust? Why did we leave the work unfinished?” His answer, “We are Americans, we are never ones to humiliate a defeated foe. It is unsportsmanlike.”
I’m not so sure. Truth of the matter is we have become so accustomed to being lectured, to being told that we who think as individuals and who have eyes to our families – who love our own lives and dream of our own futures and serve our own Gods; we who do not accept that we exist at the mercy of one group to be put to the service of another have developed a ‘circle the wagons’ mentality, an inferiority complex. From “You didn’t build that” to “Now is not the time for profit”; from Hugo Chavez’s tirades to Michael Moore’s temper tantrums – from Bernie to Francis we’ve endured the tongue lashings. We’ve endured while Venezuelans starve; we’ve endured while factories are shuttered, while history books are rewritten, and while our sacred values are rubbished. And all the while we look quietly back over a hundred years of madness and murder, baffled as to why nobody can find the courage to say “This idea is stupid and wrong”.
Cue President Donald Trump, “The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented. From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure. Those who preach the tenets of these discredited ideologies only contribute to the continued suffering of the people who live under these cruel systems. America stands with every person living under a brutal regime. Our respect for sovereignty is also a call for action. All people deserve a government that cares for their safety, their interests and their well-being, including their prosperity.”
And then he chuckled.
I’ll admit it was grand. It was grand watching the ashen faces of the communist dictatorships – Venezuela and Cuba and North Korea – having their failures highlighted on that greatest of all stages. It was grand thinking about the apoplectic fits of rage that must have been rippling through academia; the cultural Marxists of our own land assaulted in their safe spaces by the truth, truth we all know but for some reason cannot find the courage to say lest we be called out as unfeeling in a hurting world, a world to whom we have given only prosperity.
Confucius once said, “The object of the superior man is truth”. Well folks, Mr. Donald J. Trump just told the truth. And I for one am grateful for it.
Joel D. Hirst's Blog 
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Well, as I see it, here’s the problem. Communism ISN’T an evil ideology, not actual Communism. If anything, it’s a Divine ideology – a perfected political-economic form. Of course, therein lies the fatal flaw baked right into it. It’s perfect and requires perfection – a moral perfection – from its adherents. Quite frankly, it’s just something that Man can’t achieve. And, like so many near-misses, being near but not on the mark is so very, very much more vile and evil than not trying in the first place.
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alas, unless we start to recognize that denial of self is the real evil, we’ll still get power-hungry dictators trying and naive people applauding. Until it all goes wrong, again, and again the food lines start.
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And alack, the evil of denial of one’s self is nigh meaningless when so few do so as compared to vast masses who are too ignorant of their selves to deny such and, even more woesome, ignorant even of that ignorance.
What are the power-hungry dictators or the naive people other than children ignorant of their selves and what their selves need to flourish, dancing instead between pile of rotting, tawdry detritus?
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Wow.
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So what you’re saying is, communism doesn’t fit with human nature, i.e. it’s a bad idea.
The great insight of the Founding Fathers was that to build a stable state with any degree of freedom and justice you must work with human nature not against it.
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Yes, that is exactly what I’m say, Stephen.
But then, almost nothing that the Left seems to want actually works with human nature; hence all of it must be mandated through fiat and the implicit or explicit threat of force. Communism is just the pinnacle of their wrong thought.
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Simply because Man isn’t capable of doing it correctly, not in numbers and for any length of time, and because Communism produces horrific results unless perfectly implemented by people who perfectly both believe in it and actually know what their real needs are and what they can actually contribute.
But remember that I was speaking of actual Communism, not the Statist Socialism that is often referred to as Communism by the masses.
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Why does the Divine ideology so often produce horrible results?
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Because it is not divine, we are just made to believe it is.
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I just got dogpiled by Leftists for pointing out that yes, National Socialism is really Socialism and that the crimes of the Nazis have been far exceeded by those of other Socialist governments. There is this weird idea that the Nazis were some unique form of government rather than one of a long line of failed collectivist utopias.
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Statists are statists and they come in all colors https://joelhirst.wordpress.com/2015/03/03/its-the-philosophers-stupid/
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“We are Americans, we are never ones to humiliate a defeated foe. It is unsportsmanlike.”
Wonder what he thought about the Molotov-Ribbentroff Pact.
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Apologies – Ribbentrop.
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Somehow, shooting people in the head or gassing them is viewed as evil, but intentionally starving them to death is A-OK, and forcing them to not be able to pay for medical care they need is not just A-OK, but it is celebrated.
And not “somehow,” but its about the emotional reaction of the range of the moment. Not the facts of reality, not the principles those facts imply, and not the reasons for acknowledging and remaining logically consistent with those principles. Pure emotion.
Man kind is fighting an epistemological war with itself. The war is: reason or emotion, and emotion is winning.
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Indeed. Its like I heard recently “Socialism starts with utopian ideas like ‘free health care for all’ and ends with suggestions to raise rabbits for food”.
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B-b-b-but REAL socialism has never been tried! (eyeroll) I don’t think humanity will ever get this monkey off its back.
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Quote from your post: …His answer, “We are Americans, we are never ones to humiliate a defeated foe. It is unsportsmanlike.”…
If we look at the all paragraph that ends with this sentence(so first paragraph), US and allies defeated Soviets at WW2? What kind of history information and diversion do you have?
The Red Army was the real power which defeated the Nazis; 26 million Russian have lost their lives in this war; 11 million soldiers 15 million civilian Russians and losses are made up this figure. Even the smallest land of the USA was not occupied, but the Russians gave their lives for motherland while it has been occupied!
Besides, if Soviets weren’t been at war, WW2 could have been finished yet, but at least it would have been more two-three years long. And any west ally couldn’t hold over the all war cost two-three years more. This first paragraph completely smells anti-propaganda in simple style with questions and answers.
And this sentence is really funny. “We are Americans, we are never ones to humiliate a defeated foe”. I think this one should be told to the Native Americans, Vietnamese and many others like them. I am sure they will approve you, haha!
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