The media hardly seemed to bat an eye at Sochi’s communist nostalgia
writes
Benny Huang regarding the "Unmistakable communist imagery in the form of enormous foam hands carrying a hammer and a sickle and the playing of an old Soviet hymn [which was] met with great applause."
Indifference was the primary reaction but some members of the press seemed to go as far as sharing the sentiment. Wasn’t communism grand?
No, actually it wasn’t. As an economic system communism fails, which causes shortages, which causes resentment against the government, which causes reciprocal governmental oppression. Communism stymies ingenuity and punishes productivity. It attempts to abolish God because it cannot tolerate any higher authority than the state.
… As much as conservatives find the idea of communism distasteful, it’s important to recognize that to some people communism sounds great, at least theoretically. These are the utopian idealists, and though most of them can see that communism’s grand designs did not bear fruit, they nonetheless have no regrets for daring to dream.
It’s hard to overestimate the enthusiasm with which the global elite greeted the October Revolution. For years to come the Soviet Union would serve as an inspiration to all those who trusted in the promise of humanism and inevitable progress.
… A remark made by our sitting president sheds some light on just what modern liberals think communism is. During a presidential debate in 2008, Senator McCain pressed Senator Obama on his reply to Joe the Plumber that “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” That statement sums up the socialist position as well as any I’ve ever heard but of course Obama denied it. “By the end of the week,” Obama replied, “[McCain]’ll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my—I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
Huh? Did Obama really mean to imply that sharing is what defines a communist? Yes, and I think he was expressing a commonly held belief among members of his party.
Communists most certainly do not share. Sharing involves giving of yourself voluntarily. Communism means taking from other people by force. Giving and taking are opposites. How can anyone confuse the two?
Here’s what communism would look like if implemented in a school cafeteria. Rather than give a piece of his own PB&J to the less fortunate, the cafeteria Bolshevik punches another kid in the face and takes the sandwich his mother packed for him. Then, if he’s feeling charitable, he’ll give the PB&J to someone who has nothing to eat. Or he might just eat it himself. The cafeteria Bolshevik continues doing this to different kids every day until most of them realize that packing lunch is foolish because they will only be violently deprived of it. Kids learn to wait for the cafeteria Bolshevik to give them a piece of someone else’s sandwich. In time, the total number of PB&J’s plummets and so the kids stand in line for hours waiting for the cafeteria Bolshevik to give them one of the declining few. The cafeteria Bolshevik now wields complete power because no one eats without his say-so.
How can anyone confuse this kind of tyrannical bullying with something as meretricious as sharing? The two concepts couldn’t possibly be more estranged, and yet, for the better part of one and a half centuries, communism has had its defenders precisely because so many people confuse forcibly seizing other people’s property with sharing.
It sounds as if Barack Obama is one of those people. It’s sad that a man with degrees from Columbia and Harvard believes that communism means giving a little of your own stuff to a guy who has less, but I suppose that that’s exactly what students learn in Ivy League schools.
