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Did the withdrawal of America from Iraq do good? Of course not. It only led to the rise of Islamic State with its mass murder and torture.

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These days it may seem as though the entire nation is moving ever leftward. But on the personal level it’s actually much more usual for political change to go in the opposite direction: from left to right.

It’s not that uncommon an event, either -- in fact, there’s a whole literature of political memoir written by left-to-right changers (such as David Horowitz and Norman Podhoretz, to name just two).

One changer closer to home is founder and former CEO of PJ Media Roger L. Simon, who talked about his own story in a recent speech in which he admitted that, despite his having written a book about his change experience, the how and why of political change is still a mystery to him.

Political change is something I’ve thought about long and hard because it happened to me, too, about ten years ago. In fact, struggling to understand and explain that change was one of the things that first drew me to blogs and blogging. I agree with Roger Simon that the vast majority of people are exceedingly reluctant to change their political beliefs and identification, and that was my experience, too; in fact, I’ve titled my own change story “A mind is a difficult thing to change.”

It’s not easy to come up with universals, because change stories differ in their personal details: fast or slow; solitary or interactive; sparked by things heard, seen, read, or personally experienced. But over the years that I’ve been contemplating my own story and listening to or reading those of others, I’ve come to see some patterns.

Rarely, if ever, are prospective changers actually seeking change. In fact their previous political positions on the left may be quite firmly and strongly held, and they would probably consider anyone quite mad who had the audacity to inform them of the transformation about to take place.

But although they may not be interested in change, change is interested in them. It usually begins with something external, some new information encountered seemingly by accident, something that starts to bug the person because it contradicts or doesn’t fit easily into his or her pre-existing framework. It’s like a buzzing fly that won’t quit and can’t be ignored. It causes discomfort, a sense of unease, and the disequilibrium that comes from the dilemma known as cognitive dissonance.

It’s such an unpleasant experience that people are usually eager to resolve it. How they do that is one point at which changers split off from non-changers. The latter group, if faced with that very same information, might just swat that fly -- that is, in their discomfort at the knowledge that seems incongruous with their previous beliefs, they would either discredit the new information, minimize it, rationalize it, or shut it out entirely, thus ending the discomfort and the dilemma.

But those who ultimately end up as changers can’t seem to put it away that easily. For them, something once seen cannot be unseen. Perhaps they have a different habit of mind to begin with, one more accustomed to challenging its own beliefs and assumptions, one more uncomfortable with contradictions.

The process can become even more intense if the experience is a personal one in the first place. Roger Simon’s slow decades-long change, for example, began with trips to China and the Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s, where he witnessed some disturbing things he found he couldn’t forget or explain away. David Horowitz discovered that a friend of his whom he’d sent to work as a bookkeeper for the Black Panthers had been murdered by them and the crime was covered up by the left. These are personal experiences of a dramatic sort, especially Horowitz’s. They act as catalysts to send the person on a path to a series of discoveries, although the initial experience doesn’t need to be so extreme to spark the same process.

The whole thing rarely happens overnight, although it can. It resembles tearing down a structure and building a new one brick by brick. The final collapse of the first building tends to be the quickest part, with the changer now perceiving that structure as having been a house of cards, essentially fragile, although previously the person had been unaware of that fact.

Another less dramatic way a change experience can begin is with the perception that the mainstream media has lied about something. It can even be something that seems quite small and unimportant by itself, but then it happens again, and again, and a pattern begins to emerge. This learning usually also comes about by accident. For example, a person might happen across the original of a speech from which a truncated quote had been taken, and suddenly realize that the quote was probably edited that way in order to purposely mislead. The advent of the internet has increased the opportunities for this sort of discovery, because it’s much easier to compare the two texts.

Again, the watershed moment is not usually the event itself, but the person’s reaction to it. Some people resolve the discrepancy by ignoring it with a shrug, and perhaps the thought, “Oh, everybody in the media lies all the time, the right even more than the left.” Or it’s dismissed with the rationalization that it’s not really a lie because a much more important truth is being told in the process. Or it can be justified with an ends/means calculation: lying in a good cause is okay. In the future, such a person might even try to avoid going to the source of quotes, in order to avoid encountering similar discrepancies that might lead to more cognitive dissonance that could lead to greater unease.

But people who end up becoming changers are much more likely to vow to get to the bottom of it and learn more, plunging ahead with research. People who do so often discover as time goes on that a great deal of what they thought they knew is actually false.

I know that place; I’ve been there. It is a profoundly disorienting time, and many and even perhaps most people would do almost anything to avoid it. But those who are constructed a certain way cannot help themselves, because the discrepancy gnaws away at them. Next time they see something -- another quote, for example -- that reflects badly on someone on the right, they are driven to check out its veracity by looking at the original text and its context. And of course they also check out similar stories in the press on the right, hoping to find similar distortions about the left, so it can all seem evenhanded. But if they are persistent, over time they discover the troubling fact that it’s not quite equal: generally there are more distortions (and more egregious ones) made by the left.

At some point changers usually become hungry for knowledge. Reading more and more writers on the right (sometimes for the first time), and/or talking to more people on the right, they discover a number of simpatico souls where they had thought there would be none. Ultimately, they find a coherent philosophy and their place in it. It takes a while, often quite a while, to accept that one is now a Republican or a conservative or a libertarian or a classical liberal or whatever one ends up calling oneself. Some never do; Zell Miller, who changed his mind but never could bring himself to switch his party affiliation, likened party identification to a birthmark.

And finally, of course, there are the reactions of others. Most people who’ve lived their lives in a liberal bubble have little awareness of the invective hurled at those who change– -- until they become one of those people themselves. And even if they were previously aware of it, they probably remain sanguine in the notion that it won’t happen to them, because, after all, they’re talking to liberals who’ve been their friends for years.

So it is usually a tremendous shock when they have their first coming-out discussion. Even if voiced only tentatively, their departure from the liberal line is often met with tremendous hostility. Not from everyone, of course. But a large percentage of the people they now encounter, including friends and family, will express anger and contempt.

Being on the receiving end of this experience can’t help but be profoundly disturbing. Perhaps it even drives some people under cover, and or back into the liberal fold. But for most, it seems there is no turning back, because -- as a fortune cookie I got a few years ago succinctly put it -- “one’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”

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There is an old adage that goes something like: “If you’re not a liberal when you’re in your 20s you haven’t got a heart; if you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 40 you haven’t got a brain.” It’s a reasonable summation of youth’s innocence and its desire to save the undertrodden from the seeming unfairness of the world, and of adults’ experience and its learned realization that utopia on earth is not an option. [except for how many of you here are over 40??]

I fit that old adage rather nicely, as do millions of others of my generation who were formerly young 1960s liberals bent on saving the world, but who are now middle-aged conservatives and libertarians bent on saving American institutions from the reckless attacks of today’s new generation of liberal youth.

I am reading a book by one of my peers, a prominent Sixties radical named David Horowitz, who was one of the founders of the New Left and an editor of Ramparts, the magazine that set the intellectual and revolutionary tone of the Sixties leftist movement. Horowitz’s cohorts included Black Panther leader Huey Newton and Tom Hayden, a radical who promoted guerrilla warfare in America’s cities in the Sixties but who went on to become a California state senator. The book is called Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey, and it chronicles Horowitz’s transformation from prominent left wing radical to prominent conservative publisher, revealing along the way the lies, communist front groups, and other subterfuges many Sixties radical groups used to hide their real agenda, which was to subvert America and replace it with a communist utopia.

Youth and zealotry

Much of the emphasis of Radical Son is on the involvement of youth as the soldiers who form the rank and file of the radical left. “This is the perennial challenge,” the book states, “to teach our young the conditions of being human, of managing life’s tasks in a world that is (and must remain) forever imperfect. The refusal to come to terms with this reality is at the heart of the radical impulse and accounts for its destructiveness, and thus for much of the bloody history of our age.

“Ominously, Horowitz also states in the book: “My only regret comes from thinking of all those young radicals just entering the arena who, if they were to consider this story, would benefit most from its lessons, but who unfortunately will not read it all.”

And that is the sad truth. Just as Horowitz and I did not realize our errors until we had done our damage to America, so too most of this new generation of young radicals will not realize their error until they have done their damage. That fact is at the heart of the recruiting strategy of the left—recruit the young to do the dirty work of dismantling America, then discard them when they get older, and realize that the left is largely a fraud, nothing but a front for socialist and communist ideas.

It’s a strategy that has worked well for the left. Horowitz says that many of the publishing avenues that were open to him as a young leftist radical writer were abruptly closed to him when he became a conservative, and much of the favorable publicity he could count on from the mass media suddenly disappeared when he went conservative.

That’s why he got involved in several small political magazines, so that like the rest of us conservatives his voice would not be totally muffled by the leftist-controlled mass media. Some of his magazines are Heterodoxy, whose articles shed light on the fraud of many left wing government programs, Report Card, which exposes the fraud of government and union-controlled education in America, and the Defender, which is the mouthpiece of the Individual Rights Foundation. All are excellent and well researched.

Pawns and fools of the left

Horowitz also mentions the pawns and fools who do the left’s radical bidding:

Politicians, who respond to the hysterical squeals of the young, as do many of the rest of us, pass laws that further damage America’s institutions.

Feminists, who are far more concerned with leftist ideology than with the rights of women, support an Anita Hill against a conservative justice like Chief Justice Clarence Thomas, but then distance themselves from Paul Jones, because she is accusing a liberal President like Bill Clinton.

Environmentalism, he says, is just another horse for the left to ride on because all the previous ones, called collectivism, communism, and progressivism, have been shot out from under them.

Rebirth of individualism

In spite of the somber tone of the book, Horowitz sees hope for America and her institutions. His turnabout, and mine, is part of that hope.We who have been formerly liberal and influential have a lot to atone for. And who doubts that there is a reawakening of individualism in America today, even among some of our youth. Our job, as lovers of freedom and individual rights, is to keep the momentum going. Horowitz’s book and his other publications are food for thought for those of us who have travelled from left to right...

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ORIGINAL: bounty44

https://pjmedia.com/blog/why-do-some-liberals-become-conservatives/

oh no mnottertroll, a blog!

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ORIGINAL: jlf1961

You all realize that regardless of being right or left, in American politics the single motivating force is the desire for power, not to do a fucking thing for the people?

Depending on the issue, lobbyists contribute billions to congressmen of both parties to achieve the goal they want.

The largest political scandals in American history dealt with political machines that got corrupt people elected, and again, breaks down to an equal number per party.

So, bottom line, who gives a shit what side of the fence a politician is on, he is a self serving shit eating lying bastard with one goal, to further his own agenda, the people are just something to fuck with.

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Having covered the origins of leftism in the initial article in this two-part series, let’s recap. Liberalism was originally named for its chief aim—as a philosophy based upon liberty, which is now known as Classical Liberalism. The roots of this worldview stretch back to classical paganism. In An Intellectual History of Liberalism, Pierre Manent generally describes Liberalism as “the basso continuo of modern politics, of the politics of Europe and the West for about the past three centuries.” In other words, it is our foundational societal theory. Yet, now the term liberalism has been co-opted by socialism.

Ralph Raico describes the original idea:

“Classical liberalism” is the term used to designate the ideology advocating private property, an unhampered market economy, the rule of law, constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of the press, and international peace based on free trade…including freedom of contract and exchange and the free disposition of one’s own labor, is given a high priority. Historically, liberalism has manifested a hostility to state action, which, it insists, should be reduced to a minimum.

Having recapped, let’s examine the development of modern liberalism, or socialism. How is it that what was once the philosophy of liberty devolved into doctrinaire, pedestrian socialism—with its inane fixation on controlling the habits of men and extinguishing their freedoms? This occurred because Socialists needed to update their brand marketing, as most Americans considered Marxist inspired ideas unacceptable on their face.

I. Emergence of Modern Leftism—“Old” vs. “New” Liberalism

A. Change of Definitions

How did the term liberalism—originally understood as the philosophy of liberty—become defined as its opposite? Ralph Raico describes this transition:

It is not disputed that the popular meaning of liberal has changed drastically over time. It is a well-known story how, around 1900, in English-speaking countries and elsewhere, the term was captured by socialist writers. For a century now controversy has raged over the true meaning of liberalism. How did this momentous transformation of the term liberal—what Paul Gottfried calls “a semantic theft”—come about?

According to Raico, the Left tells itself an essentially false, self-aggrandizing fable of how the word liberal was co-opted by socialism, while attempting to retain a sense of natural evolution and growth of their movement. Specifically, the Left informs itself that Old Liberals were content with laissez-faire until they realized this method would not work to make the world a better place. They then decided to adopt more government controls for economics and communitarian vision of property ownership.

It is clear, though, that image problems with the term socialist itself was a huge motivation to dump the word. Some persons dropped socialist and called themselves individualists. These began to develop ideas similar to Italy’s Fascist economic policy. John Dewey began to use “individualist” in this manner. Others preferred the term “nationalist,” while a third group adopted “liberal.” Interestingly, such persons—while stealing the identity of real liberals, still saw themselves as the benefactor, not enslavers, of mankind. Note this statement from revisionist socialism founder Eduard Bernstein:

The development and protection of the free personality is the goal of all socialist measures, even of those which superficially appear to be coercive. A closer examination will always show that it is a question of a coercion that increases the sum of freedom in society, that gives more freedom, and to a wider group, than it takes away.

The difference between these two movements could not be more stark. The Old Liberals defined themselves as fierce advocates of freedom, however recipients decided to use this opportunity. The New Liberals are fixated upon outcomes—specifically the great aims of Utilitarianism, “the greatest good for the greatest number,” or practically speaking—happiness and pleasure—however one might measure these. Ironically, liberalism itself grew as a reaction against the welfare state and the bureaucratic “rage to govern”, as condemned by Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau.

B. John Stuart’s Mill: Sausage Maker of Modern Liberalism?

John Stuart Mill is one of the most influential thinkers of the 19th century—nowhere more so than on the subject of liberalism. The famed author of On Liberty is accused of hideously deforming liberalism and casting it into a dark hole. He taught that government’s goal is to maximize human happiness, not simply defend individual rights. Further, he wanted to scupper traditional religion and replace it with a religion of humanism. Writes Raico:

The freedom of opinion espoused in On Liberty was largely part of Mill’s grand strategy—to demolish religious faith, especially Christianity on the way to erecting a social order based on “the religion of humanity.” True individuality would be incarnated in…a being in whom selfishness and greed would be replaced by altruism and the constant cultivation of the loftier faculties.

In fact, it is Mill’s work in creating a humanist religion based upon socialist elements helped create the modern world. Writes Linda Raeder in John Stuart Mill and the Religion of Humanity:

One of the more remarkable developments in Anglo-American society over the past century has been the transformation of liberal politics from a commitment to limited government toward the progressive expansion of governmental direction of the social process. John Stuart Mill was a pivotal figure in that transformation. His self-avowed “eclecticism” allowed him to retain something of a commitment to classical liberalism, and he never completely abandoned the belief in a limited political sphere that characterizes that outlook. But Mill muddied the waters of classical-liberal philosophy and practice by his conviction that the end of government is the all-encompassing “improvement of mankind” and not the preservation of individual liberty-under-law, as well as by his self-conscious embrace and advocacy of the “social” moral ideal. Moreover, Mill’s ambition to replace the theologically oriented society of the Western tradition with one grounded in and oriented exclusively toward Humanity necessarily entailed a departure from classical liberalism.

II. Debacles of New Liberalism

Are Socialism and its big brother, Marxism, an effective means of organizing society and creating prosperity and happiness? No, but this has been well-known for decades. There are no known successes in socialist countries—only failures. Further, somewhere between 100-200 million humans were needlessly slaughtered in communist countries. Here is an expose’ of four of the most notable communist regimes of the last 50 years.

A. USSR

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR lasted from 1922 before dissolution in 1991. Socialism, or Russian Marxism was never a success. In fact, at no time did the country support itself because of failed leadership, poor central planning and the inherent defects of Marxism. Lenin and Stalin’s decision to wage war against the Kulaks, the independent peasant farmers, made famine a certain outcome. Consider Stalin’s “Five-Year Plan” as symbolic of the USSR’s history of unmitigated failure:

Stalin decided the economy must be given a quick upgrade, and so he launched his Five-Year Plan, announced in 1929. Richard Pipes, in Communism: A History, describes how this put the entire economy under state control. The government promised if the people worked hard to meet the goal of tripling production, the outcome would be an increased standard of living for all. Neither took place. Instead, Alec Nove, a specialist in the early socialist Russian economy declared, “1933 was the culmination of the most precipitous peacetime decline in living standard known in recorded history.”

B. China

If any country challenges the USSR’s record for economic failure and outright disaster, it would certainly be communist China. For example, Chairman Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward represents probably the largest human disaster in recorded history, as up to 40 million Chinese starved to death or died as a result of this foolish and evil policy:

In 1958, Mao announced the Great Leap Forward to transform China into a modern state within a few years. In Mao’s mind, his plan to dominate and revolutionize China would then transfer to the rest of the globe. The Great Leap would occur when collectivized farms saw food production spike from new methodology. A compliant press celebrated massive increases in harvests, such as 100-fold gains in productivity. Yet after 6 months, the program was exposed as a massive failure, and instead of swelling production, widespread food shortages resulted. When reported to Mao, he replied all people would eat less since it was healthier anyway, according to Jon Halliday in Mao: The Unknown Story.

C. Vietnam

Vietnam is still officially a communist country. Experts believe the war and continued failed socialist policies have dreadfully damaged the economic vitality of this beautiful land. This is even admitted by communist officials. A recent official rebuke was levied at leaders of the failed economic system, according to the Harvard Ash Center:

Vietnam’s ruling Communist party has promised economic reforms and a restructuring of state firms and the banking system after a top-level meeting criticised senior members—thought to include the prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung—but left them in post. The country’s banks are swimming in bad debt, much of it owed by the huge state enterprises at the heart of the economy. Moody’s downgraded Vietnam last month and said bank reforms should be implemented quickly. The central committee, the powerful body of more than 170 senior members of the Communist party of Vietnam, “came to the decision not to discipline the collective of the political bureau and a comrade member of the political bureau”, the party said in a statement on its website.

Dương Quỳnh Hoa (1930-2006), was named a “heroine of the revolution,” becoming an important member of the communist cadre, a cabinet member of its provisionary government. In a 1990 interview with Stanley Karnow from Vietnam: A History, she especially criticized forced collectivization of farming, and stated:

I have been a communist all my life, but now I’ve seen the realities of Communism, and it is a failure—mismanagement, corruption, privilege, repression. My ideals are gone. Communism has been catastrophic. Party officials have never understood the need for rational development. They’ve been hypnotized by Marxist slogans that have lost validity—if they were ever valid. They are outrageous.

D. Cuba

Cuba is also still communist and its economic, political and human rights record is an astounding failure. Cuba was artificially kept afloat by the Soviets during much of their history, for its strategic importance, until the USSR fell apart. Says one writer,

When the Soviet bloc dissolved at the beginning of the 1990s, Cuba suddenly lost the $5 billion to $8 billion in annual Kremlin aid and trade that had kept the island afloat for three decades. Unable to produce enough food, Cuba’s people began to go hungry. Without the generous Soviet oil subsidy, transportation and industry were paralyzed. Without hard currency to pay for them, no food, fertilizer or oil could be imported. Left to stand on its own for the first time in 30 years, Cuba folded. Beginning in 1993, with people eating banana peels just to feel something substantial in their stomachs and with the populace suffering an epidemic of blindess and paralysis linked to vitamin deficiencies, Castro borrowed a page from Lenin’s New Economic Policy of the 1920s and turned to capitalism to save socialism. He legalized the U.S. dollar and opened the door to small-scale private enterprise.

[but keep at it comrades, maybe someday you'll get it!]

III. Conflicting Visions: Sowell’s Critique of Modern Liberalism

Why do modern liberals war with conservatives at every level? Thomas Sowell, in his brilliant study of ideology, A Conflict of Visions: Idealogical Origins of Political Struggles, explains why people embrace particular beliefs, whether socialist or conservative:

Visions are the foundations on which theories are built…Here a vision is a sense of causation. It is more like a hunch or a “gut feeling” than it is like an exercise in logic or factual verification.

Sowell goes on to differentiate between the constrained and unconstrained vision. Here, in the constrained vision, one accepts human limitations, tragedies, and compromise. For example, Alexander Hamilton sums this up in The Federalist Papers:

It is the lot of all human institutions, even those of the most perfect kind, to have defects as well as excellencies—ill as well as good propensities. This results from the imperfection of the Institutor, Man.

This is the Conservative view. The other, being unconstrained, never accepts any level of failure, built in flaws, or compromise. This is the modern liberal or socialist view which has caused much misery in the modern world. Sowell cites the quintessential unconstrained position, that of radical William Godwin:

Godwin regarded the intention to benefit others as being “of the essence of virtue,” and virtue in turn as being the road to human happiness. Unintentional social benefits were treated by Godwin as scarcely worthy of notice. His was the unconstrained vision of human nature, in which man was capable of directly feeling other people’s needs as more important than his own, and therefore of consistently acting impartially, even when his own interests or those of his family were involved.

In essence the unconstrained constrained vision demands the good be perpetually traded in for the perfect, destroying mankind’s chance for success and happiness at every turn.

IV. Why Marx Fails: Reasons Socialism Always Collapses

Max Eastman wrote a highly influential expose’ upon the failure of Marxism titled, Reflections on the Failure of Socialism. He lists several issues as being especially egregious in socialism’s failure, including the planned economy, the immorality of communist ethics, socialism and its failure to address human nature, and the dangers of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, etc.

Other authors have compiled a list of the manifest failures of socialism. Here is a summary of the crucial differences between socialism and capitalism:

The strength of capitalism can be attributed to an incentive structure based upon the three Ps: (1) prices determined by market forces, (2) a profit-and-loss system of accounting and (3) private property rights. The failure of socialism can be traced to its neglect of these three incentive-enhancing components.

Conclusion

The main reason socialism fails as an economic theory is it does not account for price of commodities, and therefore cannot adequately ration any finite good. Further, socialism fails on a psychological level because it treats human motivation as a perverse fiction, irrelevant for producers, and therefore ignored. Finally, it fails as a political theory because it cannot value humans as being any different than machines.

[but again, keep your chin up comrades and maybe someday you'll get it! no matter how much misery and violence in the meantime!]

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Young Marxist clubs are surfacing at public schools around the country again. Why?

Students at Edina High School in Minnesota say they received an unusual invitation over the loudspeakers on a cold January morning earlier this year.

The announcement was not related to a school play, a pledge drive, or a bake sale. Rather, it was an invitation to join the school’s newly-created student-led group: the Young Marxists Club.

Officials at Edina Public Schools confirmed the existence of the club.

"We did have a Young Marxists Club last year," said Susan Brott, Director of Communications & Community Engagement at Edina Public Schools. "I think that was the first year they had it."

School officials said all clubs are student generated and led by faculty advisors. Clubs are not automatically approved. There is an application process, as well protocols and guidelines that must be followed upon creation of a club. Symbols deemed "inappropriate" by school officials are not permitted, for example.

"So long as everyone is welcome to join, clubs are generally approved," Brott said. [hey vile critter parts, maybe you can join in somehow?]

Edina Young Marxists Club

EHS Young Marxists

In some ways it’s fitting that a Communist club should sprout up in this affluent Minnesota school district. The Gopher State was the birthplace of Gus Hall (1910-2000), the former chairman of the Communist Party who four times ran for president of the United States as his party’s nominee, peaking in 1976 with 58,709 votes (0.07 percent of the total).

But Minnesota is not the only place where Communist youth clubs are surfacing.

Several communist clubs were created in secondary education systems around the country in recent years, evidence suggests, in places as geographically diverse as Norman, Oklahoma; Santa Clara, California; and Stevensville, Michigan.

Officials at Norman High School in Oklahoma declined to confirm or deny the existence of a student Communist club. However, a Twitter account (presumably created by a student) claims the NHS Young Marxists “meet every Thursday in room 103.” A Young Marxists group also is listed on the school’s Wikipedia page.

Norman High School Young Marxists

Officials at Santa Clara High School in California and Lakeshore High School in Michigan did not return phone messages seeking details on communist clubs allegedly started in their schools. But social media posts suggest communist clubs were recently formed in these schools.

Harvey Klehr, a professor of politics and history at Emory University who has written several books on Communism, said Marxist youth movements in the U.S. are not new, though they are few and far between.

“Communism at its height in 1939 had less than 100,000 members,” said Klehr. “There might have been ten or fifteen thousand in youth movements. That’s not exactly a mass movement in a nation the size of U.S.”

this kid knows what's up! pic.twitter.com/MpwH4eigcO

— LHS COMMUNISTS (@youngcommieclub) January 12, 2017

Though it was rare for communist clubs to form in schools even during the heyday of Communism in America, it was not unheard of, he said, particularly in socialist-friendly states such as New York and Minnesota.

Parents speaking to Intellectual Takeout on the condition of anonymity expressed frustration that schools would facilitate the formation of student clubs around an ideology that had killed between 85 and 100 million people.

One possible reason schools and students might be inclined to form or allow such groups is that Americans—particularly millennials—are largely ignorant of Communism’s bloody history.

A recent YouGov study found that only 33 percent of millennials are familiar with Lenin—and one-quarter of them view him favorably. The same poll found that one-third of millennials believe the George W. Bush regime killed more people than that of Joseph Stalin.

“This generation essentially has no personal experience with communist or socialist societies,” Klehr said. “It’s no surprise they have little understanding of what these socialist societies are like considering our failure to teach its history.”

Such ignorance could explain why schools and students would condemn one ideology that killed millions of people while embracing another.

“I think most people have a sense of how horrible fascism and Nazism were,” Klehr said. “I don’t think they have a sense for how horrible Communism was, and that’s a real tragedy.”

Recent polling suggests that about one-third of America's 18- to 29-year-olds have a favorable view of socialism. However, the socialism and communism of today's youth looks a bit different than that which was embraced by their grandfathers.

Social media posts from various accounts show relatively little emphasis on economic issues. Gender and race are the primary themes, suggesting that traditional Marxism may have given way to cultural Marxism.

Incredible read. "It is not hyperbole to say that white supremacy is resting at the heart of American politics." https://t.co/pzP2qRLdz3

— Young Dem Socialists (@ydsusa) July 16, 2017

There may be a reason for that, Klehr said.

“Economic Marxism was a failure; even most Marxists admit that,” he said. “So today it’s awfully hard to have a Marxism based on economics.”

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Socialism, or Russian Marxism was never a success.

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he strength of capitalism can be attributed to an incentive structure based upon the three Ps: (1) prices determined by market forces, (2) a profit-and-loss system of accounting and (3) private property rights. The failure of socialism can be traced to its neglect of these three incentive-enhancing components.

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ORIGINAL: BoscoX





Which is exactly why the conservative ideal of a smaller, less powerful government is WAY preferable to the Democrat party dream of an all-powerful, endlessly micromanaging government

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ORIGINAL: Hillwilliam

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ORIGINAL: BoscoX





Which is exactly why the conservative ideal of a smaller, less powerful government is WAY preferable to the Democrat party dream of an all-powerful, endlessly micromanaging government

Conservatives DO want a smaller government.
Republicans, not so much.[:D]

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ORIGINAL: mnottertail

conservative or republican, what that has ALWAYS translated to is more expensive contractors. ALWAYS.

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ORIGINAL: BoscoX


FR

9) Selective Outrage

I was a graduate student. Female genital mutilation came up in class. I stated, "without ornamentation, that it is wrong".

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ORIGINAL: heavyblinker

I'm pretty sure this is fake simply because its liberal-bashing reads like standard-issue conservative ego porn