American Thinker | James Lewis | May. 23, 2008
Today, for the first time in American history we have two — count ’em, two — hard-core Leftists running for the Democrat Party nomination. The Left hasn’t had this kind of chance for power since Truman defeated Henry Wallace in 1948. Hillary and Obama are Marx twins who only differ in race and gender.
All the media tell us is how great it is to have a woman and a black man running for president. What those two really believe, where they learned their quasi-religion, where they derive their support, who else they want to raise to power, and what they will do if they get there — all that doesn’t even get discussed. All over the world, Leftist hearts are leaping at Hillarybama. What exciting progress!
Wait a minute. Marxism lost the Cold War, right? The Soviet Empire came down, Eastern Europe was liberated, China is now semi-capitalist, and post-socialist countries like India are thriving like never before. More of the world is prospering, because economic and political freedoms have spread since the USSR crumbled. Even Russia has a low, flat tax to encourage free markets. Indigenous talents and enterprise are finally being liberated, and the results are wonderful for hundreds of millions of people.
Liberals are upset today because free-market economies are growing too fast, and are therefore polluting an unsullied Mamma Earth. Tens of millions of ordinary people in China and India are doing too well. The elites seem to yearn for the good old days — the famines in India, the massacres in Russia and China — and that wonderful sense of being in charge of human progress.
And yet … in spite of years and years Leftist catastrophes, our organs of propaganda are still tilting drunkenly to the Left. Crypto-Marxism, a barely disguised revival of the old farce, is flourishing in our chattering classes. The prestige that Marxism lost in the real world soon came back in fantasy. Oh, if people only loved one another! Oh, if people only cared! Oh, if we only had real solidarity with the wretched of the earth! That’s the feel-good story. But the real yearning is for power: Oh, if only people like us were in charge of everything.
In Britain, under the daily pounding of the Bolshie Beeb, the most admired “philosopher” of all time is now … blood-dripping old Karl Marx. Freedom is routinely trashed; thieving tyrants like Hugo Chavez are celebrated.
“Crypto Marxism” — crypto meaning “hidden” — is a useful word to describe what’s happened in the last twenty years. Because as soon as the Soviet Union crumbled, a host of barely disguised post-Marxist ideologies grabbed the microphones: the Green Movement, now furiously peddling global warming fraud; Third Way socialism in Europe, trying to hitch the welfare wagon to free markets; the European Union, a new autocracy of unelected committees, exactly what the USSR used to call “workers’ Soviets”; the unbelievably corrupt, bigoted and self-serving United Nations; and all over the academic world, an explosion of anti-Western and anti-democratic fads like Post-Modernism, Multi-Culturalism, Deconstructionism, Feminism, anti-Zionism, Black Liberation Theology and other repackaged Marx imitations. It was a triumph of image-making and marketing.
Today, crypto-Marxism dominates our political discourse. It’s wild — just as if Nazi goose stepping had became a popular sport after World War Two, instead of the hula-hoop. The Nazis were horrific in their thirteen years in power. The Marxists had seventy years in the Soviet Union, and managed to kill 100 million people according to Marxist historians themselves. But here we are, twenty years later, and all that is deliberated wiped from our minds.
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Another excellent article from the American Thinker. As the son of immigrant parents who fled and survived communism of the Stalinist variety, I still shake my head in bewilderment at the infatuation so many people have with marxism. Granted, many would not refer to what they hold forth as marxism, but it is what it is. Folks, we are American; land of the free, home of the brave. We did not arrive our place in the world because of some ingenious government plan designed to make America great. We got here because of a lot of blood, sweat and tears shed by enterprising, self-sacrificing, risk-taking individuals. And still, we hold out our hands and our goods to so many who suffer around the world. Our government is only as good as it guards and fulfills the truths held forth in our Constitution; to build a government aparatus which ignores the Consitution and blatantly goes outside the Constitution will in reality destroy the drive, initiative, hard work, self-sacrifice of Americans. Then there will be no one left from whom to take in order to give to those who demand they receive.
Fr. Peter, you are absolutely correct about the communist and leftist threat to our way of life, the unique freedoms we enjoy, and our very lives. Me and my family also suffered under the communist tyranny in Europe and fled to the safety of America only to witness our society, especially government institutions and academia freely embrace and promote some of the worst and destructive aspects of communist ideas.
The communist principles represent the most corrupt, atheistic, materialistic, anti-human, anti-freedom, and anti-Christian ideas and ideals that the world has ever known. They embody the deadliest and most dangerous and evil lies that mankind has faced and still faces. These demonic and godless concepts have lead to the immense suffering, torture, and imprisonment of millions and the death and starvation of at least 100 million innocents. Yet, this is not enough to dissuade so many in government, the press, and academia, including Obama, from embracing many of those principles and championing the Marxists ideals. It’s really a deep mental sickness and dangerous spiritual delusion.
“One has to realize what communism is,” insisted Father Seraphim Rose. “Not merely a power-mad political regime, but an ideological-religious system whose aim is to overthrow and supplant all other systems, most of all Christianity.
Communism is actually a very powerful heresy whose central thesis . . . is chiliasm or millennialism: history is to reach its culmination in an indefinite state of earthly blessedness, a perfect mankind living in perfect peace and harmony.”
Communism specifically attacked the land[s] which had most nearly retained her [their] ancient Christian traditions – Holy Russia [Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Serbia]. Propaganda portrayed Bolshevism as a political/social uprising, which is what gullible individuals throughout the world still imagine it to have been. But the “revolution” was far more than this – it was actually a battle against Christianity.
Chris, thank you for reminded us once again of the real enemy. IMO it is the chiliasm that attracts so many in the west even many who call themselves Christian. Philosophically it is deeply imbedded in western thought. It is reflected not only in the specifically anti-Christian hatred of Marxism but also often in the individualism of many Libertarians who don’t particularly like Christianity and her “antiquated” morality and other worldly orientation.
Chiliasm may be the predominate heresy of our time.