Ask me a easy one.

Bryan Caplan (via @JonahNRO) asks:

…”Is there any socialist analog of Liberty Fund?”  Is there any leftist charity whose chief mission is to organize small seminars where the participants read and discuss classic political writings?

The answer is simple: sure!  They’re called “American Commies.”  Small seminars where people talk about their favorite Commie writers is about as high as those Commie idiots can reasonably aspire, organizationally speaking.

Moe Lane

#rsrh What? Of course Commies are unpatriotic…

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers: also, to quote a (Democratic) friend of mine, when it comes to whether it’s stupid-or-evil to quote Stalin… embrace the healing power of ‘and,’ my brothers and sisters.

pretty much by definition.  Communism is by its nature an international movement that rejects the fostering and nurturing of individual national identities in favor of some nebulous transnational ‘class’ struggle: there is no place in the orthodox version of the faith for anything less than eventual world revolution.  Although I suppose that you could decide that only a particular racial/ethnic/political group deserved the dubious benefits of Marxism-Leninism: thus creating a sort of national socialism…

…Oh. Right.  Commies hate being reminded of that little detail of 20th Century history.  Anyway, here’s the video of the Russians looking at Communism in NYC; I admit some admiration at the sight (or more accurately, non-sound) of the cameramen not breaking down in helpless laughter throughout.

Moe Lane

PS: Marxism is intellectualism for stupid people – and, believe me: if you’ve got books by Stalin in your library and you’re using those books to look for ideas… yes, you are a stupid person.

Yet another reminder: Communism kills people.

Via Instapundit comes this surprising op-ed from the New York Times that admits that the People’s Republic of China’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ caused truly frightening numbers of deaths: looking at the actual source material, its author is now estimating a death toll of 45 million (50% more than previous estimates).  That works out to about 6.5% of its population, based on the 1960 census: to put that in perspective, the equivalent for 2010-era USA would be 20.15 million, or just over the entire population of New York State.

Now, this op-ed is not surprising because said famine (which was largely deliberate) is unique in the annals of world Communism: it’s not.  The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had deliberate famines in the Ukraine in the 1930s and a general one just after World War II.  The Khmer Rouge of Democratic Kampuchea likewise had a general one in the 1970s, as did the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the 1990s.  Half the famines in Africa over the last fifty years involved either civil wars started by Marxists, or started against them.  In short, it’s long been known that the only thing that Communism is good at is in turning large numbers of live peasants into large numbers of dead ones.  That’s because – as I have noted before – Marxism is intellectualism for stupid people; it tends to attract the sort who can’t understand that an economic system that cannot feed its own population reliably has failed at the game of Life.  Literally. Continue reading Yet another reminder: Communism kills people.

Prince of Wales attacked by far-Left mob.

(Via Instapundit) One presumes, at least, based on the graffiti (generally Communist; I’d also say ‘vile and ignorant,’ but that would be redundant), the careful over-dramatic poses (with obligatory bandannas), and of course the crowd of screaming blackshirt anarchists smashing the window of Prince Charles’ limo while screaming “Tory scum*.”  The ostensible reason for the rioting was the recent hiking of tuition rates in England, which have proven to be unpopular.  I say ‘ostensible’ because, as is the custom, the protests got taken over by Hard Left groups who could care less about tuition increases.  What they do care about is inciting a politically-useful violent response from the police, which they apparently think will allow them to start the Revolution on the spot.  Which wouldn’t actually happen, but then Communism is intellectualism for stupid people.

By the way, I have a suggestion for the British: if your students can’t have a demonstration without throwing a paint can through a limousine window and attacking your heir to the throne, then perhaps everybody that you catch at it shouldn’t get to be students anymore.  And don’t let yourself get too worked up about them reacting badly to it, either.  Your own Winston Churchill had quite a few things to say on the subject of appeasement, and why it’s a bad idea.  You know, Churchill.  The fellow whose statue one of your spoiled man-children was caught urinating on.

Moe Lane (crosspost) Continue reading Prince of Wales attacked by far-Left mob.

#rsrh November’s scaring people again.

Jim Geraghty and Glenn Reynolds have done an admirable job of rolling their eyes at this doesn’t-really-get-it WaPo op-ed by ‘democratic socialist’ [read: ‘Commie’] Harold Meyerson, so I’ll restrict myself to this nugget of nonsense:

In an April speech at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, [noted apologist for murder Dick] Trumka affirmed that “working people are right to be mad at what has happened to our economy and our country.” Our political leaders, he continued, need to validate that anger — and remedy its causes — if they are to keep that anger from turning into racial, religious and homophobic hatred.

Yes. Yes, of course. When I’m infuriated at the way that this Congress and President have mucked up the economy, my default reaction will be to go out with pitchforks and torches to go looking for black, Muslim*, and gay people to beat up.  I need to be protected from that inevitable scenario by enlightened Commies** like Meyerson***, because of course I can’t be trusted to work out on my own who to properly blame.

Or is he worried that I will know who to properly blame, and that my first reaction to meeting the aforementioned black, Muslim, and/or gay person will be to give them a torch and a pitchfork and invite them to come along?  And that a nontrivial percentage of same will accept the invitation?  One wonders.

Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh November’s scaring people again.