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October 13, 2008
Those Who Haven't Been Taught the Past Are Doomed to Repeat It
Posted by Dave Blount at October 13, 2008 11:23 AM
What could explain the possibility of a radical who has been mentored by communists his entire life being elected President of the USA? In a word: ignorance, which is deliberately imposed by an education system dominated by leftists. Paul Kengor elaborates:
I have seen for quite some time that although we won the Cold War — and defeated the Soviet communist empire — America is vulnerable to varying degrees of collectivism, wealth redistribution, "creeping socialism" (Ronald Reagan's phrase), class-warfare rhetoric, and generally milder, more palatable (but still dangerous) forms of disguised Marxism. Why? How? The answer is simple: The history and truth about communism is not taught by our educators.
College professors strongly disapprove of mentioning the hell communism has conjured on Earth wherever it has been imposed across the world.
It is not so much that these professors approve of communism as much as they disapprove of — actually, utterly despise — anti-communism. They are anti-anti-communist more so than pro-communist. Conservatives need to understand this, so as to avoid broad-brushing and losing credibility. Sure, a lot of professors are Marxists, and many more share the utopian goals of Marxism, but the vast majority are simply leftists.
Being on the left entails many strange contradictions and political pathologies, one of which is this bizarre revulsion toward anti-communists. These leftists — to their credit — despise fascism, and will preach anti-fascism until they're blue in the face. They are as appalled by fascism as conservatives are by communism. But while conservatives detest both communism and fascism, liberals only detest one of the two.
Of course, fascism is basically leftist ideology wrapped in nationalism. It's the patriotic packaging liberals object to, not the actual content, which doesn't differ much from communism.
Not only do the historical tragedies of communism go untaught, so does its demonstrable lack of economic viability.
[A]side from failing to instruct their students in the crass facts about communism's unprecedented destruction — its purges, mass famines, show trials, killing fields, concentration camps — these educators are negligent in failing to teach the essential, non-emotional, but crucial Econ 101 basics that contrast capitalism and communism and, thus, that get at the heart of how and why command economies simply do not work. […] Consequently, Americans today do not know why communism is such a devastating ideology, at both the level of plain economic theory and in actual historical practice.
This is why revelations of Obama's mentorship by the Stalinist Frank Marshall Davis and the Maoist Bill Ayers evoke yawns from most college kids. The 100 million people killed by their own communist governments in the 20th century are just a statistic. Making a big deal about communist-imposed slavery and genocide would be "McCarthyism."
The next generation has never been taught to grasp what communism means. If schools won't teach them, life might have to.
On a tip from NGWFJ.
