SOME HISTORY

A Leftist at work: "Mao was an early radical but he was driven by an overwhelming lust for domination. He championed women in his early writings but he exploited, betrayed, and consumed droves of them and drove into madness or despair three of his four wives. He had scorn or contempt for peasants and cared little if they died of hunger. Far from being a great guerrilla leader, he often commanded his forces into losing situations. Most of his closest colleagues feared his murderous tendencies and did what he wanted not out of loyalty but ultimately-Zhou Enlai is the outstanding example here-out of fear. Mao opposed fighting the Japanese despite the urgings of Josef Stalin, and never forgave the commanders of the only two battles against them. During the guerrilla period Mao encouraged the production of opium whose sale greatly swelled his treasury. His policies led to the death of up to a million landlords. He encouraged Kim Il Sung to attack South Korea. His economic policies and contempt for the peasantry led to the world's greatest famine in 1959-1961, in which at least 37 million people died. He provoked the Cultural Revolution and demanded detailed accounts of the torture and killing of its victims."

Leftists think nothing of lies: ""I am not and have never been a member of the Communist Party," Alger Hiss said under oath on Aug. 5, 1948, and calmly refuted the accusation of former Soviet agent Whittaker Chambers. The House Un-American Activities Committee had subpoenaed Chambers two days before. Then a senior editor at Time magazine, Chambers had testified reluctantly. Hiss, however, was not content to deny his communist ties. "So far as I know," he added, "I have never laid eyes on [Chambers], and I should like the opportunity to do so." The unruffled demeanor of Alger Hiss unnerved the HUAC members, who had trusted Chambers, but it did not surprise Chambers. He knew from experience that Hiss had the strength to be a communist, "that sense of moral superiority which makes communists though caught in crime, berate their opponents with withering self-righteousness." What would have shocked Chambers is if Hiss had yielded and wept and told the truth".

The murderous Che Guevara: "It's safe to assume that many people now sporting radical-chic Che T-shirts oppose capital punishment, but Che Guevara served as an executioner for Castro, as Guevara himself admitted in some of his diary entries... But Che Guevara's killing spree didn't reach its apex until after the corrupt Bautista regime collapsed and Castro put Guevara in charge of the San Carlos de La Caba¤a prison. Jos‚ Vilasuso, a lawyer and professor in Puerto Rico who had served with the group in charge of the judicial process at La Caba¤a prison, told Vargas Llosa that one night in 1959 he witnessed the execution of seven political prisoners. Another witness, Javier Arzuaga, a clergyman more inclined toward the liberation theology of Leonardo Boff than the conservatism of the former Cardinal Ratzinger, told Vargas Llosa that Che Guevara never overturned a sentence. He said he personally witnessed 55 executions, including that of a young boy named Ariel Lima. Estimates of the number of executions of political prisoners during the six months that Che Guevara was in charge of La Caba¤a vary. Economist Armando Lago has compiled a list of 179 executions. Pedro Corzo, who is making a documentary about Che Guevara, puts the number at 200. Vilasuso told Vargas Llosa that 400 political prisoners were executed under Guevara's command. Whether Che Guevara executed 400 political prisoners or "only" 200, it's hard to see how self-styled "progressives" can continue to justify their worship of the murderer".

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and America's support for the Afghans: "Just as radicals today like to think of themselves as "anti-anti-Saddam" so then they were anti-anti-Communist. In practice this meant they were the mainstay in the West for the Soviet empire and its expansion into vulnerable nations on its periphery like Afghanistan. The United States provided training and arms for the Muslim mujahideen in Afghanistan because its conscience was roused by the Soviet invaders whose scorched earth policies killed a million defenseless Afghan civilians before the resistance, with America's help, was able to stop them..... the victory of the mujahideen, made possible by America's gift of missiles, not only defeated the Red Army, but triggered the chain of events which led to the fall of the Marxist empire. In other words, U.S. support for the mujahideen eventually liberated a billion people whom the Soviet comrades of American and European leftists had enslaved for fifty and seventy years. In other words, America's support for the Palestinian, Egyptian and Saudi terrorists (Osama among them) who flocked to the cause was a somewhat bad deed in the service of a very great good one. It was not as bad a deed for example as saving and arming their friend Joe Stalin and his Marxist butchers in order to defeat Hitler, but it was an equally good one"

The Catholic "Treasure Chest" comics from the 1960s are reproduced here. The anti-Communist series is still pretty close to the mark.

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