Reason: John Stossel & Lilly Tang Williams: '100 Years of Communist Disaster'

Source:Reason Magazine- Happy Birthday Communism, from John Stossel. 

"This year marks communism's 100th birthday. Its horrors should remind us of the value of freedom."

From Reason Magazine

China is a good example of a communist disaster as far as their economic system, until they started their privatization program about 40 years ago and moved to a more capitalist private enterprise economic system.

But China is still a communist, unitarian, one-party, state, that happens to have a private enterprise economic system, while still maintaining some state-owned enterprises. Their political system is still a one-party communist system and there’s still no free press, free speech, right to privacy, fair trial, etc, things that liberal democracies like America have.

And yet I don’t think anyone at this point would argue that the People’s Republic of China is a failed state. Just a little push back at John Stossel’s broad point here that communism has failed in China.

I’m more interested in the somewhat rebirth if not of communism, but certainly socialism and what I call Neo-Communism. Which is a very illiberal (not liberal) form of socialist-collectivism which is somewhat undemocratic, while still leaving in some democratic principles.

For example, non-socialist parties are still allowed to technically run for national office in Venezuela. The Center-Right Liberal Democrats did win control of the National Assembly there a few years ago. But then what the so-called Socialist (Neo-Communist) Maduro Government does there is say that those elections were not valid and the opposition is now a threat to the country (meaning the Maduro Government) and the Maduro Government starts their own brand new National Assembly where only members of the Socialist Party there are allowed to serve.

Which is a big reason why we’re seeing so much chaos in Venezuela there because the economy is collapsing in a country that is energy independent and yet they can’t produce enough affordable energy for most of the country. But rising inflation and interest rates, shortages of other basic necessities in life including food. Because Big Uncle Nick (meaning President Nicolas Maduro) believes his state is more capable of producing the goods and services that the Venezuelan people need better than the people themselves.And that Venezuela is a country of 25 millions morons essentially who are too stupid to manage their own affairs. And they need Big Uncle Nick and his army of Neo-Communists (his government) to take care of them for them.

Venezuela is the perfect example of a failed Neo-Communist state and disaster. Cuba would be another great example, add North Korea. Anyone seen or heard from the Soviet Union lately or seen any Soviets? Almost like they’ve disappeared from the face of the Earth.

But to bring it back home back to America where no one who isn’t an alcoholic or drug addict actually believes communism will ever takeover America and run this country. But there is a new socialist movement that has two wings in it.

One American Socialist win, is a democratic socialist wing led by Senator Bernie Sanders and Dr. Jill Stein, who by enlarge are both peace-loving Hippies from the 1960s who perhaps occasionally enjoy a joint every now and then who do live on cloud nine politically in the sense that they both have this warped fantasy that perhaps you could only get from smoking too much pot, that government services are free.

Democratic Socialists believe that if American taxpayers just gave up most of their income to Uncle Sam, or perhaps Uncle Bernie and his wife Aunt Jill, (assuming that we wouldn’t allow them to just take our money from us) that America would turn into some beautiful socialist utopia. With no one ever going without not enough or enjoying too much, because the U.S. Government would collect our wealth for us and then manage for us and decide for us what we need to live well.

Besides, in Bernie and Jill’s view Americans tend to be stupid anyway and aren’t capable of making our own complicated decisions anyway that you would probably need a masters degree from an Ivy League or some other great Northeastern or West Coast university to be able to manage properly.

Democratic Socialists believe that such complicated decisions like where we should get our health insurance, health care, how to invest for our retirement, where to get our childcare for our kids, who to take care of our kids when they get older, etc, basic decisions that only New York, San Francisco, and Washington yuppie intellectuals are capable of making. And therefor according to Uncle Bernie and Aunt Jill and other Socialists, should have this decision-making power over everyone else and given the power to run our lives for us.

But wait, it gets a helluva a lot worse than that. Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein, are the good Socialists for the most part. Other than having a hard time telling the truth about the costs and consequences of their economic policies. Its much worst than the Sanders-Stein factions of American socialism.

Move over to the American Neo-Communists the people who hate free speech so much that they’ll use their free speech rights to try to shut up people who disagree with them. Even use violent tactics and terrorism to try to shut people up. We saw this at Berkley during this winter.

The Neo-Communists are people who say they hate capitalism even though they own almost every form of new technology there is and claim they can’t live without their smartphones and iPads and other devices. Who are always up to date on the latest fashion trends and own all of them. And yet they say they hate capitalism.

Neo-Communists are people who claim to love animals and are for animal rights and put people down for the eating cheeseburgers and other meat and call that animal cruelty as they’re wearing leather jackets. Again, hipster-leftists say they hate capitalism even though they spend most of their time when they’re not protesting against free speech, at coffee houses on their laptops and iPhones. Who claim our Founding Fathers (the original Liberal Democrats) were evil racists who created this evil American empire. As they wear t-shirts of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro and support those two men who are both responsible for the murders of thousands of people. In Fidel’s case perhaps millions.

Communism will never make it to America at least as a governing philosophy where we would see some communist regime installed and running the U.S. Government. Because Americans tend to be too individualist and once we are educated, we tend to know what doesn’t work and what does work and are able and want to make our own decisions in life both personally and economically.

Besides, the examples of failed communism and failed communist states are widely known. At least outside of the Millennial Generation and once the Millennial’s finally grow up I believe they’ll come to realize that the pot fantasies that they had in their twenties and even thirties about how like totally awesome socialism and communism is, was nothing more than a social fad and an attempt to look cool with their generation.

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