Because Leftists are Idiots

Monday 6 February 2012 - Filed under Uncategorized

The Daily Telegraph on why the lessons from the fall of communism and the truth about collectivism as a political philosophy haven’t actually been learned:

The failure of communism should have been, after all, not just a turning point in geo-political power – the ending of the Cold War and the break-up of the Warsaw Pact – but in modern thinking about the state and its relationship to the economy, about collectivism vs individualism, and about public vs private power. Where was the discussion, the trenchant analysis, or the fundamental debate about how and why the collectivist solutions failed, which should have been so pervasive that it would have percolated down from the educated classes to the bright 18-year-olds? Fascism is so thoroughly (and, of course, rightly) repudiated that even the use of the word as a casual slur is considered slanderous, while communism, which enslaved more people for longer (and also committed mass murder), is regarded with almost sentimental condescension.

Is this because it was originally thought to be idealistic and well-intentioned? If so, then that in itself is a reason for examining its failure very closely. We need to know why a system that began with the desire to free people from their chains ended by imprisoning them behind a wall. Certainly we have had some great works of investigation into the Soviet gulags and the practices of the East German Stasi, but judging by our present political discourse, I think it is safe to say that the basic fallacies of the state socialist system have not really permeated through to public consciousness.

The answer to your question is because leftists are subversive idiots who want not a society of equals, but a means to take from those who have acquired wealth and success. That communism didn’t survive, or that its tenets worked to murder tens of millions of individuals doesn’t prove that it failed in the eyes of leftists. In fact, to many these things are a proof of success.

2012-02-06  »  madlibertarianguy