Future Gulags

In a recent post I offered a brief description of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's classic examination of the ruthless and brutal persecution of the Russian people perpetrated by the communist authorities after the revolution of 1917 -- The Gulag Archipelago (hereafter abbreviated as GA). Millions were killed, imprisoned, or exiled during the decades that followed and Solzhenitsyn, as one of the survivors, had the passion and the spirit to conduct the difficult research in complete and necessary secrecy, and the courage to tell the story.

I also included just a sampling of some of the recent comments made by those on our political left, comments that are reminiscent of the attitudes that drove the thinking of the communists who so fervently slaughtered and imprisoned so many Russians. How sad that those on the left seem to despise the protections of religion, speech, and press, among others, provided by our nation's Constitution.

In truth, there's little difference between the totalitarians of either left or right. They both believe the state should control all aspects of people's lives -- they are, after all, totalitarians -- but there are some differences in practice, particularly related to the way they view and handle a society's means of production. Communists despise the idea of private property and corporate ownership and believe the state should own pretty much everything. Of course, once government bureaucrats take over an industry, thus eliminating all competition and any incentive to succeed, the industry descends into gross inefficiency and chaos. Fascists are actually a bit (but only a bit) smarter since they realize total government control would likely destroy any industry. They, therefore, allow private companies to run their businesses efficiently but demand subservience. Adolph Hitler, for example, didn't have to nationalize Krupp, I. G. Farben, Siemens, Daimler-Benz, and so many others. All he had to do was threaten them and they willingly did his bidding. Armed troops outside the front door of a business or a home can be an effective motivator.

We're starting to see signs of this among our hi-tech giants who do the bidding of the liberal establishment by "canceling" those who disagree with the prevailing ideology. The threat? Be good or the first thing we'll do is repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and allow anyone to sue you for what someone else says about them on one of your platforms. Oh, yes, we can also apply a host of anti-trust legislation and break your big company up into a slew of smaller, more easily controlled firms. There’s so much we can do to you.

Are the "leftists" who have infected Congress, government agencies, academia, big business, and the media really on the political left, or are they more closely aligned with the far right? It actually makes little difference since both extremes have similar ends -- control of others through the expansion and application of power -- and use similar means to achieve them. Solzhenitsyn makes this point often enough when, for example, he compares the ruthless application of power by both Hitler and Stalin, and their minions.

In writing the truth about what his country and its people endured, Solzhenitsyn offers us many prophetic insights. I certainly don't intend to relate them all, but hope only to show that the disturbing things we are experiencing and hearing now are nothing new. We must be wary, or this "one nation, under God" could easily lead to the end visualized by James Burnham in his 1964 book, Suicide of the West.

Let me conclude this post with a comment by Solzhenitsyn in which he describes the legal means put in place and implemented by the Soviet communist government, a new form of justice necessary if they hoped to carry out their brutal persecution:

"And so an entirely new form was adopted: extrajudicial reprisal, and this thankless job was self-sacrificingly assumed by the Cheka, the Sentinel of the Revolution, which was the only punitive organ in human history that combined in one set of hands investigation, arrest, interrogation, prosecution, trial, and execution of the verdict" GA...p. 28.

It was called “reprisal” because it’s primary purpose was to rid the society of real and potential political opponents of the Bolsheviks. It was a form of political cleansing driven as much by revenge as by necessity. Sound familiar? And when I hear of the secrecy and obvious extra-legal actions of federal law enforcement and its involvement with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court, I can’t help but think that perhaps we’ve taken a first step toward the “extrajudicial” approach taken by those communist revolutionaries. 

In my next post I hope to show how that which began in Russia a century ago merely foreshadowed some of what we are witnessing today.

Strange Doings

Just a few of the random thoughts that have arisen in my often confused and certainly aging mind as I try to understand the more confused minds of those who make the headlines.

Oh, Canada! A few days ago an acquaintance asked me, "Did you read what Canada has done? What's with those Canadians? Have they gone insane?" He was referring to a law passed overwhelmingly (67 to 11) by the Canadian Senate that makes it a crime to refer to a person's sex by other than the term the person desires. In other words, should a Canadian decide that he/she/it is none of these but prefers to be called by another manufactured pronoun, such as "zir" or "zie" or "zit" or whatever, you must acquiesce to the loon's desires or face criminal prosecution. As my friend suggested, this is, of course, insane. But rest assured, the Canadians have not "gone" insane, they have simply remained insane. Indeed, a mild form of insanity has been their occasional mental state for the past few hundred years. After all, rather than join us in our quest to free ourselves from tyranny, they remained loyal to King George III, a man whose madness is rather well documented. So...the Canadians rejected George Washington -- a good guy and a very smart and sane man -- and instead placed their future well-being in the hands of another George, who happened to be a madman. I rest my case. I have only one question: Will those 11 senators who voted against the measure be prosecuted for discrimination? This would seem to be the most likely outcome for a nation comfortable with insanity.

LGBTQetc and Islam. Isn't it a bit odd that the Alphabet Corps of self-declared victims of sexual discrimination has become another voice decrying what they perceive to be Western (i.e., once Christian) Civilization's rampant Islamophobia? I do find this odd since virtually every Muslim-majority nation has sharia-based laws prohibiting homosexual and "related" behavior. And in many of these nations -- including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, and others -- the punishment under these laws includes the death penalty. Strange bedfellows...so to speak. It only confirms the late James Burnham's belief that liberalism is just another form of suicide. (See his remarkable and prophetic 1964 book, Suicide of the West.) 

Violence on the Left. What do Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro, and Bernie Sanders have in common? Well, OK, four of them are dead, but all five are (or were) Marxists. And once we establish that basic fact, the violence we encounter on the political left today becomes understandable. Socialism is just a seemingly "soft" form of Marxism. But it is Marxism nonetheless and accepts the basic tenets of Marxist faith. One of these tenets is the need for revolution to accomplish its ends. In the words of Elton John: "We go up the revolution, freedom strike another blow. Yeah, strike another blow." In this context, of course, freedom includes only the freedom to believe what the Marxist believes.

That's why all of those young collegiate Marxists, who have been indoctrinated by all those aging professorial Marxists, get violent whenever someone who holds an opposing view dares to show up on campus. Yeah, strike another blow.

That's why a mediocre comedian can hold up an effigy of the decapitated head of the president and get rave reviews from her fellow travelers. Yeah, strike another blow.

That's why a Bernie Sanders toady can decide it's fine to shoot up a Republican congressional baseball practice. Yeah, strike another blow.

That's why a Nebraskan Democratic official can say he wished the baseball-field shooter had actually killed that  Republican representative instead of just wounding him. Yeah, strike another blow.

Interestingly, according to a recent poll, registered Democrats now prefer socialism to free-market capitalism by a double-digit advantage: 49% to 37%. I can only assume this will lead to increased violence on the left and quite likely an increase in violent responses from the far right.

Yes, indeed, we live in a strange, confused world. Thank God for God.

Suicide of Western Civilization

In my previous post I provided a link to Elizabeth Scalia's blog, The Anchoress, but what I hadn't read at the time was her piece that appeared this morning on the website of First Things. Entitled, "Hating Ourselves to Death" it offers a brief glimpse of the West on its deathbed and provides what I believe is an accurate diagnosis of the likely terminal illness that has placed it there. It's well worth a read.

I've written a few posts recently on the subject Western Europe's probable demise and the spread of its fatal disease to our shores here in the USA. But what I find most interesting about this speculation (by me and others) is how James Burnham (1905-1987) anticipated it all almost a half-century ago. Back in 1964 Burnham recognized the basic flaws of modern liberalism and clearly saw the kind of future into which these errors would lead us. The title of Burnham's book, Suicide of the West, pretty much says it all.

Burnham, a once-radical Trotskyite, who is probably best known for his book, The Managerial Revolution, underwent a significant change in thinking back in the 1940s and became a stalwart of the conservative movement and a frequent contributor to William F. Buckley's National Review. It was there, back in the early sixties, in the pages of my father's copies of that journal, that I first encountered James Burnham. And it was just a few years later when I was handed a copy of Suicide of the West, also thanks to my father. According to Burnham, modern liberals are wracked with guilt and self-hatred, a syndrome that becomes manifest in all kinds of contradictory behaviors and beliefs. He would have agreed heartily with Scalia's article mentioned above.

In my opinion Burnham's best book, though, is The Machiavellians (1943), another prophetic look into the future (our present) in which he describes the ascendancy of a governing elite who will make effective use of the trappings of a democratic society as its members work toward one overreaching goal: the realization of their own personal interests.

James Burnham is still worth reading.