Suicide of the Liberals

When I saw the title, "Suicide of the Liberals" in the October, 2020, First Things, I thought it would be "our" liberals who wave their little flags at "peaceful" protests led by BLM, and donate to racial justice causes, and meet with other faculty at the university to promote reeducation workshops on American history. But, no. It was about what happened in Russia in the first 20 years of the 20th century--i.e. the Russian Revolution. As the author points out:

"Revolutions never succeed without the support of wealthy, liberal, educated society. Yet revolutionaries seldom conceal that their success entails the seizure of all wealth, the suppression of dissenting opinion, and the murder of class enemies.

There were many groups colluding and cooperating in bringing down the Russian government--the Maximalists, the Socialist Revolutionaries, Kadets, Mensheviks, populists, anarchists, and the Bolsheviks, who finally gained control. The author reports that the liberals in Russian society (referred to as the intelligents) well-educated, not particularly wealthy or of high social class, with a regulated life and obligatory beliefs for a "moral" person, with a devotion not unlike a strict religion.

The Russian liberals of the early 20th century had great distain for anything conservative and could excuse all manner of violence and intolerance as noble and understandable. Like robbery, extortion, murder and demands to abolish the police. Better to side with people a mile to one's left than be associated with anyone an inch to one's right.

There wasn't a word in this article by Gary Saul Morson about 2020 and what is happening in our country, but it certainly sounded familiar. Like Twitter and Facebook yesterday shutting down the Biden China story and the President's press secretary. Or critical race theory appearing in government departments and medical schools attached to major universities. People being threatened or having careers destroyed over a different opinion in politics. Or a candidate for vice president twisting history to fit her wish for a liberal supreme court justice. The willingness to move a mile left and not an inch to the right. Yes, very familiar indeed.

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/10/suicide-of-the-liberals?

Corporate Socialism by Michael Rechtenwald

“For anyone wondering about corporate socialism and what I mean by it, it's very simple: State socialism is socialist only "on the ground." There's nothing "socialist" about the state itself within socialism. Those who run the state don't live according to socialist principles. They are the ruling elite. They control the means of production. They live like oligarchs, because they are essentially oligarchs.

The same goes for "corporate socialism." There's nothing "socialist" about the corporationists  who run the corporate socialist system. They are the ruling elite. They don't live according to socialist principles. They are oligarchs.

In both cases, socialism is promoted to and for the masses. Both are two-tiered systems: oligarchy on top, "socialism" on the ground. Both are monopolistic.

There is nothing pure in this world.

The difference between corporate and state socialism is just who is in control of the resources and the means of production--the state actors in one case, the corporatists in the other.

The difference between corporate socialism and mere cronyism is that under corporate socialism the corporate socialists promote socialism on the ground--in order to satiate the masses, eliminate competition, and pretend to be noble.”

And who financed the Russian revolution?  A different viewpoint. https://youtu.be/PaFklTLNy8c  Professor Antony Sutton

Caught in the Revolution by Helen Rappaport

http://www.helenrappaport.com/page31.html 



Caught in the Revolution; Petrograd, Russia, 1917--a world on the edge.  Interesting book about the westerners and foreigners caught in the Russian Revolution, which using the old style calendar was 100 years ago in February, but new style is, wait for it, March 8, 1917. Yes, yesterday's march against Donald Trump has been a Communist holiday for years. That's why they wear red.  I was asked to review this title. So I'm plugging it here again. Great read.

The marches began with food shortages in Russia, but in the U.S. there are no shortages except gullible women and the knowledge of history and the goals of the American Communists. Their number one goal is to de-christianize the country, which is why they don't mind going soft on how radical Muslims treat women, gays, the poor, etc. 

The Russian women didn't even get the day off work until 1965! (From Wikipedia)  "Following the October Revolution, the Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai and Vladimir Lenin made it an official holiday in the Soviet Union, but it was a working day until 1965. On May 8, 1965 by the decree of the USSR Presidium of the Supreme Soviet International Women's Day was declared a non-working day in the USSR "in commemoration of the outstanding merits of Soviet women in communistic construction, in the defense of their Fatherland during the Great Patriotic War, in their heroism and selflessness at the front and in the rear, and also marking the great contribution of women to strengthening friendship between peoples, and the struggle for peace. But still, women's day must be celebrated as are other holidays." "

March 8, 1917

Not that the organizers of today's women's march will tell the snowflakes the significance of March 8, 1917, or the color red, but it's all about Communism, a political philosophy that killed millions of Russians, Poles, Ukrainians and Eastern Europeans, probably at least half of whom were women. No crime was too small, no thought too dangerous, no prayer too insignificant to rile the great mother state. Thank God for the Pope, the president and the Prime Minister who helped that mess unravel. Pity the poor American women duped by their Communist sisters into thinking they were protesting President Trump.

Caught in the Revolution--advance copy

I received an exciting advance copy to review this week, Helen Rappaport, "Caught in the Revolution; Petrograd, Russia, 1917--a World on the Edge." (St. Marin's Press, due February 2017). It's written from research using foreigners' diaries and letters who were eye witnesses caught in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Review copies don't have the photos ;-(  but the list of eye witnesses is certainly interesting. The list includes Julia Dent Grant, granddaughter of president Grant, the black valet of the American ambassador, as well as many journalists and correspondents. One really piqued my interest, Emmeline Pankhurst, and I'll have to do a bit more research on her.

 

We visited this city in 2006--traveling there by train from Helsinki, Finland. St. Petersburg was created in 1703 by Peter the Great who wanted a seaport, then the name changed to Petrograd in 1914 (burg is German and grad is Russian for city), then Leningrad in 1924 for Vladimir Lenin, and then after the Communist regime collapsed, the people voted to change it back to St. Petersburg.