Communism, to many idealistic Americans, is a beautiful idea. But experience shows that every time the charming theory meets reality, mass killings follow. Bill Whittle just came off the set of his new series on the Soviet Union, and the intense research and writing on what happens when people embrace the Communists, assures him that the ideology fails not just because Russia “didn’t do it right.” Mass slaughter is not a bug, but a feature.
Bill Whittle and Alfonzo Rachel create two new episodes of The Virtue Signal each week thanks to funding from donors and Members. You can give with PayPal or credit card by tapping the big blue button above.
When you become a Member, you unlock access to backstage video content, the Member-written blog, forums and comments. But most of our Members join because they want to be part of the production team that gets these messages out to people who don’t hear these values, principles and virtues elsewhere. To join, tap the big green button above.
Thank you for watching and sharing, and for supporting this enterprise.
13 replies on “The Communists: Who Will Speak for Victims of Mass Killings as Americans Embrace Communism?”
The cold war was not always so cold. As a Cav Pilot in Korea in 1983 that peninsula generated a lot of heat. Between Reagan’s visit, Korean airlines being shot down, border infiltrations, firefights across the border, and pot shots taken on border aircraft , well it kept your attention. Later as a Military advisor in Central America in 1985 it became very apparent, we were fighting communists on 2 fronts, one, the 12,500 Soviet Advisors in Nicaragua who were busy exporting revolution into El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, the other? The Democrat Party in D.C.
Watching this episode of the Virtue Signal, and the topic of Communism, reminds me that Gene Roddenberry absolutely nailed the progressives/communists in his 1969 Star Trek (TOS) “The Way to Eden”. In that one show, Roddenberry wrote of an amazingly diverse group of space hippies led by a madman named Dr. Sevrin, who were on a quest to find the planet named Eden. The obnoxiousness of the hippies, the arrogance, their expressed feelings that through the means of destroying the Enterprise by putting it in Romulan territory, would justify the ends of finding their planet where everything was groovy. So reminds me of today’s socialists/Marxists/progressives, no matter what age they are. Clips of the song below are still on Youtube. Don’t watch on a full stomach.
The joke was on them though, as once they stole the transporter and went down to the planet Eden, all fruit was poisonous and the grass was flesh burning acid. Nice!
“Steppin into Eden, yea brother
Steppin into Eden, yea brother
No more worries in my body or my mind
Gonna live like a king on whatever I find
Eat all the fruit, and throw away the rind……
Yea Yea Brother, Yea”
Oh, and the tall blonde guitar playing hippie? He’s the son of an important Catullan politician from the planet which the Federation is in negotiations.
His name, not Hunter Biden, but, Tongo Rad. Gene had quite the sense of humor.
and just to though some fun trivia in, Peace Loving Space Hippie Tongo Rad was played by Charles Napier, who just happened to have a long career playing military or very mean tough bad guy roles.
Living as I do on physical site of the best American Experiment in voluntary Socialism that first succeeded and then failed and died of its own internal conflict, I can fundamentally understand the opposite philosophies that individualism and socialism are and the battle for the human consciousness we are in the middle of. That is the COLD WAR of the mind.
Hey Bill,
I think I just heard you say that you are doing a documentary on the Soviet terror state. By coincidence I’m reading a book on Lithuanian patriots who fought back at the time of the Soviet occupation circa 1945. I’m about half-way through. It provides a kind of day to day accounting of the NKVD methodology as seen by their intended targets:
“Fighters for Freedom – Lithuanian Partisans Versus the USSR” by Juozas Daumantas
The author has a couple of wikipedia pages:
https://lt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juozas_Luk%C5%A1a-Daumantas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juozas_Luk%C5%A1a
The english version accuses him, based on little more proof than guilt by association, of participating in pogrom. I honestly have no idea where the truth lies, but the accusers evidence is weak.
Nevertheless, those accusations do not diminish its value as an eyewitness account of what an initial occupation by communists looks like.
Hope this helps.
A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
— Gerald Ford, 12 August 1974, his first address to a joint session of Congress after assuming the Presidency.
Wasn’t he quoting Thomas Jefferson?
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/jun/06/facebook-posts/no-thomas-jefferson-did-not-say-big-government-str/
“Neither this quotation nor any of its variant forms has been found in the writings of Thomas Jefferson,” Monticello says on its website.
Its first known appearance in print, Popik found, was an unattributed entry in the 1952 book “Remember These Things” by Paul Harvey. It showed up a year later, also unattributed, in the Texas newspaper, “The Morning Avalanche.”
In 1954, then-U.S. Rep. Gerald Ford used a similar line and repeated it as president in 1974. (Ford’s assistant, Robert Hartmann, reportedly said that Ford claimed to have heard the phrase “early in his political career” from Harvard McClain at the Economic Club in Chicago.)
I had always assumed it was older, possibly Revolutionary period, but in my prior research Ford was the best I attribution could find. Most folks would have heard it first from that address.
I would guess Ford may have said it many times in House committee meetings over the many years he was in the minority fighting Democrat spending.
I’m also not sure Jefferson or his contempories would have understood the concept of a government giving you everything you want. They did not see government as the giver of things or money but as a taker of things, and therefore, must be limited.
The Federal government didn’t become a major giver of things until the “New Deal” made possible by income taxes.
You know what? I’ve been through this conversation before. You’d think I’d remember.
another one of the many reasons I love this site: I learn new things!!
Thanks, Chris
Institutions of higher learning today make a distinction between Socialism and Communism. The chief distinction is that under the Marx/Engel version of Communism there is no such thing as private property whereas in Socialism individuals still may own private property but the means of production, which is to say the means of creating wealth, are owned by the State.
Marx and Engels called that sort of Socialism an “utterly unrealistic utopian dream”. This is one of the few things Marx and Engels got right. It is an utterly unrealistic utopian dream. They missed the fact that their Communism was based on that unrealistic dream, a foundation of sand upon which they built their Communist ideology.
Marx and Engels advocated for what is today called Communism as “revolutionary socialism”. They didn’t consistently or clearly differentiate socialism from communism in their writings and used the terms interchangeably. It’s still Socialism, still the unrealistic utopian dream, but is achieved by violent revolution rather than by non-violent political means.
Marxists today often refer to Socialism as a first, vital, indispensable step on the road to Communism and for a Marxist that utterly unrealistic utopian dream is the foundation on which to build a Communist Worker’s Paradise.
A further modern slant on Socialism is a thing called “Democratic Socialism” …
“Like communists, democratic socialists believe workers should control the bulk of the means of production, and not be subjected to the will of the free market and the capitalist classes.” – History.com
Which is to say this is simply another unrealistic utopian dream. The market is what drives production, not the other way around. The ‘capitalist classes’ are merely swapped for governmental authorities even less responsible, more prone to corruption and far less knowledgeable about economic issues. Who are being driven by theory and ideology rather than supply and demand. It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing ideology and it is still that vital, irrevocable, irreplaceable first step on the road to Communism.
Because this cannot work the excuse will always be that we need more not less socialism. The tyrants will always say that if they only had more power they could make this work. (We just saw a perfect example of that. “If we have more power we can save you from COVID.”) Right up to the moment the foundation of sand brings the whole construct down. The more that is built on that sandy foundation the harder the crash will be when it collapses.
All roads lead to the same destination under Marxist ideology and it’s important not to forget that simple fact.
Thus Communism is just a brand name for generic Socialism. It is the Socialism that actually leads a society to the point of no return on the road to Communism. The difference between a Communist and a Socialist is like the difference between generic naproxen and brand named Aleve. Both are the same thing in essence. It might be a different colored pill but it still contains the same substance.
The result is still tyranny no matter what you call it, a pile of dung by any other name still smells like a pile of dung. You can have that tyranny forced on you by violence or you can vote yourself into it but the end result is always the same. Either way, once you have it the only way to be rid of it is to shoot your way out (as Bill is fond of saying).
The goal is to get you to the point where you either accept the status quo or fight and once that goal is reached it is much easier to bring the might of the State against any any and all who object in any manner. The gulags were filled to overflowing with good Communists who believed unfailingly in the Soviet Man. Such a State of Tyranny knows that most people will not lay down their lives to combat it. So will then look for any trace of resistance or incorrect doctrine to stomp on.
Remember all this when you hear someone who claims to advocate for any brand of Socialism. Because that person is a Communist, knowing and admitting it or not. It’s all poison and it’s universally fatal to Liberty and prosperity.
The similarities between the “Cold War” with the US vs. the USSR and the “Catch a Cold War” of the federal government of the United States vs, the people of the United States? The CoVid response is generating a slow death, the death of our Republic The government overreach and its effect on education makes the next generation dumber, more easily led by the state. The overreach and its effect on our national identity by making us lemmings to be led off a cliff by the Pied Piper. We are not to think for ourselves. We are to cower in fear.
God gave us the freedom to choose between good and evil. We know God is good because of the results we see when we choose the good. We need to remember we are a nation under God and live like it.