Where to Begin?

           Old Gadfly:  Gentlemen, do you recall from your understanding of history what happened 100 years ago?

AM: The Russian revolution took place in two phases.  In February of 1917, the socialist movement organized to delegitimize the political regime in power—Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. 

Two socialist groups led the charge—the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks.  The Mensheviks believed in pure Marxism yet were tolerant of liberal views (i.e., individual liberty and property ownership).  The Bolsheviks were far less tolerant of liberal opposition, and classified people as friend or enemy, with Lenin’s vision for utopia facilitated by political elite as the litmus test.  Then, in October of 1917, the Bolsheviks seized political power from the provisional government and became known as the Communist Party.  Those who opposed Lenin’s vision would eventually be silenced—either sent to a Gulag or executed—in the year following the revolution, the Red Terror engaged in an estimated 1.5 million political and religious executions.  Here’s a passage from a Wikipedia account from a book[1] by George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police (pp. 197–198):

At Odessa the Cheka tied White officers to planks and slowly fed them into furnaces or tanks of boiling water; in Kharkiv, scalpings and hand-flayings were commonplace: the skin was peeled off victims' hands to produce "gloves"; the Voronezh Cheka rolled naked people around in barrels studded internally with nails; victims were crucified or stoned to death at Dnipropetrovsk; the Cheka at Kremenchuk impaled members of the clergy and buried alive rebelling peasants; in Orel, water was poured on naked prisoners bound in the winter streets until they became living ice statues; in Kiev, Chinese Cheka detachments placed rats in iron tubes sealed at one end with wire netting and the other placed against the body of a prisoner, with the tubes being heated until the rats gnawed through the victim's body in an effort to escape. 

The same Wikipedia source recounts other forms of brutality as reported in a book[2] by Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev.  A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia (p. 156):

Members of the clergy were subjected to particularly brutal abuse.  According to documents cited by the late  Alexander Yakovlev, then head of the Presidential Committee for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, priests, monks and nuns were crucified, thrown into cauldrons of boiling tar, scalped, strangled, given Communion with melted lead and drowned in holes in the ice.  An estimated 3,000 were put to death in 1918 alone.

IM:  What is critical to emphasize is that the Bolsheviks were socialists.  A well-documented history reports “communists have killed more than 100 million people. Countless more suffered and suffer still.”  I find it shocking that in America, Bernie Sanders, a known socialist who ran unsuccessfully for President, recently published his own book with the title, Our Revolution.  He does not hide the fact that, ideologically, he is a socialist—as if he is totally oblivious to the atrocities stemming from a socialistic society.  His language is consistent with Lenin and the Bolshevik movement.  He presumes a morally superior perspective, playing upon envy to pit the lower class against the upper class.  What amazes me is the large number of followers who wanted him to be President.

AM:  This is very disturbing to me—Gadfly and I spent over 34 years as a member of our national security team opposing the threat of socialism in Vietnam and during the Cold War.

           IM:  Yet, the younger generation has not been educated on our history, thanks to the John Dewey progressive educational philosophy that has shaped education in America for nearly a hundred years.

Old Gadfly:  I am glad you mentioned Dewey.  We’ll have another lengthy discussion centered on an excellent analysis by Henry T. Edmondson III in his book, John Dewey & The Decline of American Education:  How the Patron Saint of Schools Has Corrupted Teaching and Learning.  Meanwhile, are there indications of how bad history education is in America?

IM:  Absolutely.  There is a stark contrast between baby boomers and millennials in terms of attitudes toward capitalism and socialism.  A recent report indicates millennials are far more supportive of socialism and communism than baby boomers.  Yet, based on my own anecdotal data, baby boomers who have grown accustomed to generous welfare benefits also leaned toward Sanders and his socialistic utopia.  

           Old Gadfly:  Let’s get back to the Russian revolution.  The left is starting to describe the current protest movement as an equivalent to the Tea Party movement that emerged in 2009.

AM:  The Tea Party movement represented rallies, not protests.  No one was arrested, and there was never any violence or damage during these rallies.  These rallies expressed concerns about socialistic policies being forced upon us (such as Obamacare and other crushing regulations).  Compare these rallies with the left wing protests taking place. 

IM:  Even if there is some truth to allegations the Koch brothers financially supported some of the Tea Party efforts, the left ignores solid evidence that George Soros is clearly behind ongoing protests from the left.  In fact, the recent Women’s March on Washington was well organized and at least 50 of its partner groups have been funded by Soros.  The Koch brothers have earned their fortune through sound business practices.  Soros, on the other hand, is a convicted felon, and earned his fortune by betting on the demise of entire national currency systems.   

AM:  But more important, the Tea Party symbolically represented the historical Boston Tea Party that protested tyranny.  Similarly, the modern Tea Party advocated individual liberty, limited government, and a fair market economy.  Compare this with left wing protests that oppose the rule of law and American values of patriotism and individual responsibility. 

IM:  The left believes in identity politics and a manufactured oppression.  With this complex set of strawmen, they can then disparage liberal opposition (classical liberalism now more accurately represented by the conservative movement) by calling them the new set of “N” words—racist, bigot, misogynist, homophobe, xenophobe, Islamophobe, and so forth.  The political left champions themselves as the protectors of the oppressed.  Notice I said protector as opposed to liberator.  The left exploits modern Uncle Toms, like John C. Lewis and Elijah E. Cummings, as ideological warriors.   By the way, the real Uncle Tom in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel was a hero, unlike today’s pejorative meaning advanced by the intellectual left.  The political left exploits this notion of oppression to justify a large central government that imposes social justice, that is, equality for everyone (except the ruling elite).  Ironically, if there were no oppression, then there would be no need for the political left.  None of their ideas of good governance assumes a capacity for self-governing people, as envisioned by our Founding Fathers.  These dynamics explain why the left has gotten away with running inner city plantations for decades.

Old Gadfly:  I want to get back to the Russian revolution because this history is important in understanding the American revolution of 2017.  The Russian revolution was the beginning of Soviet communism.  The Communist International, commonly referred to as the Comintern, was founded in 1919, intended to fight "by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State” (see here).  According to Dictionary.com, the word soviet means, “(after the revolution) a local council originally elected only by manual workers, with certain powers of local administration. . . . (after the revolution) a higher council elected by a local council, being part of a hierarchy of soviets culminating in the Supreme Soviet.”  Bernie Sanders (and Obama’s) modern bourgeoisie are the top 1%.  Notice the abolition of the State means no borders, no national sovereignty.  This might explain the left’s resistance to building a wall and enforcing immigration laws.

AM:  The Communist Party USA (CPUSA) was very active in the early part of the 20^th Century, and it was totally loyal to the Comintern. 

Old Gadfly:  The Comintern went away after WWII in the 1940s.  Yet, American support of Soviet Communism did not stop.  Thus, like al Qaeda, the socialist/communist ideology remains the organizing principle.  Since our progressive educators will not educate our children on history, we must find a way to fill this gap.  For example, till the day he died in 1996, Alger Hiss claimed he was innocent of being a Communist and Soviet spy.  To this day many, mostly those on the left, believe he was innocent.  Today, Jonathan Brent serves as the Visiting Alger Hiss Professor of History and Literature at Bard College.  Yet, Brent is not a left-wing ideologue.  See this interesting article by John Miller.  The body of evidence of Soviet Communist sympathies and actual spying is voluminous.  See for example,

Whittaker Chambers, Witness, (Washington, D.C.:  Regnery History, 1952).

J. Edgar Hoover, Masters of Deceit:  The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It, (New York, NY:  Pocket Books, Inc., 1958).

G. Edward White, Alger Hiss’s Looking Glass Wars:  The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy, (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 2004).

Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood, (New York, NY:  The Modern Library, 2000).

Allen Weinstein, Perjury:  The Hiss-Chambers Case (Stanford, CA:  Hoover Institution Press, 2013).

Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, The Venona Secrets:  The Definitive Exposé of Soviet Espionage in America, (Washington, D.C.:  Regnery History, 2000).

John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies:  The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2009).

IM:  Is there a major take-away from these books?

Old Gadfly:  To my amazement, the Soviet Communist spying efforts penetrated the highest levels of our government, academia, Hollywood, and the media. 

AM:  The Flynn political assassination episode is a classic example.  On January 12, 2017, Charlie Savage reported in The New York Times, “In its final days, the Obama administration has expanded the power (Executive Order 12333) of the National Security Agency (NSA) to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.”  This is how the NSA was legally allowed to “share” with another agency the intercepted conversation between Flynn and the Russian Ambassador.  This classified information was then leaked to David Ignatius of The Washington Post who claimed on January 12, 2017:  “According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking.” 

IM:  Combine this soft coup attempt with evidence that the Obama Administration went to great lengths to (a) stack the federal appellate court system—70% are left of center, and (b) absorb political appointees ahead of veterans as career federal employees into the unelected bureaucracy, a strong argument can be made that the federal government is being infiltrated by leftist ideology.

Old Gadfly:   Stacking the appellate system seems to be working in the left’s favor, given recent actions to thwart Trumps temporary travel restriction from seven countries that lack robust vetting systems.  The left has accumulated a lot of political street smarts over the years, to include the Watergate episode in our history.  Geoff Shepard recently revealed formerly undisclosed evidence of left-wing corruption in his book, The Real Watergate Scandal:  Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot that Brought Nixon Down.   Here are some key points from the evidence:

First, Nixon, as a junior U.S. Representative, was the lead investigator in the Alger Hiss case.  Although Hiss was only convicted of perjury, Nixon was uniformly despised for his role because Hiss was highly respected among the left.

Second, special prosecutors Cox and Jaworski had political agendas, and illegally colluded with Sirica, the presiding judge, and Bazelon , the chief appellate judge to orchestrate Nixon’s prosecution.

Third, public releases of judicial action were deliberately timed for maximum effect in the media.

AM:  Do you think the left-wing effort is orchestrated?

Old Gadfly:  Again, the organizing principle is the ideology, socialism (today’s socialists prefer the label progressive).  In terms of marshaling resources, let’s look at some more evidence:

First, since 1989, according to Open Secrets.org, of the top 10 donors, six are labor unions, with the Service Employees International Union, being the largest.

Second, in the heyday of the CPUSA, front groups were critical in advancing the cause.  The protests taking place across the nation (and international system) are far from spontaneous.  See for example, the work being advanced by Indivisible.

Third, just like the role Lenin played in serving as a visible symbol for the socialist movement, Barack Obama plays that role today.  He is the leader of the Organizing for America (OFA) initiative.  Check out the OFA website.  This website, www.ofa.us, was originally called Organizing for Obama prior to the year 2009).  Here is a quote from the website:

With more than 250 local chapters around the country, OFA volunteers are building this organization from the ground up, community by community, one conversation at a time—whether that’s on a front porch or on Facebook.  We’re committed to finding and training the next generation of great progressive organizers, because at the end of the day, we aren’t the first to fight for progressive change, and we won’t be the last.

IM:  These developments seem to fit the pattern of the soviet councils following the Russian revolution.  The Bolsheviks fought for progressive change.  Millions died.  So far, fortunately, we have not seen the same brutal conditions.

Old Gadfly:   Mostly because there are a sufficient number of responsible, hard-working Americans who do not subscribe to socialism . . . for now.  But, let there be no doubt, there is a contest for the soul of America. 

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[1] George Leggett. The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police. (Cambridge, MA:  Oxford University Press), pp. 197–198.

[2] Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev. A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia.  (New Haven, CT:. Yale University Press, 2002), p. 156.