Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Why don't people hate Communism more?

Dennis Prager's latest article covers Communism vs. Fascism/Nazism, and asks the question we all agree that Nazism is really really bad. So why don't we realize how bad Communism is. He gives his seven reasons; some of which are accurate and some of which are veiled attacks on liberals. He does note that Communism seems to have won, saying "Communism won, Nazism lost. And the winners write history."

However he does leave out a few reasons why Communism isn't seen as bad as Fascism.

1. Conservatives have been muddying the waters since the 1940s and the era of McCarthy. They have tried to equate everything and everyone more liberal than Ronald Reagan as Communist, and hatve warned for years that every liberal/progressive proposal is leading us to Communism. It's a bit like the boy who cried wolf; eventually it stops working. And in so doing it confuses people about what Communism is.

2. Communists are still around and are valuable trading partners. While you can argue that this sucks (and it certainly does) we can't afford to antagonize them as much as perhaps we should. Instead we are stuck pretending they are our friends, which restricts our ability to demonize them the same way we demonize Iran.

But of course the larger point is that whatever high minded principles Prager pretends to, he is of course in favor of reminding us all that Liberals and Progressives are soft on Communism because they secretly favor it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Seems to me "the left" he's talking about is the academic thinker types not the run of the mill doritos eating doofii that vote for Democrats.