It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
– Sir Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister during WW II
Yet, there are those that would have us believe that Socialism / Communism is more perfect than our Republic (all of our flaws duly noted) even as they downplay the real poverty of their citizenry under their Marxist systems (even as the Lenins, Stalins, and Mao Tse Tungs murdered over 100 million of their citizens).
"America has to wake up to this new reality: the Cold War battle between communism and capitalism is back, only this time it’s on our front porch. It went underground in the 70s, got an education, put on a suit, bought a house and had a couple of kids. Then it used the schools to educate new foot soldiers and manipulated the pop culture to indoctrinate the next generation of fellow travelers who seek to create a new world order in the image of old world Marxism." Read the entire article, "The Revolutionaries’ Revenge" by Sally Zelikovksy at and watch "The Occupation Manifesto" produced by Sally Zelikovsky, Steve Kemp, and Virginia Walters and listen to the Occupiers discuss their Marxist vision for America."
(H/T: Jack)
Frankly, for all the bluster of improving the lot of the 99% as they say, the real movers and shakers, buried down a couple of layers, are all about merely changing out the 1% with their version of the 1%. At least these folks are honest in what they believe and what their goal is – a complete repudiation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of the Rule of Law / Right to Private Property / limited government embodied in the Constitution.
The Other McCain has a GREAT post on Marxism in context of the 17 year olds who were brought to the Occupy Denver / BlogCon11 confrontations by their teacher:
This was how, Marx taught, the era of feudalism had ended with the rise of the bourgeoisie — the capitalistic merchant class, which displaced the hereditary aristocracy in the French Revolution. (It can be said that Marx, like many 19th-century Germans, was afflicted with a bad case of “revolution envy.”) Based on this understanding of history, Marx then prophesied that the very same material conditions that had empowered the bourgeois merchant class – innovations in science and technology, the growth of modern industry, the spread of democratic government — would inevitably lead to another revolution: The rise of the proletariat (industrial workers) to challenge the dominance of the bourgeoisie.
Above and beyond Marx’s specific critique of industrial capitalism as a system whereby the wealthy exploited and oppressed the workers, it was his belief in class struggle as a permanent fact of human existence and material conditions as a force for revolutionary upheaval that distinguished Marxism from other socialist theories of the 19th century.
Marx boasted that his Communism was “scientific socialism,” which he contrasted to the “idealistic” schemes of others. The famed Communist Manifesto of 1848 advocated specific measures such as the progressive income tax and free public education as part of a party platform, these ideas were not original to Marx and his co-author Friedrich Engels. Rather, the party platform incorporated a list of reform proposals that were broadly popular among socialists of the era. What distinguished Marx and Engels — the basis of their claim to leadership of a proletarian revolution they forecast as the inevitable result of a forthcoming crisis in the bourgeois capitalist system — was their assertion that this was an outcome they had discerned through their scientific understanding of historical development.
You do need to go and read the whole thing – as this snippet is of the basics of Marxism – see how this fits in with that Occupy moment! It is a condemnation of our educational system from a free market viewpoint – but for the Marxist, a victory.
The problem for the movement is that, like the Communist Revolutions elsewhere (and described in Animal Farm), some are more equal than others:
Hell no, we won’t go — unless we get goose down pillows.
A key Occupy Wall Street leader and another protester who leads a double life as a businessman ditched fetid tents and church basements for rooms at a luxurious hotel that promises guests can “unleash [their] inner Gordon Gekko,” The Post has learned.
The $700-per-night W Hotel Downtown last week hosted both Peter Dutro, one of a select few OWS members on the powerful finance committee, and Brad Spitzer, a California-based analyst who not only secretly took part in protests during a week-long business trip but offered shelter to protesters in his swanky platinum-card room.
“Tents are not for me,” he confessed, when confronted in the sleek black lobby of the Washington Street hotel where sources described him as a “repeat” guest.
Spitzer, 24, an associate at financial-services giant Deloitte, which netted $29 billion in revenue last year, admitted he joined the protest at Zuccotti Park several times.
“I’m staying here for work,” said Spitzer, dressed down in a company T-shirt and holding a backpack and his suitcase. “I do finance, but I support it still.”
During his stay, hotel sources said, he and other ragtag revolutionaries he brought into the hotel lived like 1 percenters. He would order up a roll-out bed to accommodate guests, they said.
Deloitte is going to be SO pleased to see that their company name, their company reputation, has now been linked with those that would like to see them go down. It shows, however, the double-speak of the Leaders of the movement – and the hypocrisy thereof.
