Some have celebrated, while others ignored, something that happened in Russia a century ago:
Disaster In Red: The 100th Anniversary Of The Russian Socialist Revolution
November 9, 2017
Authored by Richard Ebeling via The Future of Freedom Foundation,
November 7, 2017, marked the one hundredth anniversary of the Russian (or Bolshevik) Revolution in Russia that happened on that date in November 1917, which lead to the communist “dictatorship of the proletariat” and ushered in an epoch of totalitarian tyranny and mass murder both in Russia and in every other country where socialism was put into practice.
Historians estimate that as many as 150 million people, if not more – innocent men, women and children – were killed in the name of building the collectivist utopia.
They were shot, tortured, worked or starved to death in prison cells, in interrogation rooms, in labor camps, or just in the places where they lived.
“Socialism-in-practice” created a chamber of horrors in which the individual was reduced to a mere expendable “cog in the wheel” to serve the collective good, or made into “enemies of the people” to be eliminated as the prelude to building the “bright, beautiful communist future.”
Power, Privilege, and Terror as Socialist Reality
In the name of a “classless society,” communism created the most minute and granulated system of privilege, favor, and power, depending upon where the individual stood in the hierarchies of the Communist Party and the management of the vast central planning bureaucracy. “Special” food and clothing stores, “special” clinics and hospitals, “special” apartments and country houses, “special” resort and recreational facilities and vacation sites, “special” opportunities (with Party permission) to visit the forbidden and decadent “West,” and to bring back some of the “bourgeois” goods unavailable in the “workers’ paradise.”
The Communist Party did all in their power to control and confine the minds of those over whom they ruledinto narrow corridors of knowledge and belief so little or no doubt could arise that theirs was the best of all worlds, and far more “socially just” and materially better than anything existing in the reactionary and corrupted capitalist parts of the globe.
If for a younger generation born after 1991 – the year the Soviet Union disappeared from the face of the world map – this all seems like ancient history that has no relevance or meaning for their lives (and especially so since so little is told about that Soviet chamber of horrors in school history books, or the mainstream opinion magazines and newspapers), its significance is no less important to know and a lesson not to be forgotten. …
Though Soviet communism came to an end slightly more than a quarter of a century ago, the ghost of the spirit of communism lives on around the world. It is not so much that many people intentionally want to be straightjacketed within the confines of a Soviet-style totalitarian state, or that they wish to wait on the tiring and unending lines at “people’s” retail stores for meager supplies of everyday necessities of life as was the case behind “the Iron Curtain,” or exist in fear that it could be tonight that the secret police might come to take you away to an unknown but frightfully imaginable fate.
Most people, especially in the United States, don’t see this as the inescapable future of a socialist system fully imposed and implemented because so few have any knowledge or awareness that this was how tens of millions, hundreds of millions lived under socialist regimes as the coerced and controlled worker bees in the collectivist hive commanded by the ruling Communist Party “vanguard of the revolution.”http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-08/disaster-red-100th-anniversary-russian-socialist-revolution
Not everybody, including in Russia, wanted to celebrated this:
MOSCOW — Tuesday marks the centennial of the Russian Revolution, one of the most significant political events of the 20th century. Yet President Vladimir Putin’s government is barely acknowledging it …
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the Kremlin has no plans to commemorate the centennial, which ushered in seven decades of Communist rule. “What is there to celebrate?” Pravda.ru quoted him as saying. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/11/05/putin-centennial-russian-revolution-forget/818400001/
As far as socialism goes, Cal Thomas wrote the following last year about it:
May 7, 2016
Given its track record, one wonders why socialism is gaining in popularity in the U.S. and what appeal it has to a generation that, apparently, knows little about it.A recent survey from Harvard University has found that 51 percent of young people between the ages of 18 and 29 do not support capitalism. Just 42 percent support the economic system that has allowed even the poorest American to live better and to have more opportunity for advancement than most of the rest of the world. Thirty-three percent of those surveyed support socialism.
Why does socialism receive such strong support among the young? I think it’s partly due to what is being taught in too many public schools and universities and it is partly due to ignorance and human nature, which would rather get a check than earn one.
Three quotes about socialism sum up both its false promise and its danger.
— “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” –Winston Churchill
— “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” — Margaret Thatcher
— “The goal of socialism is communism.” — Vladimir Lenin
There are many modern and older examples of socialism’s failures. A modern one is found in Venezuela, a country rich in oil, but politically and economically poor. It’s funny how spreading the wealth around, which is socialism’s major appeal, didn’t trickle from the corrupt and incompetent Caracas government to the Venezuelan poor.
Under the presidency of the late Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s gross domestic product has dropped to an all-time low and the country’s misery is continuing under his successor, Nicolas Maduro. It’s gotten so bad the government has taken drastic steps. Unfortunately, none include repudiating socialism.
The latest is a reduction in the workweek to two days, Monday and Tuesday, at least until the end of May. It’s supposed to save energy and electricity, which are in short supply.
Surgical sutures are either unavailable, or of poor quality when they can be found. Food shortages are common and the food that is available often requires one to wait in line for many hours to buy even small amounts. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-socialism-s-false-promise-20160505-story.html
And yes, Venezuela is still having problems.
As far as the USA goes, in the Democratic primary last year, both of the leading candidates (Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton) espoused elements of socialism, with one calling himself a socialist.
Furthermore, consider something the Russian newspaper Pravdaclaimed in the Fall of 2012:
Barack Obama…is a Communist without question promoting the Communist Manifesto without calling it so.
How shrewd he is in America. His cult of personality mesmerizes those who cannot go beyond their ignorance. …
Alas, the schools in the U.S. were conquered by the Communists long ago and history was revised thus paving the way for their Communist presidents. (Lerma X. Obama’s Soviet Mistake. Pravda, November 19, 2012. http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/columnists/19-11-2012/122849-obama_soviet_mistake-0/#sthash.Iabc844H.dpuf)
It is true that most in the USA do not seem to realize that its lurch towards socialism/communism has been happening and that the US education system has many with socialist/communist leanings. Many young people do not understand economics and lean further towards communism/socialism than earlier generations did.
While many see US President Donald Trump as a significant force against this trend, even he has talked about socialized medicine as well as additional monitoring of US residents.
Neither socialism nor communism are the answer for humanity.
Nor are unbridled capitalism, democracy, nationalism, nor the other systems that humans have attempted to implement apart from the God of the Bible.
People need to change and turn to God and His ways.
Russians, Americans, and all others need the Kingdom of God for the coming utopia (watch also Millennial Utopia)–as that, and not human revolution, holds the answers for all.
Radio News Reporter: John Hickey.
