A bit of advice on Tuesdays Choice from the Democracy of the Dead
http://tylerdoughurst.wordpress.com/201 ... -the-dead/
On a visit by the Fabian George Bernard Shaw and Lady Astor to the Kremlin, as relayed by Sir Winston Churchill in “Great Contemporaries” copyright 1937:
It must have been with some trepidation that the chiefs of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics awaited the arrival in their grim domains of a merry harlequinade. The Russians have always been fond of circuses and traveling shows. Since they had imprisoned, shot or starved most of their best comedians, their visitors might fill for a space a noticeable void....So the crowds were marshaled. Multitudes of well drilled demonstrators were served out with their red scarves and flags. The massed bands blared....How important for our public figures to probe for themselves the truth about Russia: to find out by personal test how the Five Year Plan was working. How necessary to know whether Communism is really better than Capitalism, and how the broad masses of the Russian people fare in ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ under the new regime....Here we have a system whose social achievements crowd five or six persons in a single room; whose wages hardly compare in purchasing power with the British dole; where life is unsafe; where liberty is unknown; where grace and culture are dying; and where armaments and preparation for war are rife. Here is a land where God is blasphemed, and man plunged in this worlds misery, is denied the hope of mercy on both sides of the grave....here we have a power actively and ceaselessly engaged in trying to overturn existing civilizations by stealth, by propaganda, and when it dares, by bloody force....
And, in a chapter about Leon Trotsky from the same book:
....And when at last the Communist regime for which he had striven with might and main was established throughout the whole of Russia, when the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was supreme, when the New Order of Society had passed from visions into reality, when the hateful culture and traditions of the individualist period had been eradicated, when the Secret police had become the servants of the Third International, when in a word his Utopia had been achieved he was still discontented. He still fumed and growled, snarled, bit and plotted.
He had raised the poor against the rich. He had raised the penniless against the poor. He had raised the criminal against the penniless. All had fallen out as he had willed. But nevertheless the vices of human society required, it seemed, new scourging’s. In the deepest depth he sought with desperate energy for a deeper. But-poor wretch- he had reached rock-bottom. Nothing lower than the Communist criminal class could be found. In vain he turned his gaze upon the wild beasts. The apes could not appreciate his eloquence. He could not mobilize the wolves, whose numbers had so notably increased during his administration.... So the criminals he had installed stood together, and put him outside....
....Communism is not only a creed. It is a plan of campaign. A Communist is not only the holder of certain opinions; he is the pledged adept of a well-thought-out means of enforcing them. The anatomy of discontent and revolution has been studied in every phase and aspect, and a veritable drill book prepared in a scientific spirit for subverting all existing institutions. The method of enforcement is as much a part of the Communist faith as the doctrine itself. At first the time-honored principles of Liberalism and Democracy are invoked to shelter the infant organism. Free speech, the right of public meeting, every form of lawful political agitation and constitutional right are paraded and asserted. Alliance is sought with every popular movement towards the left. The creation of a mild Liberal or Socialist regime in some period of convulsion is the first milestone. But no sooner has this been created that it is to be overthrown. Woes and scarcity resulting from confusion must be exploited. Collisions, if possible attended with bloodshed, are to be arranged between the agents of the New Government and the working people. Martyrs are to be manufactured. An apologetic attitude in the rulers should be turned to profit. Pacific propaganda may be made the mask of hatreds never before manifested among men. No faith need be, indeed may be, kept with non-communists. Every act of goodwill, of tolerance, of conciliation, of mercy, of magnanimity on the part of Governments or Statesmen is to be utilized for their ruin. Then when the time is ripe and the moment opportune, every form of lethal violence from mob revolt to private assassination must be used without stint or compunction.... The citadel will be stormed under the banners of Liberty and Democracy; and once the apparatus of power is in the hands of the Brotherhood, all opposition, all contrary opinions must be extinguished by death. Democracy is but a tool to be used and afterwards broken; Liberty but a sentimental folly unworthy of the logician. The absolute rule of a self-chosen priesthood according to the dogmas it has learned by rote is to be imposed upon mankind without mitigation progressively for ever. All this, set out in prosy text-books, written also in blood in the history of several powerful nations, is the Communists faith and purpose. To be forewarned should be to be forearmed!