Some Questions About Socialism (and One Answer)
Garry Kasparov describes socialism, correctly, as communism with “better marketing.” He abhors dictatorship and all evidence of authoritarianism, and believes it is incumbent on free nations to take hard stands against global aggressors like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and the Mullahs in Iran. Why, then, is he a consistent and vocal supporter of the Democratic Party?
Please do not say, “Because at least they are better than the Republicans.” For then I must reply, “Better with regard to those specific points, noted above, that Kasparov has made his personal political crusades?” Further, and even more to the point: “Why does he have to choose the Democrats merely in order to oppose the Republicans? May one not oppose both? Indeed, must one not oppose both, if opposition to authoritarianism, and outrage against the West’s appeasement of tyranny, are one’s personal crusades?”
Kasparov has criticized the Democratic Party’s socialist members for their refusal to condemn the Cuban regime, the Chinese regime, the Iranian regime. But why does he think there are “socialist members” of the Democratic Party? Does he really think the declared socialist members are the only actual socialists in the party? Can he explain why the Communist Party USA has actively supported, and urged its members to campaign for, the Democratic presidential candidates in each of the past several elections?
On the occasion of Fidel’s Castro’s death, Justin Trudeau got all misty-eyed reminiscing about his dad’s long-term friendship with the Cuban killer, and shared his own childhood memories of kind old Uncle Fidel. Now, like all spiritual communists (aka socialists), Justin the Wonder Fop is in the awkward position of reconciling his open and enthusiastic admiration for the Cuban dictatorship with the desperate cries of Cuban “protesters” demanding a chance to live — along with the domestic embarrassment of having to admit that the majority of Cubans and other Central American immigrants to Canada are vehement anti-communists who are rallying in support of the oppressed Cuban people.
Why didn’t Trudeau (along with the U.S. congressional “squad” of communist agitators, and all others of their ilk) see this coming? Did he really believe, as his Maoist daddy and Michael Moore and Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone and the rest of the millionaire lefty poseurs have wanted us all to believe, that the Cuban people in general were in love with their communist leaders, and thrilled to be poor and trapped? Did he really believe that all those people who died in the ocean trying to make it to North America on makeshift rafts or overloaded fishing boats over the past sixty years were just holiday beachgoers who drifted off-course?
Are any of those, public and private, who continue at this point to express sympathy with, and idealism about, Marxism in general, whether of the communist or “democratic socialist” variety, really expecting us to believe that their motives or intentions have anything whatsoever to do with improving the practical lot of humanity, let alone advancing the cause of anything that could remotely be understood as freedom, whether political or psychological? Is it not rather true — and obviously true at this point — that their motives are either a sniveling resentment of their fellow human beings or raw power lust? Is it not equally true that their practical intentions are reducible to nothing but the plunder of the wealthy, the destruction of all social institutions and communication not easily controlled by the state, and coerced conformity with their moral agenda of universal servitude and nihilistic infantilism?
Is it not apparent that the socialists — communists with better marketing, as Kasparov nicely phrases it — have won? Is it not clear that when the most plausible opposition to Marxism on this Earth can produce no more plausible leadership than the personality cult of a halfwit demagogue who is still, eight months after losing his reelection bid, clinging to the self-evident falsehood that he won, and dreaming of being “reinstated” as president — that is, of staging a military coup that would somehow occur without his hair getting mussed or his manicure scuffed — is it not clear that when the hopes of liberty are reduced to that, there truly is no hope?
Good Lord, is it not time to accept reality? Must we not concede that today, and for the foreseeable future, freedom has lost, the great dream of modernity is over? Does reason not demand that we acknowledge that the rule of the frightened and self-loathing has arrived in full force, and there is no longer any practical political recourse for the tiny minority who wish to live as human beings in the proper sense of the term?
The good news — and yes, there is at least one bit of good news — is that there is a vaccine for the pandemic of socialist despair that has suffocated the life out of political discourse and the last gasps of practical liberty. And unlike some other so-called vaccines, this one actually does what a vaccine is supposed to do, namely prevent the vaccinated from getting the virus.
The vaccine is philosophy. It works by infusing one’s soul and daily life with spiritual context and principles of reason, fostering the development of self-propagating cells of understanding, which, if they are allowed to adhere to the soul’s inner walls without dilution by excessive anger or false hope, may become a protective layer of wisdom through which even the most virulent attack of progressive oppression can never penetrate.
