Wasted Wednesday

Pros & Cons is a comic strip about a lawyer, a psychiatrist and a police officer created by Glasgow–based artist Kieran Meehan. It was known as A Lawyer, A Doctor & A Cop before July 7, 2008, when it was renamed in an effort to make the title easier to remember. However, The Toronto Star still refers to it by its old name. (c. King Features Syndicate)

Caution: very opinionated editorial

Just in case any of you are sorry you quit Entrecard, this will make you giggle.

I just read where they are making those smelly paid ads mandatory. But you can "opt out" if you pay them $50 a year.

I quit long ago because they started thinking my blog was their blog. Many of you did too. Then there was a second wave of good blogs who left them. I am sure this latest will see even more good folks leave.

The latest popular blog to leave recently was Sandee at Comedy Plus. This on the heels of Lidian FINALLY telling them to kiss her grits on her two VERY popular blogs.

Why are the rest of you staying? Remember at the beginning when we all met such wonderful new friends?

If you haven't done so yet, reclaim your blog. Dump Entrecard. They've already dumped on you.

Lest I leave you with the mistaken thought that I believe it is the Liberal Left who is the cause of all of America’s troubles, let me be quick to say that I firmly believe it is the Rabid Right - the Ridiculous Right - who continually paves the way for the Loony left and even makes them necessary.

If Communism suddenly seems to be attractive to the “masses” of despairing people who see no future anymore for either themselves or their children, it is because the policies of the Right drive them to that despair.

“... the Right prepares the way for the Left — in both the United States and Russia. The Right gives the motivation and creates the sense of desperation and moral outrage that leads people to embrace utterly implausible solutions like socialism and communism.” —Jeffrey A. Tucker

Without wars, unemployment, inflation, there is no need for revolution. Without those things, there is no specter of evil capitalism with which the Loony Left can strike fear into the hearts of the desperate.

For all of Obama’s socialism and semi-brainless economic strategies, the Right have only themselves to blame. Those of us who take neither side suffer the the futility that goes on around us. We are left with the attacks and counterattacks, Left against Right, Right against left, on and on and on - when all we really want and need is progress through greater liberty.

Renaissance Poetry. More or less.

Poems have been written on whatever materials were at hand, and with whatever writing instruments could be found or fashioned. I'm sure if Shakespeare have been in prison, he would have found a way to write, if only to while away the time. When it comes to prison poets, long works have been written on toilet paper.

One writing material, and writing instrument, used by prisoners of some repute were diamonds on glass. Odd.

I can think of only two instances where a prisoner (both were female) wrote on the glass window of her "cell" with the diamond ring on her finger. Both were imprisoned royalty (hence why they still were allowed to wear their diamond rings, I guess.)

Most recently we have the Empress Alexandra of Russia. She scratched her initials in the glass of the window where she and her family were confined in Tobolsk in 1917 or 1918. Not very inventive, If I do say so.

More inventive, or at least more poetic, was the couplet inscribed on her glass window at Woodstock (the manor, not the music love-in in New York) by prisoner-princess Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII, in 1554. The soon-to-be Elizabeth I scratched these concise (if not contrite) words:

Much suspected by me,
Nothing proved can be,
Quoth Elizabeth prisoner.

Okay, not a couplet. Turns out she was right, though.
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Incredibly useful Renaissance trivia tidbit:

"[In childhood], Elizabeth was well-schooled in the arts. An excellent keyboard player, and a lover of dancing even in later life, she encouraged and carefully planned music for ceremonial occasions throughout her reign."

Investigating Communism

Whittaker Chambers was an American writer, Communist Party member and a spy for the Soviet Union. President Reagan awarded Chambers, posthumously, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Obviously, some things happened in between these two things. If you are interested, you may want to read more about Whittaker Chambers. However, this post is about Communism in general and why people become Communists. I learned much of this by reading about people who became Communists, like Whittaker Chambers.

Here are a few of the things I found out, or that Communists allege.

At the heart of Communism, and the very core of its appeal, is its credo: "Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to gain."

Communism makes a profound appeal to the human mind [they say.] Communism is aimed at, and appeals most to, the working man who never seems to get ahead in life; who feels, finally, that he is being oppressed by the rich elite. He is angered at that thought and bitterly frustrated at his apparent hopeless situation. Before his government is "changed" he sees his government as simply another tool of those rich oppressors.

Communism also appeals to the liberal elite whose life-passion is the liberation of these downtrodden and abused working folk. The liberal elite nest frequently in academia: educated people become communists mostly for "moral" reasons. (So Chambers wrote, anyway.)

[Moving to other writers] In addition to Academia, there are many organizations (ACORN, TIDE, APOLLO and others) that are set up ostensibly for the purpose of relieving the plight of the downtrodden, but whose agenda is primarily political [though who are apparently not above making a buck or two in the process.]

Mostly these people do not think of themselves as Communists, though their aims seem often much the same.

I then tried to "codify" what it meant to be a Communist:

What do Communists believe in? What are the earmarks of a Communist? I hadn't given this much thought until I recently started reading the recent political literature in this country and comparing it to traditional Communist literature. Here are some of the things I gleaned from reading the earlier Communist Party literature. The following appear to be the hallmarks of a good Communist.

1. Communists believe in the supremacy of the State rather than of the individual. All good things come from and are "enforced" by the State. Therefore the State must be molded to reflect the agenda of the downtrodden worker-class.

2. Communists DEFINITELY do not believe in God. That stuff is for ignorant non-thinkers.

3. Communists believe in the redistribution of wealth. This doesn't just mean high taxation of the wealthy but, rather, confiscation of money and property to "equalize" citizens.

4. Communists believe in the inherent evil of what they call the ruling class: people who have created or inherited wealth.

5. Communists believe poor people are victims of that ruling class.

6. Communists believe all people are economic and social equals. (Oddly, in all existing and previous Communist governments, there is/were still a ruling class elite who have summer homes and are driven around in limousines.)

Communists believe a lot more than the above, but those are the things that are obvious from my reading so far.

Then, I asked myself, by reading contemporary political literature, whether any of these seemed to be congruent with the statements and philosophies of some of these current organizations and supporters. It seemed that this is so, but I need to do more research because it might be terrible if that were true.

Conclusions? I don't think it is a question of Communism vs. Capitalism. I think it is a question of Communism vs. Freedom. I suppose I am hardly unique in that observation.

There seems to be a great divide between the stated ideals of Communism and what actually seems to happen.