Leftist Academic Elites Blindspot for Communism
As I mentioned earlier, many anti-American Americans seem to love communism in comparison the America. Walter Williams, over at the Jewish world review, makes a similar observation of Leftist Academic Elites. Walter explains it thus

While academic leftists, and I'd include their media allies, are not communists, they are anti-anti-communists. In other words, they have contempt for right-wingers, conservatives or libertarians who are anti-communists. Why? Academic leftists, and their media allies, are in agreement with many of the stated goals of communism, such as equal distribution of wealth, income equality and other goals spelled out in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' "Manifesto of the Communist Party." Leftist elites love the ideas of communism so much that they are either blind to, or tolerant of, its many shortcomings.

Indeed. Academics will often use the line that Mao, Lenin and Stalin perverted communism to try and salvage many of the stated goals of communism for their own beliefs. The key is that they are secular humanists, who think that we will 'progress' through our current society to a communist like one. This is why the academics evaluate capitalism based on the real world, whilst they evaluate communist ideals on the utopian end-vision. As Walter explains

Often, when people evaluate capitalism, they evaluate a system that exists on Earth. When they evaluate communism, they are talking about a non-existent Utopia. What exists on Earth, with all of its problems and shortcomings, is always going to fail miserably when compared to a Utopia. The very attempt to achieve the utopian goals of communism requires the ruthless suppression of the individual and an attack on any institution that might compromise the loyalty of the individual to the state. That's why one of the first orders of business for communism, and those who support its ideas, is the attack on religion and the family.

In a related story, Bill Meuhlenberg has written a response to another such lefty elitist, dealing with her brushing over the communist history and equivocating all religion with the worst of religion (Of course, the worst of secularism is never equivocated with all of secularism).

Bone however simply dismisses the killing fields of communism, by claiming communist ideology is “similar to a religious ideology”. That is like saying Bone’s ideology is similar to Archbishop George Pell’s ideology. Her argument does nothing to lessen the charge of secular blood-letting. But her comment does make the case that non-religious people and their beliefs can be just as zealously promoted as any religious belief can.

She then suggests that for religious people to raise the issue of communism is like saying “there is no point in curing tuberculosis because malaria kills more people”. No that is not the point. It is Bone who is trying to make the case that secularism makes for better, safer societies. But the evidence tell us just the opposite. The fact that religious people have killed others is deplorable, but in most religious traditions, such killing is seen as tangential to the faith, as an aberration of it.

But in secular ideologies like communism and fascism, mass murder is fully justified in terms of their own worldview. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, et. al., were all fully prepared to justify the killing of millions. It was not a perversion of their ideology, but the fulfilment of it.

By lumping all religions together, Bone betrays a great ignorance of religion.

Read the whole thing.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Friday, August 18, 2006