Not withstanding my recent rant against the Wall Street Journal, I do still read it (hint, you can get it online through your local library link). It does still contain have some worthwhile material, like this op-ed: What Socialism Meant for My Great-Grandfather. It is written by Helen Raleigh, an immigrant from China, is the owner of an investment advisory firm.
A few excerpts:
After the Communist Party took over in 1949, it pushed for “land reform” to win the support of the country’s 300 million landless peasants. The Party claimed landowners were class enemies and exploiters of the poor, and that unequal land ownership was the main cause of social injustice.
“Land reform” might also be called “leveling the playing field” in the parlance of America’s neo-communists.
Though many villagers shared similar economic conditions, a government worker came to my great-grandfather’s village and divided everyone into five classes: landlords, rich peasants, middle peasants, poor peasants and laborers. Then a work team organized “speak bitterness” struggle sessions so the poor could vent their frustration against the “rich.”
Well that sounds familiar. America’s leftists have been doing that, like, forever.
Hey dudes, don’t be sleeping through the class war, you could end up as collateral damage
At first, villagers hesitated to speak ill of one another, especially their kin, in public. But the work team was good at stirring up envy and greed and inflaming hatred toward any villager who owned property.
“You didn’t do that on your own, somebody else did that for you.” So you don’t get to keep it.
Very good indeed, “stirring up envy and greed and inflaming hatred” is the stock and trade of communist community organizers.
My great-grandfather often had to stand in front of the village with his head bent, listening to his neighbors and relatives accuse him of wrongdoings that were grossly exaggerated or plain false.
That’s why we love President Trump: he simply refuses to play their game.
Throughout China, landlords and rich farmers were rounded up and executed or sent to labor camps. Local governments confiscated their property and redistributed it to landless and impoverished farmers.
“Oh, it will never be like that here” the neo-communists tell us. The ones who actually believe that are too stupid to vote let alone rule.
Cubans didn’t think it could happen there either, neither did Venezuelans
That’s why those of us who don’t believe it are staunch supporters of the Second Amendment.
In 1953 the Chinese government started a movement to collectivize agriculture. The land that had been handed to poor farmers was gradually returned to the state. By 1958 there was no private land ownership. Private farming was prohibited. Farmers were required to sell their produce to the government at fixed prices; no private sales were allowed. Farmers couldn’t choose which crops to grow. They had to follow the orders of local Communist leaders, many of whom didn’t know much about farming. Crops perished and millions of people starved.
And this is the model the Democrat elitists want to use for our medical system.
I sometimes feel as if I’m back where I came from. I want to scream every time I hear the American left’s eerily familiar slogans: “Make the rich pay their fair share,” “Level the playing field,” “You didn’t build that.” This is the same sort of rhetoric the Chinese Communist Party used against landowners like my great-grandfather. The policies advanced by that rhetoric ruined China’s economy along with millions of lives.
To be specific, Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” caused at least 50-60 million deaths before all was said and done.
The American left offers nothing new. Socialism always begins with a great promise and ends in disaster. It has failed every time and everywhere it was tried.
After an initial blush that looks like success socialism always fails. At that point it’s enforced by the barrel of a gun. Then it's called Communism.
Let’s not throw away American prosperity so that a few leftists can give it another go.
…said no Democrat presidential candidate ever, in this new brave world. They’ve got a hell of a platform, literally. Good luck with that.
Don’t worry, we’ve got this!
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