“The first welfare state on earth was created against socialist opposition.”

George Watson writing in The American Scholar, discusses how Winston Churchill helped establish the English welfare state–and how Engles stood in his way: In 1908, when [Liberal H.H.] Asquith became prime minister, there were almost no models of state welfare anywhere on earth. The exception was Bismarck’s Prussia, which to the dismay of German Social Democrats had [...]

Robert Mugabe was a front-row guest at JPII’s beatification ceremonies

 The crusader against Polish communism has now been commemorated with a ceremony at which a genocidal Marxist dictator was a guest of honor. Via James Kirchick of The New Republic: On May 1, Pope John Paul II was beatified. The second-to-last step in the road to sainthood, beatification occurs when the Catholic Church declares that a [...]

Ain’t no party like a Communist Party ’cause a Communist Party don’t learn from tragically obvious historic precedents

Today marks the 193rd birthday of the author of the most complete system of analysis ever devised, which fails to take into account only human nature—Karl Heinrich Marx. Might that we all follow the good man’s own example and declare, If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist. -Karl Marx, letter [...]

Why there is no great National Socialist novel

Kanan Makiya, reviewing Igor Golomstock’s Totalitarian Art, reflects on the aesthetic sterility of absolutist movements: [Totalitarian art] is often indistinguishable from propaganda. Consider the amateurish poster of Saddam on a white horse (à la Vasily Yaklovev’s portrait of the Soviet marshal Georgy Zhukov) that was plastered all over Baghdad in 1989 — the year he rode under his Victory [...]

How will Hugo Chavez’s apologists explain his support for Gaddafi?

I’d like to know.   Takeaway: It’s not just the go-to roll-call of “imperialist” countries responsible for propping up developing-world terrors.

Juche and “Bend it Like Beckham”

In a column I can’t seem to find, Christopher Hitchens made the point that it isn’t harsh regimentation of a totalitarian society that makes it a horror to live in, but the arbitrariness and unpredictability of the whims of the oligarchs. When a leader renames the day of the week after family members or claims he [...]

17.11.1989

Today marks the 21st anniversary of the beggining of the Velvet Revolution, a nonviolent mass protest which would affect the liberation of the Czec Republic from communist rule, an example for democrats worldwide.