Send e-mail to letters@gainesvilletimes.com (no attached files, please, which can contain viruses); fax to 770-532-0457; or mail to The Times, P.O. Box 838, Gainesville, GA 30503. Include full name, hometown and phone number for confirmation. They should be limited to one topic on issues of public interest and may be edited for content and length. Letters forwarded from other sources or those involving personal, business or legal disputes, poetry, expressions of faith or memorial tributes may be rejected. You may be limited to one letter per month, two on a single topic. Submitted items may be published in print, electronic or other forms. Letters, columns and cartoons express the opinions of the authors and not of The Times editorial board.
Every now and again, we all need to refresh our memories. Hunters sight in their rifles each year, NFL players go to spring training, and so on. Regarding communism, then, we should re-examine communists.
In the last paragraph of “The Communist Manifesto,” Karl Marx wrote, “Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.” Here are a few items and quotations from Section II.
- “Communism abolishes all religion, and all morality.”
- “Communism abolishes individuality, independence and freedom.”
- Abolish private property. “You reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend. This cannot be accomplished except by tyrannical means and violence against the rights of property (owners), to ‘sweep away’ all existing rights.”
- Impose a heavy progressive income tax.
- Abolish rights of inheritance.
- Confiscate property of emigrants (those leaving to work in other countries).
- Centralize credit in a government-controlled national bank.
- Centralize governmental control of communication (censorship).
- Governmental control of factories and industries.
- Governmental control of agriculture.
Compulsory education of children in governmentally controlled schools. “Abolish the family! The claptrap about family, education, and parental relationships to their children is disgusting.” The elite, of course, require special private education for their children.
Democrats, both in Congress and as Presidents, have brought ALL of these conditions to the USA in the past century, little by little, beginning in 1913 with the progressive income tax.
Marx may have been candid, but Democrats in general, and the Obama Administration in particular, are not. They hide their intentions by calling radio censorship “localization;” control of banks and automobile manufacturers a “rescue;” and rationing of homeowners’ gasoline and electricity “renewable energy.”
If one has not read George Orwell’s “1984” recently, one tends to forget “Newspeak,” where politically correct obfuscation rules.
Orwell knew Communists well (he was a socialist, after all). Decades ago, he wrote that communists were liars.
Gainesville