The Dad Rants

Greetings munchkins:

Of late it seems that our country has suddenly become infested with communists. They are sprouting up everywhere like weeds in Oregon in the springtime.

We know what causes weeds in Oregon: fantastic soil, spring weather, and sunshine. Add the month of May, shake vigorously and voilà, you have weeds! Now that we know what causes weeds, we can begin the process of figuring out how to prevent them from growing.

We ought to apply that same thought process to the prevention of growing communists. Once we know the social environment that grows communists, we can begin the hard work of eradicating that environment from the body politic. Unless and until we do this, our beautiful American garden will be filled with these nasty, thorny, communist weeds.

But before we hop into that discussion, a history lesson is in order. By now you KNOW you ain’t getting out of here without a history lesson!

During the Jurassic Period when I was in the 8th grade in the early ‘70’s, I developed a fascination with communism. I’m not quite sure why.

It may have been the realization that we were in a cold war, and that the world’s two superpowers had thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other’s largest cities. It may have been the realization that two 25-year-old fighter pilots flying MiGs and F-16s within 100 yards of each other could get antsy and set off WWIII.

Now, that sounds unlikely until you remember the fact that 19-year-old Serbian Gavrilo Princip shot the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and single handedly launched WWI, WWII, the Bolshevik Revolution, the disintegration of five empires, and the Cold War itself.

Without the actions of a hot headed 19-year-old Serbian terrorist in the summer of 1914, we don’t have Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Ceausescu, Mao Zedong, and a host of other 20th Century monsters.

We don’t have the assassination of Czar Nicholas II and his entire family. We don’t have the formation of Israel, or the Cold War itself. Roughly 25% of the Cambodian population doesn’t get wiped out in the ‘80’s by Pol Pot in the killing fields.

We don’t have the Bolshevik Revolution, the Vietnam War, or the Korean War. We don’t have the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall, Tiananmen Square or 9/11. Peru’s Shining Path would not have been around to slaughter roughly 100,000 Peruvians in the late ‘80’s.

Over 200 million people would not have been slaughtered in the 20th Century but for Mr. Princip shooting the archduke that summer day.

Would all this have happened if the archduke’s driver had not taken a wrong turn that beautiful summer day in Sarajevo? Would all this have happened if Princip had not sat down for a cup of coffee ten yards from where the archduke’s driver stopped to put the car in reverse?

Would all this have happened if Princip had simply missed the shot? (At his trial it was learned that he was the worst shooter of the Black Hand terrorist team assigned to kill the archduke. But it’s hard to miss from ten feet.)

My fascination with communism was not based on a question of the viability of the project. I had studied enough history to know that there is something inherently evil with a system of government that can cause over 200 million people to be slaughtered in a single century.

Communism has historically proven to be so brutal that our very language has changed to reflect that fact. The word “democide” was developed to describe the results of communism.

The term “homicide” describes the killing of one human being; “genocide” describes the killing of a designated group of human beings; “infanticide” describes the killing of infants; “filicide” describes the killing of one’s child; “matricide” describes the killing of one’s mother; and “patricide” describes the killing of one’s father.

Communism brings us the newly designated term of “democide” which means death by government.

Such is the brutality of communism. Yet people still advocate for it.

My current fascination has nothing to do with communism’s viability as a project. It has failed too many times for me to believe it can work. My current fascination is around how could so many “smart” people could believe in such a historically murderous system of government.

I began to wonder if there is any commonality among people who buy into such a thoroughly discredited form of government?

So, I began to look into the backgrounds of communist leaders, and people who buy into communism as an acceptable form of government. As it turns out, they do share a certain commonality in their upbringing. Not all of them share this upbringing. But enough share this background that one can draw some reasonable conclusions.

Generally, they never come from the working class that they purport to help. They almost always come from the group of over-educated college types who have never worked a physical job in their lives. They often grow up without religion, so they live their lives in search of meaning. And they find that meaning in attempting to re-order the world to fit their liking with communism.

It seems that a mixture of youth, narcissism, a radical university education, and a lack of Christianity is a dangerous potion indeed.

This is my theory. Let’s walk through the backgrounds of a number of notable communist figures to see if the evidence supports my theory.

Vladimir Lenin’s father was a high-ranking official within the Russian educational system. Karl Marx’s father was a successful lawyer. Pol Pot’s family-owned 50 acres of rice paddies in Cambodia. His father was a wealthy farmer with political connections. Che Guevara’s father was an engineer, Fidel Castro’s father was a wealthy Spanish sugar cane farmer, and Mao Zedong’s father was a successful farmer.

Not one of these monsters ever worked with their hands for a living. Every one of them grew up living on the largesse of their wealthy, hard working parents. Every one of them spent time at a university.

Albania’s Enver Hoxha grew up in a merchant family and studied at the University of Montpellier in France. He also spent time in Brussels, where he worked at the Albanian consulate and studied law. Russian communist Leon Trotsky’s father was a prosperous farmer, and his mother came from an educated background as well. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez’s parents were both schoolteachers. Friedrich Engels was Karl Marx’s partner, and his father was a wealthy textile manufacturer. Chile’s Salvadore Allende’s dad was a lawyer.

Our home-grown communists all seem to hail from similar backgrounds. Let’s take a brief look at some prominent American made socialists/communists.

A good place to start would be with The Weatherman Underground. The Weatherman Underground was an American-made 1960’s leftist terror outfit. Here is a short list of its leaders and a brief outline on their backgrounds:

Bill Ayers: Ayers grew up in a suburb of Chicago, the son of a former CEO of Commonwealth Edison. He attended public schools until his second year in high school, then transferred to Lake Forest Academy, a small preparatory school. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies from the University of Michigan in 1968. He was apparently struck by the call to “not stand still” and to act on his “moral conviction” to destroy the country that made it possible for his dad to become CEO of one of the largest companies in the country, and for him to never get his hands dirty while “living large” at prep school and at the university. (You can’t make this stuff up)

Bernadine Dohrn: Dohrn was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Bernard D. Ohrnstein and Dorothy Soderberg. She grew up in Whitefish Bay, an upper-middle-class suburb of Milwaukee, where she was a cheerleader, treasurer of the Modern Dance Club, National Honor Society member, and editor of the school newspaper. Of course, her harsh background slaving away as the treasurer of the Modern Dance Club positioned her to know what’s best for the black inner-city underclass, and for rural unemployed whites in Appalachia.

She attended Miami University for one year before transferring to the University of Chicago, where she earned a B.A. in Political Science in 1963 and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1967. While at law school, she became active in civil rights work, organizing for Martin Luther King Jr. and serving as the first law student organizer for the National Lawyers Guild.

If you were outlining the perfect commie academic background, it would match that of Ms. Dohrn. Two degrees from the University of Chicago, both of them in fields that are heavily populated by progressives: law and political science. And that was her finishing school after growing up in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin. If Joe McCarthy was still around, her background alone would have put her on the “House Un-American Activities” list.

Mark Rudd: Rudd was born in Irvington, New Jersey. His father, Jacob S. Rudd was born Jacob Shmuel Rudnitsky in Stanislower, Poland. He was a former army officer who sold real estate in New Jersey.

I would be remiss if I didn’t give a “shout out” to the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). The SLA was founded at the University of California, Berkeley. (Of course!)

The founders included Patricia Soltysik, Nancy Ling Perry, and Donald DeFreeze. The SLA may be the most interesting of the American leftist groups that emerged in the ‘70’s. And THAT my friends is really saying something!

The SLA began as a group of well-off white students from UC Berkely. These students participated in a university sponsored prison outreach program organized by the Black Cultural Association at Vacaville Prison. The objective of the association was to educate black inmates on political and social theory. (Folks, you can’t make this up.)

Patricia Soltysik and Nancy Ling Perry were the ring leaders of this project. Patricia Soltysik’s dad was a pharmacist, and she grew up in middle class Goleta, California. She became radicalized while attending UC Berkeley.

Nancy Ling Perry’s family owned and operated a furniture dealership in San Francisco. She also became radicalized while attending UC Berkeley, then followed college with a stint as a topless blackjack dealer. Given the reputation of UC Berkeley, topless dancing while blackjack dealing may have been a field of study. Maybe it was a dual degree program. But I digress.

Donald DeFreeze was a black inmate with an extensive criminal background. He met up with Patricia Soltysik, got educated on political and social theory by Ms. Soltysik and the rest is as they say, history.

The SLA dominated the news cycle in the mid-’70’s with a number of crimes to include the SLA assassination of the Oakland Schools Superintendent, the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, and the execution of numerous bank robberies and attempted bombings that they used to finance their “America makeover” project.

As you might guess, the end wasn’t great for the SLA. They went out in a hail of gunfire in a manner reminiscent of Bonnie and Clyde. DeFreeze, Ling, Soltysik and three other SLA members lost a gunfight with the LAPD from inside their safe house. Sadly, Soltysik was killed on her 24th birthday.

I repeat: The mixture of youth, narcissism, a radical university education, and a lack of Christianity is a dangerous potion indeed.

My research project wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t add the Julius and Ethel Rosenburg couple to this discussion.

Julius and Ethel Rosenburg were the last Americans to be executed for treason. They were executed for treason at Sing Sing Prison in 1953. They were found guilty of passing along secrets from the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. If you will recall, the Manhattan Project was the top-secret program initiated by the United States to develop the Atomic Bomb.

The Soviets were able to detonate an atomic device in August of 1949. Intelligence sources estimated that this was 3-4 years earlier than they should have been able to accomplish this feat. It was determined that the only way the Soviets could have detonated a device that early was through espionage. Subsequent investigation led to the arrest, investigation, trial, conviction, and execution of the Rosenbergs.

The background of Julius and Ethel Rosenburg once again fit the lethal potion for radicalism I described earlier. Julius Rosenburg was an electrical engineer who joined the Young Communist League while attending school at City College of New York.

Ethel Rosenburg grew up amidst depression era poverty and became radicalized participating in union organizing and worker protests while working as a secretary for the National New York Packing and Shipping Company. She may be the only person I reviewed who wasn’t radicalized via the university system.

Let me close this research project with a brief discussion of our current crop of young radicals. They are much more sophisticated than their aforementioned predecessors.

They have learned that it is best to operate non-violently when you are out of power. They have learned that it is better to first seize the levers of power, then become violent when the police work for them.

Brilliant.

It is much better to have the police do your bidding like Uncle Joe Stalin, rather than to die in a blaze of glory fighting the police like the SLA.

Zohran Mamdani: He is currently the mayor of New York City. He was born on October 18, 1991, in Kampala, Uganda, to prominent parents. His dad was an academic, and his mother an acclaimed filmmaker. This dude is well acquainted with the silver spoon.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: She is currently a congresswoman from New York. Her father was an architect. She attended college and worked on Bernie Sanders political campaign.

Elizabeth Warren: She is currently a senator from Massachusetts. She grew up in a modest household where her father worked as a maintenance man and later as a salesman. She went on to attend George Washington University and acquired a law degree at Rutgers University. Law school seems to have become a virtual breeding ground for socialists beginning in the 1970’s.

Gavin Newsom: He is currently the governor of California. His dad was a lawyer and appellate court justice. He worked with family friend Gordon Getty to co-found a winery. Now you might be thinking to yourself that this is an awesome American story. You might be thinking that it’s a classic Horatio Alger style rags-to-riches story that demonstrates that working hard and starting at the bottom is as American as apple pie.

Well, let old dad disabuse you of that charming notion. That’s not how it works with leftists.

It turns out that Gordon Getty is the son of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. Yes, THAT J. Paul Getty. The one who was before he died one of the richest people in the world. Now it’s just a silly wild guess, but Newsom’s winery probably had a bit of an assist getting off the ground. My guess is that this business wasn’t exactly launched on a shoestring. Trust me friends, this was no rags to riches story. It was probably more like a riches to more riches story!

Nancy Pelosi: Her dad was a US congressman and mayor of Baltimore. She graduated with a degree in political science from Trinity College in Washington DC.

Memo to kids: Don’t let your kids go to college. If they DO go to college, don’t let them major in political science or law!

Now that we know the climate and soil that grows the weeds in our body politic, we can begin the hard work of weed eradication and weed prevention. Voting is the eradication part. That is really the easy work. It’s easy to pull weeds once they’ve made themselves visible above the soil.

The hard work is in the week prevention effort. This involves killing the weeds while they are invisible beneath the soil. It involves pulling them out by the roots and eliminating the soil and conditions where they flourish.

They key components of the weed eradication effort begin with the university system. I’m not suggesting eliminating the university system. I am suggesting separating the funding of the university from the public coffers. If people want to attend “camp commie”, they ought to pay for it on their own dime. And not on the dime of some machinist whose children won’t be attending “camp commie”.

We should also make it clear to those who attend “camp commie” that it’s simply not worth the cost. We’ve ranted in the past and will do so again in the future on what a poor return on investment college has become for the majority of the population.

As we used to say in the hood: “If people knew it, they wouldn’t do it.”

The elementary through high school system should be privatized so that parents are given a choice on how and where to spend their educational dollars. The vast majority of parents will choose schools that produce positive outcomes. They will not choose schools that produce Marxists who learn to hate God, their country, their parents, and each other. Or better yet, homeschool your children when possible.

Finally, the body politic will need to return to church. Church is where virtue is taught. Family is where virtue is instilled.

It’s difficult to practice narcissism when you realize that there is something greater than self. Pride leads to the desire for power, envy and narcissism. Envy and Narcissism leads to anger. Anger leads to violence, and violence leads to communism.

The thinking of the communist is that someone else has something that I deserve, and therefore I have the right to take it.

This is the guiding principle that drives communists.

To summarize: Eliminate the immediate threat by voting communists out of office. Eliminate the longer-term threat by supporting school choice initiatives, working to defund the university system, ensure that your children are steeped in Christianity, and most importantly of all, keep your kids out of the University system. (Except for under very narrow circumstances)

If you do this, you’ll prevent your family from becoming “communized”. If enough of us do this, your grandchildren will have a shot at having what you’ve enjoyed during your first 25 years on the planet. And what I’ve had for six decades on the planet.

And that something we’ve had is called:

FREEDOM!!

Peace Out,

Dad

P.S: It’s really amazing that people don’t know the name Gavrilo Princip. After Judas Iscariot, he has to be the most consequential assassin in world history.

We know Brutus, the assassin of Julius Caesar. We know John Wilkes Booth the assassin of Abraham Lincoln. We know Sirhan Sirhan the assassin of RFK, and we know Lee Harvey Oswald the alleged assassin of JFK. (No thinking person believes this anymore)

Yes, those assassinations were consequential. But nothing like the impact of Princip’s assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdninand and his wife that hot summer day in Sarajevo in 1914.