Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, former Reagan speechwriter, on today's dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial;
It is an appropriate time to be dedicating this memorial. It was 20 years ago this week that President Reagan gave his now famous Berlin Wall speech. A columnist in the New York Times recently noted that the foreign policy gurus of that era, as compared to the American people in general, have not acknowledged the significance of that forceful challenge by President Reagan to the Communist Party boss Michael Gorbachov to "tear down this wall."The columnist noted that even George Shultz did not mention the speech in his lengthy memoirs of his years as President Reagan’s Secretary of State. Well, let’s set the record straight. George Shultz and the foreign policy elite, including Collin Powell, adamantly opposed that speech. They did everything they could to pressure President Reagan not to take such a tough public stand against the wall. They insisted that it would re-ignite “ill will” and would be taken as an insult to Gorbachov.
They were wrong and President Reagan’s moral clarity and commitment to confronting evil, rather then ignoring it for diplomatic or political purposes, carried the day. Instead of antagonizing the Kremlin leadership, the speech convinced them that the wall had to come down and yes, when it did communism crumbled along with it. The foreign policy elite, smug and arrogant, would have prolonged the Cold War had they had their way.
More ;
The memorial, a 4.2-meter-tall bronze replica of the “Goddess of Democracy” statue built by Chinese students during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, was the brainchild of historian Lee Edwards and former ambassador Lev Dobriansky, who spent more than a decade raising nearly $1 million to complete the project on a site near the U.S. Capitol.The dedication ceremony was held on the 20th anniversary of former President Ronald Reagan’s 1987 speech in Berlin in which he called on then-Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall that separated the city and had divided a continent since the end of World War II. Bush noted that the wall would finally fall two years later, liberating the people of Central and Eastern Europe and changing the world.
In all, as many as 10 million innocents perished at the hands of communism, Bush said, helping to make the 20th century “the deadliest in human history.”
“We'll never know the names of all who perished, but at this sacred place, communism’s unknown victims will be consecrated to history and remembered forever,” he said.
VictimsofCommunism.org
Dead in the hundreds of millions and this is the only tribute to them?
That's right OMMAG. I was offended that they quoted Bush as saying 10 million died at the hands of communist demagogues. Where in Sam Hill did he get that number from? He's way off on the body count there. Was that done purposefully by an advisor in a faint way of not offending anyone past or dare I say present? Reagan would have been ashamed that GW would listen to that fallacious advise on the number of dead he was given. He should have questioned it. Show some fortitude GW and call a murdererous spade a spade!
Communism is on the march again, in the guise of environmentalism, multiculturalism, anti-globalism, anti-west, anti-Americanism and the politics of victimology. A new generation refuses to believe that the red road leads to the top of a steep cliff and refuses to acknowledge that more millions would be sacrificed to their utopianism.
Yes, remember the past victims, but also honour them by refusing to allow more to be claimed.
Yes it was the number used that caught my attention. 10 Million would not even cover Stalin's scorecard in the USSR let alone the revolution and does not even begin to address China's history of blood then there is SE Asia, Africa, South America and so on.
I fear that even in the attempt to mark the slaughter under Communist rule our PeeCee influenced leaders are failing.
It's been posted here before but it's worth another visit if anyone's wondering what OMMAG and I are in a knot about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide
Here is how to think about communism:
Socialism = communism = socialism = communism ...
Fulford said: "The 21st inherits the melancholy task of seeing it clearly." ...-
Robert Fulford's column about The Black Book of Communism
(The National Post, Jan 18, 2000)
[...]
"Whereas the Nazis were responsible for about 25-million deaths, the communists (The Black Book persuasively argues) were responsible for 85 to 100 million." [...]
There's no Gulag memorial equivalent to the Holocaust memorials built or planned in many cities. For now, histories like The Black Book will have to suffice. The sorting out has hardly begun; even yet, we don't know how to think about communism. The 20th century endured it, and with a great sigh of relief outlived it. The 21st inherits the melancholy task of seeing it clearly.
http://www.robertfulford.com/BlackBook.html
Its our job to wipe it off the face of the earth. ANY WAY WE CAN...
Remember the enormous fuss in the MSM and by the Liberals/NDP/Bloc against Harper when he spoke out to the Chinese about 'human rights'? Remember how the MSM and the Liberals/NDP/Bloc openly chastized Harper for this action - saying that he would 'endanger trade'?
Bush will say what ever they write for him, he is not the brightest kind of guy, and Bush is no Reagan. This is not to disparage Bush. It is though the practical truth.
Today, there is serious lack of leadership material, where ever you look.
Harper had the hallmarks of leadership, though that must have worn off, he is caving to weak forces everywhere. Reagan insisted on the famous phrase to be put in his speech, one wonders if Harper would be bold enough to do that.
A leader must say what and how he/she is going to do and if elected, do exactly what he/she said, in spite of obstacles thrown in by the paperweights in bureaucracy, opposition and his own party crowd.
I just finished reading The President, The Pope and the Prime Minister by John O'Sullivan. It is an excellent book and historical record of these three world changing democratic giants, Reagan, John Paul and Thatcher.
It makes me hope that another group of great leaders will deliver us from Communism-Lite that goes buy the name of "Environmentalism."
From the site:
We must not forget the trail of blood and tears this utopian deception always leaves behind:
When the Bolsheviks murdered their way into power...
When Lenin destroyed hundreds of thousands of Cossacks...
When the Kremlin starved more than six million in Ukraine...
When Mao murdered tens of millions of Chinese peasants during his "land reforms"...
When Ho Chi Minh sent 850,000 Vietnamese to their graves in "education camps"...
When Castro buried dissenters in the infamous Isle of Pines...
Pol Pot is missing from the roster. Estimated 1.6 million dead.
As a footnote: Between 1918 and 1953 (under Lenin and Stalin), 50-million Russians served long sentences, many perishing, in the Soviet concentration camps. “The Gulag Archipelago", Alexander Solzenitsyn
www.frontline.org.za/news/Vol%201%201989/TheGlasnostGulag.htm
Hard to believe there are still fools that would give this horror another chance. Look no farther then any college campus to find them.
Did everyone catch the mention of Colin Powell?
Dangerous Idiot of the Week Award.
I have to agree that 10 million way understates the number of victims of communism. If it's a pathetic attempt to be nice to the left, just ask when the left ever tried to be nice to the right? It never happens, so there's no point trying to play that game. Even the casual reader of history has to set the death toll for communism/socialism at around 100 million as a minimum. Wait until the "environmentalists" are through with Africa and I'm sure the death toll for leftists will top 200 million easily -- atrocious.
YES ALL THOSE WHO DIED UNDER COMMUNISM ALL THOSE MURDERED BY POL POT,HO CHI MINH,JOE STALIN,VLADIMIR LENIN,FEDEL CASTRO,MAO SI TUNG, and a rememder to the hollywood left especialy RED ASNER a big time admereir of UNCLE JOE STALIN
"Hard to believe there are still fools that would give this horror another chance. Look no farther then any college campus to find them."
Penny, they aren't fools. They intend to be the leaders of the new and better way, Communism/Socialism.
It's we, the sheeple that had better look out.
I've worked with a lot of Eastern Europeans,and when the subject of U.S, Presidents comes up, Reagan is always "the greatest President, because he ended Communist rule over us".
It isn't obvious to much of our chattering class or the pseudo intellectual dead enders who infest the arts classes of our universities, but communism will go down in history as one of the great meretricious evils. Loud cheers for President Reagan and everyone else who recognized this and got busy.
Perhaps we could find a benefactor and champion to start raising money to build a similar memorial for those who have died at the hands of Socialism.
Perhaps we could find a benefactor and champion to start raising money to build a similar memorial for those who have died at the hands of Socialism.
Actually Communism killed 100 million in the last 87 years of the 20th century....but it was topped by military juntas and other dictatorships which killed 187 million disarmed people in ethnic cleansing, ideological cleansing and dissident cleansing.
Government is NOT compassion...government is raw force...always make sure it fears you or you will end up fearing it.
The US second amendment isn't about duck hunting or target shooting, it is the citizen's safety valve against rogue government it has worked as advertised for over 200 years...just as it has in Switzerland.
felis C said: "Communism is on the march again, in the guise of anti-globalism,"
Actually the Communist manifesto is a blue print for global government....communists were the first "globalists" and support the dogmatism of globalism in the form of global government...they just use environmentalism, global warming, trade deals, UN regulating etc. to destroy the sovereignty of individual nation states and create their borderless centrally controlled world.
The EU is more communist in make up than sovereign free state capitalist.
Most wealthy well placed "globalists" like David Rockefeller et al are in fact transnationalist progressives who embrace the communist ideals of borderless global governance...itself a concept from the pages of the communist manifesto.
Don't be confused as to why the super rich in the CFR, Trilatteral or other Rhodsian think tanks would embrace a form of global communism.
Once you come to understand that modern socialism is NOT a share the wealth plan but a politically actuated plan to consolidate power and control a nation�s wealth, then the paradox of super rich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead it becomes logical, even the perfect tool for wealthy power-seeking megalomaniacs.
Communism, or more accurately centralized socialism, is not a movement of the down-trodden masses but of the economic elite.
See China as the core model.
Pun'dit said: "kennedy the skirt chasing motivational speaker came up with 'ich bin ein berliner' (cheers followed) but they were empty words, a feeble impotent protest."
It was Kennedy that squared off with aggressive soviet imperialism and stopped it at Cuba in a nuclear show down....it was this act by Kennedy that essentially put the soviet nuclear genie back in the bottle...they gave up their program of putting nukes in every pissant republic with a hate-on for America after that.
Kennedy may have been a lot of things but he was no pussy with commie global aggression
What a briliant idea to use the Tiananmen Square statue, since so many in China don't even know what it is. Too bad they couldn't make it bigger.
Perhaps we should conclude with a quotation from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, one of our great contemporary prophets. He writes:
"Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offering the following explanation for the great disaster that has befallen Russia: 'Men have forgotten God; that's why all this happened.' Since then, I have spent well nigh fifty years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by the upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat:
"Men have forgotten about God; that's why all this has happened."
Speaking of collectivist excesses: Harper has a plan to pay off Native terror and extortion with a 2.5 billion dollar check...remember this when tax freedom day moves out to september.
http://www.caledoniawakeupcall.com/updates/070611post.html
...."but it was topped by military juntas and other dictatorships which killed 187 million disarmed people in ethnic cleansing, ideological cleansing and dissident cleansing."
Unarmed. That's key. Fear the government that fears your ability to defend yourself.
STAMP OUT COMMUNISM