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In Praise of Stalin
Most American schools and universities praise a number of men who endorsed and supported one of the greatest mass murderers in world history, Joseph Stalin. Can you identify the beloved leftist who was the source of the following quote?
Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature. He was simple, calm and courageous. He seldom lost his poise; pondered his problems slowly, made his decisions clearly and firmly; never yielded to ostentation nor coyly refrained from holding his rightful place with dignity. He was the son of a serf but stood calmly before the great without hesitation or nerves. But also - and this was the highest proof of his greatness - he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate.
Stalin was not a man of conventional learning; he was much more than that: he was a man who thought deeply, read understandingly and listened to wisdom, no matter whence it came. He was attacked and slandered as few men of power have been; yet he seldom lost his courtesy and balance; nor did he let attack drive him from his convictions nor induce him to surrender positions which he knew were correct. As one of the despised minorities of man, he first set Russia on the road to conquer race prejudice and make one nation out of its 140 groups without destroying their individuality.
His judgment of men was profound. . . .
In helping my son with his history homework tonight, I noted that his history book, like most history books in the public schools, praises this famous left-winger without mentioning that this man renounced his American citizenship, praised the mass murderer Stalin, helped cover up the famine and terror that Mao brought to China and was later honored by that great mass murderer himself. Do you know who this leftist is?
The 1953 article from which the quote above was taken is available at http://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc0003/stalweb.htm. The author? W.E.B. Du Bois.
My son's 7th-grade textbook, The American Nation by Paul Boyer and Sterling Stuckey (Austin: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2001) has a full page providing a positive view on Du Bois (plus positive references on other pages) and only a few rather negative lines devoted to dismissing the patriotic American, Booker T. Washington. And it's a relatively moderate textbook compared to some that I've seen. It does acknowledge that Du Bois was a socialist and joined the Communist party, but it does so in a way that gives a wonderfully positive spin to socialism and makes Communism seem like a late after thought for a man who was supporting Communism for many years. On page 262, we read: "By the 1950s he, like many prominent American intellectuals, had embraced socialism for its promise of social justice. In 1961, at age 93, Du Bois joined the Communist party and moved to Ghana." Ah, that sweet Marxist promise of social justice (through raw power in the hands of the elite) that massacred 40 million peasants in Russia and even more in China. And of course, in the lexicon of the left, an intellectual is by definition a left-winger, and anybody with conservative, pro-freedom views is labeled as reactionary and ignorant, no matter how intelligent and educated.
Parents, help your kids to understand the origins of this nation and the cause of liberty. They will be taught to be "intellectual" and embrace socialism in the schools - it's up to you to teach them why socialism is morally wrong, an economic disaster, and a danger to liberty everywhere.