Reason Magazine Cathy Young: The Far-Left Still Harbors a Soft Spot For Communism

Source:Reason

I'm not trying to claim that the mainstream far left in America, if there is such a thing, are Communists. But what I am going to imply and frankly just state is that the far left in America for whatever the reasons, and we can speculate why, has a hard time saying that big government dictatorial totalitarian statist philosophies are not only just wrong but also have done a lot of damage throughout the world, whether it was the Communist Republics of the Twentieth Century or the theocratic and military states of this century.  Americans on the far left have a hard time saying those regimes deserve to criticized.

Far left magazines like Salon or The Nation or The AlterNet, when topics come up focusing on the awful damage that these authoritarian states have done, whether it is the Communist Republic of Korea or the Communist Republic of China, which I call that it, or the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Communist Republic of Cuba just 100 miles south of Miami, Florida, or Hugo Chavez's Venezuela do not acknowledge the obvious and say that those regimes are disreputable and should be shunned.  They instead point to the damage the West, especially America, has done even though it is a liberal democracy.

The far left is the "blame the America first crowd," because we are the military and foreign policy and economic superpower, even if China passes us with a larger economy. We'll still dwarf them when it comes to standard of living and per capita income, probably for the rest of this century. They like to put America down because of these things but also because we are not a socialist republic or a social democracy.  We are not Scandinavia and we allow all sorts of debate, speech, opposition, and points of view instead of closing off opposition speech as in Venezuela.

There was a post in Salon about a month or so ago that is on this blog arguing in favor of nationalizing the news in America because of the success of FOX News. The far-left radio talk show host Thom Hartmann, again about a month ago, which is also on this blog, was arguing in favor of abolishing the Right to Self Defense, the Second Amendment. That is where the far left in America is and they are not Progressives, but people who believe there is just too much private and individual power and that government needs to take much of that away.  They are now sounding like Communists and the Left's version of the Christian Right than they sound like Democrats.