"Spit not into the fire, especially when there be meat upon it."
- George Washington, the father of our country.
That bothersome old Communist Clarence Kailin is finally being stuffed into the ground. Dead, you know.
My friend John Nichols, the La Pasionaria of today's Left, lights this sputtering candle at Kailin's shrine:
Kailin, who died recently at 95, was one of the first Americans to take up arms against the fascist forces that swept across Europe in the years before World War II. He was one of 2,800 American volunteers who fought from 1936 to 1939 as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in defense of the elected Spanish government against a coup engineered by Generalissimo Francisco Franco with the backing of Germany's Adolf Hitler and Italy's Benito Mussolini. His role in "the good fight" [Blaska: on behalf of the Soviet Union's old Joe Stalin] gave Kailin, a scrawny kid from Madison's multi-ethnic Greenbush neighborhood, a place [Blaska: of shame] in an essential chapter of 20th century history.
Now that's some truckling (and un-journalistic) hero worship! The gulags? The purges? The show trials? Darkness at Noon? Alexander Solzhenitsyn? The Berlin Wall? Forced starvation of 7 million kulaks? Persecution of religious believers?
Never mind, look over here! Clarence Kailin, lifelong admitted member of the Communist party, unrepentant to the last, fought against fascism! Of course, so did old Joe Stalin, but I digress.
In the spirit of such hagiography, I have commissioned a florist to deliver a wreath of prickly roses in the shape of a hammer and sickle to the memorial at the First Unitarian Society this Saturday. The card reads simply, "In grateful memory of our victims. /s/ Joe."
After all, the purpose of a memorial is to remember, is it not?
Seventy years later, left-leaning journalists like Nichols and Amy Goodman continue the same errors of omission. Why? ... To forget that "the good fight" against fascism also involved the crushing of a revolution? [A Capital Times letter: The dark side of the Spanish Civil War]
The noted political commentator Walter Williams asks and answers:
Why are the horrors of Nazism so well known and widely condemned, but not those of socialism and communism? For decades after World War II, people have hunted down and sought punishment for Nazi murderers. How much hunting down and seeking punishment for Stalinist and Maoist murderers?
Academics, media elites and leftist politicians both in the U.S. and Europe protested the actions and military buildup of President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and ultimately the breakup of the Soviet Union. Recall the leftist hissy fit when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the evil empire and predicted that communism would wind up on the trash heap of history.
... The reason why the world's leftists give the world's most horrible murderers a pass is because they sympathize with their socioeconomic goals, which include government ownership and/or control over the means of production. In the U.S., the call is for government control, through regulations, as opposed to ownership. [A Minority View: Excused Horrors]
Kailin's memorial service, John Nichols tells us,
will feature talks, music and video presentations recalling Kailin's service in Spain and his lifetime of campaigning for civil rights, trade unionism and international solidarity.
In Clarence's honor, Nichols will provide voice-over narration for the following film: (Actual footage of Clarence the K marching off to do some "international solidarity." Look for a guest appearance by the Havana Paul look-alike.)
