On Bill Ayers and small ‘c’ communists

American Thinker | James Lewis | Oct. 15, 2008

Bill Ayers said in 1995 that he was just a “small ‘c’ communist.” He said it with a little laugh. And most of us aren’t even shocked. We’ve heard words like that before. But we should feel shivers running up our spines.

I know goofy liberals who moan about all the good intentions demonstrated by Karl Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky. They’re all Obama voters, for some reason. They are the same kinds of people who think Jesus was a communist, and that George W. Bush is Hitler. They are often the kind of people who try desperately to be completely nice in their lives, especially to designated victims. But often they harbor a belly full of rage — against conservatives, or big corporations, or fundamentalist Christians, or anybody who challenges their belief in their own saintliness.

In basic politics there are only two numbers you need to know. One is Six Million. You know what that means. The other number is not nearly as well-known, but it should be. It’s One Hundred Million.

The other number is not nearly as well-known, but it should be. It’s One Hundred Million. Six Million is forever linked to Hitler’s Final Solution to the Jewish Problem. Whether it was precisely Six Million, or whether we should include the Armenian Genocide committed by the Turks, or whether we should add the tens of millions of other people killed by Hitler, not to mention all the other genocides in history … all that comes later. The expression “Six Million” has come to be a touchstone for human evil, and we fragile humans really need our touchstones. Otherwise we get confused, and wander off into perversity. We become suckers to political scam artists.

We need some kind of soundbite to remind us of deliberately chosen human evil, and Six Million is just about the right size to keep in mind. Six Million should stand for all the massacres of innocents: In Rwanda, in centuries of African slave trade, in Nanking, in Turkish Armenia, in the Partition of India, the list is painfully long.

One Hundred Million is the estimated number of people massacred by Communists in the 20th Century, according to a definitive study by French Leftist historian Stéphane Courtois and his team, published in The Black Book of Communism.

One Hundred Million is the second soundbite every sane person on earth should know.

Six Million and One Hundred Million — forget all the quibbles, just listen to the sound of those numbers.

Now when your friendly neighborhood “small ‘c’ communist” comes along, all smiles, and offering love and peace, we need to say just one thing: One Hundred Million. If that doesn’t wipe the smile off their faces they are beyond human reach. By that act of willed ignorance they have exiled themselves from the company of decent people.

Try it some time: There are an amazing number of nominally sane people who will try to explain that number One Hundred Million away. Vladimir Putin is doing it even now in Russia, where many of the murderers and their victims lived. That reveals what kind of man Putin really is.

In the same way, murderous racists need to be confronted with only one number: Six Million. It’s not because those murder victims were Jews killed by Nazis. It is just a gut-grabbing allusion to deliberate, massive human evil — always performed in the name of some transcendent ideal, of course.

So we only need to ask about two numbers to find out where people stand.

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1 thought on “On Bill Ayers and small ‘c’ communists”

  1. True – but Ayers isn’t running for president.

    As for Obama, he’s not a communist. He’s a stalking horse for big corporate interests.

    Seven of the Obama campaign’s top 14 donors consisted of officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in originating and/or bundling fraudulently made mortgages. These latest frauds have left thousands of children in some of our largest minority communities coming home from school to see eviction notices and foreclosure signs nailed to their front doors. Those scars will last a lifetime.

    These seven Wall Street firms are (in order of money given): Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. There is also a large hedge fund, Citadel Investment Group, which is a major source of fee income to Wall Street. There are five large corporate law firms that are also registered lobbyists; and one is a corporate law firm that is no longer a registered lobbyist but does legal work for Wall Street. The cumulative total of these 14 contributors through February 1, 2008, was $2,872,128, and we’re still in the primary season.

    Or this:

    There’s no question that industry loves Barack. As of March 31, UBS, the second largest bank in Europe, has given over $165,000 to his campaign. The Exelon corporation, which is the nation’s largest nuclear plant operator, has donated almost $160,000. The investment Goliath, Goldman Sachs, has also fattened the pockets of Barack Inc. with over $143,000. Citigroup has given well over $50,000 with Morgan Stanley close behind at $40,000. Wall Street has Obama’s back.

    Kirkland & Ellis, the conservative law firm that worked for the Democrats to limit ballot access of Ralph Nader’s campaign in 2004, also digs Obama, and have given his campaign over $70,000. That’s a lot of money to be tossing around so early in the campaign season. But the firm that represents GM and tobacco giant Brown & Williamson has plenty of cash to spare. They know Obama has a good chance at winning the nomination – if not this cycle, perhaps one down the road. In the meantime, Obama’s voice as a leading Democrat in the Senate grows more influential by the day. They know they’ll get their money’s worth in the long run.

    Obama will steal from the poor, give to the rich, raise some taxes, and govern the country like a giant kleptocracy.

    But it won’t be Communism, and won’t feature concentration camps. It’ll be crony-capitalism writ large. The greatest distinguishing characteristic of an Obama administration versus the outgoing Bush administration will be – well, it will be hard to find.

    Obama will stay in Iraq, stay in Afghanistan, expand NATO, and do practically everything McCain would like to do. Only Obama will probably talk more ‘left’ while consistently selling out his hardcore-left supporters, whereas McCain would talk ‘right’ while consistently selling out his hardcore-right supporters.

    Forgive me for not being overwhelmed with anxiety one way or the other.

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