Tommy The Commie

The principal knocked lightly on my door in the middle of a class. When I looked up, he opened it a crack and said, “The superintendent wants see us in his office right after this period.”

It was 1985. I was teaching US History and current events at the old Snow School in Fryeburg, Maine. The superintendent’s office was a short drive down Portland Street near the traffic lights which weren’t there yet. On the way, he told me it was a parent complaint. As we walked through the door, the secretary pointed to the superintendent’s office saying, “Go right in.” 

“Mr. Smith (not his real name) was in here, angry,” he said after we both sat down in front of his desk. “His daughter is in your class, right?”

“Yes.”

“He told me you said President Reagan is either a liar of a fool — and he’s pissed. Did you say that?”

“I did, yes.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Well, Reagan said he wouldn’t negotiate with terrorists, but his administration traded weapons for hostages with Iran,” I answered. 

“He said he didn’t know anything about it, but it was happening right under his nose. I can come to only two possible conclusions: either he knew about it and he’s lying, or he should have known about it but didn’t — and that would make him a fool.”

“That’s your opinion?”

“Yes.”

“Did you say it was your opinion?”

“I did.”

“I told Mr. Smith he should talk to you about it directly, and come back to me if you two can’t resolve it.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Here’s his number. Give him a call and let me know how you make out.”

“Mr. Smith” was a retired Marine and a large person, bigger than me at least. We sat down and I thanked him for coming in. He squared his shoulders and let me know that he didn’t like my criticism of President Reagan and why. I told him same thing I said to the superintendent. After a prolonged stare, he accepted it as he might accept that a bird had crapped on his windshield. 

It wasn’t the first time I had annoyed a conservative parent. Another complaint came from a local attorney who also had a daughter in my class and had been elected to the school board. He objected to how I portrayed President Reagan’s invasion of Grenada. After covering what happened down there I had told students I agreed with those whose opinion it was that Reagan was trying to distract America’s attention from his disastrous deployment of American troops at the Beirut Airport. More than 200 US Marines had died in a truck bombing there less than a week before the Grenada invasion. We met and discussed particulars of where we disagreed about what motivated the Grenada invasion. Then he suggested that I needed to offer alternative viewpoints when I presented liberal interpretations to students.

That seemed reasonable, so I invited him into class to offer one, and a week or so later he did. He took most of a day in all four of my history classes explaining why Granada was important to shipping lanes leading into the Panama Canal. If the island were led by a communist government, American shipping could be threatened as well as US control of the canal itself. Then we both answered questions from students.

Later in the 1980s sometime I found myself sitting at a lunch counter next to a local heating contractor and oil dealer who also had a daughter in my class. After listening to her describe some of our classroom discussions at their dinner table, he concluded that I taught with a liberal bias. “People call you ‘Tommy the Commie,’” he said with a chuckle. “I’d appreciate it if you could offer the other side once in a while.” I thanked him for his feedback and promised I would try to do so.

Reactions from other conservatives in the community were similar. When they didn’t like the way I was teaching, they confronted me face-to-face with specific objections. We’d discuss issues rationally and with civility. If other conservatives complained about me behind my back, I never heard about it. By the early nineties, after I’d become conservative myself and my column was appearing regularly in local newspapers, many, many more complaints came from parents and other members of the community on the left.

I lost count of those, but I can recall only two that had names attached, and only one liberal parent ever sat down to talk with me. Typically I would hear from the principal that parents objected to a column or a lesson. When I asked who I’d be told they wanted to remain anonymous.

So do most of the leftists who comment on my blog. Come to think of it, so do the leftist thugs in Antifa.

There’s a definite pattern here.

The Pope and The Donald

They talk much, the Donald and the pope, and the more they say, the more worried I get. Though I’m a conservative in my politics and in my Catholicism, I don’t relate to either. Watching our culture dominated by the left for decades, I expected the Republican Party and the Catholic Church would stand against the onslaught. With these two guys in charge, I’m losing hope. When they clash as they did last week over immigration, I’m not rooting for either. The Donald professes to be a conservative Republican, but I doubt that. The pope succeeded two men I greatly admired: John Paul II and Benedict XVI, but Francis doesn’t come up to them — not even close.

Pope Francis wants open borders. He exhorts European parishes to take in Muslim, so-called refugees from Syria and other places in the Middle East in spite of growing popular opposition to them everywhere. He said mass last week within yards of the US/Mexico border in Texas. When asked about the Donald’s promise to build a wall there, the pope said: “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”

Trump, of course, hit back. “The pope is being told that Donald Trump is not a nice person, okay?” said the Donald. “Donald Trump is a very nice person. I’m a very… I am a very nice person, and I’m a very good Christian…” Maybe he is, I don’t know, but my gut tells me he became Christian while campaigning in Iowa. I’m glad he brought attention to the illegal immigration crisis, but I’m hoping he’s not the Republican nominee.

The pope talks like a communist, criticizing capitalism wherever he goes. Meeting with Bolivia’s leftist President Evo Morales last year (who wore an image of communist hero Che Guevara on his jacket), he called unbridled capitalism “the dung of the devil.” From Morales, he accepted a sculpture that was a morph between the hammer and sickle and the crucifix. That disturbed me.

 As columnist Dennis Prager put it: “In terms of evil committed, what is the difference between the hammer and sickle and the swastika? Would the pope receive, let alone keep, a Fascist, racist, or Nazi sculpture with a crucified Christ on it? Of course not. Yet the hammer and sickle represents more human suffering than all of them combined. The number of people enslaved and murdered under the hammer and sickle dwarfs the number of people enslaved and murdered by any other doctrine in history.”

Prager is right, of course, as anyone who has studied history knows. John Paul II and Benedict XVI learned that first-hand, but it’s becoming painfully clear that Francis hasn’t. Neither has likely Socialist/Democrat presidential nominee Bernie Sanders who spent six months on a Stalinist kibbutz in Israel during the sixties. In 1988, he chose to take his honeymoon in the Soviet Union just before it disintegrated. He followed that with a trip to Cuba in 1989 where he tried to meet with Fidel Castro, who snubbed him. Bernie met with the mayor of Havana instead.

Until very recently, the Donald talked like a liberal Democrat, favoring abortion, Obamacare, eminent domain for private projects, and donating money to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and other liberals. Now he claims he’s pro-life and he will repeal Obamacare but he offers no explanations for how or why he got from there to here. He’ll solve every problem by getting the “most amazing people” to do this and “the smartest people” to do that. He’ll “negotiate tremendous deals” and everything will be wonderful.

I’m with him on immigration and it’s not unrealistic to deport all those here illegally and build a wall to prevent them coming back. I support his suggested moratorium on Muslim immigration too unless they can be thoroughly vetted — which isn’t likely considering how the San Bernardino killer from Pakistan was “investigated.” If that’s the best the State Department and FBI can do, then we better just stop for now.

First impressions can be lasting impressions. My BS alarm went off as soon as a got a look at the Donald’s hair and it never quieted. He seems like a loose cannon and as much a narcissist as President Obama. I can’t help but think of him as Mussolini with an orange pompadour.

It’s looking more and more likely that November will bring a choice between Bernie or Hillary and the Donald. God help us.

Occupy Wall Street Focused? Come On

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) isn’t “focused” as Nancy Pelosi claims. It’s about as many grievances as there are people in attendance at its multiple sites around the country. I’ve questioned people at two local sites in my futile search for unified themes, but the only constant I found other than discontent was class envy. Those who have worked through envy know it when they see it - and it’s always ugly. That’s why envy is one of the seven deadly sins.

Democrats fertilize and exploit envy, especially of the rich. Evidence indicates they catalyzed OWS through their public-employee unions and remnants of ACORN. Pelosi and Obama both endorsed it but it may backfire on them. Violence, drug dealing, overdoses, sexual assaults, filth, disease, and death are all escalating as OWS gets crazier every day, especially on the left coast. John Nolte of Biggovernment.com is keeping a running tally of lawlessness at all the OWS sites, lately called “Obamavilles” by those of us who see Saul Alinsky fingerprints. Each Obamaville is a microcosm of the Democrat Party: socialists, communists, anarchists, homosexuals, revolutionaries, trust-funders, students, and others including radical Islamists in their keffiyehs spouting anti-semitism. By the time this is published, more violence may have occurred as cities evict left-wing squatters from public parks this week - especially on the left coast.From Zombietime

The old saying that “It’s as if the country were turned up on its side and all the loose nuts rolled into California” is verified again by OWS Obamavilles in the Bay Area. There are left-wing loonies everywhere of course, but San Francisco and Oakland have the highest concentration. Traditional Democrat constituencies at these Obamavilles aren’t getting along with each other though. They’ve segregated themselves in Oakland as evidenced by a Zombietime.com photoessay. One area is fenced off with pink ribbon and a sign declaring “Women, Queer + Trans ONLY.”From Zombietime

Another sign declares “PEOPLE OF COLOR TENT!” Some Obamaville homosexuals “of color” had an identity crisis over what victim group they most identified with, so another area was designated “POC/QPOC - People Of Color - Queer People Of Color - information - conversation.”From Zombietime

If they can’t reconcile, there’s a giant white board featuring workshops to attend at the OWS Oakland Obamaville including: “Medic training with the Black Cross” (What’s the Black Cross? I’m sure I don’t know); “Anti-capitalism”; “Anarchism & Anti-colonialism”; “Marxism 101”; “What To Do When The Police Come”; “Resistance Training”; “Gang Injunction Presentation”; followed by “What Are Gang Injunctions?”; followed by “Student Speaking Out About Gang Injunctions”; followed by “Ken Knabb: The Occupation From A Situationist Perspective.” Yoga and Meditation workshops interspersed all others.From Zombietime

Don’t those sound exciting? What else would we expect from the Bay Area -headquarters for the Land of Fruits and Nuts?

When leftists around Conway, New Hampshire got the urge to join the OWS movement, I had to drop in to ask questions. About 40-50 people occupied four street corners for an hour, and I visited each. At the first corner I asked a man holding a sign declaring: “GET BIG $$ OUT OF POLITICS!” how he proposed to accomplish that.

“Who are you?” he asked, and I identified myself. “I know you,” he said disdainfully. The local Conway Daily Sun has published my column with a picture for years. Others on that corner murmured and cast sidelong glances my way.

“You’re about as welcome as chlamydia!” Someone said over my shoulder. Turning, I recognized a radical feminist who wrote columns in the Sun critical of me and whose email address was “Madamovary@[something-or-other].com”

“You’ve had chlamydia?” I asked her.

“No,” she said, as the conversation continued downhill. A short, bearded guy with a hostile look came over holding a big microphone and I thought it prudent to walk over to another corner. Madamovary mentioned my visit on her web site describing me as “Our local purveyor of hate speech.”

At the next corner another woman recognized me and shouted: “You’re the devil incarnate!”

“And you’re abrasive,” I said.

“I wondered what I’d do if I ever met you - and here you are!” she said.Woman on right called me the devil incarnate

“Yup. Here I am,” I responded, and then spoke to an older couple about their sign as she continued glaring. They were peeved that some corporations paid no income tax but weren’t sure what to do about it. I asked if they would support a flat tax with no deductions for corporations and people. They would, they said, and we found ourselves in agreement.Guy Fawkes guy on right

At the next corner were the local Unitarian/Universalist minister with the obligatory rainbow banner, someone wearing the obligatory Guy Fawkes mask and holding a sign proclaiming: “THE PEOPLE ARE TO (sic) BIG TO FAIL,” and others holding signs you’d see at any OWS site. I wanted to ask the Guy Fawkes guy if he advocated violence - given that the real Guy Fawkes stockpiled gunpowder under the House of Lords in 1606 in an unsuccessful attempt to destroy Parliament. The hour was nearly over however and I didn’t get a chance.

I found no one at local OWS sites who understood Constitutional government. People were angry and resentful but had little idea how to address their myriad grievances. OWS is anything but focused. It’s a discontented mass that could devolve into an ugly mob if history is any guide.

Defining Communism in Class

“What is communism?” I asked the class after writing the word on the board. “I’d like to find an unbiased definition.

One girl was looking in the glossary of her textbook for a definition. “I have one,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, nodding to her.

“‘Communism: economic system in which all property is owned by the community,’” she recited.

I thanked her, then asked the class: “Does that definition make communism sound good, bad, or neutral?”

“It makes communism sound good,” said a boy, “as if everything was equal.”

“Makes communism sound good,” I repeated. “‘An economic system in which all property is owned by the community.’ Who agrees that the textbook’s definition is biased by making communism sound good?”

About three quarters raised their hands.

“Anybody disagree?”

No hands.

“How about we try to come up with a definition with as little bias as possible?”

“Just use a dictionary,” said another girl. “They’re not biased.”

“Oh no?” I said. “Let’s check them out. Take out your laptops. Go to Dictionary.com or whatever site you like to use.”

They pulled computers out of cases, opened their lids, and soon there were hands in the air. “‘a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state,’” said a boy.

“Okay,” I said. “Does that definition have any bias for or against communism?”

“Doesn’t sound like it to me,” said a girl. “That sounds neutral.”

“Who agrees?” I asked the whole class.

About half raised their hands.

“What about the rest of you?” I asked. My sense was they were tentative and not confident enough to offer an opinion one way or another, so I moved on. Another girl said, “a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.”

“Well?” I said expectantly. “Any bias?” I wondered if she knew what “totalitarian” and “self-perpetuating” meant.

“I’m not sure, but it doesn’t sound good,” she said.

“Totalitarian government is one that has total control over people’s lives,” I said. “A self-perpetuating political party is one that does whatever is necessary to stay in power, in control.”

I waited a few seconds in case there were questions. “What do you think now? Does that definition sound biased?”

“Yup,” she said. “It doesn’t make communism sound good at all - kind of like it was shown in ‘Dr. Zhivago.” We had watched that movie in class for its depiction of World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, and communism’s effects on the central character’s family.

“So, communism is: ‘a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party,’” I repeated. “Do you all agree that definition makes communism sound bad?”

“Definitely,” said a boy.

“Yes,” said the girl who first read the definition and wasn’t sure.

“Are any of you surprised that dictionaries can be biased when defining certain words?”

Several students nodded. “I just never thought of dictionaries that way,” said a girl.

“Well,” I said. “Communism is controversial. People to the right of center on the political spectrum tend to be hostile toward communism and socialism, but people on the left tend to think they could be good systems if applied well.” We had studied a political spectrum earlier in the year. “The people who wrote your book are like that, for example. They’re left of center.”

“Most words aren’t controversial, however. They may have different shades of meaning, but there’s little disagreement or bias when defining them.”

“So, do you think we could come up with an unbiased definition?” I asked the whole class.

Lots of blank stares and wide eyes, but no one volunteered to craft a definition.

“Awe, come on,” I said. “Nobody?”

Some scrunched their shoulders, but no one volunteered.

“Okay, how about this one,” I wrote on the board as I recited: “‘Communism - an economic system in which there is no private property and government decides who makes what and who gets what.’”

Then I turned around and asked, “What do you think? Any bias?”

“I think it’s biased against communism,” said a boy.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“It makes it seem like government is all-powerful.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Anybody else?”

“I don’t think it’s biased. That’s the way communism is,” said another boy. “Government, or ‘the party’ decides everything.”
“Okay,” I said. “Who thinks my definition is biased against communism?”

Only three hands went up.

“Who thinks it isn’t?”

Three more hands. The rest refrained from expressing an opinion.

“Well,” I said. “I am biased against communism, but I was trying to be neutral. We’re almost out of time, so we’ll let that definition stand for now.”


We're in Trouble

“Is it possible for a human being to become perfect?” I asked the class. Most students agreed it wasn’t. Some believed we could strive for perfection and that’s a good thing, but each of us would always fall short.

“How about creating a perfect society?” I asked.

“How can you create a perfect society with imperfect people?” said a particularly sharp girl with the perfect rhetorical question.

I was setting them up for lesson on utopian communes in America - efforts to establish perfect societies - and ultimately how the struggle between communism and capitalism dominated the 20th century.

We looked at 19th century communes like the Shakers and the Oneida Community. Both were religious, members of both gave all their property to the commune, both controlled all aspects of members’ lives, but they had opposite views of human sexuality. The Shakers eschewed sex but the Oneida commune spread it around as much as possible in a method they called “complex marriage.” Both thrived economically, supplying members with whatever goods and services they needed and both lasted longer than most attempted utopias. Neither achieved perfection, but they were around for a fairly long time working at it.

Though voluntary, 19th century American communes attracted fanatics who knew what was best for us all, and who were willing to impose it violently. It can’t be just coincidence that two presidential assassins were, at least temporarily, members of the Oneida Community. They were Charles Guiteau who killed President Garfield, and Leon Czolgosz, who killed President McKinley. Czolgosz especially seemed to personify the utopians’ metamorphosis from from religious to secular/socialist, then to athiest/communist as he embraced leftist anarchists and communists. People like him had no qualms about violently imposing their utopian fantasies on Russia beginning in 1918.

They transformed Russia into the USSR, then extended their influence over all of northern Asia and half of Europe. Promising to redistribute wealth, they appropriated private property whether owners were willing to part with it or not. They took control of the entire economy and every aspect of people’s lives, but seemed by all acounts to move further away from perfection rather than closer to it. The USSR couldn’t provide the consumer goods citizens needed. Its planned economy caused its demise.

Communist utopians tolerated no dissent. Somewhere between forty and sixty million people, most of whom were skeptical about communist dreams of establishing a workers’ paradise, were killed - far more than the number who died at the hands of Hitler’s Nazis.

Even without reproducing, the Shakers outlasted the USSR, which finally disintegrated twenty years ago. There are still a handful of Shakers in New Gloucester, Maine a few miles east of where I’m writing. As for the Oneidas - their utopian community is gone but they exist as a joint stock company making cutlery.

The religious American communes were entirely voluntary. People could join or not and if the life didn’t suit them, they could leave. The USSR was anything but. Communist officials built walls and an elaborate security apparatus to keep people from escaping. They had no choice beyond “adapt or die.” Communists believed they knew what was best for all whether they liked it or not. Religion was outlawed and the state became church. The revolution was sacred and capitalism evil. Individual liberty was not only irrelevant, it was “counterrevolutionary.” And, as Boris Pasternak’s novel character, Dr. Yuri Zhivago put it: “They shoot counterrevolutionaries.”

My earliest awareness of this was watching on TV as an ugly little bald guy with a wart on his face took his shoe off during a speech, banged it on the podium at the United Nations in New York City and declared: “We will bury you!” That was Soviet Premiere Nikita Kruschev. That Kruschev was dedicated to forcing Soviet communism on the entire world came through loud and clear to me that day and I’ve never forgotten it. Kruschev’s USSR collapsed thirty years later only because the United States sustained a forty-five-year-long Cold War.

We face a different enemy now. It’s another religious utopian group with strange ideas about sexuality, but different from its smaller predecessors in that it would violently impose itself on everyone in the world. It’s anything but voluntary. Radical Muslims are true believers with no doubts that they know what’s best for all of us whether we like it or not. They would make the world Muslim and run it under Sharia Law. They’re quite open about their intentions and have demonstrated that they’re willing to kill themselves if they can take a few infidels with them. Radical Shiite Muslims believe the Mahdi will emerge soon to preside over a thousand years of justice and peace. Iranian President Ahmadinejad invoked him from the same UN podium Kruschev used fifty years before.

Like the communists, Radical Muslims know the biggest obstacle in the way of achieving their utopian vision is the United States. Trouble is though, our Commander-in-chief lacks the will to oppose them. He won’t even call our enemy by its name. After US Army Major Hasan openly admired Muslim suicide bombers, declared the US an “oppressor” of Muslims, asked an al Qaeda recruiter what he could do “to further the Jihad,” shouted “Allahu Akbar!” while he gunned down forty-three US soldiers last week, President Obama said: “Well, look, we -- we have seen, in the past, rampages of this sort. And in a country of 300 million people, there are going to be acts of violence that are inexplicable.”

Inexplicable?

We’re in deep trouble.