Conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby has a good article today on the somewhat overwrought criticism of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for saying, in Cairo, that the US Constitution is not a good model for other countries in 2012. As Jacoby points out, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia recently actually said that “[t]he bill of rights of the […]
Archive | Communism
National Endowment for Democracy Event in Honor of Vaclav Havel
Earlier today, I skipped both the annual AALS conference and the parallel Federalist Society conference in order to attend a moving memorial for Vaclav Havel sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy and the Czech embassy. Appropriately, most of the speakers were dissidents and human rights activists from societies with repressive governments – including Syria, […]
Why North Koreans Cried for Kim Jong Il
A couple weeks ago, I criticized a CNN article that stated that North Koreans “revere” recently deceased communist dictator Kim Jong Il, without noting that those who fail to show officially mandated reverence for the “Dear Leader” are likely to face severe sanctions from the government. To its credit, CNN went on to publish a […]
The 20th Anniversary of the End of the Soviet Union
In addition to being the last day of the year, today is also the twentieth anniversary of the official end of the Soviet Union, when the last Soviet government institutions shut down. Today’s quasi-authoritarian Russia is far from admirable. But, despite Mikhail Gorbachev’s lame and self-serving claims to the contrary, it is still a vast […]
Do North Koreans Really “Revere” Kim Jong Il?
This otherwise reasonable CNN article about recently deceased North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il claims that he was “revered at home” by his people, despite a negative reputation abroad: Regarded as one of the world’s most-repressive leaders, Kim Jong Il always cut a slightly bizarre figure. His diminutive stature and characteristically bouffant hair have been […]
Writings of Vaclav Havel
For readers who may be interested, many of Vaclav Havel’s writings and speeches are available for free in English translation at his official website. Havel, who passed away on Sunday, was a great writer and the leader of the anti-communist dissident movement in Czechoslovakia. In addition to such classics as The Power of the Powerless, […]
Kim Jong Il Dies
In an interesting historical coincidence, brutal North Korean communist dictator Kim Jong Il has died on the same day as heroic anticommunist dissident Vaclav Havel. Kim presided over the world’s most repressive regime, the closest ever to a real-life version of Orwell’s 1984. Even Soviet communism was relatively mild by comparison. He was responsible for […]
Vaclav Havel, RIP
Today is a very sad day. Vaclav Havel has passed away. Havel was a great writer and playwright and became the leader of Czechoslovakia’s anticommunist dissident movement in the 1970s and 80s. He spent several years in communist prisons. After the fall of communism in the Velvet Revolution – to which he made a crucial […]
George Orwell on Democracy and Political Ignorance
Bryan Caplan has a interesting post on George Orwell’s portrayal of democracy in his classic work Animal Farm. As Bryan notes, the initially egalitarian and democratic regime established by the animals gets subverted in large part because of political ignorance. Like Bryan, I would be interested to know more about Orwell’s view of real-world democracy. […]
Communism and the Jews
Co-blogger David Bernstein links to Polish Jewish scholar Stanislaw Krajewski’s article on the relationship between Jews and communism in Eastern Europe. As Krajewski emphasizes, this is an extremely sensitive subject. Right-wing anti-Semites have long claimed that communism was really just a “Jewish conspiracy” intended to subjugate gentiles for the Jews’ benefit. I agree with most […]
Swedish Government Apologizes to Baltic States for its Failure to Recognize Communist Crimes
The Swedish government recently apologized to its Baltic neighbors for its previous whitewashing of Communist atrocities in the region: Sweden owes its Baltic neighbours a “debt of honour” for turning a blind eye to post-war Soviet occupation, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt told his counterparts on Monday. During a ceremony in Stockholm attended by the […]
The 50th Anniversary of the Erection of the Berlin Wall
Today is the 50th anniversary of the erection of the Berlin Wall. In November 2009, I wrote a post on the 20th anniversary of the Wall’s destruction. What I said then is also appropriate to today’s less happy anniversary: In several ways, the Wall and its collapse are fitting symbols of communism. They demonstrate several […]
Yelena Bonner, RIP
Yelena Bonner, the widow of Soviet-era dissident Andrei Sakharov, and a prominent dissident in her own right has passed away: Yelena Bonner, a rights activist and widow of Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, has died, her daughter said Sunday. She was 88…. Bonner grew famous through her marriage to Sakharov, the Soviet Union’s leading […]
Victims of Communism Day
Today is May Day. For the past several years, I have advocated that this date be transformed into Victims of Communism Day. My 2007, 2008, and 2010 posts on the subject explain the rationale for this idea. Here’s a summary from my very first post on the subject, which remains equally valid today: May Day […]
The “San Francisco Democrats” meme
These days, there are innumerable books and articles which will tell you that at the 1984 Republican Convention, “San Francisco Democrats” were denounced, and that the term was understood by everyone as an attack on homosexuals. This is at most only a partial truth. Suppose that in 2012, after the Republican Convention, a Democrat denounced the […]