Given how popular the "Socialist" brand has become in the U.S. lately, it's refreshing to see someone bring to the forefront the horrors that have accompanied it through time. Mark J. Perry does the review justice with The ‘Everest of bodies’ who are the ‘victims of socialism’ in which he quotes from Alan Charles Kors' article “Can There Be an ‘After Socialism’?” Here is Kors as quoted by Perry:
No cause, ever, in the history of all mankind, has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents, and more orphans than socialism with power. It surpassed, exponentially, all other systems of production in turning out the dead. The bodies are all around us. And here is the problem: No one talks about them. No one honors them. No one does penance for them. No one has committed suicide for having been an apologist for those who did this to them. No one pays for them. No one is hunted down to account for them. It is exactly what Solzhenitsyn foresaw in The Gulag Archipelago: “No, no one would have to answer. No one would be looked into.” Until that happens, there is no “after socialism.”
The West accepts an epochal, monstrous, unforgivable double standard. We rehearse the crimes of Nazism almost daily, we teach them to our children as ultimate historical and moral lessons, and we bear witness to every victim. We are, with so few exceptions, almost silent on the crimes of Communism.
This time is different, they'll say. Sure, we yearn for an autocratic leader who'll take charge and redistribute the wealth accumulated by all those filthy rich people. But there it will stop. Our autocratic leader is a nice one. We love our autocratic leader.
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