In Albania, communism still hurts BBC News 27 years since the fall of communism, Albania finally is opening up its secret police files. The secret service, known as Sigurimi was brutal. It relied on a huge network of civilian informers to crush any dissent and keep the communist regime in power ... |
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In Albania, communism still hurts - BBC News
By Samuel Gregg*
Marxists, Marxist ideas and Marxist regimes have brought death and destruction to millions. Yet according to Pope Francis, if anything, the communists think like Christians. Whats going on here?
Within the first year of his pontificate, Franciss strong criticisms of economic globalization and capitalism resulted in him being accused of having Marxist sympathies. Such charges, however, are demonstrably false.
For one thing, Francis has specified that Communism is a mistaken idea. Back in a 2013 interview with the Italian newspaperLa Stampa, the popestatedthat Marxist ideology is wrong. Likewise, the Argentine home-grown theology of the people which hasinfluencedFranciss thought explicitly rejects Marxist philosophy and analysis. Nor has Francis hesitated to canonize Catholics martyred by Communist regimes. Hes even conferred a cardinals hat upon an Albanian priest, Father Ernest Troshani Simoni, who was twice sentenced to death by Enver Hoxhas dictatorship one of the very worst Communist regimes. These arent the words or actions of a Communist fellow-traveler or apologist.
Nevertheless, in the same interview in which Francis described Communism as wrong, he immediately added, But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people. One wonders if the pope would say something similar, for example, about Nazis: But I have met many Nazis in my life who are good people.
Theres little in Marxist ideology (let alone practice) to suggest that communists think like Christians about very much at all.
Somehow, I doubt it even though political movements and regimes lead by Marxists and guided by Communist ideologies invariably embrace methods indistinguishable from those of National Socialist Germany. Indeed, if one goes simply by the numbers, Communistshaveslaughtered millions more people than the Nazis. In Pope Franciss Argentina, Marxist movements such as theEjrcito Revolucionario del Pueblohad no qualms about engaging in kidnappings and assassinations in the late-1960s and early-1970s as part of their effort to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat.
One possible interpretation of the popes words about Communism is that they reflect his belief that some people are drawn to Marxism because they regard Communism as being on the side of the worlds underdogs. During a 2015 interview, the popesuggestedthat Communists were, in a way, closet Christians. They had stolen, he said, the flag of the poor from Christians.
These themes resurfaced in a more recentinterviewof Francis this time conducted by the self-described atheist, the 92 year-old Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari.
Caution is advised when reading any of Scalfaris interviews. Scalfaris renditions of his conversations with prominent figures are based on memory rather than notes or recordings. Thats bound to raise questions about the veracity of whats written (not to mention the prudence of talking to Scalfari, but thats a different matter). Scalfaris questions are also designed to encourage the pope to make controversial remarks. In most cases, Francis politely deflects them.
At the same time, some of Franciss comments in his latest Scalfari interview mirrors odd statements hes made on other occasions. Consider what Francis says about Communists in response to Scalfaris comments about equality:
Eugenio Scalfari:So you yearn for a society where equality dominates. This, as you know, is the program of Marxist socialism and then of communism. Are you therefore thinking of a Marxist type of society?
Francis:It has been said many times and my response has always been that, if anything, it is the communists who think like Christians. Christ spoke of a society where the poor, the weak and the marginalized have the right to decide. Not demagogues, not Barabbas, but the people, the poor, whether they have faith in a transcendent God or not. It is they who must help to achieve equality and freedom.
The problem with these words is that the most cursory reading of standard Marxist texts soon indicates that theres little in Marxist ideology (let alone practice) to suggest that communists think like Christians about very much at all.
In the first place, Marxism is rooted in atheism and philosophical materialism. Christianity is not. Thats a rather fundamental andirreconcilabledifference. Second, virtually all Marxist thinkers and practitioners Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Che Guevara, Pol Pot, etc. hold that the ends justifies the means. Small o orthodox Christianity, with its insistence upon moral absolutes which admit of no exception, specifically refutes that claim. Third, Marxism, Marxists and Marxist movements dont see the poor as Christianity does: i.e., as human beings who need to be loved and assisted.
Communism views the poor like all human beings as simply moving-parts of the dialectics of history.
Instead Communism views the poor like all human beings as simply moving-parts of the dialectics of history. The economically less-well off, from a Marxist standpoint, have no intrinsic worth by virtue of their poverty or status as human beings. Such a materialist and instrumentalist perspective is light-years away from Christianitys view of those in poverty and human beings more generally.
So whatdoesFrancis mean when he says that the communists think like Christians? A clue to the popes thinking may be found with his references to equality in his most recent Scalfari interview. The pope argues, for instance, that
What we want is a battle against inequality, this is the greatest evil that exists in the world. It is money that creates it and that goes against those measures that try to make wealth more widespread and thus promote equality.
From his pontificates beginning, Francis has focused, laser-like, on this inequality theme. As the words above indicate, the specific inequality which the pope has in mind iseconomicinequality.
But is economic inequality really the greatest evil in the world today? Is economic inequality at the root of Islamic terrorism, dictatorial regimes like North Korea, the termination of millions of unborn-children in the West, resurgent anti-Semitism, or the relentless efforts to legalize euthanasia? Theres noevidence, for instance, that economic inequality causes terrorism.
Moreover, economic inequality isnt always wrong. Theresnothingin Catholic teaching to suggest that wealth and income inequalities are intrinsically evil. Theyre often quite justified. The person willing to take on more responsibility, for instance, in creating and managing an enterprise is usually entitled to a greater share of profits than the employee who assumes less responsibility and who didnt take the risk of starting the business in the first place.
Another thing that Christians should keep in mind but sometimes dont is that inequality and poverty arent the same thing. Its theoretically possible for everyone to be economically equal because they are equally poor. Its also conceivable for a society to have vast wealth and income disparities, and for the very same society to have very few people who are materially poor.
Of course, some forms of economic inequalityareunjust. One contemporary example iscrony capitalism. In these economic arrangements, collusion between businesses, politicians and regulators replaces free competition under the rule of law. If theres a major culprit (the money) for unjust forms of economic inequality today, its crony capitalists and their political and bureaucratic enablers.
Crony capitalism should be but isnt the target of Christian critique. Catholic social teaching says exactly nothing about the subject. Part of the difficulty with the popes commentary on these issues is that he, like many other good people, doesnt seem to recognize that market economies are premised on the rejection of governments granting privileges toanyparticular group. Thats the core argument made inBook Fourof Adam SmithsWealth of Nations(1776).
One of Pope Franciss many paradoxes is that, while he consistently and rightly denounces any idolatry of wealth and the type of materialist mindset which reduces everything to economics, the pope often articulates curiously economistic explanations for the worlds ills. Material poverty is something all Christians must be committed to working to reduce. Lets not pretend, however, that Christians and Marxists think the same way about poverty or equality for that matter. The simple truth is that they dont.
This article first appeared atThe Stream.
About the author: *Dr. Samuel Gregg is director of research at the Acton Institute. He has written and spoken extensively on questions of political economy, economic history, ethics in finance, and natural law theory. He has an MA in political philosophy from the University of Melbourne, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in moral philosophy and political economy from the University of Oxford, where he worked under the supervision of Professor John Finnis.
Source: This article was published by The Acton Institute
The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty is named after the great English historian, Lord John Acton (1834-1902). He is best known for his famous remark: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Inspired by his work on the relation between liberty and morality, the Acton Institute seeks to articulate a vision of society that is both free and virtuous, the end of which is human flourishing. To clarify this relationship, the Institute holds seminars and publishes various books, monographs, periodicals, and articles.
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Does Pope Francis Really Believe 'Communists Think Like Christians'? OpEd - Eurasia Review
By Vincent Bevins By Vincent Bevins January 26
JAKARTA, Indonesia Religious radicals in Indonesia are clashing with the government after a cleric claimed he could see communist imagery hidden on the country's new currency.
Habib Rizieq, the leader of the militant Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) recorded comments last month in which he claimed new Indonesian rupiah notes carry the hammer-and-sickle, an iconic symbol of communism. On the notes, the letters B and I (for Bank Indonesia) overlap in a way that vaguely recalls the communist logo if you squint hard enough.
This may seem like a trivial dispute, but it's a provocative attack in the world's most populous Muslim nation, where hundreds of thousands of people (or more) were killed in the 1960s for being communists or suspected communists.
In 1965 and 1966, members of the military, along with civilians, systematically executed members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) as well as many of its alleged supporters. The PKI had been accused of backing a military coup. In the decades of authoritarian rule that followed, communists continued to be portrayed as an evil, dangerous threat. When current President Joko Jokowi Widodo was elected in 2014, activists hoped he would apologize for the massacres or launch an official investigation. But Islamists, who still see secular leftism as a major problem, strongly opposed the idea, and Widodo took no major action.
Communist parties are still illegal in Indonesia, and Rizieq was questioned Monday by the police, who were investigating whether he slandered the bank by even making the claim.
Some members of the FPI assembled outside the police station to support Rizieq. The Islamist organization is notorious for carrying out violent raids against people it deems are committing un-Islamic acts.
There is a deep strain of anti-communism, particularly in the Muslim community, and it was made even more intense by the executions in the 1960s, said Gregory Fealy, a professor at Australian National University who has worked on politics and Islam in Indonesia. There continues to be conspiracies theorizing about the reemergence of communists, a lot of which are very fanciful, but they can really get people's imaginations going.
Fealy said accusations of crypto-communism are fairly common for Rizieq's group. This is de rigeur for the FPI, he said. Whether they believe there was really communist imagery there or not, they know this always will get a reaction.
But Rizieq's claim puzzled many Indonesians, who couldn't see the hammer-and-sickle no matter how hard they tried.
Gandrasta Bangko, a 35-year old marketing director in Jakarta, took to social media to mock the allegation. Just saw a cloud formation that looks like Palu-Arit, he tweeted, using the Indonesian term for hammer-and-sickle. Preparing lawyer team to sue anyone responsible for this s---.
An unsigned editorial published Tuesday in Indonesia's Tempo magazine said that we can rightly accuse Rizieq of suffering from acute communism-phobia. It is more laughable than criminal. The editorial argued that rather than focusing on absurd debates over phantom imagery, the group should be restrained by being held responsible for their actual crimes.
After speaking with police, Rizieq denied that he had improperly accused the government of communism but still didn't back down on his claim that the bills have threatening imagery.
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An Islamist militant group says Indonesia's new bills have secret communist symbols - Washington Post
Airport chaos including the detention of travelers with legitimate papers is a worthwhile sacrifice for national security, said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, on Fox News Sunday while speaking with Chris Wallace. "325,000 people from overseas came into this country just yesterday through our airports," she said, and fewer than 400 have been affected by President Trump's Friday executive order that temporarily bans U.S. entry of people from seven majority-Muslim nations.
"That's 1 percent," Conway continued. "And I think in terms of the upside being greater protection of our borders, of our people, it's a small price to pay," she added, arguing that temporary detention pales in comparison to the grief of the children whose parents were killed in the 9/11 attacks.
Her comments come in response to the case of two Iraqi men, one a former U.S. Army employee, who were detained at the airport in New York City because Trump signed the order while they were in transit. Multiple judges ruled Saturday night that they and those in comparable situations must be released.
Wallace pressed Conway to address President Trump's incorrect claim that it has been substantially more difficult for Christian refugees to enter the United States than Muslim refugees, and to answer why countries like Saudi Arabia, the home country of the majority of 9/11 hijackers, are not on the seven-country list. Conway repeatedly deflected on both issues. Watch her remarks in context below. Bonnie Kristian
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China sees Trump's election as an opportunity to spread the values and stability of communism - The Week Magazine
Editors Note: This article was originally published in the January 16, 1962, issue of National Review. L. Brent Bozell, also a senior editor, responded to Meyer in the September 11, 1962, issue of National Review.
In the spectrum of American conservatism there are and have been many different groupings, holding varying positions within the same broad outlook. Some have emphasized the menace of international Communism; others have emphasized the danger of the creeping rot at the heart of our own institutions. Some stress the corrosion of tradition, and with it of the natural law of justice, as the source of our afflictions; others, an intellectual failure to grasp the prime importance of freedom in the body politic. Nevertheless, whatever the differences in emphasis, there has been general agreement in the practical political sphere on the necessity both to resist the collectivism and statism that emanates from indigenous Liberalism and simultaneously to repel and overcome the Communist attack upon Western civilization, which though it has its subversive detachments operating domestically is primarily based upon the armed power of a foreign enemy.
There have been, of course, tendencies to overstress one aspect or another to such a degree that those who do so tend to move right out of the spectrum. There have been some who concentrate so wholeheartedly on the menace of domestic Communism that its international character is lost sight of and the true role of Liberalism is only cloudily understood. There have been some with such concern for the deterioration of the philosophical foundations of virtue and justice that they neglect almost totally the corollary that in the political realm freedom is the precondition of a good society. But whatever strains these one-sided emphases have created in the growth towards a mature political and philosophical American conservative position, there has not been until lately any grouping which directly and explicitly opposes itself to the defense of freedom from either its domestic or foreign enemies.
Recently, however, there has arisen for the first time a considered position, developed out of the pure libertarian sector of right-wing opinion, which sharply repudiates the struggle against the major and most immediate contemporary enemy of freedom, Soviet Communism and does so on grounds, purportedly, of a love for freedom. These pure libertarian pacifists applaud Khrushchev, support the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, join the Sane Nuclear Policy Committee, and toy with the tactic of a united front with Communists against war. They project themselves as the true representatives of the Right, attacking the militantly anti-Communist position of the leadership of American conservatism as moving towards the destruction of individual liberty because it is prepared to use the power of the American state in one of its legitimate functions, to defend freedom against Communist totalitarianism.
Tempting Fleshpots
It might seem that there is no point to discussing a view of reality so patently distorted that it can consider appeasement of Communism, disarming ourselves before the Communist armed drive and alliance with those who ease the road to Communist victory, as essential to the defense of the freedom of the individual. But although those who profess these absurd opinions are small in number, they do influence a section of the right wing, particularly in the universities, and they may, if not combatted, influence more, for they offer tempting fleshpots: the opportunity at one and the same time bravely to proclaim devotion to individual freedom, championship of the free-market economy, and opposition to prevailing Liberal welfare-statism, while comfortably basking in the sunshine of the Liberal atmosphere, which is today primarily the atmosphere of appeasement and piecemeal surrender.
Shocking though they are, the practical results of this pacifist strain in the right wing are minimal; more important is the light that the development of such a monstrous misapprehension of reality casts upon the dangers inherent in the pure libertarian approach to the problems of freedom in society. It is a tendency which, followed unchecked, can be as harmful to the development of a mature American conservative position as the counter-tendency in the conservative penumbra concerning which I have written previously in these pages to look upon the state as unlimitedly instituted to enforce virtue, thus abnegating the freedom of the individual.
Of course, in any healthy growing movement there are bound to be clashes of opinion, differences of emphasis, within over-all agreement on basic principle. This is particularly to be expected in the burgeoning American conservative movement of today and for two reasons. In the first place, the tone of the conservative mind, with its aversion to the narrowly ideological and its respect for the human person, is alien to the concept of a party line and so is generous to individual differences of stress on this or that aspect of a general outlook. But more specifically, the principles which inspire the contemporary American conservative movement are developing as the fusion of two different streams of thought. The one, which, for want of a better word, one may call the traditionalist, puts its primary emphasis upon the authority of transcendent truth and the necessity of a political and social order in accord with the constitution of being. the other, which, again for want of a better word, one may call the libertarian, takes as its first principle in political affairs the freedom of the individual person and emphasizes the restriction of the power of the state and the maintenance of the free-market economy as guarantee of that freedom.
The Meaning of Virtue
Before the challenge of modern collectivism, hostile alike to transcendent truth and to individual freedom, traditionalist and libertarian have found common cause and tend more and more to work together on the practical political level. But further, the common source in the ethos of Western civilization from which flow both the traditionalist and the libertarian currents, has made possible a continuing discussion which is creating the fusion that is contemporary American conservatism. That fused position recognizes at one and the same time the transcendent goal of human existence and the primacy of the freedom of the person in the political order. Indeed, it maintains that the only possible ultimate vindication of the freedom of the individual person rests upon a belief in his overriding value as a person, a value based upon transcendent considerations. And it maintains that the duty of men is to seek virtue; but it insists that men cannot in actuality do so unless they are free from the constraint of the physical coercion of an unlimited state. For the simulacrum of virtuous acts brought about by the coercion of superior power, is not virtue, the meaning of which resides in the free choice of good over evil.
Therefore, the conservative who understands also that power in this world will always exist and cannot be wished out of existence stands for division of power, in order that those who hold it may balance each other and the concentration of overweening power be foreclosed. He stands for the limitation of the power of the state, division of power within the state, a free economy, and prescriptive protection of the rights of individual persons and groups of individual persons against the state. But he does not see the state as an absolute evil; he regards it as a necessary institution, so long as it is restricted to its natural functions: the preservation of domestic peace and order, the administration of justice, and defense against foreign enemies.
In the political sphere the conservative consensus presently emerging in the United States regards freedom as an end; but, although it is an end at the political level, it is a means as is the whole political structure to the higher ends of the human person. Without reference to those ends, it is meaningless. While that conservative consensus regards the untrammeled state as the greatest of political evils, it does not regard the state itself as evil so long as it is limited to its proper functions, so long as the force it wields is effectively limited by a constitutional understanding of the bounds beyond which that force may not intrude upon the sacred sphere of the individual person, and so long as that understanding is enforced by division and balance of powers.
The American conservative today, therefore, although he owes much to the libertarian stream in Western thought its deep concern with freedom, its analysis of the political structure in terms of freedom, its understanding of the vital importance of the free-market economy for a free modern society cannot accept the fundamental philosophical position, sometimes rationalist, sometimes utilitarian, which is the historical foundation of pure libertarianism. He cannot posit freedom as an absolute end nor can he, considering the condition of man, deny the role of the state as an institution necessary to protect the freedoms of individual persons from molestation, whether through domestic or foreign force. He is not, in a word, a utopian. He knows that power exists in the world and that it must be controlled, not ignored with wishful utopian thinking.
The contemporary American conservative not only rejects the authoritarian extremes of nineteenth-century conservatism and the extremes of nineteenth-century rationalist and utilitarian liberalism, but, in a sense, he goes behind the so often sterile nineteenth-century conservative-liberal controversy, to found his outlook upon that earlier synthesis of belief in transcendent value and in human freedom which the Founders of the Republic embodied in their lives and actions, discursively expressed in their writings and their debates, and bequeathed to us in the body politic they constituted.
Their political concern was the establishment of freedom and its preservation, but they understood that freedom is meaningless unless founded upon the laws of Nature and of Natures God. The protection of the free energies of free individuals, so that they might in liberty strive to live according to those laws, was their most intimate concern. But they knew that in the defense of liberty a properly constituted state is necessary, not only to establish Justice [and] insure domestic Tranquility but also to provide for the common Defense. They did not content themselves with abstract analyses of liberty; they proclaimed in unambiguous tones, Give me liberty or give me death. To that wager of fate, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, they pledged our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
Providence, honor, valor, are concepts that the dry utilitarianism of the pure libertarian cannot compass. The pity is that when the soul cannot respond to those words, all the brave intellectual structure turns to cobwebs; and the champion of a freedom unfounded on the deep nature of man and the constitution of being pipes out: Give me liberty if it doesnt mean risking war; give me liberty, but not at the risk of nuclear death.
Frank S. Meyer (19091972)was a senior editor of National Review.
Excerpt from:
The Twisted Tree of Liberty - National Review