Ayn Rand & Jared Lee Loughner: A Match Made in Hell

by Caleb T. Maupin

The media has focused a great deal of time on examining the motives of Jared Lee Loughner, the 22 year old who opened fire on a political rally in Tucson, Arizona. Much emphasis has been put on his listing of Adolph Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” among other books, among his favorites.

A Sinister Philosophy

However, another book stands out on the racist killers reading list. That book is “We the Living” by Ayn Rand. The fact that this book was listed says a great deal about the personality of this racist murderer, and how he views other human beings, himself, and politics.

Ayn Rand was a right-wing intellectual of the Post-WWII era. Her books all serve to preach an ideology called “objectivism.” Rand bragged that this new “philosophy” she had invented could rationalize pure free market capitalism, while no other moral code could. She may be correct.

Regardless, Rand became a household name during the time when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), along with Ronald Reagan, purged Hollywood of leftist screenwriters and actors.

Rand testified against her co-workers in the film industry, and was rewarded with book contracts and publicity.

Rand’s novels reek with capitalist worshiping sociopathy. Her novel “The Fountainhead” has a scene portraying rape as a moral act. Her most highly praised work “Atlas Shrugged” tells of the capitalists of the world going on strike in protest of “the mob” i.e. the working class, somehow persecuting them with government regulation and wealth redistribution.

Rand’s non-fiction is even more twisted in content. One of her many texts is titled “On the Virtue of Selfishness” and preaches that compassion for other human beings is a form of weakness. Another book, “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” claims that the bankers and capitalists are “the most persecuted minority”, a laughable concept at best!

Rand’s writings have received a great deal of promotion in the present times, as the wealthy use them to propagate the ideas of the “Tea Party” and other ultra-rightist movements. FOX news, Ron Paul, Campaign for Liberty, the John Birch Society, and countless other ideological ultra-rightist organizations view Rand as prophet, proclaiming to humanity the merits of ruthlessness, and the need to hand complete power over to the “great men” who drive the capitalist economic system.

"We The Living" vs. Real Soviet History

The particular novel that was so adored by the ruthless Arizona murderer is particularly interesting. “We The Living” is Rand’s first novel, published before she became famous. It is an ugly, deceptive attack on the heroic Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

Rand wrote the novel after moving to the United States, leaving the USSR. Her hatred of the USSR was largely based on the fact that her wealthy father was forced to share his mansion with working class people by the Bolsheviks. The injustice and persecution Rand felt at seeing workers get a share of the wealth they produce never left her.

The novel portrays the Soviet Union as a hellhole of starvation and corruption, and slanders the leaders of the Bolshevik Party as corrupt and incompetent.

At the time this novel was published in 1936, the Soviet Union was an economic powerhouse. The Communist Party’s five years plans had brought with them full employment, free education for all, and quality medical care. Soviet life expectancy triple during this period.

At the same time, the rest of the world was in the grips of the “great depression.” While thousands of workers in the U.S. were unemployed and starving, the Soviet Union had a labor shortage, and hired thousands of workers from the U.S. and elsewhere to help them in a boom of socialist construction.

Mighty collective farms drove starvation into the pages of history. The first steel mills in the region pumped out tons of sturdy metal. The world’s largest hydro-electric power station, the Dniper Dam lit up the countryside. Railroads connected the far off Siberian territories, and the isolated villages of Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus to the world.

The Bolshevik regime was the first country to legalize homosexuality in modern Europe. Abortion was likewise made legal, and birth control was given on demand, without apology.

Illiteracy was abolished as members of the Young Communist League and the Young Pioneers poured into the countryside.

While capitalist countries like Germany, Spain, and Italy embraced fascism to save capitalism, and lynch mobs waged a reign of terror in the Jim Crow U.S. South, the USSR stood tall as a shining light of social equality. Women managed factories and held seats in the Soviet Government. Paul Robeson visited the USSR and proclaimed “I am at home” as the racial discrimination so common in the U.S. was non-existent.

The portrait portrayed in the piece of fiction so beloved by ruthless, racist killer Jared Lee Loughner is not consistent with reality.

The Danger of "Revolutionary" Rightism" & Fascism

The lie that the USSR and other Socialist Countries were horrid and impoverished has long been used by the ultra-right. Glenn Beck and his ilk have even tried to convince workers that the misery of unemployment, home foreclosures, and economic suffering they endure is because the U.S. is “socialist.”

Just as Hitler referred to the Weimar Republic as “Marxist” in order to discredit revolutionaries in 1930s Germany and win angry working people to a right-wing position, now the ultra-right does the same in painting Obama as a “Socialist” and a “Marxist” as he presides over bank bail-outs and massive tax cuts for the super rich.

The lies that are peddled by the ultra-right, including hitmen like young Loughner are deceptive fascist poison. The cause of the massive suffering so many feel in the present time is not immigrant workers, oppressed people, “socialism”, or the President of the United States.

The cause is the ruthless capitalist class, who lives by exploiting human labor and foments war and destruction around the world.

The only hope for working people in the U.S. is to cast off rightist lies like those peddled by the Loughners and Becks of the world, and build a revolutionary movement to bring this ugly system down, and win real justice.

Loughner and his ideological co-horts are a tragic symptom of the decline of capitalism, and the lack of true revolutionary organizations to defend workers interests.

To many young working people are unaware of Marxism-Leninism and its path to a brighter future of working class power and equality. Instead, the poison of Fox News, Ron Paul, Ayn Rand, or the Tea Party fills the void. These fascistic, ultra-rightist “movements” connect with young worker’s rage at their material conditions, but also manipulate this rage into disgusting racism, bigotry, and eventually confused depression and insanity.

What young worker’s need more than ever is a strong revolutionary movement confronting the capitalist system, and demanding jobs, education, and healthcare for all. Furthermore, they need to join with the battle to abolish capitalism, and fight for World Socialism as the capitalism dies a fiery, explosive, and destructive death.

Oxford Scholarship? Robert Service Does Trotsky

by Caleb T. Maupin


For the longest time, Trotsky's criticisms of the USSR were held up by capitalists as "proof" of Soviet evil. Trotsky's critiques of Stalin's bureaucratism were seen as signs that the USSR was "a brutal dictatorship."

Even though Trotsky called for "unconditional defense" of the USSR, and maintained it was a "worker's state" until his death, the propaganda of the capitalist media used him as a battering ram against Communism, despite his intentions. Even now, countless young radicals use "Trotskyism" as an excuse not to defend the USSR and other socialist states.

However, now that the USSR is gone, Trotsky is up for grabs as well. This may be related to the fact that Hugo Chavez, a leader of the Revolutionary Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela quotes Trotsky left and right, and has done his best to enact the concept of "Permanent Revolution."

So, Trotsky is now "under the bus" from the same historian whose made a career writing shoddy books with bad research about Stalin. Robert Service, a "respect historian" who teaches at Oxford University and his held up by the capitalists as an "expert" on Russian history has spit out an anti-Communist text. Like his other "masterpieces" this one has logical and factual errors that put any 5th graders history report to shame, even if they are using the recently established Texas textbooks as a source.

This book is loaded with plain factual errors.

Trotsky's first son was named Lev, not Sergei. Its usually good for biographers to get the name of the first son of the person they write about correctly. Its a minimum expectation, especially from an Oxford University "historian" like Service. If I opened a biography of Abraham Lincoln that said his first son was named Leonardo, I would give it equal credibility to Service's work. However, the capitalist media does not hold the same standards.

Stalin didn't order the Shanghia insurrection of 1927, he contrarily ordered it to surrender. Stalin made the Chinese Communist Party dissolve into the Nationalist Party. The entire point of Trotsky's writings are defense of the Shanghia Commune and the Chinese Worker's Revolt, and criticism of Stalin for undermining the Chinese Communists by sabotaging their efforts for his own, short term gains. Has Service ever read any of Trotsky's writings on China?

He doesn't seem to understand their entire thesis. I wonder if the Oxford Library has a copy? Perhaps Mr. Service has never heard of the Marxist Internet Archive.

Trotsky's secretary Bernard Wolfe, was of no relation to Bertram Wolfe, the U.S. Communist leader. Bertram left the Communist Party in the USA with Jay Lovestone's "right opposition" in 1930. The Trotskyists left with James Cannon's "Left Opposition" in 1928.

Bernard Wolfe was of no relation to U.S. Marxist politics, and definitely not the same person as "Bertram Wolfe" a U.S. right opposition leader of the Communist Party.

What kind of historian makes these kinds of huge errors? Has Service ever read any of Trotsky's writings?

This lame attempt at demonizing Trotsky is sad. What's wrong with Trotsky, according to Service?

He's a "self-hating jew" because he tried to hide is Jewish heritage in Czarist Russia. The pogroms by the Czars government, and frequent hate crimes by the Black Hundreds Party might have a bit more to do with it than "self-hatred." Even after the revolution, Trotsky was the victim of Anti-semitism in the world press. Trotsky lived under and helped overthrow the very government that first wrote and published "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

Would Service call Jewish people attempting to flee Nazi Germany with false papers "self-hating"? Good night! What was Trotsky, a Communist atheist of Jewish heritage expected to do? Is this anything close to a fair criticism?

Trotsky was involved in the suppression of the Left-Socialist Revolutionaries? Yes, that is true.

Why? Because the Left-Socialist Revolutionaries shot Lenin, the President of the USSR, nearly killing him.

Is it immoral to attempt to arrest a clandestine political group that shoots heads of state? Does Mr. Service feel that the J. Edgar Hoover should be condemned for "suppressing" Lee Harvey Oswald? Was it "Red Terror" when Sara Jane Moore was sent to jail for shooting Gerald Ford?

Robert Service's latest hit is another episode to add to the list of anti-Communist self-exposures.

Yes, next time somebody tells me Fidel Castro is an evil dictator, I will say "Yeah, and Trotsky's first son was named Sergei, right?"

The next time somebody says Mao killed millions of people, I'll say "Yep, and Stalin order the 1927 Chinese insurrection, what a blunder!"

This book is just another reason to see that anti-Communism is as discredited as the flat earth theory and faith healing. The problem is just that the ruling class that owns the media, controls the universities, and has the ability to promote such "scholarship" is willing to promote the ideas of clowns like Robert Service, because Socialism is their enemy. Socialism means that for once there is public control of the industries, the economy, and the media. It means no more will a small elite be able to dictate over the rest of humanity, and that the horrors of unemployment, poverty, starvation, and war will be no more.

Robert Service should at least consider getting a good secretary do to his research before attempting to write such slanderous attacks. He should also be careful not to confuse his secretary with 1930s U.S. Marxists, EVEN IF THEY HAVE SIMILAR NAMES!

Video: Reccomended Reading for the Winter Months

History Channel Revisionism: Review of "Nazi America: A Secret History"

The fortune 500 company Disney-Pixar, and the History channel, several years ago produced a film called Nazi America. It was a made for TV documentary telling the history of “Nazism in the United States.” The film begins with the German-American Bund, and from there tells of George Lincoln Rockwell’s “American Nazi Party”, and finally William Luther Peirce’s “National Alliance” and the terrorist spin-off group “The New Order.”

To the film’s credit, if any can be given, they made it clear that Nazism is very anti-communist in addition to being Anti-Semitic and Racist, not jumping on the bandwagon of Jonah Goldberg’s contention that Nazism is a “leftist” belief system.

However, the film was greatly flawed in its history of U.S. Nazism, and at some points greatly inaccurate through the omission of key historical facts.

There’s Way More Than The Bund

The section of the film about the 1930s, only covers the “German American Bund,” and its previous incarnations such as the “Friends of New Germany.” The film fails to mention that there was a LARGE fascist and pro-Hitler movement in the U.S. that contained countless other organizations. The Silver Legion of America was pro-Hitler in its agitation, as was the Black Legion of Michigan and the Ku Klux Klan of the Southern U.S.

Charles E. Coughlin, the Pro-Nazi Clergyman, preached Pro-Nazi and Anti-Semitic rhetoric from the radio-waves to millions every Sunday evening in a pulpit provided by General Motors. Henry Ford distributed millions of copies of The International Jew to those who patronized his car dealerships, and newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst printed Pro-Nazi editorials in his countless publications throughout the U.S.

However, this Disney-Pixar produced, broadcast, and distributed film seemed simply to focus on the “German-American Bund”, a small band of German-Americans that never attracted more than a few thousand members.

The film never explored the “Liberty League”, a congressional caucus, and society of businessmen who said Roosevelt was a “Marxist” and attempted to overthrow him and install a Pro-Nazi dictatorship.

The coverage of the response to the German-American Bund was greatly lacking as well. Rather than pointing out accurately how the movement was led by the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party, both of which had numerous anti-Nazi protests including the meeting of the Silver Legion that was shut down by the SWP, the Anti-Nazi movement was characterized simply as “Jewish Americans,” a false and racist accusation if ever. Countless non-Jewish U.S. residents were outraged by Nazis and other Fascists, and took up guns and makeshift street fighting weapons against them.



The “America First Committee” an isolationist, conservative group that was openly Pro-Nazi and opposed entrance of the U.S. into WWII received no mention in the film, despite the fact that the German-American Bund was very active within its ranks.

“Worse than Mccarthyism?”

The Smith Act Prosecutions of fascists in 1943, in which the Nazis, unlike the Communists and Socialists charged under the same law, walked free in a mistrial, was never mentioned.

At one point when talking about the 10,000 Germans interned during WWII, compared to the millions of Japanese people, a German citizen proclaims “this was nothing compared to Mccarthyism.” A disgusting historical mis-characterization if ever.

The film shows how inside of these internment camps, Nazis were allowed to have rallies in support of Hitler, march with Nazi flags, eat “good food” from their country of origin, go swimming, relax, and enjoy themselves at the tax payers expense.

The film did not compare the treatment of these 10,000 Nazis with the internment of the Japanese who suffered horrifically in comparison, and were arrested on much lesser suspicions of any illegal activity.

The thousands of Communists jailed during Mccarthyism contrarily to the spas for Pro-Nazi U.S. citizens, got to go to Federal or State Prisons, where they were barred from reading anything remotely in support of their ideology and in some cases starved, tortured, raped, and beaten by other prisoners hoping to get parole through the “patriotic” act of brutalizing a “commie” prisoner.

Hundreds of political prisoners from the Black Liberation Army, the May 19th Communist Organization, the Black Panther Party, the Weather Underground, and other leftist organizations remain locked away in the U.S., where the guards can depend on the help of fascist gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood to do things that may have legal consequences for prison authorities.

“Hollywood Nazis” v. “Ron Paul & Friends…”

The section on modern Nazism, is also loaded with the same problems of previous sections of the film. It shows only the “Hollywood Nazis”, a section of modern Pro-Hitler fascists who are few in number. These folks are known for marching in brown shirts, waving swastikas, and screaming racial epithets while getting defended by the ACLU on the basis of “Free Speech.”


The film did not mention the other wing of the Nazi movement in the U.S., that being the various “Paleo-conservatives” who openly speak in favor of Hitler, and use conspiracy theories about “Zionism” to justify all dislikable things about U.S. Society.

Pat Buchanan, MSNBC contributor and speechwriter for Richard Nixon, recently wrote and posted an article claiming Hitler “wanted peace” and “Socialists” in the U.S. government forced war on Germany for his website. David Duke, the Holocaust Denier and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican, and was recently interviewed on CNN.

Ron Paul’s Presidential campaign in 2008 was staffed by members of the Neo-Nazi movement to whom he gave winks of approval by his denunciation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and his support for “State’s Rights”, the slogan of the KKK and segregationist movement.

The Constitution Party of the U.S.’s 2008 Presidential Candidate, Chuck Baldwin, openly declares that the South should have been victorious in the civil war, and that Lincoln started the “march toward socialism” with the emancipation proclamation.

Clearly, Nazism has much more support in the modern U.S. than simply the likes of Hal Turner and Bill White, who parade in outlandish, silly, offensive costumes, saying disgusting things while thousands of police protect them from any possible retribution. Ironically, even open Neo-Nazi Hal Turner is now publicly acknowledged as FBI employee, who was supplied with airplane tickets, thousands of dollars in wages, and other benefits while preaching the merits of lynching on his radio program along with Holocaust denial and every racial and ethnic slur in the U.S. vocabulary.

Who fights Nazis? Only the JDL?

The Anti-Fascists of today were equally slandered in the modern section as in the section on the 1930s. The coverage of George Lincoln Rockwell, did not tell of how he was blocked from entering New York State after Workers World Party and Youth Against War and Fascism shut down New York City in 1963, or how the Socialist Worker’s Party beat him senseless in Boston led by Barry Sheppard.

The numerous Anti-KKK and Anti-Nazi protests shown in the film did not feature leftists, who traditionally lead the marches. Contrarily, a leader of the Ultra-Zionist Terror organization, the “Jewish Defense League” (JDL) was interview extensively, saying things to the effect of “anyone who slanders Jewish people out to be murdered.” The JDL also assassinates Palestinian activists, bombed the headquarters of the Black Panther Party, and attacked Workers World Party and Socialist Workers Party meetings with led pipes because they denounced Israel and Zionism. Are these right-wing Zionists the only Anti-Nazi activists that could be found for interview?















Such a characterization of the Anti-Nazi movement as being merely a movement of militant Zionists does great damage, and is exactly the image Neo-Nazis would like to present.

Overall, the piece clearly showed the class biases inherent in Disney-Pixar corporation. The film fit the current dialogue about fascism, as a small clique of right-wing extremists, not so different from the left-wing extremists, who show the “beauty” and “danger” of free speech in this “beautiful” “democratic” U.S.

The fact that countless capitalists have been pro-fascist and very few have been pro-Communist, shows that there is a clear interest in covering the real history Fascism in the U.S. as well as the movement to counter it among the workers and oppressed people.

Should we expect anything else from the class that Bankrolls Nazism to prevent the workers from taking power from them? I think not.

Inside Modern Minds and Madness: On The Work of Walter Dean Myers

A Double Review by Caleb T. Maupin

Monster by Walter Dean Myers (1999)

Shooter by Walter Dean Myers (2005)

Walter Dean Myers is the author many socially conscious, radical, psychological, and intensely political teen novels. As far as modern, mainstream teen fiction is concern, the two works of Meyers’ Monster and Shooter remain by far the most politically advanced I found in the genre.

The novels deal with the issues of racism, poverty, violence, alienation, fascism, the prison industrial complex, and various other issues.

The novel Monster deals with a youth accused of murder and facing the death penalty if convicted. The youth is mistakenly accused of being co-conspirator of two other Black youth who carried out the murder. It is assumed that he is an accomplice for no other reason than that he is Black as well, and that he walked into the store where the clerk was murdered shortly before the murder took place.

The novel takes inside the prisons of the U.S., and shows the horrendous conditions and abuse. The novel also takes inside the mind of a Black youth growing up in inner-city poverty in the late 90s. The novel shows us the discrimination and abuse he suffers from authority, and his struggle to define himself apart from the role society has already assigned him.

The style of the novel is extremely artistic, as it alternates from the personal diary of the protagonist and a screenplay he has written about his near death experience of being tried for a capital crime. The title of book Monster is what the prosecutor refers to main character as, despite the fact that he had nothing to do with the crime. We soon learn that the name “Monster” is not a label given specifically to our protagonist, but by the repressive society to all young Black males who live as an occupied nation within its borders.

The style is highly psychological and highly political. It makes the reader panic, and fill with rage at the injustices revealed within the text. It takes the reader to places they haven’t been before, and to conclusions that the bourgeoisie would prefer we do not make.

Shooter, another Myers novel, is a very complex work. It presents itself as being a post-Columbine laments about bullying, but soon you discover it is much more than that. The novel tells of a group of three friends. The first is a teen member of the rising Black middle class, suffering from alienation, and becoming frustrated with his parents money-hungry lifestyle and obsession with “getting ahead” despite his state of clear depression and loneliness.

The second member of the described clique is a young woman of 18 years old who is surviving amid the trauma of sexual abuse and growing up in poverty.

The third member of the clique is a socio-pathic teen, who has been raised in a fascist household, and turns to racism, extreme cruelty, and self-hatred for answers to the misery of teen life.




The novel takes inside the minds of all three of these characters, the first two through interviews, and the final through his diaries. We learn about how this strange combination of people come to be friends, and how one of them is manipulating the two of them for his own, brutal, and heartless ends.

The novel is a portrait of the insanity of youth in 90s, and shows how it led to countless insane acts of violence. The novel shows how even while capitalism was booming, material goods flowed freely into many pockets, and “stuff” and success were in abundance for some, an emptiness existed. Insanity and cruelty was still a feature of life under a ruthless economic system.

Myer’s work is full of power. He shows real people, with real emotions, and real feelings, reacting to the real problems of everyday life under a racist, sexist, and heartless capitalist order.

Myer’s work reminds me both of the films of Jean-Luc Godard, the novels of Richard Wright, and the paintings of Social Realism. The two works highlighted above are Native Son, Tout Va Bien, and the radical murals of Rivera forged into one.

They are full of emotion, and will lead anyone to an understanding of the problems with our economic system, and how they mold the minds of people.

Walter Dean Myers is a must read for all ages, despite the fact that his novels are directed at teen readers. Myers novels show reality, highlighting parts of it so often, unforgivably ignored. Go read Monster and Shooter, then feel the power within them, and go out and change the world.

Ann Coulter: Neo-Conservative Museum Piece...

Book Review: "Guilty" by Ann Coulter

I don’t know why I read this book, but for some reason it caught my fancy and attention. I wondered how Ann Coulter would suffice now that her political party was out of office, and her previous mantra, accusing all who dissented from the policies of the “commander in chief” as treasonous would no longer suffice. I also wondered if Ann Coulter, like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and others would now be presenting herself as an “American Revolutionary” defying a “socialist” President.

My expectations of Coulter jumping off the Neo-Conservative train to nowhere and reviving the politics of Barry Goldwater and Robert Taft like her right-wing cohorts were disappointed.

Coulter’s book is mainly just yet another attack on the media, written almost formulaically at some points. Most of her chapters point to a perceived bias or hypocrisy in the press. She points to favorable coverage of a liberal politician, pundit, or activist. She then contrasts it with the unfavorable coverage of a conservative politician, pundit, or activist. She then throws in a usually cleverly worded and humorously sarcastic jab.

Most of the books chapters are merely compilations of passages modeling the above formula. She has one chapter in which she declares unmarried mothers to be the root of all social ills. She never seems to look at what may cause single motherhood’s existence or even the context in which it takes place. With her logic all social problems would evaporate if out of wedlock pregnancy were abolished or criminalized.

The only section of the book that was a remotely relevant political point was one where she lists Presidential Assassins, and claims to illustrate that all of them were ideologically leftists. She uses this as a basis to attempt to lampoon the media’s concern about the possibility of President Obama being assassinated.

Her historical errors make this selection laughable in some places, and tragically sad in others, when it is realized some would be capable of believing them.

Coulter’s tirade begins by calling John Wilkes Booth, the stage actor who shot Abraham Lincoln of being a leftist. Her basis for such a claim, is that Booth opposed the civil war, making him an “anti-war” activist, and that he shot Lincoln who was a Republican, making him a liberal like the Democrats. She also points out that Booth like leftist Sean Penn was an actor, as if this is somehow relevant.

These claims are utterly foolish on a number of levels. The associates of Booth and many other southern aristocratic families opposed the civil war because they were supporters of the racist, semi-fuedal order in the south, not because they were pacifists, hippies, or Marxist-Leninists.

Likewise, at the time of the civil war, the Republican Party was a liberal party, far to the left of the Republicans of our modern times. Lincoln was an outspoken supporter of organized labor, and in his campaign for re-election, he was endorsed by Karl Marx and the vast majority of U.S. socialists. Lincoln’s official basis for waging the civil war was opposition to the conservative mantra of “state’s rights,” used to this day by conservatives to defend Sodomy Laws and Abortion Bans, just as it was used to defend slavery in the 1860s.

Booth’s assassination of Lincoln was done because Booth was a wealthy “southern gentleman” filled with racial and class prejudice. He viewed the civil war as a violation of his freedom and “liberty.” Booth was also known to justify slavery by reciting passages from the Bible, in which slaves are ordered to obey their masters.

If Booth had not been killed shortly after his murder of Lincoln, and somehow lived until the present time, he would most likely be found today shouting “Sic Sempre Tyrannus” at Healthcare Town Hall Meetings with an AK-47 in place of his pistol.

Other claims are similarly deceptive. James Garfeild’s assassin, contrary to Coulter’s claims, was motivated by anger that the nepotism he had depended on, in the form of a high-paying government job, did not come to pass.

Lynn Fromm, the attempted assassin of Gerald Ford, though semi-accurately described as a “hippie” and a known drug user, committed the murder in support of the far-right, delusional, Objectivist, Libertarian cult leader Charles Manson, who based his cult’s mass murder on his specific interpretation of the book of Revelations.

I will of course, concede that the assassin of William Mckinnley was indeed a crazed Anarchist practicing ultra-left terrorism. I also concede that Sara Jane Moore, who attempted to shoot Gerald Ford was a young New Left radical, who indeed highly admired the bizarre Maoist-influenced sect called the Symbionese Liberation Army that kidnapped Patty Hearst.

Lee Harvey Oswald’s politics have been debated since the very day of he shot Kennedy. It is hardly an irrefutable fact that he was a Marxist, as Coulter presents the case. Many find it odd that he never so much as met another U.S. communist, but did a great deal of weird things such as write bizarre lengthy letters to Communist Party and Socialist Workers Party in stereo-typical “commie” language, looking as if they were a basis for a cover story.

John Hinkley shot Ronald Reagan because he was motivated by a crush on Actress Jodie Foster. Is hetro-sexual romance a leftist cause according to Coulter? Hinkley was also somewhat obsessed with “Catcher in the Rye,” a 1940s stream of consciousness novel that is quite anti-gay in more than a few of its passages.

Coulter claims that only famous person ever killed by right-wing assassins was Martin Luther King. This is an extremely odd delusion.

Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party was assassinated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, hardly a leftist grouping.

The National Guard of Ohio, after being ordered to load their rifles by a right-wing governor, James Rhodes, murdered four Kent State College students.

James Rector was shot and killed by the National Guard of California, sent in to Berkeley on orders of Ronald Reagan.

Emmit Till was beaten to death by two conservative southerners after he whistled at a white woman in 1954, violating the “traditional values” of the south.

Members of the right-wing “Fraternal Order of Police” shot Amadou Diallo 41 times for reaching for his wallet, saying they thought it was a gun.

Unlike the assassins Coulter names, all of the above listed murderers were never convicted in a court of law, and walked free.

Another member of the right-wing “Fraternal Order of Police”, Dan White, shot the Mayor of San Francisco and a city councilman named Harvey Milk who was the first openly Gay public official in U.S. history. White received only a three-year sentence for this double murder on the basis of the “twinky defense” in which he claimed that junk food had altered his mind causing the murder.

The Ku Klux Klan proudly murdered multiple civil rights workers in Mississippi, bombed multiple black churches killing thousands, and threatened to murder John Lennon on National TV, when protesting against The Beatles performance in Cleveland, Ohio.

The KKK has carried out a great deal of political violence. They can hardly be described as a “liberal” and “tolerant” organization, despite their violent tendencies and Ann Coulter’s need for them to be conservative in order for her logic to line up.

Timothy Mcviegh, the bomber of Oklahoma City’s Federal Building was a proud NRA member, Gulf War Veteran, and Christian Fundamentalist. His favorite book was The Turner Diaries a novel about a dystopia where oppressed white males wage Guerilla warfare against a socialistic US. This book, that also was the favorite of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of the Columbine Massacre, is basically a milder version of the Reagan Era’s classically bad cult movie Red Dawn.

Currently the majority of prison murders in the U.S. are carried out by the Aryan Brotherhood, an organization that is devoted to anti-communism, white supremacy, strict border control, segregation, and Fundamentalist Christianity. This prison gang that has killed thousands is not by any stretch a “liberal” organization.

Ann Coulter’s claim that right-wing violence is non-existent contradicts factual reality. Even the FBI, a group she champions, admits that the Anti-Abortion movement, and the economic libertarians and constitutionalists of the “Montana Freeman” are the most active and dangerous violent political tendencies.

Most of Coulter’s book has no real relevance to me as a far left Marxist-Leninist. Attack after attack on Democratic Politicians is largely irrelevant to me.

I found her claims that Bill Clinton was involved in predatory lending to be quite convincing and interesting. However, I do not follow her logic that because of Clinton’s hypocrisy one must support the Republican Party by default. Hypocrisy on the part of one’s opponents is not an argument in support of one’s own viewpoint. Coulter needs to realize that calling prominent liberals hypocrites, does not in any way give credit to conservative causes, it only accurately and justifiably in some instances exposes those claiming to oppose them.

Coulter seems to be losing her skills a bit. The media seems to focus so much on Coulter’s nasty and offensive quotes that this latest book seems to lack anything else. One almost thinks Coulter wrote the majority of the book, hoping to come up with offensive quotes that would anger even the mainstream media, and get her the “controversy” she longs for.

She has realized by now that such things translate to free advertising; being able to get nasty with Matt Lauer, and other pundits in the “liberal media” which give her a voice, and throw her soft-ball questions. It is interesting that the only time Coulter has been forced to explain whether she is a six-day creationist or not was on British Television, yet she claims the U.S. press is out to get her.

If Coulter continues to sound like a Neo-Conservative of the Bill O’rielly variety, she may become a museum piece in Rightist U.S. History. The right-wing propaganda industry is now much more interested in works like Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism or Glenn Beck’s Common Sense.

Though these books are equally and in some ways more deceptive, they focus on conservative principles and hope to address key historical and cultural questions that bear relevance to modern political debate, not modern political personalities and their character or lack thereof.

Coulter seems to be stuck in the Bush years, when Conservative punditry consisted simply of calling opposition to the status quo unpatriotic and cowardly. In the new age of capitalist economic depression, the right-wing is discovering the need to create the illusion of radicalism, as all working people, even the most right-wing, are filled with anger and a desire to “stir the pot.”

Bushist Neo-Conservativism and its “know nothing” “my country right or wrong” politics will not suffice to satisfy the urge to radical change that accompanies empty stomachs and mass evictions.

John Steinbeck: What is a Red?

Campus Progress: Unlike Glenn Beck, Thomas Paine did have "Common Sense"

Below I reprint an article from Campus Progress, which contrasts the ideologies of Glenn Beck, and Thomas Paine, whose legacy Mr. Beck claims to be living in his new book. Very informative.

Trying to make 'Sense' of Glenn Beck
The conservative icon’s latest book blends Beck’s typical hyperbole with a gross misrepresentation of Thomas Paine’s political views.

By Michael Corcoran
August 3, 2009


Glenn Beck is a particularly egregious example of the larger-than-life conservative punditry class that gained almost regal status during the administration of President George W. Bush. The host of popular shows on Fox News and radio, Beck’s daily musings are so heated and fiery that he often reaches the verge of tears, his voice squeaks in anger and his inaudible words cease to sound like they come from a human. (For those with the stomach for it, YouTube offers many treasures highlighting this tendency, including this clip where Beck actually threatens to "vaporize" a caller who disagrees with him.) It is precisely this attempt at populist rage that led to his latest book, Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: the Case Against an out-of-control government, inspired by Thomas Paine. It just may be the perfect symbol of his hyper-ambition and the outlandish anger that is reflected by many of today’s conservatives.

In Common Sense, Beck’s nonsense goes way beyond misguided right-wing talking points and resorts to a grotesque distortion of American history. His goal, by his own admission was to “re-write” Thomas Paine’s Common Sense—one of the most influential pieces of political writing in American history—and start a new conservative revolution. "Make no mistake," he writes, "a (non-violent) revolution is needed to restore America." It is ambitious endeavor no doubt and has proved to be a major hit; it tops on the New York Times‘ best seller list. But intellectually the book is an abysmal failure. This is because Beck’s efforts to channel Thomas Paine—one of the great progressive thinkers in U.S. history—are patently absurd.

Beck’s 174-page book (the last quarter of which is a reprint of Paine’s pamphlet) is mostly a tirade against government spending. His main targets are social welfare spending, progressive taxation and the occasional rant against the destruction of America’s pious roots. These very themes contrast mightily with the views of Paine, turning the book into something of a bad joke before one page is actually turned. While Paine did view government as a necessary evil, and warned against excessive debt, he was by no means a modern-day libertarian—in fact, quite the opposite.

Paine in his own time was radically progressive—in some ways socialist—and on most issues would be way to the left of the typical parameters of debate in Washington D.C. In the 1775 writing Agrarian Justice, Paine became among the first in the colonies to advocate for a "guaranteed minimum income." Sounding a lot more like Eugene Debs than Beck, Paine’s proposal was to "create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person when arrived at the age of twenty-one years … for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property."

Paine wrote:

Taking it then for granted that no person ought to be in a worse condition when born under what is called a state of civilization, than he would have been had he been born in a state of nature, and that civilization ought to have made, and ought still to make, provision for that purpose, it can only be done by subtracting from property a portion equal in value to the natural inheritance it has absorbed.

Paine made it clear that he thought freedom was infringed by unmerited inequity—what philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin refers to as "positive liberty," or having the power and resources to act to fulfill one’s own potential. Beck, like most conservatives, unambiguously defines freedom in the mold of "negative liberty," or freedom from government restraint.

"Wake up America!" he writes. "Capitalism isn’t about money, it’s about freedom—the freedom to try and fail that made the United States the richest industrial nation in the world." It is also interesting that, given that Beck’s book pays homage to Paine—who published the first essay in America advocating for abolition— Beck makes no mention of the role of slavery had in the early development of the U.S. economy.



Indeed, Beck fumes over most any kind of progressive taxation or shared services: Chapter 5 is actually titled "The Cancer of Progressivism." He constantly rails against the evils of universal health care, minimum wage hikes, welfare, and small tax increases on the rich. In Common Sense, he writes that it’s unfair that those who "worked hard, lived prudently, spent wisely,” must be bailed out at the expense of the poor.

"The rich are being vilified and targeted because they are rich," Beck writes of Obama-era "class warfare." He has a particular concern about the nation’s youth, who have become increasingly skeptical of modern-day capitalism in recent polls, decrying them as the types that "prefer to be led and fed by the state for free." They are, he insists, "sheep willing to be shorn and molded by their master—yet their ranks are likely to swell as the economic crisis worsens."

With such sharp language one might assume the United States under Obama has implemented a Soviet-style planned economy, but, alas, Beck’s major gripe is that the Democrats implemented a large, but desperately-needed stimulus package, which was gladly received by conservative governors across the country, save a few ideologues.

During the 2008 presidential election Beck threw regular tantrums about how Obama was a socialist for wanting to allow Bush tax cuts to expire on those making more than $250,000 a year. These are marginal tax increases, comparable to what the rich paid under Ronald Reagan’s tax plan. So surely, if Paine was a guest on Beck’s show in 2009 and advocated for a guaranteed minimum income—a direct transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor—an infuriated Beck’s eyes would pop out of his head as he smeared Paine as a French-loving, socialist “little pinhead."

Beck’s strong affinity for the need for an increased role of religion in society also further emphasizes his fundamental differences with Paine. Progressives, Beck writes, "recognize that religion is a unifying force and a counterbalance to state power, so they believe that it must either be harnesses by the state or destroyed." Putting aside his ridiculous assumption that all progressives wish to destroy unity through the use of state power, what is telling about his chapter on religion and morals is that Paine’s words are nowhere to be found. Clearly, this is because, including Paine’s actual thoughts on the matter would further reveal the book’s fatal flaw.

Paine was a staunch critic of religion and Christian doctrines, arguing that they thwarted free-thinking and logic to the detriment society. "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit," Paine wrote in The Age of Reason. It is no wonder that Paine’s utterances on the subject are entirely absent from Beck’s version of Common Sense.

Beck’s book is more evidence of a resurgence of conservative populism aimed at channeling public anger. Progressives would be wise to take notice. As crazed as Beck seems, it must also be acknowledged that his voice is heard—and often. For strategic reasons, his existence simply cannot be ignored: progressives must take great pains to counter his blather. For it is true that Glenn Beck has a large and enthusiastic audience; it is also true that America can learn a lot from Thomas Paine. But Common Sense dictates that the possibility of these two realities becoming in any way morphed together is beyond frightening.

Michael Corcoran is a correspondent for The Boston Globe’s metro desk and graduated from Emerson College in 2007.

John Galt and Tom Riddle

The Harry Potter books of J.K. Rowling, and the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand both contain two very similar characters, with similar philosophies.

In Rand’s book, we have a character named John Galt. The first words of the novel are “Who is John Galt?”, a question that is repeated throughout the book non-stop. Later, we discover that this mysterious person is an industrialist, and a “superman”, who organizes the intellectuals, innovators, and free-thinkers of the world to form a new country, where they are not forced to bear the burden of “the mob” of common people.

John Galt gives a lengthy speech beginning with the words “This is John Galt speaking…” In the speech he proclaims that the highest form of Morality is working purely in one’s own self-interest, and purging one’s soul of its “altruism” i.e. compassion and willingness to care for others. Galt calls upon his minions to purge themselves of their emotions, their feelings, and their connections to others, and to become emotionless, self-centered beings who accept the only true virtue of selfishness.

Rowling’s books have a similar character. Tom Riddle, who later changes his name to “Lord Voldemort”, is an impoverished orphan. He is poor, abused, and grows up in misery. However, he soon learns that he is extremely intelligent and has some very good skills. He then uses these skills to build himself up higher and higher. He refuses to let teachers, friends, and others get in his way, and soon he becomes on of the most powerful people in the world, stepping on others and repressing those who get in his way.

Riddle seeks to purge the world of “undesirable” people he calls “mudbloods.” He also gives a speech in which he proclaims “there is no good or evil, only power and those who seek it.”

If John Galt and Tom Riddle were homosexual and existing in the same realm of fantasy, they would undoubtedly be a couple. They share the same world view. Selfishness is a virtue. Ordinary people are inferior. Stepping on others in order to succeed is the way of the world. Glamorization of the “rags to riches” complex, etc.

Ironically, Riddle and Galt have opposite literary roles. Riddle is an antagonist, and Galt is a protagonist. Rand worships the ideology they proclaim, Rowling views it as the incarnation of evil.

It seems the battle in our modern world is simple.

It’s Ayn Rand v. J.K. Rowling.

I know who I’m cheering for.

J.K. Rowling on British Communist Jessica Mitford: "The First It Girl"

In light of my Harry Potter Review, I found the article below, Rowling's review of "Decca", a collection of letters from the British Born Communist and Spanish Civil War Veteran.

J.K. Rowling reviews Decca: the Letters of Jessica Mitford ed by Peter Y Sussman

Jessica Mitford has been my heroine since I was 14 years old, when I overheard my formidable great-aunt discussing how Mitford had run away at the age of 19 to fight with the Reds in the Spanish Civil War: 'And she charged a camera to her poor father's account to take with her!' It was the camera that captivated me, and I asked for further details. My great-aunt, who taught classics and approved of a thirst for knowledge, even of a questionable kind, produced a very old copy of Hons and Rebels, the first volume of Jessica Mitford's autobiography.

Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford gives, as letters usually do, a much fuller picture of the writer than either of her own autobiographies, and I finished reading feeling even fonder and more admiring of her than before (it would have been what Decca calls 'rather narst in a way' if I had not, given that I named my first daughter after her).

The letters span a life that was remarkable by any standards – the teenage aristocrat who fled England, eventually becoming a Communist in America; the runaway wife turned war widow who became a civil rights campaigner, campaigning journalist and, finally, author of the huge bestseller The American Way of Death, an exposé of the corrupt practices of the funeral industry. And all this was quite apart from her membership of that band of prototype 'It Girls', the Mitford Sisters.

Decca was characteristically amusing on what she called 'The Mitford Industry'. After the success of the US bestseller The I Hate Cats Book, she wrote, '"The I Hate Mitfords Book" might go well here – followed as in the US by "100 Ways to Kill a Mitford"'. To Katharine ('Kay') Graham, publisher of the Washington Post: 'The Mitford Girls [the musical] folded in London, so that's ONE chore you can avoid. (Is said to be possibly opening in GERMANY, serves those wretched Krauts right if so.)'

Letters to, and about, her sisters will be the first many readers turn to: Nancy, the Francophile writer; Deborah, 11th Duchess of Devonshire; and, very occasionally, Pam, usually dubbed the 'quiet' or 'rural' Mitford (Decca was heartily amused by the Private Eye spoof, 'I, Doreen, Memoirs of the Unknown Mitford Sister').

Decca never forgave the Nazi sympathies of her second-eldest sister, Diana Mosley, though a ceasefire was called for both of them to attend Nancy's deathbed. By her own admission, Decca's dislike was compounded by the bitterness she felt about the death in action of her first husband, Esmond Romilly.

Given this, it was unexpected and touching to read the letter she sent to Deborah when Oswald Mosley died: '… Diana must be so sad and lonely. For obvious reasons I shan't be writing, but if inclined do transmit message of sympathy. Much love, Henderson Oh dear what a v. odd & awkward letter. But you know how it is, Hen.'

There are rows too, the most heated concerning the Mitford Industry itself. 'Why should you be the final arbiter of everything about the family?' she writes furiously to Deborah at one point. The apogee comes when the family's most notorious skeleton is dragged forcibly from the cupboard: David Pryce-Jones's biography of Unity, to whom Decca was closest in youth, and who became an arch-fascist and favourite of Hitler's.

Decca thinks the story ought to be told; the other sisters are in favour of suppression; and as the exchanges become ever more inflammatory, the reader feels that guilty sense of eavesdropping which only the most disingenuous will pretend is not one of the greatest thrills of reading other people's correspondence.

Decca's letters sing with the qualities that first made her so attractive to me. Incurably and instinctively rebellious, brave, adventurous, funny and irreverent, she liked nothing better than a good fight, preferably against a pompous and hypocritical target. 'As you can see,' she wrote, while embroiled in a public campaign to close down the fraudulent Famous Writers School correspondence course, 'it's all rather enjoyable, mainly because they're such super-respectable right-wing asses.'

She was riddled with contradictions, as she knew herself; the least 'politically correct' Communist imaginable, she was once reprimanded by the party for advertising a fundraiser by promising 'Girls! Girls! Girls!' on the promotional poster, which was felt to show a questionable stance on 'The Woman Question'. Frequently reproved for levity at Communist Party meetings, she unashamedly enjoyed her forays into a more moneyed world ('lapping up the luxury' at Kay Graham's, and of course staying at the incomparably beautiful Chatsworth).

Despite her loathing of housework and indifference to dirt and clutter, there are nevertheless glimpses of Lady Redesdale's daughter ('paper napkins, which I did think squalid'.) To a Communist who had written her a fan letter, she replied: 'I try … to write things that I hope will be useful in the [Communist] struggle – eg the prison book … I realise that often I get absolutely besotted by trivial subjects which haven't got much to do with the class struggle, but I fear that is a fault of character.'



Peter Sussman has done a masterly job of editing these letters, which must have been a veritable minefield given that, as he says, 'Decca's views were often stated intensely and provocatively.' His footnotes are exemplary, illuminating at least one relationship that had eluded me through 27 years of reading about the Mitfords.

By grouping the letters chronologically, dividing them according to periods, he manages to give unobtrusive form and structure to a life that was lived chaotically. The only possible quibble, and I think it was unavoidable, is that we are given all the unbearably sad details of her first husband's death before plunging into the most touching love letters that I have ever read, sent to Esmond while he was training with the Canadian airforce, so that their humour and warmth is overlain with a chill of foreboding from the start.

The culmination of this sadness is reading Decca's letter to her mother, after receiving the telegram that 23-year-old Esmond was missing: 'I'm absolutely certain that Esmond is all right … sometimes it takes as long as 6 months to hear about prisoners.' At night, Sussman tells us, the friend with whom she and her young daughter were staying could hear her talking in her sleep: 'Oh, the water was so cold, the water was so cold …'

Decca's own death was smoking-related. How I identified with her attempts to give up. Aversion therapy, she wrote, was useless. Her second husband, Bob Treuhaft, 'collected a ton of disgusting butts & ashes, and all I did was to breath in deeply & say "HOW divine."' By the time the cancer was detected it had spread to her brain. Years previously, Evelyn Waugh had criticised The American Way of Death, for its lack of a 'plainly stated attitude towards death'. She replied via her sister Nancy: '… tell him of course I'm against it'.

On the evidence of her final letters, her attitude was an almost cheery acceptance. Her last written words were addressed to her husband ('Bob, it's so ODD, dying …') and her adored 'Hen', her sister Deborah, and they are painfully moving.

Her last laugh, however, was had at the expense of her ancient enemy, Service Corporation International, which she had pursued for years, alleging exorbitant and immoral practices in the funeral industry. On Decca's instructions, her assistant wrote to them after her death including a bill for funeral expenses: 'Ms. Mitford feels that you should pay the bill. In her own words "after all, look at all the fame I've brought them!" '

Review: "Thank you, Cindy, for leading the way."

Myth America: The 10 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution by Cindy Sheehan

When I first heard the name Cindy Sheehan I was soon to become a senior in High School. I heard her name on National Public Radio, in the living room of my house where I was bored out of my mind as the summer began to rap itself up, and I was soon to return to my last year of school before leaving my small rural Ohio town and go to college in the big city of Cleveland.

Hearing about Cindy Sheehan was very inspiring.

In my town, I had been called to see the principal for handing out anti-war leaflets. I had gotten into physical confrontations about the war with students soon to enlist in the military, and make the tragic mistake that Casey Sheehan made years before.

I was told more times than I could count that I needed “Shut up and support the troops.”

I was told that being against the war was unpatriotic, disrespectful, rude, insane, and meant that I “hated America.”


Sheehan and the Media

When I heard what Cindy Sheehan was doing, picketing Bush’s ranch to demand an answer from him as to why her son had been killed, I smiled. Cindy had lost her son in the Iraq war, so there was no way anyone could accuse her of being unpatriotic or “America Hating.” Those people who blindly supported the war could not dismiss her as another “childish” radical. They would have to listen and engage with what she had to say about the war on Iraq. Or at least, so I thought.

The hate machine of the US media began attacking her relentlessly. She was first called an “anti-Semite.” Then lying e-mails circulated that claimed she didn’t even raise her own son. I recall how she was said to be “exploiting her son’s death”, while Bush was clearly exploiting every soldiers death in order to send more and more to the same fate.

But the mere fact that her protest received coverage at all from the U.S. privately owned for profit media was a sign that the war was increasingly growing unpopular with many people.

Cindy Sheehan: A Proletarian Mother

I did not meet Cindy in person until over a year later. In Cleveland, the U.S. Labor Against War (USLAW) coalition of trade unionists held its national gathering at a hotel. I went to the gathering as a young activist college student, and I met Cindy Sheehan. What struck me about her appearance was that she did not have the counter-culture image of so much of the left.

Cindy Sheehan was a working class woman. When she was a child, her father had fed the family by working at a Lockheed Martin Plant in California. As an adult, her job had been running an after-school program from the Catholic Church where she worked as a youth minister. Like most working class Mother’s she devoted a great deal of her life to raising her children and struggling to give them a good life.


The Journey

The journey that Cindy went on following her son’s death, is emblematic of the journey that millions upon millions of everyday workers will be going down in years to come.

Cindy had always been a Democrat, and leaned to the left a little. When she began her protests she still was a faithful supporter of the Democratic Party. But soon she saw that the Democrats were not going to end the war. She saw this very well when, with much of her help and support, they took control of Congress and did nothing to end the brutal war that had killed her son.

For a time, Cindy became associated with non-socialist feminist groupings, speaking of “matriotism not patriotism” in one of her e-mails. Cindy spoke highly of Ron Paul for a period as well.

Like many in the working class are currently doing, Sheehan wanted to end the ills of this system. She wanted to know what caused them, and she searched for answers.

Soon, she found some.



Cindy had been scoffed at and ignored by the President of the United States, the country for which her son had died. Yet, she was embraced by the President of Venezuela, who was moving his country towards Socialism. He did not dismiss her or attack, but hugged her and led those watching to chant “Cindy! Cindy! Cindy!” with him. It seemed that not long afterward, Cindy herself would be moving down the socialist road as well.

“Myth America”

Her new book "Myth America: The 10 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution", is not a liberal or even reformist manifesto by any means. The book is an open endorsement of Socialism, and attack on the “Robber Class” of capitalists.

Sheehan calls the bourgeoisie the “Robber Class” and the rest of the human race the “Robbed Class.” In Chapter 7 of the book, she gives a lengthy defense of the Cuban Revolution, the fruits of which she has seen with her own eyes. She dares to tell the truth about Cuba’s healthcare, education, and housing programs which are a testament to Socialism’s practicality.

I feared a bit when I saw that she had chapters on such topics as 9-11 Truth and the Federal Reserve. I feared that she may be embracing the Internet cult of Ludwig Von Mises and Ron Paul’s disciples, but my fears were put away.

Sheehan shows in her chapter on the Federal Reserve System, how it is incarnation of capitalism. She explains how the Federal Reserve was created by the “robber class” to serve its own interests. Sheehan denounces the ridiculous Larouchian calls for a return to the “Gold Standard”, which she explains is just as harmful. Instead, Sheehan calls for decentralized, local, community-controlled banking systems.

In a sense, Sheehan calls not even for the nationalization of banking in the U.S., but for the Socialization of it. She calls for we the people to control the banks, the fifth plank of Marx’s Communist Manifesto, which, contrary to the claims the John Birch Kooks, is not enacted by a private corporation called the Federal Reserve that serves the rich.

Sheehan says some things that many of her fellow U.S. workers desperately need to hear. She explains how elections do not matter, and how little change has come about a result of the new administration. Sheehan also explains how the U.S. does not have the highest standard of living in the world, and is hardly “The Greatest Nation in the Universe.”


Common Sense Socialism

Sheehan speaks against environmental degradation, and goes further by explaining that the root cause of the earth’s destruction is the profit lust of this “robber class” she speaks against. If only so many within the environmental movement itself could understand that the problem is not that we don’t have enough “green jobs” or an “eco-friendly capitalism.”

For a movement based on science, it seems to have taken a non-scientist like Cindy to make the scientific observation that if it is more profitable to pollute, pollution will continue, as long as profit remains the bases of the economy.

Sheehan does not even separate herself from Communism in her conclusion, and openly says that she wants a “Revolution.”

Sheehan speaks repeatedly in the book of the mass number of workers being thrown out of their homes and calls for evicted workers to join together and move to a tent city outside of the white house, demanding an end to the rule of the Robber Class.

I am force to think not only of the great Communist-led Hunger Marches of the 1930s, but also of the recent People’s Summit Tent City held in downtown Detroit, which I attended and joined hundreds of working class people in gathering to oppose the rich capitalists who met several blocks away to plot how to further rob the working people of the world.


Education for Revolution

Cindy Sheehan did not go into the ditch outside of Bush’s ranch in 2005 because she was a Communist. Cindy Sheehan went to the ditch in Crawford Texas in the heat of the late summer because her son had been killed in Iraq. Cindy confronted the system that killed her son, though at the time, she didn’t even fully oppose it.

Cindy Sheehan was forced to become a socialist by life experience. Cindy was educated, not by dusty Marxist textbooks, but in the school known as Class Struggle.

Cindy wanted the unjust war that took her son away to end. She soon could do nothing but confront the reality that the system was responsible for waging and continuing that evil war.

Hugo Chavez came to office in Venezuela advocating the “Third Way” between extreme capitalism and socialism. But like Cindy, he saw that the private corporations would not allow him to even make slight reforms. After a U.S. backed coup attempt, Chavez was won over to the system which abolishes the rule of the “robber class” and lets the people rule through control of the banks, factories, natural resources, and industries.

Socialism is the solution to the contradictions we face in this world. When people take sides in these contradictions, and try to change the world for the better, they will either give up and go home, or see that the symptoms they battle all stem from the same disease.

I hope that millions of other working class men and women, in the country which has so long been a center of right-wing chauvinism everywhere but its college campuses, will be won over politically as they see capitalism devour itself, swallowing their homes, jobs, livelihoods, and freedoms with it.

The journey on which Sheehan embarked from the death of her son to the writing of Myth America is a journey that the entire human race is currently making. Thank you Cindy, for leading our way.

Video: "The So-Called Primitive Accumulation" By Karl Marx

Fred Goldstein's Ground Breaking Book: FREE ONLINE!

http://www.lowwagecapitalism.com//Low-WageCapitalism-lores.pdf

This groundbreaking book, is available free online. This book is a non-sectarian, highly researched and documented portrait of modern capitalism, its attacks on the working class, as well as an analysis of how to fight back and build a better future.

This book is not a sectarian plug for Workers World Party. This book is not philosophical obfuscation or the ramblings of a leftist intellectual. This book is accessible to all who want to see how we can fight back against capitalism, and be victorious. This book is full of documentations, sources, citations, and proof of its claims.

The book has been endorsed by Michael Parenti, Howard Zinn, Abayomi Azikiwe, Greg Elich, Clarence Thomas of ILWU, Bertell Olman, Berna Ellorin, Ignacio Meneses, and many others.

The book is what all who want to fight capitalism in the current epoch should be reading. Download it for free, at the link above!!!!!

Video Book Review: "Low-Wage Capitalism" By Fred Goldstein

Dissecting Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism"

An Interpretation of "The State and Revolution" by V.I. Lenin

Richard Dawkins Doesn't Speak for Me

By Staff Writer Caleb T. Maupin

From the latest issue of Maelstrom Magazine

Yes, I am an atheist. I do not believe in God. I do not believe in any of the traditional religions. But I'm not a dick about it, and I'm certainly not British.

Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens' God is not Great, do not represent the way I view the world.

Yes, countless horrible, horrible things have been done in the name of religion. I wish more Christians knew about the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, Sodomy Laws, and all the horrors that went along with that.

But one thing these “voices of atheism” never speak to, is the good things religion has done. Religion doesn't have to preach oppression. Some religions preach social justice. If it weren't for religion, how many people would donate to charity? Let's not forget that Martin Luther King was a Christian through and though, and that Malcolm X was very devoted to Islam.

Yes, I don't believe, but I have learned to remember why people turn to religion. In the world we live in, where there is so much chaos; where people are losing their homes at astounding rates; where the Department of Agriculture says 11.9% of families are “food insecure,” where people see homeless people on their way to work, and people are also aware of the fact that they can get laid off at any time and lose their job, people need something to cling to. People need to know that there is something worth living for other than their next paycheck, or the upcoming Hillary Duff album.

This is what Karl Marx meant, when he called religion “the opium of the people.” Opium is something people used, in Marx's time, to numb their pain and suffering in what Marx went on to say were “soul-less conditions.” Karl Marx, in the same article said that religion was “the heart of a heartless world.”

Hitchens and Dawkins seem to live in an intel-lectual elitist fantasy land that says that religion is the source of the world problems, and if peo-ple just become intellectuals like them, and em-braced their “scientific method,” that everything would be all right. But no matter what people believe about the world beyond, people will still be starving, people will still die in unjust wars, the list goes on.

What is important to me, not as an atheist, but as a communist, is that people fight against injustice. I don‟t care if you are fighting for the “class struggle” or fighting for Jesus Christ. No matter what, basic human morality, religious or non-religious says that, as Martin Luther King said, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

I will say this, if God exists, which I do not believe, but if he did, he would not be a god that says to obey an unjust government, he would not be a god that says women and oppressed people should stay “in their place.” Any God which is truly a force of righteousness would say “fight for a new world.”

If that's your God, you and I are comrades de-spite our metaphysical differences.

REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF MAELSTROM STAFF

Book Review: Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" (SARCASTIC)

By Staff Writer Caleb T. Maupin

From the Latest Issue of Maelstrom Magazine

Jonah Goldberg hit the nail on the head. Liberals are fascists. He made a book with a cool picture on the cover, convincing us that y‟all were wrong when you thought fascism was right-wing. Goldberg lets us know that fascism is really a liberal idea.
His basis for this? A number of well thought out, logical points. For example, Hitler was a vegetarian. So are a lot of liberals.

It gets better. He argues that because in Nazi Germany there were bullhorns shouting orders and state propaganda at people all the time, that Hillary Clinton is a fascist, because in her book It Takes A Village she advocates television programs that give parenting advice being shown in public places.

Thank goodness we have great intellectuals like Jonah Goldberg. You see, people seem to have forgotten that Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini were really into tolerance and equality. Hitler loved people with different religions, sexual orientations, and races so much he gassed 14 million of them. That‟s what liberal tolerance is all about.

Adolph and Benito were really big on worker‟s rights as well. That‟s why they made trade unions illegal, and killed all of their lead-ers.

Oh, and just in case you wondered, Communism and fascism are the same thing, Mr. Goldberg reminds us. Sure the first group Hitler banned was the Communist Party, and he had millions of communists shot and executed. General historical rule: usually when one group totally wipes out another group and promises to wipe another group off the face of the earth, they are exactly the same.

Oh, and Goldberg also argues that be-cause leftists oppose Zionism and Hitler was anti-Semitic, they are the same. Yes, I‟m sure Hitler‟s disagreement with Judaism was based on compassion for brown-skinned Palestinians being persecuted in Israel, a country which wasn‟t created until after he died.

You see, Mr. Goldberg is doing what more people should be doing: convincing conservatives that what they already think is right. Were you a bit confused when your political science professor told you that Hitler was a staunch nationalist, militarist, sexist, homophobe, and racist, you know, kind of like Rush Limbaugh x1000? Don‟t worry, Jonah Goldberg will solve your confusion by reminding you that Fascism/Nazism, like all things that are bad, is the spawn of leftism, liberalism, tolerance, and compassion.

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