Review: "The Soviet Story"

At the Libertarian Party of Iowa's state convention in March the keynote speaker, Dr. Yuri N. Maltsev, recommended watching the 2008 documentary "The Soviet Story." The film studies the fascinating relationship and similarities between the Soviet Union (USSR) and Nazi Germany. I just watched it and I too highly recommend the film. If you watch it, you will learn a lot about communism and our World War Two ally that they didn't teach you in school. It is available on Amazon video, YouTube and probably elsewhere.


The film first spends some time illustrating that communism and Nazism are not as different as many think. It shows how both are largely based on the writings of Marx & Engels. You'll see early Nazi symbology with the swastika literally between the hammer and sickle.


The film highlights the many mass extermination atrocities committed by the Soviet Union including The Holodomor, the deliberate starvation of 7 million Ukrainians in one year alone. The film attributes some 20 million total murders to Soviet communism over the course of its history. In his book "The Great Terror," researcher Robert Conquest puts that number at about 15 million. Whichever, it's a lot.


It's important that we remember and understand this bloody history, lest we repeat it. While the crimes of the Nazis have rightly been widely denounced and their ideology discredited as a result, the same can't be said for the communists. You can say, "Soviet communists made mistakes and had some excesses, but they were mostly right," among Western intelligentsia today, whereas saying the same thing about the Nazis would get you booed out of the room. While modern Germany condemns the Nazi regime, Vladimir Putin, current ruler of Russia, calls the collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century." Most American millennials wouldn't know to disagree with him.


The film also spends significant time on the wartime collaboration between the USSR and Nazi Germany. I was aware the two countries had a non-aggression pact with each other initially, but was unaware of the degree that the two regimes actively aided each other. There were plans on which country would get to consume which smaller countries, Poland was split between the two, the Soviets let the Nazis use their naval base to stage their invasion of Norway, the Soviet NKVD (secret police) taught the Nazi Gestapo torture techniques and how to set up concentration camps, and the Soviets provided food and materials to the Nazi war machine. When many Jews fled to the USSR to escape the Nazis, the NKVD rounded them up and turned them over to the Gestapo.


It's obvious that Stalin and Hitler were planning on carving up Europe for themselves before the two monsters began quarreling. This is not the image of our wonderful World War Two ally that we are often presented with in the West.


Please check out this film! You'll learn a lot. This is a Latvian film (Latvia being one of the three "Baltic states" that didn't appreciate their time under the boot of Soviet oppression) and there are several different versions of the film out there in different languages. Make sure you grab one in English.

Resistance Is NOT Futile!

"Resistance is futile," the evil Borg would warn enemies that they intended to assimilate into their collective on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It seems like we hear that exhortation from all types of progressive "experts" these days when it comes defending ourselves from those who would prey upon us.

While Colorado was passing its recent gun bans (including banning licensed concealed carry on college campuses), for instance, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs advised its students to vomit or urinate on themselves to repel a rapist. Active resistance could get the girl harmed, don't you know? This despite the fact that research going all the way back to the Jimmy Carter administration shows that of attempted rapes 32% were actually committed, but when a woman was armed with a gun or knife, only 3% of the attempted rapes were actually successful.

Rape isn't the only crime that armed defense has proven effective in resisting. After the Newton shootings President Obama called for a review of existing research on gun violence. The results he got probably weren't what he was looking for. The assessment from the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council concludes that crime victims who use guns in self-defense have lower injury rates than other victims.

One 2006 Florida State University study cited in the assessment found that "self-protection in general, both forceful and nonforceful, reduced the likelihood of property loss and injury, compared to nonresistance." It found that using a gun in self-defense reduced the risk of property loss as well minor or serious injury to the victim. In clinical language, it concludes: "Combined with the fact that injuries following resistance are almost always relatively minor, victim resistance appears to be generally a wise course of action." In other words, "Resist, damn it!"

You can see the macro-effects of individual armed resistance on our crime rates as well. Since violent crime peaked in 1991, twenty-four more states have enacted "shall issue" laws giving citizens a lawful means to carry the most effective tool of resistance. Researchers found that "when state concealed handgun laws went into effect[,] murders fell by 8.5 percent, and rapes and aggravated assaults fell by 5 and 7 percent.” In our nation we now see that gun ownership is at an all-time high while the nation's murder rate is at all-time lows. (Despite this, 56% of Americans think gun crime is worse than 20 years ago. Thank you mainstream media!)

Of course our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms wasn't meant just to give us the means to resist muggers, murderers and rapists. It also gives us a defense "against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers" (in the words of jurist and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story).

Although 65% of Americans believe the 2nd Amendment exists as a hedge against tyranny, I've heard this idea pooh-poohed by modern intelligentsia who believe that common citizens armed with light weapons would no longer be able to stand up to a foreign invader or domestic tyrant armed with heavy weapons and even nuclear weapons. ("Resistance is futile.")

However, there are numerous examples of primitive indigenous forces wreaking havoc on more-advanced foreign occupiers. The Afghans, for instance, were able to fight the Soviets for nearly a decade, eventually expelling them, and they have kept us hemorrhaging blood and treasure and unable to declare victory for over twelve years now.

Whether the tyrannical oppressor is foreign or domestic, in his book The War of the Flea, Robert Taber makes a convincing case that as long a guerrilla force retains the support and good will of the general populace it is very nearly unbeatable. An American resistance movement fighting honorably against despotism would no doubt retain a great deal of popular support from the American people.

Even if it were to fail, would it not be better to try? Better to stand against tyranny? Is not better to die on your feet than live on your knees? In The Gulag Archipelago,  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's book about the Soviet forced labor camp system, it is  recounted how the victims of Communist brutality regretted not standing up against their oppressors early on:

"During an arrest, you think since you are not guilty, how can they arrest you? Why should you run away? And how can you resist right then? After all, you’ll only make your situation worse; you will make it more difficult for them to sort out the mistake.

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family?

"Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?

"The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! We did not love freedom enough. Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself."

No wonder that our Founding Fathers wrote in several of their state Bills of Rights that, "The doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind." Whether it be against the petty crimes of street criminals or the high crimes of tyrants: Stand and resist!

1941

1941

by Benjamin R. Cashner

It was December seventh, he remembered well.
It brought the world to the brink of hell.
They came in low and dropped their bulk,
they reduced his ship to a burning hulk.

He says he can still here the sirens blare
on the whistling winds of winter's air.
But that was a long time ago, that fateful day,
so long ago it seems like yesterday.

Gary Johnson on Syria

Gary Johnson, 2012 Libertarian Candidate for President, released the following statement today regarding potential U.S. military intervention in Syria:

“No one disagrees that the use of chemical weapons in Syria is despicable, and the results tragic. However, those facts alone do not make going to war either justified or even a good idea. And while the Administration can parse words all day long, launching missiles or dropping bombs constitutes going to war.

“There is no clear U.S. interest in what is, in reality, a civil war on the other side of the globe. Likewise, there is nothing to indicate at this time that intervening in that civil war will benefit anyone -- either here in America or in Syria.

“The consequences of our military actions in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan should be a lesson to President Obama and others who appear determined to act without any meaningful strategic or national defense justification.”

Arming Our Enemies

Don't Forget Them This Memorial Day

Name of war, year and number of U.S. military killed and wounded:

American Revolutionary War 1775–1783 50,000

Northwest Indian War 1785–1795 1881+

Quasi-War 1798–1800 556

First Barbary War 1801–1805 138

Other actions against pirates 1800–1900  294+

Chesapeake–Leopard Affair 1807 21

War of 1812 1812–1815  ~25,000

Marquesas Expedition 1813–1814 7

Second Barbary War 1815 148

First Seminole War 1817–1818 83

First Sumatran Expedition 1832  13

Black Hawk War 1832  390

Second Seminole War 1835–1842 1535

Mexican–American War 1846–1848 17,435

Third Seminole War 1855–1858 53

Civil War 1861–1865 646,392 (Union Forces)

Dakota War of 1862 (Little Crow's War) 1862 220–263

Shimonoseki Straits 1863 10

Snake Indian War 1864–1868 158

Indian Wars 1865–1898 1,025

Red Cloud's War 1866–1868 226

Korea (Shinmiyangyo) 1871 12

Modoc War 1872–1873 144

Great Sioux War 1875–1877 525

Nez Perce War 1877 291

Bannock War 1878 34

Ute War 1879 67

Ghost Dance War 1890–1891 99

Sugar Point- Pillager Band of Chippewa Indians 1898 23

Spanish–American War 1898 4,068

Philippine–American War 1898–1913 7,126

Boxer Rebellion 1900–1901  335

Mexican Revolution 1914–1919 70

Occupation of Haiti 1915–1934 184+

World War I 1917–1918 320,518

North Russia Campaign 1918–1920 424

American Expeditionary Force Siberia 1918–1920 380+

China 1918; 1921; 1926–1927; 1930; 1937 83

US occupation of Nicaragua 1927–1933 116

World War II 1941–1945 1,076,245

China 1945–1947 56

Berlin Blockade 1948–1949 31

Korean War 1950–1953 128,650

U.S.S.R. Cold War 1947–1991 44

China Cold War 1950–1972 16

Vietnam War 1955–1975 211,454

1958 Lebanon crisis 1958 7+

Bay of Pigs Invasion 1961 4

Dominican Republic 1965–1966 213

Iran 1980 12

El Salvador Civil War 1980–1992 35

Beirut deployment 1982–1984 169

Persian Gulf escorts 1987–1988 31

Invasion of Grenada 1983 138

1986 Bombing of Libya 1986 2

Invasion of Panama 1989 324

Gulf War 1990–1991 1,231

Somalia 1992–1993 153

Haiti 1994–1995 3

Colombia 1994–Present 8

Bosnia-Herzegovina 1995–2004 18

Kosovo 1999–2006 22+

Afghanistan 2001–present 12,035

Iraq War 2003–2010 36,395

*Source: Wikipedia

Let Imperial Foreign Policy Die With Bin Laden

On May 1st the gallant warriors of SEAL Team 6 delivered justice to a wicked man, Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda who was ultimately responsible for the deaths of over 3,000 Americans.  With the symbolic face of our enemy in the "War on Terror" now resting in the cold depths of the North Arabian Sea, perhaps this is a good time for America to draw down it's forces in that nebulous war and reevaluate it's interventionist foreign policy in general around the globe.  Meddling foreign policy, which has occupied our efforts for over a century now, is creating more enemies, stretching our brave military dangerously thin, and helping to bankrupt the nation.

To see how our foreign policy creates enemies we can look at bin Laden himself.  Osama wasn't the threat he was just because he could motivate a few religious kooks against us.  He was dangerous because, in his heyday, he was able to strike a chord with a large segment of the mainstream Muslim world.  And what was he saying that was resonating with rank-and-file Muslims?

Michael F. Scheuer (who, as chief of the Osama bin Laden tracking unit of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, was studying Bin Laden before most Americans had even heard of him) summed up the case that bin Laden presented to his fellow Muslims against the U.S. in his 2004 book Imperial Hubris.   "Bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us," Scheuer wrote.  "None of the reasons have anything to do with our freedom, liberty, and democracy, but have everything to do with U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world.  [...] He could not have his current -and increasing- level of success if Muslims did not believe their faith, brethren, resources, and lands to be under attack by the United States and, more generally, the West.  Indeed, the United States, and its policies and actions, are bin Laden's only indispensable allies."

Scheuer says that we are not "misunderstood" in the Muslim world, as our politicians often claim.  Rather, we are hated because of "how easy it is for Muslims to see, hear, experience, and hate the six U.S. policies bin Laden repeatedly refers to as anti-Muslim:

• U.S. support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in the Israelis' thrall.
• U.S. and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula.
• U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
• U.S. support for Russia, India, and China against their Muslim militants.
• U.S. pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low.
• U.S. support for apostate, corrupt, and tyrannical Muslim governments."

In short, "Muslims are bothered by our modernity, democracy, and sexuality, but they are rarely spurred to action unless American forces encroach on their lands. It's American foreign policy that enrages Osama and al-Qaeda, not American culture and society." 

And that's just one culture.  Rest assured that your federal government is enraging people of many cultures all around the world (in your name).  When foreigners become incensed with our government's meddling in their affairs they sometimes lash out.  The CIA casually calls that "blowback."  As 9-11 demonstrated, blowback can be disastrous.

In order to guard its empire of intervention, the U.S. maintains an archipelago of some 507 to 1,180 foreign military bases (even the government is unsure of the actual number).  To put that in perspective, our nearest competitors, Russia and Great Britain only have a few such bases.  China, Iran, North Korea, Libya, and any other nation on our "naughty list" all have zero.  It's unclear how much these overseas bases cost the U.S. taxpayers, but in 2010 the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform estimated that cutting U.S. garrisons in Europe and Asia by one-third would save about $8.5 billion in 2015 alone.

The total U.S. defense budget is about $700 billion, or 20% of the total federal budget.  This figure represents about half of all military spending in the world.  This doesn't include related expenses such as care of disabled vets, pensions, or "homeland security" costs.  Since the federal government borrows about 40 cents of every dollar it spends, that means the government will borrow billions per year (often from the likes of the Red Chinese) to fund defense programs supposedly to defend us from the likes of the Red Chinese.  This when both the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have publicly stated that the national debt, not some foreign power, represents the single biggest threat to U.S. security.

In conjunction with its massive military, the U.S. maintains "alliances" with hundreds of much weaker nations that threaten to drag us into any war that breaks out anywhere in the world.  Our "allies," who expect our protection from their menacing neighbors, often spend a smaller percentage of their national wealth on defense than we do.  Why should they waste their blood and treasure to defend their own country when starry-eyed Americans will do it for them?

Since many neo-conservatives try to dismiss any criticism of aggressive foreign policy as unpatriotic piffle from the "blame America first crowd," perhaps I should pause here to clarify a few things. 

First, I have nothing but profound respect for our brave men and women in uniform, who don't set our foreign policy but whose lives are often risked by it.  I wore the uniform in peacetime and served with some of the Iowa Guardsmen who are in Afghanistan right now.  They're a great bunch of guys.  Nor am I some pacifist who thinks that war is always wrong.  It' a rough world and nations, like individuals, have a responsibility to defend themselves.  Lastly, I don't think America or her people are "bad."  On the contrary, she is a great nation populated by brave, honest and industrious people.  It's just that our country has a convoluted, self-destructive foreign policy.  Again, that's not because we are bad but because foreign policy is a product of the federal government and our government could screw up a cheese sandwich.

So what is the alternative to the current quasi-imperialist foreign policy?  Perhaps a return to the peaceful, noninterventionist foreign policy that the founders of our country envisioned.  Thomas Jefferson famously advised "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none."  In his farewell address, George Washington stated, "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world."

I believe the most elequent statement of traditional American noninterventionism, however, comes from John Quincy Adams' speech delivered on July 4, 1821:  "America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity.

"She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights.

"She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own.

"She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. [...]

"Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.

"But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.

"She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

"She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. [...]

"She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.

"The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....

"She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit...."

As we look at the state of our great nation at home and abroad, she is beginning to look like that "dictatress of the world" that Adams warned of, whose principles are changing "from liberty to force."  Perhaps now is the time to correct that.  Our great enemy Osama bin Laden is at the bottom of the sea and our nation is sinking in a sea of red ink.  If we can't honestly reexamine our foreign policy now, then when can we?

The Once and Future Foreign Policy

Most of us who grew up in the 20th century probably assume that the twin pillars of our foreign policy, dollar diplomacy and big stick diplomacy, are America’s traditional methods of international relations. Not so. At her founding, and for a good many years afterward, America maintained a policy that (in the technical parlance of international diplomacy) was called “minding our own damned business.”

In President Washington’s farewell address he reminded Americans, “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.” In his inaugural address, with his usual eloquence, President Thomas Jefferson advised that America should seek "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none."

Did this mean America was afraid to wield a “big stick” when needed? Not at all. The Barbary Wars (1801-1805, 1815) and the War of 1812 demonstrate that when America had clear and immediate threats to it’s people or tangible interests it would defend them.

America retained this policy of non-interventionism roughly until the Spanish-American War (1898). Someday, when the federal government can no longer afford to maintain a global empire because of the weight of its own indebtedness, this may again become the de facto foreign policy.

The best articulation of traditional American non-interventionism is John Quincy Adams’ Independence Day speech to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1821, when Adams was serving as U.S. Secretary of State. His speech explains this premise passionately and poetically. Here it is:

John Quincy Adams on U.S. Foreign Policy (July 4, 1821)

And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind?

Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity.

She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights.

She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own.

She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart.

She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right.

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.

But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.

She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.

The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....

She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....

[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.

Fight Terrorism With Freedom

Once again I'm responding to a column in the newspaper. I sent the following to my hometown paper:

I felt compelled to respond to the recent column by retired Army Colonel Clyde Meyer about militant Islam. I agree with Col. Meyer that Islam has a long history of violence. I also agree with his point that throughout history there have been fanatics from all religions who have used violence to advance their cause. Where I begin to disagree with the good Colonel is how best to fight Islamic extremists today.

Let me preface this by saying that, as a former military member myself, I am not reflexively anti-war. I understand its utility and occasional necessity, but I am not reflexively for war either. While I’ll leave the foreign policy side of the debate for another day, I would encourage anyone interested in the subject to read the book Imperial Hubris by CIA veteran Michael Scheuer for a thoughtful analysis of the motives of the Islamic terrorists.

Colonel Meyer states that since some terrorists have reached American soil they need to be “weeded out” through “counter-insurgency measures.” He casually shrugs off potential violations of the U.S. Constitution that he once swore an oath to defend. (As Republican activist and former-Marine Bill Salier likes to point out, that oath has no expiration date.) Meyer writes that the measures he endorses include “the control of people and resources and can infringe on some of the individual rights to which we are entitled by our constitution.”

Before we unleash the counter-insurgency tactics that we employed in Vietnam and Iraq on the American public, perhaps we could try something else: Freedom. I believe that we can defend ourselves against those who would harm us not by destroying our individual liberties but by defending them and expanding them.

For instance, Meyer mentions the recent Fort Hood attack by a suspected jihadist. Soldiers on that base were, as a matter of policy, denied the Second Amendment right to carry firearms that people elsewhere in Texas and 39 other states currently enjoy. That section of Ft. Hood (like Columbine and Virginia Tech) had become a “gun-free zone,” a proven magnet for mass murderers.

The same could also be said of the September 11th attacks. Government restrictions on the rights of Americans turned airliners into “gun-free zones” and government policy dictated that crews and passengers not resist hijackers. If people had been allowed to resist (as those on Flight 93 did anyway) or if the pilots had been allowed to keep pistols in the cockpit (as was common practice until the 1960’s) then 19 terrorists probably wouldn’t have been able to kill 2,976 Americans armed only with box cutters.

These are just two quick examples of how the answer is more freedom, not less. On this issue, as on many issues, the best thing the government can do for the American people is to stay out of our way. Surrendering our freedom and power to the government in exchange for promises of security ensures that the government will always find new threats so as to expand its power.

End The War(s)!

Excerpted from a post by Jeff Yager, one of our friends at Advocates of Liberty:

"One of the major news stories from the last week is that Barack Obama has decided that he will end the war in Iraq. Well, not really. Removing "combat" troops in Iraq is at least a step in the right direction, even if they are baby steps. This policy announcement mirrors what appears to be his stance in another war going on that's closer to home and perhaps claiming even more lives than the one in the Middle East: The War on Drugs.

"Last week, Eric Holder announced that the raids on medical marijuana users would end. This could mark the beginning of the end for marijuana prohibition. However, if Obama's Iraq War timeline is any indication at the speed at which he will be delivering his wonderful change, then I wouldn't go looking for that new bong on Ebay quite yet."

Read the entire article here.