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Call it the latest in proof positive some Millennials are hell-bent on being ignorant and brash, but they did all they could to live up to their poor reputation earlier in March. A group of Millennials denigrated the Victims of Communism (VOC) Memorial on Capitol Hill, taking photos of themselves flipping it the middle finger, then posting and bragging about their slimy conduct on social media.

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PARTISANNEXTDOOR (@BlackAutonomist) March 26, 2017

with the lads at the victims of communism memorial pic.twitter.com/fsFxcSxup5

YHWH (@TankMaster5000) March 26, 2017

Millions of people have been murdered, tortured, and persecuted by communist dictators like Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro. The memorial was built to honor those innocent lives. The front pedestal reads, To the more than one hundred million victims of communism and to those who love liberty.

Several Twitter accounts related to the incident link to the website of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a socialist-third party that believes the only solution to the deepening crisis of capitalism is the socialist transformation of society.

This seems to go hand in hand with what we already know Millennials believe about communism as an ideology to be admired. In October, VOC released a survey which gauged Americans attitudes toward socialism, communism, and related ideas.

We knew Millennials, born in 1982-2002, had a thing for Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., but the VOC survey showed they embraced much more than just a grandfatherly version of an American-Socialist.

According to the study, just over half of millennials (55 percent) believe communism was and still is a problem, compared with 80 percent of Baby Boomers and 91 percent of elderly Americans. Only 37 percent of millennials have a very unfavorable view of communism, while 57 percent of the rest of Americans do. A surprising 64 percent of Americans agreed with the classic Karl Marx statement that underpins Marxist philosophy: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

This was not only shocking about their present views, but revealing about their previous or current history education. Marion Smith, executive director of the VOC told me on the phone that the March incident not only shows a callous disrespect of innocent lives sacrificed, but unfortunately ties in with how rabidly Millennials have embraced communism. I think incidents like this are made more likely because so many people dont understand history. They dont understand Mao and Stalin are mass murderers. They dont know about the crimes committed by people of these communist regimes. They dont understand the human misery as a real fact of history.

Whats the appeal of dangerous ideologies like this to Millennials? Smith told me, Many students are taught that the alternative to a free enterprise system is a form of socialism. A marxist interpretation of society. If you dont like capitalism, the obvious alternative in most peoples minds is some form of marxist faith.

This type of ignorance stems from a lack of education, and in some cases our nations cultural slide. But it is exactly what progressives even Marxists wanted in order to implement their policies. Millennials have become the type of de facto voter base socialist leaders cater to and ultimately exploit via everything from propaganda to crimes against humanity. If a person has little knowledge of historical perspective, and is therefore vulnerable and willing to agree with any ideological talking point that comes their way in a pretty package, that person is an easy target to woo, to turn into a fanatical zealot, and to then wittingly or unwittingly participate in the types of crimes these very leaders committed. Multiply that by thousands and you have a Katyn massacre on your hands not because people always knew or were complicit (innocent people should not take the blame), but because evil dictators exploited ignorance and filled empty minds with their twisted ideology.

The only way to stop this trend is to cut it off where it begins: education. Its imperative we press for a more expansive, clarifying education of global history to high school and college students so they are informed about how communism actually played out in various cultures. VOC has made significant efforts to that end, but more must be done.

Since studies show high-schoolers and collegiates dont know basic facts about world history, let alone the staggering atrocities communist regimes committed, they offer a supplemental curriculum to aid teachers in educating students about this specific topic. A few minutes watching the videos within their Witness, project--stories of survivors of communism--might provide valuable perspective for some Millennials still touting Marx as a mentor. The danger of forgetting history is it opens up what is acceptable in our politics, reminds Smith. The language of violence that is so much a part of certain ideologies. Lets do what we can to educate our young people, even Millennials, so this doesnt happen again and so history does not forget those brutally murdered by communist regimes.

Nicole Russell is a contributor to Conservative Review writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Federalist, The American Spectator, Reason, National Review Online, and Parents magazine. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectators Young Journalist award. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and four children. You can follow her on Twitter @nmrussell2.

Read more from the original source:
Millennials' views on communism: All the proof you need on education system's abject failure - Conservative Review

'Communism for Kids' Fails to Make Amazon.com Top 100 Rankings CNSNews.com (blog) A new book that sells the concept of Communism in the simple terms of a children's story has failed to sell on Amazon.com except in the category for true believers. Communism for Kids by MIT Press unfolds like a story, with jealous princesses ...

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'Communism for Kids' Fails to Make Amazon.com Top 100 Rankings - CNSNews.com (blog)

In 2004, German political theorist and queer politics expert Bini Adamczak wrote Communism for Kids, and, for some reason, MIT Press has decided that it needed to be translated and published in English this year. At last, American families will have the opportunity to take Adamczaks ideas from the fever swamps of the Occupy movement to their childrens bedrooms.

Dont expect this scholar of social theory to deal with communisms long history of failure, however. Communism for Kids is a fantasy complete with princesses and talking chairs and thus affords the author free rein to lambast capitalism and construct her own imaginary, happier vision of communism. Claiming to be new, the book promotes the same tired theory that communisms problems lie in implementation, not in ideology.

MIT Presss website has an overview which touts how this communism is different: This little book proposes a different kind of communism, one that is true to its ideals and free from authoritarianism. Ah, communism that is free from authoritarianism. That old chestnut.

In keeping with the usual propagandistic style, the aesthetic of Communism for Kids is predictably creepy:

Left-wing propaganda has proliferated in childrens books recently. In another work, A Is for Activist, children are taught the alphabet via charming limericks such as: T is for Trans. / For Trains, Tiaras / Tulips, Tractors, / and Tigers Too! / Trust in The True / The he she They That is you! Books such as these promise to cleanse children of wrongthink before they can even spell and before they have learned any history. Usually, they are topical. But if you come down on the partisan or establishment side of things, you can also find cute stories featuring Hillary Clinton or Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

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German Book Communism for Kids Translated into English by MIT Press - National Review

NewsBusters (blog)

Not a Misprint: MIT Press to Publish 'Communism for Kids' Book NewsBusters (blog) Talk about starting the indoctrination early. The Washington Free Beacon on Monday reported that MIT Press will be publishing Communism for Kids, a book ... Culture Beat: Pushing Communism on Children The Patriot PostPatriot Post all 3 news articles »

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Not a Misprint: MIT Press to Publish 'Communism for Kids' Book - NewsBusters (blog)

Reviews and News:

MIT publishes Communism for Kids by Bini Adamczak, "'a Berlin-based social theorist and artist' heavily involved in 'queer theory.' When it originally appeared in German, the book was titled Kommunismus: Kleine Geschichte, wie Endlich Alles Anders Wirdroughly, Communism: A Little Story, How Finally Everything Will Be Different."

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Patrick J. Burns reviews Reginald Thomas Foster's Ossa Latinitatis Solathe Latinist's life work, "condensed to just over eight hundred pages, each one filled with enthusiasm for and meticulous study of the language to which Foster has dedicated his life."

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When television was a medical device.

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What makes Canadian food unique? Moose.

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The history and appeal of the French Foreign Legion: "The reasons modern recruits give for joining can seem prosaic. Gareth Carins, a former quantity surveyor, turned down the British Army in favour of the Legion. 'The truth was, I liked the army,' he writes in Diary of a Legionnaire (2007). 'I liked hill-walking, I liked travelling, and I was looking for an adventure.' He reports that people regard his justification with 'a look of disbelief and even disappointment' and rightly so, since the mystique of the Legion can't be so easily captured. The one thing Carins doesn't mention is death, but death is close to the heart of the Legion's attraction."

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Alex Renton takes aim at the brutality of British boarding schools in Stiff Upper Lip.

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Essay of the Day:

The Fifth Marquess of Lansdowne served briefly and, at first blush, unremarkably as Britain's Foreign Secretary from 1900 to 1905, but he was a great negotiator, John Bew and Andrew Ehrhardt argue in The American Interest, and maybe even one of the greatest conservative diplomats of the twentieth century:

"Shut out of Europe, Lansdowne began his effort to rebalance British power with a move on the chessboard that was at once bold, imaginative, and unexpected. In an effort to preserve Britain's privileged access to Asian markets, his first priority was to blunt Russia's influence in the region, which he did by crafting an unlikely alliance with Japan in 1902. As Henry Kissinger later remarked, this was 'the first time since Richelieu's dealings with the Ottoman Turks that any European country had gone for help outside the Concert of Europe.'

"The terms of the deal were even more important. Under the Anglo-Japanese Treaty, both nations promised neutrality if either power was involved in a war over China or Korea with one adversary. Should either power find themselves in a war with two states, one alliance partner was required to offer military assistance to the other. This deftly inserted caveat kept Britain out of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. What is more, Japan's emphatic besting of the Russian fleet at Tsushima represented a further vindication of Lansdowne's strategy. Japanese victory ensured that Britain had a powerful ally in the Far East, a point reinforced by the renewal of the alliance in 1905. As a result, as Paul Kennedy has written, 'Britain's maritime position by the second half of 1905 was more favorable than it had been for the previous two decades.'

"While the Anglo-Japanese alliance was the first pillar of Lansdowne's new approach, the question of Britain's European isolation remained unanswered. So it was through the Entente Cordiale of 1904, between Britain and France, that Lansdowne delivered what was, in effect, a 'diplomatic revolution' in British foreign policy."

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Photo: Sorano

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Poem: Dana Gioia, "The Sunday News"

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Prufrock: Communism for Kids, the Greatest Conservative Diplomat, and the Appeal of the French Foreign Legion - The Weekly Standard