The basic ideals of communism written by the revolutionary Karl Marx are excellent, with an extreme liberal, open-minded mentality, but when Communist states were tested in Russia and other Asian countries, it became the exact opposite, a Facist, dictatorial, totalitarian reign of terror.

Why do I care one way or the other about how communists want to live their lives? If they want to live under the sole power of one person, I say good for them. It's not like their here to declare war on the US or anything. Can't we just let everybody live their lives?!

Haven't we learned something over the past 75 years or so by observing the hideous failure of this "experiment" in Russia? It doesn't work! It's imaginary, a pipe dream, a fantasy. Believing Communism could work out as written in real life is like expecting all the elements in a Romance novel to come together and make your life perfect?it just isn't gonna happen. There is no basis in reality for a utopia on this planet and certainly no past history of one. Work hard, put your faith in God, and insist on the freedom to do both.

Everyone who is involved with the CPUSA should be treated as a traitor and expelled from the country. It is the height of hypocrisy for an American citizen to piss and moan about the ills of our society, while at the same time subscribing to one of the most demonic, and oppressive ideologies ever devised by man. If they think it is so bad they should move to Communist China.

Rusty's comment on this page is eloquent, but fundamentally misses the point. There are two core lines of modern political philosophy: that which comes from John Locke and was embodied in the American founding, and that which comes from Rousseau, was dressed up by Marx, and implemented in the USSR. The former is about respecting the rights of individuals; the latter supposes that inequities between individuals must be "corrected" for the benefit of "the people" (by whoever happens to be in charge). The Constitution uses the word "the people" as the plural of person -- each with its own natural rights. When Lenin uses "the people", he refers to the "masses" and claims to know what needs to be done on behalf of them. This of course is what caused communism to be hell on earth wherever it has been tried. It works contrary to human nature, debases human life, and depends on precisely the government elite that its starry-eyed followers suppose will never occur. Rusty is more convincing at creating a parallel between the monarchies overthrown at the founding of the U.S. and U.S.S.R., than he is at establishing the point he seems to intend: that there's little to distinguish one system from the other. I'd say further that people who believe in freedom have no problem with those who voluntarily want to try "commune-ism" (Shakers, Amish, Kibbutzism, whatever). But communism from its Marxist origins has sought worldwide revolution and forcing people to live contrary to their wishes. This is why there's a "Black Book of Communism" that compiles facts about approximately 100 million people killed by their own governments under communism in the 1900s. One other interesting note: if you go back to your early American history... the first pilgrims to North America tried to live under a communal living system, and suffered starvation that depleted their numbers by 1/3 in the first winter. Soon, they implemented a system of property rights and found themselves fluorishing economically and being more charitable as well. I believe it's in Pilgrim's Progress by Gov Bradford that all this is documented. Pretty fascinating that these first few years on American soil would foreshadow a century-long conflict. How tragic that, after all the evidence, there are still people who think communism is just dandy, and its a string of bad luck that always leads these systems into murderous tyranny.

In its literal sense, communism is "commune-ism"--community living, where all people contribute for the greater good and survival of the system. This is not inherently bad in and of itself. There have been many attempts to make this work, most notably in Oswego, New York, in Amish and Mennonite communities, in Shaker households, in Native American and Sub-Saharan African societies, on Israeli kibbutzim, etc. But people living in the 20th century have been brainwashed into believing that this is an inherently evil system. Far from it. It is the people who represent the system, much like the people who represent the U.S. and its Preamble to the Constitution. You know, "We the People of the United States of America, in order to form a more Perfect Union, establish Justice and ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the Common Defense, Promote the General Welfare and Secure the blessings of Liberty, to ourselves and our Posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution..." How is this any less utopian and commune-istic? A more perfect Union? Justice? Tranquility? Common defense and general Welfare? Sounds pretty communistic to me! And was our American Revolution any less bloody than Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels advocated? Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams were just as agitating for violent overthrow of the oppressive government of George III, just like Kerensky, Trotsky and Lenin whipped up the Russian peasantry into a frenzy that would liberate them from their own oppressors. The Russian Revolution was just as, if not more than, bloody and horrible than its American counterpart. The Americans wanted to overthrow George III from his tyranny, just as the Russian serfs wanted to overthrow Nicholas II and his tyranny. People such as Lenin and Stalin took communism to an extreme by perverting Marx and Engels to satisfy their own paranoia and personal consolidation of power. (Unlike the American system, the Russian Duma never had a system of checks and balances---all power was vested in the czar and the military.) These excesses were what most Americans have been witness to and in no way represents how the vast majority of Russians and other Soviet ethnics lived their lives. The American public fell victim to a media that leeched off of Cold War bigotry and paranoia and directly influenced the insecurities of an American government bent upon world domination through its military power and economic belief system---not unlike that of the Soviet Union (The word "soviet" means "people"). The Communist Party in the U.S. has done itself a disservice by advocating violent overthrow, and in a society that has been relatively stable with a few challenges to its existence, i.e. The Civil War, the Great Depressions of 1832 and 1929, etc., violence will not appeal to a populace if change is to be made. Communism is not bad in and of itself, but advocating violence is---something that defies the very notion of what a utopia is. No wonder people have equated communism with all things evil in this world.

hipocrits!!