Word: communisms
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Warhol wanted a democratic culture, but he had no illusions about individuality. "Someone said Brecht wanted everybody to think alike. I want everybody to think alike. But Brecht wanted to do it through Communism, in a way. Russia is doing it under government. It's happening here all by itself without being under a strict government; so if it's working without trying, why can't it work without being Communist? Everybody looks alike and acts alike, and we're getting more and more that...
...ruled, always disastrously, by the Communist Party. Bringing back the Romanovs now would certainly be poetic justice. As the historian Richard Pipes wrote, the 1918 massacre by communists of the last Czar, Nicholas II, and his family * was "uniquely odious . . . a prelude to 20th century mass murder." Now that communism has been outlawed, who better to help replace it than the relatives of its first victims...
...argument between liberals and conservatives about what caused communism's fall and who got it right or wrong will go on for a long time. On the main cause -- the utter hopelessness of communism as an economic system -- both sides got it right in their hearts but somehow wrong in their heads. They knew communism couldn't work but forgot it. Of the two sides of the argument, though, it seems to me that conservatives were wronger here. They are the ones who kept emphasizing that military strength could grow indefinitely, no matter how decrepit the economy...
...will object to having been misled if the policy worked. But did it? All you can say for sure is that if things had turned out differently -- if communism were still standing tall, the Soviet army and its proxies were still marauding around the world, and the CIA were still churning out rosy estimates of Soviet growth -- that also would be held to vindicate the Reagan policy...
ESSAY Michael Kinsley on the inordinate fear of communism...