In November 2010, the New York Times published a puff piece on the Brecht Forum, a club in New York where, to hear the Times tell it, cuddly Marxists hang out and play. “In a city known for cynicism, the Brecht, which survives on donations, is a surprisingly open and idealistic place,” the reporter wrote. The piece came in for a fair amount of ridicule. “Try to imagine,” Newsbusters dryly noted, “the Times getting so cozy among a group of mainstream Republicans, much less Tea Party supporters.”
I thought of that story when I was perusing the Times’s “Caucus” blog today and saw the following teaser to a Times Magazine piece on Paul Ryan and Austrian economics:
In a column in this week’s New York Times Magazine, Adam Davidson writes, will Friedrich von Hayek be the Tea Party’s Karl Marx?
Ahem. First of all, the magazine piece, which is already online, does not ask that question at all. Karl Marx isn’t mentioned in the article—so this isn’t the fault of Adam Davidson, who wrote a pretty fair snapshot of Hayek and the right. Since the blog item was just a teaser to another story, it had no author listed. So I will just ask a few questions here.
First: Is the Caucus blog, or the person responsible for it, admitting that Marx was a dangerous man with dangerous ideas that inspired the murder of millions of innocent people in the name of leftist utopianism, and thus is trying to scare readers about Ryan and Hayek? If so, it’s nice to see the newspaper acknowledge that Marxists aren’t so sweet and cuddly. However, does that mean he or she is also accusing Hayek’s followers of being right-wing versions of Lenin, Stalin, or Mao? Because it doesn’t get a whole lot more offensive than that.
Second: Is the Caucus editor passing Marx off as a quirky economist, and nothing more? Because that would be a Herculean whitewashing task—and also, by the way, offensive to the many victims of Marxist violence.
Third: Is the Caucus editor suggesting that the Democratic Party’s left wing is heavily influenced by Marxism? Because that would be quite the admission.
The author of that teaser doesn’t seem to know much about the subject, but he or she has certainly done a disservice to Davidson, who would no doubt recoil at the comparison with which his article has been burdened.
Well, I guess it's good then that they got that guy and nailed him to a cross. Or isn't that enough for you?
The belief that Christ died for our sins is a reflection of the doctrine that punishment has to go somewhere. God, it is thought, doesn't have the power simply to forgive sin. And so He had to come to earth in human form and suffer in order to divert the punishment to Himself. What a strange idea. nIn order to be saved, according to Christ, one needs faith, which is, by definition, not the same thing as knowledge. That means you can't know the rules until you're already in Hell and it's too late.
Christians actually debate as to how freely God forgives sins, and as to how he actually goes about it. You can google "views atonement" and click on the Wiki link. As welI, I don't see how what you say "led logically to the Inquistion and the religious wars of the 16th century" (and if that's the last time these words have had such effect, I can think of many more words you should take much more issue with) actually did. (As well, Jesus was quite far removed chronologically [if not in several other ways] from they of the Inquisition.)
Marx was a humanitarian idealist. Not all Communist States were the same. If not for Stalin – the Basis would have won WWII.
in fact we don't really know what Jesus himself said since the Gospel accounts as a whole are full of inner contradictions and discrepancies and were edited many times before the Church adopted a canon. And even then early manuscripts –for instance– give Barabbas [ Bar Abba] a first name, which later manuscripts don't do. That name is Jesus. Jesus Barabbas. The very name Bar Abba is curious, isn't it? It can be translated as "son of the father." Curious?
Mr. Mandel, n nIn your brief references of Karl Marx, you seem to display a complete ignorance of Marxism. If it's unintentional, you should maybe at least touch up on the basics. If it's intentional, well then you're just purposefully carrying on the same, false misrepresentation that has been perpetuated over the years.
Have you ever actually read any Marx? Because I haven't seen anything that even remotely resembles "thought control" in Marx's writings, nor in those who expounded on his ideas: Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. It seems like the thought control may be on those who blindly accept the misrepresentations of others who write about Marx.
Radical Islam is trying to teach the world what blind faith means. Nobody is learning.