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Special Report
Happy Earth Day, Vladimir Ilyich
Lenin on his organic and recycled birthday.
When I lived in Waterbury, Vermont, in the late 1980s I attended a bluegrass concert in the park one summer evening. The band (its name escapes me) had recently returned from a Vermont Arts Council/ State Department-type cultural exchange trip to the then Soviet Union. During a break in the music, a couple of the musicians told the assembled crowd of Boomer hippies about the trip; the bass player showing off a souvenir, which was a lapel pin fastened to his shirt pocket. It was small, gold-colored, and bore the likeness of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known to history by the notorious nom de guerre of “Lenin.” The bass player told the crowd, “Lenin was their original leader. He was the Russian George Washington.”
I’m always reminded of this when yet another Earth Day approaches (always on April 22). Most people, especially school kids, participating in the annual green fetish don’t know that it only dates to 1970, the first one held on the centenary of Lenin’s birth (April 22, 1870). The Earth Day back-story is that the Lenin anniversary was purely coincidental, at least according to the occasion’s two founders, the late Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisc.) and environmental activist Denis Hayes. Fine, it’s a coincidence.
But if indeed there is even a subtle connection, I wonder how many of the millions worldwide participating in Earth Day festivities actually know who Lenin was? Do the ones who do have an inkling know that he was one of history’s great monsters, a cold-blooded nihilist whose minions and successors were responsible for the deaths of scores of millions, and the sufferings of many more? But Earth Day as a holy-day-of-obligation of the Left (like May Day) has its ironies even if you put aside lethal political expediencies.
The Soviet Union under the green thumb of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and '30s collectivized agriculture, thus starving millions of Russian and Ukrainian peasants who up until then had solid reputations as, well, organic farmers. With his infamous “Five Year Plans” Stalin also forced the rapid industrialization of Russia that left it with a legacy of belching smokestacks, dirty skies, fouled rivers, and — in a Soviet version of “smart growth” — thousands of those dreary gray apartment buildings known for poor plumbing and lousy electrical service.
Following Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev gave his tyrant-numbed people the infamous “Virgin Lands Campaign” (1954-1962), when he “relocated” 300,000 Russians and Ukrainians to Soviet Central Asia (mostly present Kazakhstan) to plow the vast steppe and grow wheat. After one good harvest, drought and Soviet agricultural policy combined to produce windblown erosion on a grand scale, turning the region into a Dust Bowl. By the early 1960s the Soviets were importing grain, mostly from Canada.
In China, Chairman Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” (his own second “Five Year Plan”: 1958-1963) aped the Stalinist model and starved tens of millions of those pesky peasants, as industrialization accelerated. Maybe “A Hundred Flowers” bloomed, but not much else. Mao remedied these excesses with the discipline of the subsequent Cultural Revolution, when he sent academics, intellectuals, and Communist Party higher-ups into the countryside as farm laborers. I’ve always liked this aspect of the Cultural Revolution. Imagine Ivy League professors spending their summers in Iowa shucking corn at gunpoint. Mao was on to something. But sadly, part of the Great Helmsman’s monstrous legacy is that much of China today suffers hideous pollution problems, so much so that it famously shut down factories weeks before last year’s Olympic Games to clear the skies, and athletes wearing surgical masks commonly appeared in the media. Lately — and to the chagrin of international greenies — the Chinese have completed the infamous Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, where they removed 1.25 million people elsewhere, and flooded archaeological sites and 13,000 farms to do it.
In Cambodia in 1975, those admirers of Maoist agricultural methods, the Khmer Rouge, sent much of the population of Phnom Penh and elsewhere hoe-in-hand to the boonies, and in the end 1.5 million didn’t come back, notably university-educated French-speakers who wore glasses.
All of the above should tell us that you don’t have to be the late Milton Friedman to know that free market capitalist economies have cleaner environments. Private property rights encourage it. If you own a backyard, there is a built-in incentive to keep it clean because it’s yours.
So, Happy Earth Day, Vladimir Ilyich. Maybe President Obama and the Democrat Congress will get around to proclaiming your Earth Day Birthday a national holiday sometime. It’s an ersatz one anyway.
About the Author
Bill Croke, formerly of Cody, Wyoming, is a writer in Salmon, Idaho.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (51) | Leave a comment
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Pingback| 4.22.09 @ 7:27AM
Happy Earth Day, Vladimir Ilyich links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 4.22.09 @ 8:55AM
The Two Malcontents » Happy Earth Day, Vladimir Ilyich links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 4.22.09 @ 9:29AM
Topics about China » Archive » The American Spectator : Happy Earth Day, Vladimir Ily links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 4.22.09 @ 9:31AM
Topics about China » Archive » Happy Earth Day, Vladimir Ilyich links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Thunderbottom| 4.22.09 @ 10:09AM
That's right - go to nearly any place in the former Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact countries and you will find environmental devastation on a scale that would send a U.S. environmental activist into an apoplectic frenzy. And the technology used by these countries was absolutely filthy! Example: the infamous East German Trabant subcompact auto used a small two-cycle engine that spewed as much pollutants as a fleet of Mercedes diesel sedans (and no catalytic converter on the Trabant).
I will also second Mr. Croke's observation that private property rights encourage cleaner environments. All one has to do is visit any government-run housing project in the U.S. and Europe and view all the trash strewn about. Government dependency doesn't appear to foster environmentally responsible behavior.
Dustoff| 4.22.09 @ 10:40AM
Can you say "Chernobyl"
Sandra in Severn| 4.22.09 @ 11:00AM
If he hadn't been plasticized I would that Vladimir Ilyich be rotting in a Chernobyl swamp!
There the true triumph of the Socialist Republics and the Communist economic system - toxic and radioactive wastelands - what a fine way to "celebrate" Vladimir's Birthday!
The radical left has effectively shut-down nuclear power in the US and Canada, but all over Western Europe and in Japan, nuclear reactors power cities, industries and there are no melt-downs, no "China Syndromes" and I think that is VERY earth friendly.
Chris| 4.22.09 @ 11:39AM
"Purely coincidental????" Yah right! Nothing leftists do is coincidental. They're as subtle as a broken leg. It's also no coincidence that a failed and discredited communist leader like Gorbachev has chosen environmentalism as his new ideological home. The color may have changed from red to green but the desired outcome is still the same.
NavyBrat| 4.22.09 @ 12:00PM
Is this an article listing all of our Dear Leader's heroes. I wonder if he were at a summit with THESE guys, would he smile, bow, & stand like a rube? Like he's been doing? The words of Lenin & the upbrining of our President are almost identical.
"Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty."...Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"A system of licensing & registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie."...Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation & inflation."...Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"All our lives we fought against exalting the individual, against the elevation of the single person, & long ago were over & done with the business of a hero, & here it comes up again; the glorification of one personality. This is not good at all."...Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no state."...Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
And finally, my favorite:
"The bourgeoisieis many times stronger than we. To give it the weapon of freedom of the press is to ease the enemy's cause, to help the class enemy. We do not desire to end in suicide, so we will not do this."...Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Mike Licht | 4.22.09 @ 12:19PM
Earth Day 2009: our long global cow flatulence nightmare is over.
See
http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/earth-day-2009/
Dustoff| 4.22.09 @ 12:59PM
Mike.
Google Cows & c02.
+++++++++++++++++++++
By Geoffrey Lean
Environment Editor
4-19-7
Meet the world's top destroyer of the environment. It is not the car, or the plane,or even George Bush: it is the cow.
A United Nations report has identified the world's rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes.
Just about everyone thinks this....
Which is nuts.
Alan Brooks| 4.22.09 @ 1:20PM
and the Russkies did a job around this time of year-- Chernobyl, '86.
Russia is simply too primitive to have nuclear power reactors.
Big Leo| 4.22.09 @ 2:54PM
I MISS THE SOVIET UNION - I do. They were such a perfect example of how socialism didn't work. When I was 21, I was developing socialist ideas. My father gave me the gift of a two week trip to the Soviet Union, (the land of his birth) so I could enjoy socialism for myself. I have been a Republican ever since. Too bad it's gone. We could do more for conservatism by sending young Lenin wannabees to the USSR than we ever could be ever so many issues of The American Spectator. I'd even be willing to start a fund for it. Alas, there is no USSR to serve as the perfect bad example.
Robert Rosencrans| 4.22.09 @ 3:30PM
As is typical of most secular human movements, and that's all Earth Day is, is that it's true foundations are never discussed much by the drive-by-media, which is in and of itself, a secular movement.
Ira Einhorn, one of it's founders of Earth Day is a convicted killer. Ira Einhorn was a friend and contemporary of many other 60's radicals, all leftists, including the likes of Abby Hoffman and Timothy Leary. Ira Einhorn also had support from corporate America, receiving funds from Sun Oil and AT&T.
At some point Einhorn murdered his girlfriend, Holly Maddux, stuffed her in a trunk, and after two years the crime was discovered. You should note that the crime was discovered after Holly's parents hired a private investigator who presented evidence to the police, which lead to a search warrant.
Go figure. His attorney, the left leaning Arlen Spector, somehow got his bail reduced to $40,000 of which only 10% had to be placed with the court to gain Ira Einhorn's freedom. Einhorn then skipped bail, fleeing to France. Einhorn was tried in absentia and was sentenced to life in prison. Those freedom loving French wouldn't turn him over until the death penalty was taken off the table and he was guaranteed a new trial. This was all granted and he was convicted after remaining free for about 25 years after committing the crime.
If you look at many environmentalists and the environmental movement, it is filled with terrorists and other forms of criminality. Almost all are leftists.
In the meantime, the United States Department of Homeland Security, under the leftist tutelage of Janet Napolitano, and endorsed by the Stalinist figurine of President Barack Obama, can only issue reports telling law enforcement to be on the lookout for returning veterans, who by the way, never murdered anyone and simply defended their country.
Earth Day is a perfect example of another failed liberal philosophy that children around the globe are drawn into, brainwashing them into believing that they are destroying the earth, and must subjugate themselves to things bigger then they are, including big government. Yet, the children and the population in general do understand the roots of this phony holiday, which is as microcosm of liberalism in general.
For other examples of phony liberal holidays whose roots are never mentioned, look to Kwanzaa, a communistic holiday invented by another convicted criminal, Dr. Manual Karanga. Dr. Karanga was convicted along with two of his friends of torturing and mutilating two women. Dr. Karanga is now chairman of the Department of Black Studies at California State University at Long Beach.
While the Kool Aid drinkers partake of these liberal holidays, they will never be informed of the truth of the roots of these holidays. No, they will simply be told to be on the lookout for people who defended the homeland, by people who have no intention of defending the homeland.
http://www.magic-city-news.com/Editor_s_Desk_34/Ira_Einhorn_Earth_Day_s_Dirty_Secret_57095709.shtml
Kitty| 4.22.09 @ 3:32PM
Bill, The Village Voice linked your article:
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/04/communism_death.php
...
Pingback| 4.22.09 @ 3:43PM
Topics about Russia » Happy Earth Day, Vladimir Ilyich links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Nick| 4.22.09 @ 3:56PM
"Mao remedied these excesses with the discipline of the subsequent Cultural Revolution, when he sent academics, intellectuals, and Communist Party higher-ups into the countryside as farm laborers. I've always liked this aspect of the Cultural Revolution. Imagine Ivy League professors spending their summers in Iowa shucking corn at gunpoint. Mao was on to something."
I'm with you Mr. Croke!
If only we had a "Westworld" today, like I thought we would when I first saw it on TV as a 10 year old. I would love to spend two weeks on vacation ordering Shrillary the Hut, San Fran Nan, Phil Donahue, Olbermann-child, and Wesley Crusher, er, I mean Rachel Madcow to shuck corn, dig ditches, and drain cesspools!
Quick, someone call the guys at Disney!
Pingback| 4.22.09 @ 4:06PM
Capital Research Center: links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Tom Paine| 4.22.09 @ 4:23PM
Yes, to be sure.
Environmentalism is actually a Maoist conspiracy, bent on forcing millions to starve to death.
Flawless argument. Why hasn't anyone seen this before now.... before it became ... too late?
Vince | 4.22.09 @ 4:29PM
Great post Bill, I had no idea of the connection with Lenin. Earth Day should be everyday, it is good that there is at least one day to spread awareness. Here are some suggestions on what you can do to help the Earth: http://www.toptentopten.com/topten/things+to+do+on+earth+day, you can add your own suggestions.
Pingback| 4.22.09 @ 4:30PM
Ira Einhorn: Earth Day Founder, Unicorn Killer | Blippitt links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Xenia| 4.22.09 @ 4:31PM
F*** you Lenin. Ruthless murderer
Pingback| 4.22.09 @ 4:56PM
Ira Einhorn links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 4.22.09 @ 5:20PM
Ira Einhorn links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Big Leo| 4.22.09 @ 5:20PM
THE PEASANTS ARE REVOLTING! They certainly are. You demonize Lenin and Mao by saying that starving peasants to death is a bad thing. And on Earth Day, too, when we all do the racial suicide dance and call for reduction of population. Shame, Shame, Shame.
Suzieq| 4.22.09 @ 5:47PM
THere's one BIG difference between the Socialists / Communists you mention, and Earth Day. All those other ecological disasters you expertly mentioned were driven from the top DOWN.
The hierarchy of Earth Day is personal commitment. Driven from the bottom UP.
Hmmm... driven by The People.
Gee, that sounds a lot like... Democracy.
Pingback| 4.22.09 @ 5:56PM
Ira Einhorn links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
DaveS| 4.22.09 @ 9:13PM
I fervently disliked the first Earth Day when it shoved down our throats in a catholic high school. The dislike is unabated. Earth Day means, "Giaia is queen; give it up!"
Curtis Rasmussen| 4.22.09 @ 11:54PM
To Suzieq:
You are another useful idiot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
Yes, the illustrations demonstrate the abuse of power after the communist dicatorship seized power.
The current parallel? The abuse of power will occur after the pseudo-fascist Obama seizes control of the media by manipulating groups that dictate content. The free market be damned.
In both cases individuals assisted to bring change. After the power grab, these useful idiots will no longer be required. That includes you.
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