Two Kinds of Commie Wanna-bee's

I've always been a bit perplexed by people who live in the free world yet fancy themselves Communists of Marxists or whatnot, especially since the fall of the Berlin Wall. What do these commie wanna-bee's think those throngs of people were running from? Shouldn't it be obvious to all by now that there are no happy endings in communist countries? How may mass graves does an ideology have to fill up before we can rule it defunct? So anyway...

I had a revelation about free world communists while reading Mona Charen's Useful Idiots. It's packed with tales of appalling behavior by politicians, academics and journalists for whom the title is a perfect fit. But what really jumped out at me was a story about Armond Hammer. I'm retelling this from memory, so I don't recall all the specifics. Essentially, Hammer is traveling around the young Soviet Union in the 20's with some party big shot. The two are supposed to catch a train, but the train is late. When the train finally arrives, the big shot asks who is in charge. The big shot promptly has the unlucky engineer and his assistant shot. Supposedly, the pair do not have to wait for a train again.

No surprise there. Typical communism in action. What made the lightbulb go off was Hammer's reaction to the incident. Now Hammer is a big time industrialist. He's just the sort of person communists are always going on about. Yet, he's not appalled by two people being murdered because they had inconvenienced him (as I'd like to think most people would be). No, he was excited. Just think of all he could accomplish if he could just have the head of the labor union shot!

Revelation! Most of the commie wanna-bee's I have know are the college kids and aging hippies who want to make the world safe for fuzzy kitties and rainbows. You know, the ones Lenin characterized as "useful idiots." In my naivete, I never guessed at the existence of the other type. The ones, like Hammer, who see themselves holding the rifles. They plan on designating who will fill those mass graves, not on being grave fodder themselves. They're fully aware that communism is a murderous ideology. That fact doesn't frighten or disgust them. It excites them. They can't wait to put their "obstacles" up against the wall.