Hence religion is the opiate of the masses; religion deludes the poor into believing they can be happy without wealth. It lulls them into a contentedness with the nothing they have. Wealth is something; it is substantial. It is wealth that will give them true contentedness.

Hence material redistribution justifies the death of millions. Workers of all nations, unite. Kill anyone who does not support the total redistribution. All things will be held in common, so you, peasant, will have all that stuff you’ve always wanted. You will finally be happy.

Capitalism, on the other hand, makes no assumptions about the value of wealth. It merely restricts self-interest (we would say sublimates, but this word is apparently archaic) so as to prevent its most harmful effects. One cannot pursue wealth by theft or lies or force or threat of force. But what if one chooses not to pursue wealth? A monk might retire to the countryside and in his asceticism seek God. Others won’t provide for him, of course. But neither will they stop him.

Communism killed the monks.

Marx and Lenin and Stalin and Engels and Mao all believed in money. And the socialists of today believe in money just as strongly. They believe the economy is some pyramid the people must be forced to build. The people will thank you some day, when they’re sharing the glory in some faraway time. They will thank you for your coercion.

Take for example a (surprisingly) common argument in favor of the death tax: if the wealthy can pass on all their belongings to their offspring, then their offspring will have no incentive to work. Hence, by taxing the wealthy upon their death, their children will work harder to make their own money and will improve the economy.

It’s a five-year plan.

But what is lost with such a single-minded materialistic drive? Perhaps freedom. Five-year plans show little respect for mutual consent.

As it turns out, classical liberalism somehow allows for better economies anyway. Something about people working harder when they keep what they earn. But the booming economy is only a happy coincidence. Conservatives and their opponents alike should remember this. Classical liberalism is not about supercharging the economy. It is not a utopian dream, like that of communism. We are not making the new, perfect society.

No. Classical liberalism’s first promise is simple: government
restricts itself to guaranteeing mutual consent while the individual pursues heaven on his own dime.

Though North Korea currently represents a pitiable, hopeless entity, half a century ago, it, along with other socialist nations, was widely hailed as the wave of the future. To many, it represented a potential heaven on Earth, as well as an entity capable of propelling humanity to its utmost potential. Even many conservatives thought the best that could be done was to slow, and not stop, the inevitable socialist advance. A variety of assumptions bred such hopes in socialism, assumptions that history has since revealed as flawed. Among them were attitudes that absolute power need not corrupt absolutely, that a free society is possible without the presence of a free economy, and that governments can gauge citizens’ preferences better than the citizens themselves. Many also thought that the individualism embraced in the West served solely to facilitate greed, and clamored for its overthrow. In individualism’s place, the collective was advocated, which, it was strangely asserted, would foster a society perfect for the individual. Most of all, it was presumed that human nature was not fixed, but malleable, and that individuals could be crafted into more preferable forms. These presumptions were widely embraced, as supporters of socialism strode boldly forth. The phrase, “We are all socialists now,” acquired justifiable use. Backing for socialism, ironically enough, was greatest not among the downtrodden workers, but in the midst of the intellectuals and academic elites. Yet, in one instance after another, extending from Korea, to Europe, to the kibbutzes of Israel, socialism failed to meet expectations. Hells, rather than the anticipated heavens on earth, resulted. They served, in part, as a pronouncement, that those who are smart are not always right. Questions also arose, primarily concerning why increased government economic intervention did not result in greater prosperity and a better life for all. Fault, many would later conclude, lay with the underestimation of human nature’s intransigence.

Human nature did not turn out quite as malleable as hoped. Humans, contrary to Locke’s views, and especially those of socialists, entered into this world not as tabula rasas. To this end, human traits and predilections did not represent mere results of socialization.
Instead, as most modern-day evolutionary psychologists (Steven Pinker among them) would attest, humans arrive outfitted with innate traits, imprinted unto them through gen

The second, perhaps even larger benefit to a draft is simply that the military is in need of more soldiers as there appears to be a necessity for a larger military. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has said, “there really are no additional troops” and the United States Army is “about broken” (NYTimes.com). Also, with
a draft, America would have plenty of soldiers available to
secure our porous borders. President Bush’s order in 2006 to
station 6,000 National Guardsmen along the U.S./Mexico border provided only a temporary fix to America’s immigration problem while further straining our already limited military capabilities (CNN.com). Furthermore, with a draft, America would finally have the manpower needed to complete our mission in Iraq, instead of a surge of only 15%, hardly enough to completely secure Baghdad and Iraq’s borders with Syria and Iran. Currently in Iraq and along the USA/Mexico border, America doesn’t necessarily need highly skilled military professionals, people that would be highly motivated and well-trained. Instead, competent but not exceptional troops are more than capable of helping to occupy Iraq or secure our borders, exactly the kind of people a draft would bring in.

On the other hand, there are some significant costs to a draft, which mainly focus on the democratic building blocks of individualism and liberty. There are a number of costs, like the potential damage to our economy by removing part of our work force, but the main cost is the quality of the draftees. An individual’s freedom is suppressed when imposed to do anything, even serve our nation, and it may be antithetical for a nation founded upon liberty and freedom to force our youth to give up several years of their lives to serve the nation. Indeed, some Libertarians go as far to argue that mandatory service is illegal, as the Thirteenth Amendment bans “involuntary servitude.” These draftees, forced to served and give up their personal freedom, may be unmotivated and apathetic, if not resentful and embittered. Thomas Sowell best explains the problem with a modern-day draft:

"Today, a military draft would bring in large numbers of numbers of people who have been systematically 'educated' to believe the worst about this country or, at best, to be non-judgmental about the differences between American society and its enemies. The fact that we could use a larger army of the kinds of people who have already
volunteered to put their lives on the line does not mean that
we can get it by adding warm bodies fresh from our politically correct schools and colleges, where standards and self-discipline are greatly lacking.” (Townhall.com)

While there are some benefits to a draft, analyzing the
cost-benefit trade-off of quantity and equality versus quality,
I have to agree with the decision of our government and Thomas Sowell and to not support a draft. It would be deleterious to the military to have many of my politically-correct peers, many of whom are apathetic about America’s heritage and bitterly opposed to the Iraq War, be forced to enter the military. While the military can teach skills, as I have experienced firsthand, it can not instill fundamental values like patriotism and a willingness to sacrifice, and soldiers
without these intrinsic principles will put their comrades and
our nation at risk. Most Americans recognize this, as an
AP-Ipsos poll found about 70% of Americans are opposed to a draft, and the House had swiftly and conclusively voted down Rangel’s draft proposals (Polling Report). Given the highly sensitive nature of a draft, nearly all politicians would rather leave this entire policy alone. Also, there is a lack of strong interest because there are extremely few groups who are firmly on one side of the issue or the issues. Libertarian Republicans are against it, while hawk ones are for it. Democrats advocating minority rights are for it, while most Democrats are against the Iraq War and a draft. This is not a policy issue with competing organized interests but rather a decision with a complex cost-benefit trade-off that seems to transcend political parties or interest groups. However, despite the fact that most politicians ignore this policy debate, there are still significant problems in our military that need to be addressed, whether with a draft or by another means, and the problems will only worsen if left unaddressed.

In actuality, the best way to increase the size of the military and upper-class involvement may not be to artificially enforce it with a draft. Instead, it could be more effective to endeavor to break down barriers that prevent intelligent and assiduous individuals like Dartmouth students from considering the military as an option. All too often, upper-class or intelligent people are just never presented with the idea of military service, not necessarily that they just do not want to serve. Sowell explains:

"Anti-military academics think they have a right to over-ride their students' rights to reach their own conclusions and make their own decisions, or even to hear a different viewpoint about the military. Patriotic and educated young Americans who want to serve in the military are available. We need to stop academia from sabotaging national defense by blocking them from R.O.T.C. and from even hearing what military representatives have to say” (Townhall.com).

If we break down the barriers that prevent the free flow of information about our military to our students, America will benefit from a well-staffed diverse military, something that all Americans would support.

In one sense, Dartmouth’s conservative reputation is merited. Many other academic institutions sit on the gauchest of peripheries. The litany of left wing ideologues from which the College on the Hill has been spared is appreciable. Princeton employs, as its Ira DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, Peter Singer, whose groundbreaking moral and philosophical views include the beliefs that, “Species is, in itself, as irrelevant to moral status as race or sex”, that infanticide of severely disabled infants whose lives would cause suffering to both themselves and their parents is morally acceptable, and that sexual relationships between humans and barnyard animals might be “mutually satisfying”.

Columbia’s Middle East Asian Languages and Cultures department came under fire last year for crossing the line between the perennial anti-Israel bias and bigoted anti-Semitism. The UC Berkeley Fall 2001 course catalogue included an undergraduate class on “The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance” whose course description warned that “conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections”. And in my hometown of Boulder, University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill gained notoriety for calling World Trade Center workers who died on September 11th “Little Eichmanns” referring to the Nazi, and, subsequently, for apparent fabrication of his American Indian heritage (which helped him land his professorship without a Ph. D.) and for plagiarism of both academic and artistic work.

So while ‘conservative’ is an absurdly inaccurate descriptor of Dartmouth’s political climate, ‘comparatively conservative’ seems to describe us rather well. Right-of-center undergraduates may fail sometimes to appreciate just how fortunate they are to attend a college with two conservative student publications, a lively campus political debate, and many excellent professors who put scholarship before indoctrination.

Fortune, though. in the strict sense of the term has very little to do with it. Dartmouth owes its relatively unbiased climate not to chance but to the hard work of generations of committed students and alumni, including nationally-known political commentators Dinesh D’Souza and Laura Ingraham. And one of Dartmouth’s newest trustees, Peter Robinson, was Ronald Reagan’s speechwriter.

Dartmouth is not atypical in this regard: on campuses across the country the fight to maintain ideological diversity has been and continues to be prosecuted almost exclusively by the right. While the fact that American college campuses are overwhelmingly liberal is hardly disputed anymore, few people aside from conservatives seem to see this as a problem. David Horowitz, for one, has caused a great deal of controversy with his push for passage of an “Academic Bill of Rights” to foster intellectual diversity and a “plurality of methodologies and perspectives” on public college campuses. (A solution properly derided by conservatives as a hypocritical affirmative action plan that flies in the face of basic principles.)8 Daniel Pipes, conservative Middle Eastern scholar, has likewise brought controversy and publicity to the issue with the 2002 establishment of Campus Watch, an organization that monitors Middle Eastern studies programs for perceived “analytical failures” as well as the conflation of politics and scholarship and “intolerance of alternative views”.

Consider an example establishment response to these efforts. Professor Robert Brandon, chair of the Duke Philosophy Department, in an attempt to dismiss allegations of anti-conservative bias and explain the scarcity of conservatives in academia, offers the enlightened observation that conservatives are stupid: “If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire,” he explained, continuing, “Mill's analysis may go some way towards explaining the power of the Republican party in our society and the relative scarcity of Republicans in academia”. While few would go this far, at least on record, most seem to view college sans conservatism as an acceptable status quo. Or if they do find the situation inequitable, they’re complaining very quietly.

This apparent lack of concern from the left is striking. One would hope that everyone, regardless of political persuasion, would be upset by the decimation of a $40,000 college education to what libertarian Daniel Klein calls a “much impoverished intellectual experience.” And even those on the left who care more about indoctrination than education ought to have second thoughts about their monopoly. Slanted campuses, in the long run, hurt liberal students and liberalism at large far more than they do conservatives.
Stefan Beck, Dartmouth graduate and assistant editor of the New Criterion articulated this argument brilliantly in an August 22 column for National Review Online. Beck likens the liberal college atmosphere to “a stroll through the gas tent,” a painful but necessary part of Basic Training for conservative students. Furthermore, he concludes, “The conservative student gets his education elsewhere while his liberal peer is left with half of one.” Beck’s article urges conservatives to stop complaining about a situation that, while far from pleasant in the short run, ultimately serves them well. By forcing conservatives to question the liberal worldview dished out daily by professors and peers, to see its flaws and to argue convincingly for their own interpretation, a biased academia ultimately sharpens their minds and gives them excellent preparation to dominate amidst the more moderate views they’re likely to encounter in the real world.

Personal experience leads me to agree wholeheartedly. As one of very few conservative students at my public high school in the beautiful liberal paradise of Boulder, Colorado, I was consistently the only one to dispute my teachers’ and colleagues’ far-left version of the facts. Not only did this experience force me to speak up in class when I would otherwise have been too shy, it accustomed me to such a stifling political environment that Dartmouth seems ideal by comparison. Boulder made me so accustomed to disagreement that I now have the tendency to play devil’s advocate all the time, no matter what the issue or my real opinion on it.

Liberal students, in contrast, largely emerge from the college cocoon unaccustomed to disagreement, and unfamiliar with any ideas other than their own. Beck recalls that during his time at Dartmouth he observed “an array of weak responses” to conservative arguments from his left wing peers, but rarely “calm, persuasive, and informed reaction to conservative ideas.” But you’ll certainly encounter some calm and informed opponents here, perhaps because of the success of our conservative minority at making its voice heard. But the effect Beck observes is predictable. In an environment where only one side of the argument is heard, it’s easy to feel well-informed and open-minded without really being so. And the ability to argue well is a result not just of innate aptitude but of practice. Conservatives whose views are constantly under attack are given far greater opportunity to hone their skills than liberals who usually find themselves in agreement with their professors and friends. It seems to me that campuses which cultivate a new generation of liberal leaders unfamiliar with the politics of half the country and unable to argue respectfully with them are detrimental to the best interests of Democrats and other liberal groups.

Critics will claim that the left still profits from liberal campuses; that the disadvantage of inexperience in confronting the other side’s views is outweighed by the fact that liberalism will gain nearly universal acceptance among students who enter college with little interest in politics. This argument has merit. Students reminded often enough that Republicans are intellectually-weak racists are unlikely to go out and vote for them. However, we must keep faith in our peers’ ability to recognize indoctrination when they see it. Even the briefest encounter with an intelligent, committed conservative will force an open-minded individual to question the reliability of the source delivering the left-wing message. Particularly outrageous instances of bias on the part of professors are more likely to cause students to turn away in disgust than convince them. And even if students remain liberal throughout college, there is a good chance they will change their minds when they leave college for the outside world and encounter a conservative majority. (Or, at the very least, when they start paying income tax.) This will be the case especially if, as previously noted, conservatives emerge from school skilled at confronting the other side, while liberals have little experience dealing with opposing views

This last prediction rests, however, on the assumption that students will evaluate arguments on their merits, rather than demonizing political opponents as sexist, racist, homophobic, etc., as a matter of course, without listening to anything they have to say. Such incivility toward opponents is, regrettably, on the rise on the left today (Recall Chairman Dean’s famous line, “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for.”), and represents perhaps the most dangerous possible result of monolithically liberal campuses. I am reminded of students’ reactions to last year’s visit lecture by Daniel Pipes, controversial Middle East scholar. Despite having stated explicitly that “It’s a mistake to blame Islam, a religion fourteen centuries old, for the evil that should be ascribed to militant Islam” and that “militant Islam is the problem and moderate Islam is the solution,” Pipes was portrayed by some on campus as an Islamophobe- so biased he couldn’t be trusted to speak on the subject. Then many students made the bizarre leap that Pipes was a racist, perhaps reflecting a quote that compared Pipes’ visit to “bringing someone who is a racist against blacks yet who has a Ph. D. in African-American studies to come talk.” One student reacted to my attempt to set the facts straight by implying that I had no authority to defend anyone from charges of racism because I was a Republican, with the unsaid clincher, ‘and therefore a racist myself.’

This is not the sort of liberalism Democrats should wish to cultivate. Liberals who resort to ad hominem attacks to avoid having to listen to opposing points of view are not likely to change their beliefs, but neither are they likely to become nuanced thinkers able to evaluate both sides of an argument to arrive at an balanced understanding. I am optimistic enough to believe that political success is ultimately tied not just to a party’s skill at catering to its base but also to its ability to find the best answers to complicated questions. Surely liberals, who pride themselves on open-mindedness, don’t want their ranks swelled by partisans too prejudiced to listen to the other side, and thus, to find these answers.

Hence, liberals who ignore the lack of the one type of diversity they seem to view as undesirable do so at the peril of their movement’s future. As for the conservatives raising such a ruckus over under-representation, are they misguided as well? It would seem that if liberal campuses ultimately benefit us in the long run, articles such as this one that draw attention to the issue are counter-productive. If liberal campuses are good for Republicans, shouldn’t we suffer the bias gladly? The answer: not at all, because, paradoxically, conservatives reap the benefits of a liberal campus only through the struggle to change it.

A conservative who smugly and silently pities his liberal peers for their lack of experience defending their beliefs ends up no better than they. So while Beck may be right to urge conservatives on the national scene to stop their whining, those of us still in the trenches have a duty to fight on, for our own benefit as well as for the enlightenment of our liberal friends and the health of campus discourse writ large. So take heart, young conservatives, and join in the battle with the knowledge that, tough as the experience may be, you’ll come out better for it in the end. And remind any liberals who give you a hard time that you’re doing it for their own good!

At the time, the embargo was clearly futile—the Cuban government could easily provide its people with a comfortable lifestyle without U.S. aid so long as they had Soviet subsidies buttressing the economy.

In 1989, everything changed. The Soviet Union collapsed, and Cuba’s economy folded along with it. Concurrently, prices for sugar were drastically depressed because of a surplus in the world market. The dual catastrophes made it evident that Cuba needed a fiscal rejuvenation. The U.S. embargo finally became a serious problem for Castro, and hopeful Americans expected it might play impetus to his decline. Clearly, they were mistaken. Castro declared the “Special Period,” a time in which fundamentalist Marxist ideology had to be put on hold and replaced with a small dose of pragmatism. Castro opened Cuba’s gates to tourism, foreign investment, and controlled amounts of private enterprise. The government tightened its belt, and shut off power for a few hours every day in order to conserve oil, Cuba’s most essential resource. The Cuban government borrowed billions and defaulted on its debts. This, along with the income from the restrained capitalism of the “Special Period” was enough to get them through the the early nineties, with or without United States trade.

This is the first reason the Embargo would never work: the Cubans are a determined people who are willing to put their base ideologies on hold when necessary, despite quantifiable evidence that adopting the precise antithesis of their ideology would breed widespread success and prosperity. Yet, at this writing Castro has reversed the steps taken during the “Special Period” and returned to ideological Marxism; He has purportedly achieved his dream for Cuba, even at the price of pauperizing the population.

The second reason the embargo cannot work is that the United States is currently the only country in the entire world that refuses to trade with Cuba. The U.S. trades with every other country in the Caribbean, so when the Cubans need U.S. goods, they are able to gain access to them (albeit at higher prices) through these intermediaries. In fact, some other countries are especially willing to provide aid to Cuba to flout the embargo.

The third reason the Embargo is of no value is that Venezuela has replaced the Soviet Union as Cuba’s patron-nation. When Chavez came into power in Venezuela, he began to provide aid—especially oil—to Cuba at generous prices in the spirit of Communist solidarity. Because Cuba’s only source of power is oil-fired plants, this oil has easily become their most precious commodity. As a result, they now have enough power in their economic engine to develop once again foster a tourism marker and regain an irreplaceable source of income.
The ultimate evidence of the embargo’s inefficacy is that Cuban exiles living in the United States send billions of dollars in remittances every year to their relatives in Cuba. Yet most of the exile population in the United States is simultaneously unyielding in their desire to wage economic war on Cuba, and have succeeded in tightening the embargo by lobbying the Republican Party, which to its credit retains anti-Communist sympathies. However, the enforcement of the embargo is increasingly selective and inconsistent. While President Bush has recently severely restricted Cuban exiles’ access to their relatives, and seriously limited the amount of remittances they can send, he has refused to clamp down on American agricultural interests, which conduct business with Cuba. Archer Daniels Midland, for example, has been lobbying for permission to buy and sell goods in Cuba. In 2001 the embargo was relaxed just enough so that American companies are now able to sell food and medicine to Cuba.

Republicans on the federal level are reluctant to suggest lifting the embargo entirely. Cubans in Florida, all vehemently anti-Castro, are swing-voters in a swing-state. In a political climate where every state counts, a Republican can not afford to lose Florida and its wealth of electoral votes. As long as Cuban exiles in Florida vote on their anti-Communist sentiments, and as long as both parties desperately need their votes, we can expect the embargo to remain in place.

The intent of the embargo was to supplant Marxist roots with the seeds of democracy and capitalism. Though such nation transformation was accomplished militarily in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States with Cuba was prevented from even making an attempt, as President John F. Kennedy had given assurances to the Soviet Union that America would not intervene militarily in Cuba.
The inconsistent, ineffective, and hypocritical embargo in place today will not succeed in toppling any regime, and has no place in our country’s foreign policy. It belongs in history books. Would lifting the embargo aid in the overthrow of Communist rule in Cuba? Certainly not. It would in fact only create richer Communists, as in China. It is evident that Communism will reign over Cuba with the embargo in place, and it will reign without the embargo. However, if there were no embargo, Cubans would eat better and live happier. We must consider not only the immediate political consequences, but also distant outcomes of our actions: if Cubans could be spared from scrounging for a better existence, it is almost certain that the natural forces of the market would change Cuba from the inside, so that when Fidel Castro is someday gone, genuine change can occur. If the embargo were lifted, this economic revolution may not happen quickly. But with the embargo in place, it has no chance of happening at all.

POSH BEGINNINGS

Che was born Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna into a financially comfortable Argentinean family. He was the first child, and it is widely believed that he was conceived out of wedlock. In embarrassment, his birth certificate was later altered to June 14, 1928. Ernesto would suffer no social improprieties such as that and, later, would underwrite the mass executions of Cuban homosexuals: bearers of, at the time, another sort of social impropriety.

Ernesto and his family espoused radical left-wing views, common among tony Argentinean nobles. His formative years were spent in a politically self-reinforcing environment. Although his parents attempted to send their eldest son on the silver-lined straight and narrow by shipping him off to the university to become a doctor (he eventually earned his M.D., and practiced famously incompetent medicine) he quickly fell through the cracks and into the hands of the local devil—Fidel Castro. He would eventually put himself, Castro, and Cuba under the auspices of the Soviet Empire, practically pulling the Iron Curtain along its rails with his own bloody hands.

But there was much lollygagging ere his descent into “revolution”. Ernesto spent boyhood vacations in Latin America tooling around in his American-made Norton motorcycle, which he nicknamed “the Great”. His equally politically pernicious brother, Alberto, suggested in 1951 that he take a year off from school and do that wild and spontaneous bike tour of South America they had always been talking about. They did, and he kept a travelogue which would eventually gross millions in capitalist box offices.

THE WRONG CROWD

Ernesto returned to Argentina, dashed off his medical degree, and began a broad survey of South America. The small countries there were riddled with poverty and corruption. A crop of largely well-intentioned politicians, who billed themselves as reformers, liberals, revolutionaries, and the like, began to seize power. These young leaders consorted with Stalin’s localized end-tentacles, who provided public relations and policy suggestions. (Suggestions which, as history reminds us, would eventually turn into edicts from Uncle Joe as he sought ultimate power.) Many of them refused to run under the banner of communism since, even to the huddled masses, the idea of a losing freedom in a centrally-planned economy was anathema. But Marxism simmered, simmered, simmered, until it came to a boil, at which point local leaders could not avoid Soviet domination. The empire dawned, and it was a game of Axis and Allies.

But Ernesto played on the micro level, inside several of the vulnerable Latin-American nations. He became convinced early on that socialism, and then Communism, would act as a panacea for the inequality he perceived. His most productive years in terms of Marxist sophistry were in Cuba, while functioning as Castro’s point man for loss prevention and opposition suppression. He may have done just as well- and exponentially more- under Stalin himself.

But the path begins in Guatemala. His tour of South America was interrupted when the CIA toppled the Guatemalan government, prompting Ernesto to seek refuge in the consulate building. He was hardened against the United States which, he presumed, was embarking on an imperial quest to stop any government which, as he saw it, was doing what was necessary to eradicate economic inequality. “What was necessary” was an elitist, top-down political system based on economic fiat. And such a thing could only be imposed by force. Ernesto Guevara waited in that embassy until he could secure safe passage to Mexico, where he met the brothers Castro. With Fidel’s help, he would do what was necessary.

TAKING CUBA

Fidel and Raul were holed up in Mexico City, after being exiled from Cuba in an armed insurrection led by General Fulgencio Batista, who assumed dictatorial powers after a successful coup d’état. Brilliantly, the brothers were fixing to return to Cuba, via armed insurrection, and assume dictatorial powers with a coup d’état. Ernesto traveled to Cuba with Fidel, neither of whom expected to bear the brunt of the fight (nor would they), and 80 other armed guerilla warriors. In the twenty-four months of battles that followed, Ernesto earned the respect of the dictator-to-be for his ruthless and merciless policies and the eagerness with which he took to his new sinecure as executioner. A strong believer in capital punishment- especially when no trial is involved- Ernesto would execute spies, informants, deserters, and insubordinates with impunity. There is no record of how many prisoners he personally executed with his .32 pistol. And there is no counting how many death slips he stamped.

What is known is that he largely avoided combat. “Lead the march” he did, but only in a rhetorical sense. Ernesto preferred to kill people who had already been captured and subdued. Indeed, even in his native Argentina he was proud of the fact that his asthma kept him from joining the army.

Guevara’s fiery speech and inhuman cruelty towards his political enemies obscured all personal cowardice, and endeared him to Castro. Fidel promoted Ernesto to major within months, and after two years the war was over. He officially joined the new socialist government of Cuba, divorced his Peruvian wife and left her to fend for the child he fathered by her. He was soon appointed director of the La Cabaña fortress/prison. Over four years he instituted programs that resulted in mass executions of inmates. Torture was de rigeur, with mock executions (always, always followed by the real thing in due time) being the preferred method of extraction. And from his La Cabaña came the infamous Cuban labor camps, which incarcerated and killed political dissidents, gays, and anyone diagnosed with AIDS.

One Cuban journalist who knew Ernesto, Luis Ortega, wrote that his personal firing squad dispensed with 1,897 political dissenters. This during the first handful of nights in Castro’s Cuba. It was policy for friends and family of the condemned to witness the execution, and inspect the blood-spattered paredon that always remained.

Ernesto was never far from Castro’s ear. He aligned Cuba closely with the Soviet Empire, which conveniently seemed to be the only customer for Cuba’s goods. He also signed off on Russia’s plan to place nuclear missiles in Cuba, aimed at the United States of America. He would later tell a reporter that, if Cuba had been given control of the missiles, he would have ordered them launched.

FAILED REVOLUTIONS, AND THE END

Beginning in the spring of 1965, Ernesto disappeared for several years, touring the other Communist nations of the world. His failures in instituting a working socialist economy in Cuba fermented personal embarrassment, and as it slowly occurred to him that the Soviets may not be honest brokers, he fled Havana in humiliation over how closely he had aligned his adoptive nation with Stalin. When he resurfaced, it was in Africa, where he asked and received Castro’s help in mass-indoctrination of Africans in the Marxist precepts. It was his hope to inspire Cuban-style anarchy in order to accomplish something. (Ernesto’s goals become increasingly ambiguous as he moves from revolution to revolution; the only commonality being the ruthless murder and torture of those who disagree with the left-wing flavor of the day.)

His revolutions on the Dark Continent were routed by local nationalist armies who had assistance from the CIA. Ernesto’s next stop was Bolivia, where he attempted to raise a guerilla army. In the jungles, the CIA was training the Bolivian army to deal with Communist guerillas and a small contingent of US Army Rangers was also on the ground. Two of Ernesto’s columns were quickly captured by national forces. The ardently anti-communist president of Bolivia requested his head on a platter, which nearly happened. Ernesto was frustrated by the lack of grassroots support- he had not enlisted a single Bolivian peasant by the end. He was so desperate, in fact, that nearly all of the final missions upon which he set his guerilla army were to obtain asthma medicine for himself. As the revolution was failing and he was preparing for withdrawal, Bolivian forces located his encampment and captured him. He is reported to have begged for his life during the seizure of the camp. Although it was an American CIA officer who spearheaded the search for Ernesto, Guevara was unfortunately not captured by the Americans. The Bolivians who did find him proceeded to execute him. His expensive Rolex watch went to the American CIA officer. His hands to Castro.

Ernesto—Che, as he is limned in adulation—succeeded in nothing. He achieved only death and destruction. Romantic for himself, and tragic for those he led to devastation. He did not inspire peasants. He inspired a guilty middle class to leave schools and jobs and farms and join armed uprisings that accomplished nothing politically, killed hundreds of thousands of innocents, and set back the cause of Latin-American democracy for decades. In the same essay in which Che called for “many Vietnams” he also wrote of “[h]atred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine.” He pined for such inhumanity, saying “[t]his is what our soldiers must become.” And that is what he was. He belongs on the darkest pages of history books, not on t-shirts.

In a communist society, there is no private property. Under Marxist theory, everything is collectively shared and no one is permitted to gain an “advantage” over anyone else. When my friend remarked that “that sounded like a pretty good idea” to him, I was reflexively infuriated. But stepping away from the heat of that conversation, I was able to see what so many people find attractive about Communism. It is the sultry promise of equality for all, and suffering for none. I quickly learned that Communism may have achieved equality for all (excepting its rich leaders) but the “equality” was and still is a lowest common denominator not unlike the third world.

In modern Russia, there is a widely known adage, “дом и не дом,” which roughly translates as, “the home versus not-the-home” or private property versus public property. To a Russian man, his home and private property are the most important things in his life.

The home is a sacred place treated with the utmost respect. It is, to echo an American metaphor, his castle. The home is kept religiously clean; dishes are always washed, the floors are always spotless, there are no trash cans and, mysteriously, no trash either. It is a world unto itself. The Russians whom I befriended love to use their homes to entertain guests. They are warm, hospitable, and have a singularly gregarious sense of humor when inside their private castles. The gaiety though, is strictly confined. Take one step out of the apartment proper, and you are hit with a completely separate reality. The public spaces in the apartment buildings are absolutely contemptible. Public stairwells-cum-toilets make common passageways noxious, and the smell permeates throughout the building, from hall to elevator to stair to lobby. I had no choice but to hold my breath while moving between the apartment and the street.

But the streets are no better.

Outside, people are cold and insensitive. You will never get a friendly smile from a stranger. No one smiles. In fact, during my orientation program I was told that any positive facial expressions would have me mistaken for a prostitute. On the dirty roads, drivers are inhumane and unsympathetic; the pedestrian, by virtue of his method of conveyance, has no value. There is no kindness of strangers to speak of, and it is impossible to get any roadside aid. At a Metro station in St. Petersburg I found myself in need of direction. “Where is the Red Line, please?” I politely asked a stranger. He offered no response. I asked two more straphangers. Nothing. As if I didn’t exist. I made a full round before someone gave me the simple answer I needed: “upstairs,” without making eye contact.

In the world outside the home, there is, apart from the culture-borne hostile temperament, also a largely unchecked pollution problem. City trash cans are a rare sight due to the recent and unduly successful trash can bombings. So, rather than take the time to find a proper waste receptacle, Russians throw their waste on the ground or make sport of it and fling refuse into the canals and waterways. The air, as a result of this and other dubious activities, is injected with muck and gases. Well-nigh everyone smokes, the vehicles dump smog into the air, and there are almost no governmental regulations on factory pollution. The net result is a city with filthy streets, vile waterways, and almost unbreathable air.

IRON CURTAINS AND IRON HEARTS

It is absurd to think that Communism was tried here, of all places. The Russian mentality is self-reliant and individualistic. Those virtues, now twisted and blackened in the toothless maw of a crumbled empire, look like utter selfishness. In even her finest cities, or what ornate shells are left of them, Russia shows no regard whatever for the public good, for fellow man, for preservation of resources. The old gold and guns of Lenin and Stalin are preserved, and that only through their sturdy construction. (The massive diversion of currency by those dictators to keep stasis in government and glory in self produced durable monuments.) There’s a McDonald’s in Pushkin Square now, but the irony misses the mark. No one cares to hail or have at the old relics of Communism. They are merely there. No one allows a smirk or frown at the conquest of freedom and French Fries. The McDonald’s is merely there.

But the people, whether marketers or Marxists, tell a nation’s real story. Russia’s most noticeable scar from its seventy-year slog is its reluctance to let go of the Soviet mentality. The concept of red thought seemed abstract to me for a time, but after a while I was able to identify it in daily encounters. The most exasperating face was apathy in all deeds. Service, which, to exist in the classic sense necessitates personal pride, is but a fossil. Service does not exist. To be honest, I did not expect very much from public officials or employees of the state. American bureaucrats and administrative workers are well-paid, and they, as any driver knows, are slothful. But standing in line at a Russian post office makes the DMV seem like a far-off arcadia of efficiency and caring, competent customer assistance. Perhaps the post office, too, was excusable. But I never expected what I found in the marketplace.

I cannot determine with certainty whether it was because I was an American tourist or because they expect to sell so little anyway and, over time, have disheartened, but shop keepers from luxury stores to the cart-bound purveyors of life’s essentials either ignored or abused me when I tried to conduct any sort of business. It was a sad disappointment to see such a sullen market, even if economic indicators on the news should have prepared me. When I stopped at food kiosks or convenience stores I was verbally harassed. At ice cream stands, ignored. The customer is never right and the customer’s money is apparently of no interest. At one shop, I learned of the trials involved in getting change for one’s purchase. On several occasions, in fact, I presented the clerk with a five-hundred ruble note for an item that cost half that, and the clerk would refuse to sell me the item. Oh, he and I understood one another. I had the cash and he the change. But something stopped the transaction from occurring. This sounds absurd, I concede. But it nonetheless is the state of things.

The same steely, dejected nebbish mindset bleeds into family life. In the United States, is a commonly-cited and always-lamented fact that slightly over half of all marriages end in divorce rather than death. In Russia, 100% of marriages end in divorce. Infidelity is routine and expected. A popular television ad campaign tells male consumers that if they are going on vacation and didn’t want to infect their wives upon returning, they should purchase the company’s disposable STD vaccine(ish) formula.

Russia is one of the only countries on this Earth with a population that is actually decreasing. Many couples simply choose not to have children.

GODLESS AND HOPELESS STILL

Expectedly following a brutally secular regime, the state of the Cross is mangled in Russia. Under Communism, the state seized and destroyed anything that intimated hope or evinced reliance on any power other than the State. The government therefore reclaimed holy property and destroyed countless numbers of churches. The rest were turned the others into storehouses or public gymnasiums and pools. Under Stalin, St. Petersburg’s most magnificent cathedral was turned into the Museum of Atheism. Christmas, Easter and all other religious holidays were expurgated from calendars and minds. To the joy of believers, religion has made something of a comeback since the fall of Communism, and nearly every Russian woman wears an orthodox cross around her neck. But, though Russians are not persecuted for practicing their religion these days, few see any use for faith. The storehouses, gymnasiums and pools are sanctified ground once more, but are largely vacant.

On one of my last days in Russia, I had a sobering conversation with a native Russian with whom I had become very close during my time. He told me that he feels so trapped in his own country- so depressed- that if he had one wish, he would take his family to America. He spoke of the lack of opportunity for his children, the deficit of hope, and the failure of the government to lift the country out of its sad state.

Needless to say, I left Russia with a stronger sense of patriotism toward my own nation and a strong distaste for purblind advocates of Communism who have never seen what the actual thing does to a place, to a people, and to a once-bright national spirit.

There is no denying that there is some value in students with similar backgrounds and interests coming together to support one other. The problem is that students arriving on campus leap into identity-based groups, entrench themselves in these comfort zones, and never leave them. In a place where a whole slew of stereotypes accompany which organizations we join—from Greek Houses to a cappella groups—it can be difficult to branch out once you have boxed yourself into a single identity. Let me make one thing clear: other people’s perceptions are not the important thing. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Who needs the stress of realizing sophomore spring that you have made yourself into something you do not really want to be?

Dartmouth is a place to be expanding your horizons, not limiting them. Try things out that you might not have previously considered. Befriend a couple of upperclassmen and learn from their mistakes. Trust me: we have made plenty. And take my hypocritical advice- try something outdoorsy.

I can not claim to have all the answers, but if I could offer one piece of advice to the class of 2009 entering colleges across the country, it would be to echo the advice my “big sister” in my sorority gave me: eschew the self-made traps, and resist the temptation to reduce yourself to a single label. Do you really want to be known as a “token” in your group of friends? Think about it: If you join a political group, and blindly defend every stance your party takes on any given issue, you end up no more than a machine. If you reduce yourself to nothing more than your race, you are buying into a system that tells us that your race, above all, is your defining characteristic. Trust me, when it comes to figuring out who you are, it doesn’t hurt to wait. There’s no need to do it in the fall of your freshman year.

In Sylvia Plath’s autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, she compares the possibilities before her (successful career, marriage, etc.) to ripe, juicy figs on a fig tree. Overwhelmed by so many options, she fears she will starve to death before she can decide which fig is best to pick. Do not let this be you. Do not feel like you have to choose just one fig here at Dartmouth. Pick as many as you want, and only keep the good ones!

Best of luck with the journey, and welcome to Dartmouth!

We must eschew eloquence for accuracy: you were a miserable, predictable cur. For all of the prescience that our meager meteorological efforts bore, Norman Mailer bested us back in ‘59. Here was his forecast: “America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.”

But a strike it was. And a low one. Here we humble Apple Pie Eating Americans were, slurping our gangbuster-like petrol and quibbling about who’s to blame for the steadily appreciating number-placards on the highway. There we were liberating a foreign land from the death grip of a pocked creature who himself is now a dead man walking, and quibbling about if it was the right thing to do as if it had already been done. There we ran, Katrina, through the local Wal-Mart fists full of Rolled Back seventy-four packs of Coca-Cola and nine-for-a-dollar windshield wipers crying in agony over the devastation this retailer was clearly inflicting upon our sweet land of mom and pop corner stores. There we were, involved in endless, numbing debate, and unaware.

And you rolled in to the Gulf shores and informed us that we were all racists.As if we didn’t have enough to worry about. You see, these debates we have, they can enfeeble us when they lead us to question our core. You seized on that and conjured the phantasm of an evil we thought we had long ere eradicated. Certain bold voices (they may as well be surrogates of yours) denounced America as a racist nation, its president as a bigot, its culture as more hostile to one skin color than another.

But do you know what? For all the physical sears left in the winds’ wake, the attendant assault upon the hearts, souls and fabrics of this land will fail to penetrate, as so many similar subversions have.

An unhappy set, yes, has been convinced that America is a nation of permanently-anointed superiors and forever-dejected inferiors. Not only were you a racist storm, but our government was racist in its response and our society in its ethnic distribution, as if those things are molded like clay by a High Priest of Demography. These are the famously clear-headed and open-minded liberals whose sights distinguish so readily and so reflexly between white and black.
But there is a larger set, Katrina. Tempered, tested, adjusted and confident in America’s goodness and progress. They seek to identify future problems and pad against them, rather than disinter past wedges. We’ll let a larger and wiser man than Normal Mailer speak for them. We’ll let Walt Whitman, former printer’s apprentice, nurse of ailing Union Soldiers, and proud Free Soil ex-Democrat, speak to the mettle of America:

Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,)
To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane.

Pax Vobiscum,

The Editors

It goes without saying that China’s history is steeped in religious and spiritual tradition. China is, of course, the birthplace of Confucianism, and the land where Lao Tzu penned the Tao Te Ching. Buddhism from India, Christianity from the trading ports, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism—all have made their marks on Chinese spiritual life over the centuries.

Yet the People’s Republic of China is today an officially atheist nation. Four out of ten Chinese do not practice any religion whatsoever. Government secularization programs from the dawn of revolution in 1949 until the end of the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s have made religious indifference a safe option for a sizeable portion of the population. Another third of the Chinese people fall under the nebulous category of “folk religionists,” and often maintain Confucian principles while engaging in ancestor worship and ancient shamanistic practices. Christians (primarily of “independent” or indigenous denominations), Buddhists, and Muslims are the three largest “recognized” religions in China. Falun Gong, a nonviolent spiritual system of meditation, healing arts, and physical exertion, has attracted millions of adherents since the early 1990s but has been condemned by the CCP for “spreading fallacies, hoodwinking people, inciting and creating disturbances and jeopardizing social stability.” Its members have been ruthlessly persecuted since 1999.
According to Marxist theory, religion offers an illusory happiness to the suffering masses, blinding them to the harsh realities of the capitalist system. In many regards, CCP policy has reflected a “faith,” of sorts, that continual revolutionary progress will eliminate the need for any religion at all. A much-heralded document, The 1982 Policy Paper Concerning Religion, underscores this certainty on the part of the Chinese Government:

Religion is seen as a result of social frustrations and exploitation and as a tool to manipulate the masses. In China’s socialist society, this base has been destroyed so that with the advances in education, culture, science, and technology, religion will gradually disappear of its own accord.

The Communist concept of religion as lingering pathology is, however, divorced from reality. Conversions to all faiths – Christians of all denominations, the country’s nineteen million (mostly Sunni) Muslims, and especially Buddhists – continue to rise annually and dramatically. The government claims that only 100 million believers, less than ten percent of the population, profess some kind of faith. This statistic has been used consistently since the 1950s, however, despite clear evidence to the contrary. The CCP has obviously tried very hard over the decades to minimize the perpetual problem of belief.

With no way to check the evident need for religious fulfillment on the part of millions of Chinese, the CCP has instead attempted to appropriate and facilitate religious life itself. The Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB) is a monolithic arm of the bureaucracy devoted to controlling the types of religion permissible on the mainland and registering “eligible” practitioners. Many of China’s faithful find the various intrusions of the Bureau alienating and repressive. The RAB limits the number of religious sites in order to “maintain order,” and it freely installs its own Party functionaries into religious hierarchies. Corruption, so endemic on the national level (an astounding thirteen to seventeen percent of China’s $6.5 trillion Gross Domestic Product is devoured annually by a rapacious few) makes itself apparent in state-sanctioned religious organizations as corrupt officials “skim off the top.”

The government’s repression is made manifest in a variety of ways. There are only five “official” religions in China – Buddhism, Daoism, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam. Followers of other faiths must petition their government for recognition (and subsequent subjugation) or face harsh reprisals. The Vatican is not recognized at all by the CCP, and priests who pledge allegiance to Rome above Beijing face years of detention. A vast underground system of churches, reportedly claiming many more members than those run by the state, exists somewhat outside government interference. Roughly 100,000 Christian missionaries – denounced by the CCP as the remnants of Western imperialism – flow throughout the country, contraband Bibles in tow.

Du Zhonglian, a member of the Russian Orthodox Church who claims a dual Cossack and Chinese heritage, is one example of a believer marginalized by the CCP’s restrictive policies. A 66 year-old native of Beijing, he lived through the bloody Cultural Revolution, in which religious people of all denominations were tortured and sent to psychiatric wards and labor camps by zealous Red Guards. He is still petitioning the government for recognition of his religion, according to the South China Morning Post : “When asked if he meets with other members of the Orthodox community to practice his religion, Mr Du replies firmly: ‘I won't do anything illegal.’ Asked if he still prays at home, he responds simply: ‘In my heart.’”

The governmental repression of the Falun Gong religious sect remains, arguably, one of the most poignant contemporary examples of government paranoia and intolerance vis-à-vis spiritual practice. In 1992, Li Hongzhi, a former government official, first began practicing a nonviolent series of physical and mental exercises, many culled from ancient disciplines without much government interference. His training method was quickly adopted by thousands, then millions, over the course of the decade. On July 25, 1999, some 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners surrounded Zhongnanhai, the CCP central compound in Beijing, in two solid lines. The government, astounded not only by the numbers but also by how quickly Falun Gong practitioners could be mobilized, somehow detected a threat – perhaps in the same vein as the Boxer Rebellion nearly a century before – and declared Falun Gong a dangerous and potentially violent cult. A June 20, 1999, edition of Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily), the mouthpiece of the communist regime, further attempted to justify the impending crackdown by underscoring the need to abolish superstition and pseudo-science, though in reality a need for political stability was obviously the critical element.

That July, Falun Gong was officially declared illegal; numerous Falun Gong websites were jammed and hundreds of thousands of books, tapes, and meditation guides were destroyed. More distressing, of course, is the human element. Tens of thousands (it is impossible to find exact statistics) have been detained, arrested and convicted of “undermining the public order,” and sent off to prison or transformation centers for the standard three-year term for “reeducation.” Maria Chang argues in Falun Gong: The End of Days that it is the viciously defensive CCP that is the true cult, not the peaceful and decentralized Falun Gong. The hypocritical and zealous “cult” of the CCP, devoted to adoration of a leader (Chairman Mao Zedong, and other luminaries such as Deng Xiaoping) and devoted to “brainwashing” (or “reeducation,” call it what you will) is far more cult-like than Falun Gong, which is devoted primarily to deep breathing exercises known collectively as qigong. Yet the label remains, and tens of thousands continue to suffer for it.

What, then, can human rights activists do? We must recognize that China, according to the State Department, is one of six nations “of particular concern under the International Religious Freedom Act,” alongside countries such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. We must petition our representatives for further investigation of some of the most ruthless governmental repressions against people of faith in the world today. Currently, Chinese exports to America have a monetary value of well over $9.5 billion dollars annually; if the United States were to reduce its Chinese imports by an economically significant margin, say ten percent, while demanding measurable improvement in human rights for all religious Chinese by the CCP, then Beijing might well make some steps towards progress. Naturally, given the Chinese government’s record of hypocrisy and manipulation, any concessions or promises that are offered must be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism. But promises and concessions are the first step towards accountability. It would be in the CCP’S self-interest to make them for the world to see, and it would be in the interest of the Chinese people as well.

[Eds. note – Many articles and monographs have been written on the communist assault on religious practice in China. This article would be incomplete without some reference to the works used to write it—not only to justify the claims made in the piece but also to allow readers to probe the depth of the crisis for themselves.
Human Rights Watch has published several highly informative pieces on religious life in China. Dangerous Meditation and China: State Control of Religion are full of primary source documents, cross-checked statistics and personal accounts.
Chang's Falun Gong, aside from providing some much-needed historical context, explores the theoretical basis for communist reservations about an evidently pacifistic sect. Luo Zhufeng's Religion Under Socialism in China is a translated work, written by an obvious adherent to "the party line," and is therefore intriguing in its own right. Saich's Governance and Politics of China offers a satisfying overview of the Party bureaucracy, while Yijiang Ding's Chinese Democracy After Tiananmen provides further context. The 2005 World Almanac and The World Christian Encyclopedia, published by Oxford University Press, provided statistics on China's religious diversity and its economic vitality. Transcripts of the hearings and roundtables of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Washington, D.C., over the past two years proved invaluable when researching this article. They are available in most libraries in pamphlet form or on the Internet at <http://www.cecc.gov>.]

In 2003, President George W. Bush addressed the United Nations on the issue of human trafficking, identifying sex trafficking as "a special evil," distinct from other forms of slavery. According to the Beverly LaHaye Institute, between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked each year. Eighty percent of those people are women, fifty percent are children, and seventy percent of the women and children are trafficked specifically for sexual purposes. As the HIV/AIDS crisis grows worldwide, men visiting other countries seek out younger and younger prostitutes, increasing the number of children forced into this repulsive trade. Yet for many years it was an invisible issue, due in part to the vulnerability of victims; many refused to come forward.

The stories are heart wrenching. Victims of sex-trafficking, usually young women from South Asia or Eastern Europe, are intimidated and threatened. They are pulled from poverty-stricken areas, usually with the promise of a better life in the U.S. through employment or marriage. Others are sold into sexual slavery by desperate spouses or parents. Once in captivity, they are told by their captors that if they escape and go to the authorities, that they will be arrested, tortured, deported. They are often beaten or even raped to keep them in line. Trapped in a foreign country where they often do not speak the language, stripped of their passports, and ignorant of their rights (and often, their whereabouts), the victims do not come forward. Thus for years the grave problem eluded the public.
One of the first and most aggressive moves in the anti-sex trafficking crusade was the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. The bill, co-sponsored by the late Paul Wellstone (D-MN), and Sam Brownback (R-KS), had strong bipartisan support. The bill took a broad definition of trafficking, incorporating domestic trafficking under the parameters of the legislation. According to the International Rescue Committee, the legislation applies to "sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to form such an act has not attained 18 years of age", or "the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery." Such widespread, bipartisan support is especially encouraging in light of the fact that the bill was introduced before the outpouring of bipartisanship post-9/11, and the surge of pro-freedom rhetoric in the aftermath of the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Act granted special non-immigrant visas to victims of trafficking to stay in the country while their case is being prosecuted, provided they cooperate with the prosecution of their traffickers. Some on the left have taken issue with this, claiming that it puts undue pressure on the woman to take part in the prosecution of her captors. Often, the traffickers are from the same village as the victim and they fear retribution on their families. The Act also allows to the President to set standards for other countries in their handling of traffickers, and impose sanctions on those nations who do not live up to those standards. Even this has been politicized in recent years. Instead of accepting that this might be a well-intentioned action by the President, the left views it as a way of angering countries we are already on bad terms with instead of going after the countries with the largest trafficking problems. Venezuela is cited as an example of a country we “target” despite the fact that its trafficking problem is not as large and widespread as some countries in Asia. It would seem, however, that these countries should be responding to the minimum standards established if they wish to avoid sanctions.

When I speak of the erosion of the coalition between the left and the right against sex trafficking, I refer not so much to Congress as I do to political advocacy groups. This is not to say that there are no differences to the way in which Republicans and Democrats confront the issue. Republicans, especially during the Bush Administration, have tended to support a "zero-tolerance" policy for countries that are too lenient with traffickers. Democrats, conversely, often support the legalization of prostitution as a way of minimizing the sex trade. They take issue with the fact that Bush's policies do not adequately differentiate between trafficked individuals and voluntary sex workers. There is evidence, however, that legalized prostitution does not deter black market sex industry. In fact, by driving up the prices of prostitutes, they create an even greater demand for underground sex workers, and these are the women who are trafficked. According to the U.S. State Department: "…where prostitution has been legalized or tolerated, there is an increase in the demand for sex slaves and the number of victimized foreign women"—many likely victims of human trafficking.

Some on the left have compared the US policy of insisting countries enforce stricter anti-prostitution laws to an "abstinence-only" education policy as a way of combating AIDS. This seems a bit of a stretch. While it is important to educate women in developing countries about the dangers of trafficking, and provide alternatives, we cannot accept that sex work is merely a “necessary evil” that these women must endure to ensure their survival. Such a policy would manifest itself in years of inactivity on this most pressing of issues, not to mention it would fail to address the underlying problems of poverty and poor educational resources in third world or developing nations.

It is disappointing to see partisanship creeping back into the discussions on human trafficking, an issue around which it is reasonable to expect unity. In fact, there have been claims from the left that Bush’s powerful anti sex-trafficking rhetoric is hypocritical in light of his military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. It seems to me to be a fundamental misunderstanding to claim that trafficking is the only problem. To address trafficking without addressing allegedly "voluntary" prostitution would be a tragic, disastrous mistake. How is sex work voluntary when there is no other choice? Hopefully in the future, we will be able to regain some of the bipartisanship we have lost and unite once again to protect helpless, exploited victims of modern day slavery.

Over time, its name was shortened to ‘UN’ as lingual ease displaced the rigor of war. Its physical symbol: the wall of gleaming glass called the Secretariat Building, on the east side of Manhattan. Unlike any other building, it faces only two directions, though it is four-sided. The side walls are solid brick rather than glass: no corner office exists. In this quirk of architect Oscar Niemeyer, the soul of the United Nations is encapsulated. Equality at all costs. Such a proposition remains the antithesis of Hitlerism. In this most literal sense, the United Nations carries on mankind’s fight against despotism and hatred. It does so with vigor, determination, resilience, and absolute stolidity of purpose – in much the same way the United States conducted its war against another murderous dictator: Saddam Hussein. He killed millions of his own people for various discriminatory reasons. The walls of his rape rooms sweat with memories of a thousand defiled women. And yet, Kofi Annan called this war “illegal.” He disapproved and fought tooth and nail to stop the United States from executing its battle against the tyrant in Baghdad. “Why?” seems to be a fair question.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990, it was to recreate the Empire of Babylon—at least, that is what he told his citizens. In truth, there is no singular reason why his army laid waste to 30,000 Kuwaiti villages. It was a crime against humanity fueled as much by greed as by hatred, and led by a man whose political internship, as it were, occurred when he was 22, and was one of the gunmen who botched the assassination attempt on an Iraqi ruler, Abdel Kassem. Since that time, Hussein’s hands have reddened with—by conservative estimates—more than one million deaths of innocent Iraqis, most of them religious dissidents who did not share his sect of Islam.

In response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the long arm of UN bureaucracy sprang to inaction. Within hours, resolution 660 was passed, which told Saddam Hussein that the Security Council did not like very much what he was doing, and would he please stop. Several days later, resolution 661 was passed. It introduced economic sanctions, which starved Iraqis without hindering Hussein’s war machine. As the UN doctrine of ‘all states were created equal’ fell apart before the world’s eyes, George Bush began to feel pressure to right the wrong. Resolution after resolution went by. 678 reminded Saddam about 660. 686 asked that prisoners be released. 687 was a list of weapons that Iraq could no longer have. 688 condemned Hussein’s repression of his people. 707 reminded Saddam about 687. Scattered resolutions from 715 to 1441—over a period of more than a decade—demanded that Saddam submit to inspections.

Every order from this world council was ignored, subverted, minimized, or otherwise spat upon by Saddam Hussein.

In response, a broad coalition, led by the United States, forced Saddam’s plunderers out of Kuwait. During this time, broad economic sanctions attempted to punish Saddam for his tyrannical rule. But content to live fatly as his subjugated peons starved, it became apparent that trade sanctions were doubly hurting the Iraqis oppressed by Saddam. A solution was devised that would re-open the pathways of trade on a limited basis. It was called the Oil for Food program.

“This is a victory for the poorest of the poor of Iraq, for the women and children,” then-UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said in 1996. Theoretically, Oil for Food was to be just that. Instead, under the auspices of that program and over the course of the next decade, it would become readily apparent why the United Nations was unable to take proper action against the steady rise of Saddam Hussein.

If the UN’s bureaucratic coil and inherent reluctance to act dampened the First Gulf War, they nearly immobilized the second. Saddam’s actions were no different; he still had biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, as confirmed by intelligence agencies and reconfirmed with countless UN reminders. And indeed, left alone for a number of years, the world’s foremost intelligence agencies agreed that Hussein most likely was developing nuclear weapons. Although post-war inspections have revealed this to be improbable, it nonetheless was properly the basis of the President’s decisions. And, with the threshold for action so low after September 11th, the decision to go to war was unavoidable. Why, then, did France and Germany so stridently oppose all military action against Iraq in 2003? Hussein had not changed; his weapons were still there. He was still murdering his own people. Public executions of suspected prostitutes continued in many town squares. The lying continued; the evasion continued. The ‘please listen to us’ Security Council resolutions continued. What had changed?

UN officials and key member countries, particularly France, had discovered one heck of a golden goose in Iraq.

In Oil for Food, much was outsourced. Program money was transferred through the Banque Nationale de Paris. The United Nations put some of the physical administrative duties to companies such as Lloyd’s Register, Cotecna, and Saybolt. These companies had important tasks, such as stopping the smuggling of weapons. Unfortunately, every single hired hand milked the United Nations for all they could. Initial audits show millions of dollars in overcharging and inexplicable payments to local Iraqi officials. None of this was detected by the United Nations until 1998, when audits were initiated on the Oil for Food program amidst growing suspicion. But Kofi Annan embargoed the audits. They were finally released in January 2005, after calls for resignation began to ring out from Capitol Hill in Washington.

Those early audits, damning though they are, belie the depth of the Oil for Food scandal. Washington politicians had been increasingly skeptical of the program, especially in the years before the Iraq War. The United States, after all, is a large financial backer of the United Nations, and it rightly expects that its capital investments be used with propriety. When the prospect emerged that the program was illegally channeling money to Iraq War opponents, the “conflict of interest” alert was sounded and Republicans began to press for investigations. Democrats ought to be doing the same, for it is in everyone’s interest to have a Security Council capable of proper action, not just economically and politically expedient action. Congressional investigations, as many as five simultaneous ones, continue, and to this day the US Department of Justice has issued the only indictments in connection with the Oil for Food program. But the existence of these investigations was enough to make Kofi Annan play along.

So in April of 2004, Annan created the Volcker Committee, led by Paul Volcker and three investigators. It is important to note that two of Volcker’s investigators have resigned in recent weeks, specifically citing their boss’s refusal to follow important leads in the Oil for Food investigation: leads pointing upward. However, the demure Volcker investigations, limited and protectionist as they are, raise serious questions about the credibility of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, and certain governments in Western Europe. Questions that directly affect, via the United Nations Security Council, the ability of the United States to wage war when necessary, and the bedrock upon which our peacekeeping citadel was built.

Just some of the findings from the Volcker Committee’s report: Kofi Annan’s then Chief of Staff, Iqbal Riza ordered the shredding of thousands of UN documents between April and December of 2004. All the documents were from the years 1997-1999, and came from the Chef de Cabinet records, those of the UN chief of staff. Mr. Riza’s retirement was announced by Kofi Annan on January 15th, 2005, just after Riza admitted to the Volcker committee that he had authorized the mass destruction of Oil for Food documents. Also revealed is a close relationship between Kofi Annan and the Cotecna Company, one of the implicated grafters. Although Annan told the Volcker committee that he never met with company officials before awarding Cotecna the inspection contract for Oil for Food, the report found that Annan met with the company’s owner, Elie Massey, twice before choosing to give his company the business. The second of those meetings was orchestrated by Annan’s son Kojo, who is also deeply implicated in the Oil for Food scandal.

Six companies are being intensively probed to find out what influence Kojo may have had on them. Cotecna is at the center of this controversy, where he was on the payroll for about two years. Afterwards, Kojo ostensibly worked as a consultant, but one odd financial transaction makes his dealings suspect: in 1999, a 25 year-old Kojo Annan donated $235,000 to a Swiss soccer club called Vevey Sports. Kojo was subsequently elected president of that club, but never attended a single match. At the time, his monthly salary was $2,500. By their own admission, the Annan family is of modest financial means. How a young man would be in a position to donate a quarter million dollars to a soccer club in a foreign country (the same country where Cotecna operated) is incomprehensible given Kofi and Kojo’s testimony to the investigations. Indeed, the latest Volcker report condemns Kojo for actively conspiring with Cotecna to conceal his relationship with the company.

Benon Sevan, the man who accused America of being “stingy” with tsunami aid, solicited and received on behalf of African Middle East Petroleum Inc. several million barrels of allocations of oil from 1998 to 2001. Sevan personally received roughly $1.5 million: the oil contracts he arranged were worth $144 million. Former Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali is implicated, as are French officials, for the original selection of Banque Nationale de Paris to manage the program’s finances. BNP, it has been revealed, was not the lowest bidder for the job, and UN regulations require the selection of the lowest bidder. Boutros-Ghali has also been linked to South Korean Tongsun Park, who has been indicted for personally accepting millions from Hussein to act as his agent inside the United States. Russian officials are also suspected of participating in what weapons inspector Charles Duelfer described as a massive program wherein Saddam gave oil vouchers to Russian, French, and Chinese officials and journalists in exchange for aid. The vouchers could then be sold at a profit.

Other implicated men include former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua. He was complicit in holding in escrow additional Oil for Food funds in offshore accounts so that Saddam’s kickbacks would go unnoticed.

Kofi Annan oversaw the deliberate and dangerous graft of all of these men: he had even hired a great many of them. With every extra dollar that went into Saddam’s pocket, and every additional corpuscle of oil into bribed and complicit nations, a terrorist was enriched. It happened on Annan’s watch and, as has been shown, he avoided and interrupted investigation at every step of the way.

Many observers, particularly financial journalists at the Wall Street Journal, have come close to calling Oil for Food the largest financial scandal in the history of the world. With the amount of corruption already discovered, and the undue political influences of even those investigations, that title may yet be merited. The United Nations is an enterprise, to borrow Shakespeare’s words, “of great pitch and moment.” It was indeed to be mankind’s citadel against another world war. Instead, it has become the Tower of Babel that Churchill warned us of. The United States is the most powerful nation in the world, and her ability to wage war—and her very sovereignty—is at the mercy of the United Nations. A union which, in the well-intentioned but ultimately mad ideal of equality among nations, has shown itself not only incapable of action where action is needed, but of reckless impedance of great and just goals under the banner of money, greed, politics, and power. In coming years, there will be a handful of new democracies on the doormat of the Secretariat building on the West Side of Manhattan. Poor huddled masses, their yearnings fulfilled, will have a handful of new UN representatives. And for the first time, they will be representative. It is a sick irony that the world’s newest democracies shall come despite the efforts of the United Nations, that cesspool of corruption and incompetence that croons its greatness under the baton of Kofi Annan. And it is a cycle that will continue, unless the United States of America once again thrusts the world upon her shoulders and changes things for the better.

Irish Catholic immigrants, for example, were once even more heavily Democratic than American Jews, because their penniless status as recent immigrants led them to become heavy involved in and dependent upon the Democratically-dominated labor unions and political machines of large cities such as New York. However, this attachment to the Democrats lessened as Catholics worked their way into the middle-class and ceased to associate their well-being with the strength of unions and machine politics, and as the Democratic Party developed an increasingly pro-abortion stance incompatible with traditional Church teachings.

Such a political realignment has yet to occur within the Jewish community. The time may now be ripe, however. As a historical analysis demonstrates, many of the original reasons for Jewish identification with the Democratic Party no longer apply.

Economics

In the 1960’s, author Martin Himmelfarb described Jewish voter preferences with the memorable but somewhat controversial declaration that American Jews “earn like Episcopalians, but vote like Puerto Ricans.” Himmelfarb’s point was that Jews vote against their own economic self-interest. Support for Democratic economic policies in the early 20th century made sense for poor Jewish immigrants of that time. However, largely because of the culture’s strong emphasis on education, American Jews have since progressed rapidly up the economic ladder and are now one of the most affluent ethnic or religious communities in the US. Jews are unique, however, in that rising Jewish income levels have not been accompanied by a substantial increase in conservative voting. This phenomenon is attributable both to the Jewish community’s admirable concern for the poorest and weakest members of society, and to the Republicans’ failure to overcome Democratic rhetoric of class warfare and convince Jewish voters that their economic policies are aimed at benefiting society as a whole, not merely the upper class.

Judaism regards tzedakah, or charity, as one of the most important commandments, and Jewish communities have historically provided very well for their impoverished members. Indeed, according to the Jewish worldview, one who gives charity should actually be grateful to the recipient of his aid, for allowing him to fulfill the divine commandment of tzedakah. The overwhelming migration of Jews to the Democratic Party in the 1930’s can be attributed to the New Deal’s concern for the poor. Franklin Roosevelt received 82% and 85% of the Jewish vote in the 1932 and 1936 presidential elections respectively, as compared with 57.4% and 60.8% of the popular vote nationwide. (The government’s response to the Great Depression was the main area of dispute in both of these elections; in the 1940 and 1944 elections, where WWII had become an issue, FDR’s portion of the Jewish vote increased to 90%.)

However, a Jew who votes for a Democrat over a Republican today based on the idea that Democratic policies help the poor while Republicans care only about the rich betrays an incomplete understanding of either Republican economic policies or the idea of tzedakah. Moses Maimonides, the 12th century Jewish scholar, ranks different ways of charitable giving in the Mishneh Torah, stating that the highest degree of charity is given by “providing [the poor man] with a gift or a loan, entering into a partnership with him, or helping him find work; in a word, by putting him into a position where he can dispense with other people’s aid”1. This view that the best way to help another is to get him out of a situation of dependency accords almost exactly with the economic philosophy of the modern Republican Party. Although both parties agree that the safety net provided by welfare is necessary, Republicans have led the way in welfare reform based on the belief that the best way to help a poor person is to enable him escape from poverty and government dependency and become self-sufficient. More liberal attempts to combat poverty through extensive welfare programs without incentive to find employment may be well-intentioned, but they condemn the poor to continued dependence upon others’ aid. The Jewish ideal of charity resembles the Republican Party’s economic philosophy much more closely than it does that of the Democrats.

Israel

US support for the state of Israel is an issue close to the hearts of many American Jews. According to the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey, 63% of American Jews claim emotional attachment to the Jewish state, and 72% believe that Jews share a common destiny. This strong support of Israel is by no means a new phenomenon. Strong American Jewish support of Israel helped influence President Harry S. Truman to support the state’s creation. Conversely, the role that Truman, a Democratic president, played in the state’s creation helped the party of Roosevelt retain the votes and gain the trust of its Jewish demographic after the end of FDR’s presidency. No doubt Jewish support of Truman was motivated by a variety of factors, but it certainly was not hurt by Truman’s role in the creation of the Jewish state. If Truman’s support of the state was an effort to win Jewish votes, it paid off; Truman carried 75% of the Jewish vote, while his Republican opponent Thomas Dewey received only 10%, the same percentage he had received running against Roosevelt in the previous election. Jewish attachment to the Democratic Party, begun by FDR’s New Deal and the fight against Nazi Germany, was confirmed and strengthened by Truman’s support of Israel.

Today’s Democratic Party, however, has shifted far from its initial enthusiastic support of the Jewish state. While few politicians of either party dare to come out strongly against Israel, Republicans are clearly the state’s stronger backers today. The 2004 Democratic Party Platform is fairly strongly pro-Israel, affirming the party’s commitment to “the security of our ally Israel,” and Israel’s right to self-defense. Yet, it also contains the promise that a Democratic Administration will “demonstrate the kind of resolve to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that President Clinton showed”. Backers of Israel look back with anything but fondness on Clinton attempts to act as even-handed mediator in the peace process by promoting Yasser Arafat as a partner for peace, inviting the PLO chairman to the White House numerous times. Only with Arafat’s rejection of a peace deal granting 95% of his demands did Clinton stop treating him as legitimate partner in the peace process.

More worrisome than the Democrats’ official position on Israel (supportive, precisely because Democrats are terrified of losing their Jewish constituency to the Republicans) are the extreme, paranoid, anti-Israel views held by members of the American left-wing, which has become increasingly influential in Democratic politics of late. Indeed, the Democrats have conferred far more credibility upon the radical left than Republicans would even consider giving to similarly extreme, paranoid views from the right.

Skeptical? Consider reactions to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and a similar right-wing 1994 film The Clinton Chronicles. The Clinton Chronicles, which accused Bill Clinton of corruption and involvement in drug-related crime during his Arkansas governorship, was scorned by mainstream Republicans as a ridiculous concoction of propaganda and conspiracy theory; Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, on the other hand, earned him a seat in Jimmy Carter’s box at the Democratic National Convention and implicit endorsement of his film by several Democratic politicians who attended its Washington, D.C. premiere.

Statements about Israel from Michael Moore and fellow radicals are troubling, to say the least: at a recent speech in Liverpool, Moore essentially called Israel one of the sources of right-wing evil in the world, declaring, “"It’s all part of the same ball of wax, right? The oil companies, Israel, Halliburton." 2 Yet, Moore is attacked by fellow leftists for being – you guessed it – soft on Israel. The main problem with Fahrenheit 9/11 for many leftist conspiracy theorists, is Moore’s failure to blame Israel for the War on Iraq, and even the September 11 attacks. An article entitled, Blind, Or A Coward? from tompaine.com states that Moore is “[b]lind, if he can’t see Bush’s craven ties to Israel, driven by the neocons and the Christian Zionists…”. More disturbing are sites like this, which literally accuses Israelis of carrying out the 9/11 attacks, disguised as Saudi terrorists, in order to strengthen US support for Israel.

Republicans, Americans (whom Moore has called “possibly the dumbest people on the planet”) and Israel share common enemies in radical leftists like Michael Moore. The degree of legitimacy the Democrats have bestowed on Moore bodes ill for the party’s future Israel policy. Jews seeking a party that will strongly support Israel in the years to come would do well to turn to the Republicans.

Anti-Semitism and Fear of the Right

A third major reason for Jewish ties to the Democratic Party is a historically understandable fear of enemies on the Right. After the horrors of the Holocaust wreaked on them by right wing fascists whose sworn enemies also included Communists, Jews have been wary of anything associated with the right and far more tolerant of radical movements on the left. (An ironic situation, considering that Stalin executed tens of thousands on trumped-up accusations of a “doctor’s plot” or “Zionist imperialist plots”.) Many American Jews cannot bring themselves to vote Republican solely because the Republicans represent the right in the American political system. I have an elderly Jewish friend who preferred Bush to Kerry because of the increasingly anti-Israel position of the Democratic Party, yet could not bring herself to vote for Bush, because of her family’s traditional loyalty to the Democrats and opposition to Republicans; rather than vote Republican or against her principles, she abstained from the election.

Such actions are absurdly counterproductive. It is time for American Jews to get over their outdated fear of anything conservative and begin to vote their beliefs. For in the modern world, anti-Semitism is associated far less with the Right than with the Left. The KKK and other traditional “conservative” racist groups are effectively powerless today. Members of the Christian Right, whom Jews have long viewed with suspicion for their attempts at proselytizing, are currently some of Israel’s and the Jewish people’s staunchest supporters. Yes, some Christians undoubtedly support Israel with the ultimate goal of converting Jews to Christianity at the time of the Second Coming. But Judaism, in contrast to many other religions, places greater importance on actions than on beliefs. Whatever the doctrine behind their actions, the modern Christian Right treats Jews as friends, not enemies.

Anti-Semitism from the radical left, however, is on the rise. I do not for a moment claim that anti-Israel sentiments are equivalent to anti-Semitism. At my high school in the notoriously liberal town of Boulder, Colorado, the vast majority of the population held strongly anti-Israel viewpoints, many equating soldiers in the Israeli army with suicide bombers. These kids were not anti-Semitic, just sadly indoctrinated and uninformed. However, anti-Semitism is often hidden behind the guise of anti-Zionism. Leftist conspiracy theories accusing Israelis of perpetrating the September 11th attacks are not only baseless and idiotic, they also fuel anti-Semitism by casting all Jews as possible suspects in a supposed “Zionist plot”. Such theories have their origins in the undeniably anti-Semitic rhetoric of radical Islamist ideologues. Leftist radicals who propagate such ideas help spread anti-Semitic ideology, even if they are not anti-Semitic themselves. Similarly, while attacking Israel is not anti-Semitic in itself, European countries that attack Israel for human rights abuses, while ignoring far worse actions elsewhere in the world are engaged in de facto anti-Semitism. The worst enemies of the Jews are no longer to be found on the right, nor do their friends hail from the left.

On a variety of issues today, Jewish interests are no longer compatible with their traditional ties to the Democratic Party. And while old habits die hard, recent trends are hopeful. Jewish support of Republicans fell from a high of 39% for Reagan in 1980 to a low of 11% for Bush in 1992, but has been rising again ever since, and reached 24% in the 2004 presidential election. American Jews may well be beginning to vote based on the issues, rather than tradition. If and when they do so entirely, the Democratic Party has reason to worry.

1 Maimonides, Moses, Mishneh Torah, “Laws Concerning Gifts to the Poor,” 10:7
Cited in Telushkin, Joseph, The Book of Jewish Values.

2 David Brooks in the New York Times, June 26, 2004

3 http://www.tompaine.com/20050502/articles/blind_or_a_coward.php

4 Byron York, Michael Moore Loses It
5 The Washington Dispatch, June 26, 2004

Jewish presidential election percentages source:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/jewvote.html

General population presidential election percentages come from the appendix of Brinkley, Alan, American History: A Survey. 10th Edition.

Prof. Meir Kohn: I’m a professor at Dartmouth, I lived in Israel for a long time, I’m an ex-leftist, I guess that’s worth noting. I was a member of a kibbutz in Israel for three years, and I would say even when I returned to Israel after graduate school in the US, I was still a socialist. It was my experience in Israel, as an economist, looking at how socialism worked, or didn’t work, that made me change my mind. I would say it’s almost the classical neo-conservative path. Socialists went in two directions: There were those who saw that their good intentions were not realized, that the ideas sounded good but they didn’t really work, and they, this reality-based group, really became neo-conservatives. The others said, forget about reality. And that’s the extreme left of today, which doesn’t want to hear about whether it worked or not.

TDB: What do you think is the reason for the left’s appeal to Jews, particularly American Jews?

MK: I think it’s generally historical. You have to understand who the Jews that came here were– the Jews that came to the United States were generally secular; they were not religious. The religious Jews were part of the religious communities that stayed in Eastern Europe and perished. So those who were not traditional, religious, there were - a small number who were Zionists, they went to Palestine, as it was called at the time - and there were a larger number who were socialists. So the Jews who came here, I think, had leftist leanings from the beginning. And Jews played a major part in the socialist movements of Eastern Europe. That was one thing – the other I think is that the right in the United States has traditionally been seen as anti-Semitic, and Jews saw the left, particularly since Roosevelt’s New Deal as their protectors, and they became part of the New Deal coalition.

TDB: You spoke in a recent presentation about "ending the Jewish love affair with the left." Can you talk a little bit about anti-Semitism that you see in the modern left, today?

MK: It’s particularly clear in Europe. You can see signs of it in the US, but Europe is the leading example. I think in Europe there is a mixture classical anti-Semitism which is becoming once again respectable in the guise of anti-Israel politics, and partly neo-Marxist ideology, which is much more pervasive in Europe than it is in the United States. Neo-Marxism, in Europe, has become the religion. I mean Christianity is gone… so neo-Marxism is becoming the popular form of religion. In my talk [about ending the Jewish love affair with the left] I said what I meant by Neo-Marxism