THE FEDERALIST RADIO HOUR: DECEMBER 11, 2015

Garry Kasparov is a Russian chess Grandmaster and often called the greatest chess player of all time. He is also the author of Winter is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped. On the Federalist Radio Hour, Kasparov shared stories from his 78-year-old mother who grew up under Stalin and discussed what the U.S. could have done differently in their relationship with Russia after the Cold War.

Kasparov said that a dictator who runs out of enemies in his own country, will eventually begin looking for enemies elsewhere. "Eventually [Putin] would be the problem for everybody," he said. "At certain points he will have no other arguments to stay in power and to justify his eternal rule, as to create more conflicts and war."

YESTERDAY'S HEADLINES TODAY - VOL. 594

In his Kohl's sweater, Scott Walker touts middle class credentials in New Hampshire

Bush to GOP base: Sorry, wingnuts, amnesty is the "grown up plan" for immigration reform

Obama Urges Democrats to 'Turn the Page,' Abandon Hillary Clinton's Failed Candidacy

It's Clinton All the Way Down

Moonbats, Enough With Your Logan Act Histrionics

Obama Can't Force His Iran Deal on the Country without Consent of Congress

Catholic Teacher in New Jersey Suspended over Comments on Homosexuality

Surprise: The Left-Wing Economist Who Stirred Inequality Debate Is Backtracking

Unconstitutional Expulsion Week at College Insurrection

Revealed: The grim fate of the MI6 agents betrayed by George Blake

1989: THE YEAR OF MIRACLES

Via National Review:

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is today — and has gone oddly unremarked-upon, to my eye — the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has produced the following mini-documentary about the course of the Soviet Union and the liberating events of 1989. It's well worth a watch.

Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former KGB lieutenant general and the highest-ranking Soviet official to defect and be granted asylum in the West, marked the anniversary for NRO with a piece yesterday warning about Vladimir Putin's dangerous Soviet nostalgia. John Fund (who I don't believe has any KGB connections, but you really never know) has a column on the anniversary too, and told an incredible story to the Atlas Foundation recently about a East Berliner friend he made before the Wall fell.

Earlier this year, Jay Nordlinger wrote up a piece on the efforts of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, begun 20 years ago by an act of Congress, for NR.

The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the beginning of the end to a drama that had begun in Poland with Lech Walesa and the Solidarity Movement early in the decade and ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union a little more than two years later. Poland had freed itself from the Communist yoke earlier in 1989, followed in rapid succession by Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Both of those countries opened their borders with the West. When Hungary opened its borders with Austria, the East German people rushed to go on "holiday," never to return.

The East German government moved to stop the flow of people by severely restricting travel to Hungary. This led to massive protests in October, culminating with the resignation of East Germany's long-serving Communist dictator, Erich Honecker, on October 19.

Amidst the confusion, on the evening of November 9, an obscure bureaucrat in the East German government clumsily responded to a question at a press conference about the easing of travel restrictions. The shocking press conference set off a rapid chain of events that resulted in the high drama of the wall's destruction, as chronicled in the book The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall by Mary Elise Sarotte:

That night at 6:00, Guenter Schabowski, a member of the East German Politburo who served as its spokesman, was scheduled to hold a news conference. Shortly before it began, he received a piece of paper with an update on the regulations and a suggestion that he mention them publicly. He had not been involved in discussions about the rules and did not have time to read the document carefully before starting.

His hour-long news conference was so tedious that Tom Brokaw, who was there, remembered being "bored." But in the final minutes, an Italian journalist's question about travel spurred Schabowski's memory. He tried to summarize the new regulations but became confused, and his sentences trailed off. "Anyway, today, as far as I know, a decision has been made," he said. "It is a recommendation of the Politburo that has been taken up, that one should from the draft of a travel law, take out a passage. . ."

Among the long-winded clauses, some snippets leapt out: "exit via border crossings" and "possible for every citizen."

Suddenly, every journalist in the room had questions. "When does that go into force?" shouted one. "Immediately?" shouted another. Rattled and mumbling to himself, Schabowski flipped through his papers until he uttered the phrase: "Immediately, right away."

It felt as if "a signal had come from outer space and electrified the room," Brokaw recalled. Some wire journalists rushed out to file reports, but the questions kept coming, among them: "What will happen to the Berlin Wall now?"

Alarmed about what was unfolding, Schabowski concluded with more muddled responses: "The question of travel, of the permeability therefore of the wall from our side, does not yet answer, exclusively, the question of the meaning, of this, let me say it this way, fortified border." Furthermore, "the debate over these questions could be positively influenced if the Federal Republic [of West Germany] and if NATO would commit themselves to and carry out disarmament."

As NATO was unlikely to disarm itself by breakfast, Schabowski clearly did not expect much to happen that night. But it was too late -- by 7:03 p.m., the wires were reporting that the Berlin Wall was open.

It was all supposed to have been yet another bland, forgettable, bureaucratic blah-blah-blah set of pronouncements.  But in no time at all, Schabowski's gaffes had turned the Communist world upside down:

Across the divided city, the mayor of West Berlin, Walter Momper, seized on Schabowski's unclear statement and decided to do what he could to make it tough for the Politburo to retract it. Momper swiftly decided on a plan: to act as if the border were open, even though it was not; as he kept saying to himself during his TV appearances through the night, "Just keep acting 'as if,' and it will build pressure."

And then there was Jäger, the senior Stasi official on duty at the Bornholmer Street crossing, who could have fired on the demonstrators - but chose instead to open the wall. A loyal party official, he was no revolutionary. Yet that night, the pressures of crowds demanding to cross the border, party leaders screwing up, and his superior officers leaving him in the lurch to clean up the mess all combined and caused him to snap.

The rest, as they say, is history.  Be sure to watch the video below and follow the links above and read the articles in full.

Also read:

Gorbachev warning U.S. of new cold war

The Wall, 25 Years On

JUNIUS IRVING SCALES, AN AMERICAN COMMUNIST

Junius Scales in FBI custody

This is the story of how a wealthy and privileged Southern WASP got caught up in the subversive world of Communism.

Yale historian Glenda Gilmore, in her award-winning book about radical roots of the civil rights movement, recalled a childhood event in her native Greensboro:  "When I was about eight, I visited an abandoned mansion in our neighborhood.  Here, everyone whispered, was where the Communist had lived.  No one really understood what a Communist was; rather, the lesson lay in what became of them.  They left their homes, they lost their families, and they went to prison.  That's what happened to...the rich golden-haired boy who had grown up in that house."

The rich golden-haired boy was Junius Irving Scales.  Born in 1920 to a prominent North Carolina family, Scales was named for his grandfather, a Confederate colonel, and Scales' father was named for the colonel’s brother, governor of North Carolina after Democratic "redemption" of the state from Republican Reconstruction.  As a boy, Scales lived in a 34-room mansion built by his father in a new development of his, just west of the then-city limits of Greensboro.  According to Scales, his father, a lawyer and real estate developer, was then a millionaire several times over.  Among the family's servants was a black woman born into slavery; she wore a servant's uniform and attended to young Scales.

The family fortune faltered in the late 20s, however, and they left the mansion and rented a home in Chapel Hill.  Scales was an avid reader, and at age 15 he became a fixture at Chapel Hill's Intimate Bookshop.  There, as expressed by Gilmore, Scales "breathed in the radical politics that mingled in the bookstore’s dust."  In the 30s, according to Gilmore "varying shades of liberals, Socialists, anti-Fascists, and new Communists came together to create a hotbed of agitation among students and professors at the University [of North Carolina]..."  Scales enrolled at the University, where he soon became disenchanted with his classmates; disenchantment led to depression, and he attempted suicide.  Later he found some like-minded friends interested in radical politics, and as Gilmore concluded, "Radical politics held out a lifeline to Scales."

As is so often the case with the feckless children of the leisure class, Junius Scales, the inept social misfit, decided not to deal with his personal hang-ups in a positive way but instead chose to make his problems society's problems.  He turned against his country and embraced Stalin.  And, typically, copped out by claiming that it was based on his burning need to right the wrong of systemic discrimination against black people.   

Obviously joining the civil rights movement is admirable.  The fallacy of Scales, however, is the claim that it was the "only" way to get involved.  He could have worked to improve things by using his status and prominent name - along with whatever skills he may have possessed - without becoming a Communist.  Many people managed to work on behalf of civil rights without betraying their country.  

No, he chose to become a Communist as a way to rebel against his country, like Bradley Manning, because that was apparently easier than dealing with his own personal issues.  If you don't think that American leftists have crippling anti-social problems then you really must take a few minutes to scan the comments sections of any Conservative blog and read the trollish rhetorical belches they spend all day posting.  But I digress...

As the article explains, Scales finally woke up in 1957 when Stalin was denounced by Khrushchev:

Scales later summarized the effect on him:  "Most of what the capitalist press and the professional anti-Soviet experts had been saying about the Soviet Union for years was true...  Stalin - my revered symbol of the infallibility of Communism...had been a murderous, power-hungry monster!  My idol had crumbled to dust forever."

It's unfortunate that so many proud Americans were smeared as "rabid" and "paranoid" by misguided and subversive types like Scales simply for pointing out what he himself eventually came to realize was true: Stalin was a monster who killed tens of millions and every member of the Communist Party was doing work on his behalf.

The disgusting "dupes" of Stalin deserved to be marginalized every bit as much as Nazi sympathizers.  The wages of worshiping mass-murdering dictators should be the same.  Instead, Scales became a cause célèbre who eventually received a pardon from President John F. Kennedy.  

Let there be no misunderstanding on this point.  I'm not implying that Nazi sympathizers deserved the same preferential treatment and "do-overs" that Communists received but rather the opposite: punish them all to the fullest extent of the law for their crimes and marginalize them in society for everything else.  They are equally bad and for too long has this double-standard existed.

After all, it must be remembered that for two years from 1939 to 1941, Communists were supportive of Nazi Germany and against U.S. involvement in the war because that's what Stalin and the party instructed them to do.  It didn't end until Hitler broke the deal by invading Russia.  That's when shit got real.  But the lesson here is that statists will be statists and their interests are not based on any kind of humanity but on enhancing their power.  Inside every liberal is a totalitarian screaming to get out.

3 GREAT READS FROM THE CLAREMONT INSTITUTE

Captive Nations
A review of Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956, by Anne Applebaum

In 1952, Hans-Joachim Geyer, a low-level courier secretly working for the West German Federal Intelligence Service, was captured in East Berlin by agents of the Stasi, the spy network of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Geyer, a former member of the Nazi Party, had little difficulty in switching allegiances. According to now available Stasi files, Geyer quickly admitted his work on behalf of the Federal Republic and went so far as to offer up his services to the GDR. With his assistance, the Stasi was able to roll up over 100 West German spies operating in East Germany and seize hundreds of valuable documents. So helpful was Geyer (whose work lasted only a year before his cover was blown) that the GDR paid a large pension to his widow after his death.

Blood-soaked History
A review of Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962, by Yang Jisheng

It took Mao Zedong's New China about four years to carry out the "Great Leap Famine," the greatest single crime in the history of the world. The term itself, now widely used, derives sardonically from the Great Leap Forward, a campaign begun in 1958 to transform Communist China into a modern industrialized state in less than a decade. Central to this campaign was a massive reordering of China's countryside, especially the forced movement of the hundreds of millions who lived there into so-called People's Communes. Mao's agricultural policies mirrored those of his inspiration and mentor, Joseph Stalin, whose ruthless rural collectivization campaign in the 1930s caused more than 10 million deaths in the Soviet Union. In the People's Republic of China, over the decades, historians and demographers have come to estimate the deaths caused by Mao's collectivization campaign at about 40 million.

The Higher Education Hustle
Political Correctness and Higher Education

The term "politically correct" entered the American vocabulary in 1991, following a widely discussed New York magazine cover story on higher education, and has become applicable beyond the campus. The Associated Press, for example, announced this year the banishment of "illegal immigrant" from its stylebook. One linguist suggested "unauthorized migrant" as a more respectful substitute. Jay Leno, who is not politically correct, preferred "undocumented Democrats." Perhaps "joggers without borders" will catch on.

THE MIRACLE OF FATHER KAPAUN

Servant of God, Father Emil Kapaun

Father Emil Kapaun was a priest and Korean War hero from the hamlet of Pilsen, Kansas.  He led an extraordinary life and may be on the road to sainthood.  He died at the age of 35 in a Chinese POW camp in 1951.  Last week he was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Kapaun was so beloved that U.S. prisoners of war who served him began calling for him to receive the military’s highest honor on the day they were released from their North Korean POW camp 60 years ago.

"The first prisoners out of that camp are carrying a wooden crucifix, and they tell the story at length," says Roy Wenzel, a reporter at the Wichita Eagle who wrote an eight-part series and a book about Kapaun.

Korea, 1950: An exhausted G.I. is aided by Father Kapaun (right) and Capt. Jerome Dolan

Father Kapaun's Medal of Honor citation reads as follows:

Chaplain Emil J. Kapaun, while assigned to Headquarters Company, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism, patriotism, and selfless service between Nov. 1-2, 1950. During the Battle of Unsan, Kapaun was serving with the 3rd Battalion of the 8th Cavalry Regiment. As Chinese Communist forces encircled the battalion, Kapaun moved fearlessly from foxhole to foxhole under direct enemy fire in order to provide comfort and reassurance to the outnumbered Soldiers. He repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire to recover wounded men, dragging them to safety. When he couldn't drag them, he dug shallow trenches to shield them from enemy fire. As Chinese forces closed in, Kapaun rejected several chances to escape, instead volunteering to stay behind and care for the wounded. He was taken as a prisoner of war by Chinese forces on Nov. 2, 1950.

After he was captured, Kapaun and other prisoners were marched for several days northward toward prisoner-of-war camps. During the march Kapaun led by example in caring for injured Soldiers, refusing to take a break from carrying the stretchers of the wounded while encouraging others to do their part.

Once inside the dismal prison camps, Kapaun risked his life by sneaking around the camp after dark, foraging for food, caring for the sick, and encouraging his fellow Soldiers to sustain their faith and their humanity. On at least one occasion, he was brutally punished for his disobedience, being forced to sit outside in subzero weather without any garments. When the Chinese instituted a mandatory re-education program, Kapaun patiently and politely rejected every theory put forth by the instructors. Later, Kapaun openly flouted his captors by conducting a sunrise service on Easter morning, 1951.

When Kapaun began to suffer from the physical toll of his captivity, the Chinese transferred him to a filthy, unheated hospital where he died alone. As he was being carried to the hospital, he asked God's forgiveness for his captors, and made his fellow prisoners promise to keep their faith. Chaplain Kapaun died in captivity on May 23, 1951.

Chaplain Emil J. Kapaun repeatedly risked his own life to save the lives of hundreds of fellow Americans. His extraordinary courage, faith and leadership inspired thousands of prisoners to survive hellish conditions, resist enemy indoctrination, and retain their faith in God and country. His actions reflect the utmost credit upon him, the 1st Cavalry Division, and the United States Army.

Father Kapaun celebrates the Mass

I especially love the way Father Kapaun used his unshakable faith to defeat all efforts by the Chinese Communists to indoctrinate the prisoners.  One of the premises of my blog is that such attempts at indoctrination (in a less specific way) continue to this day by those whose world view is built upon the lies of Marxism, the foolishness of Freud, and the nihilist black hole of atheism.  Father Kapaun's story is truly inspiring.  

Part 1: Father Emil Kapaun, a chaplain during the Korean War, braves gunfire to save a wounded soldier
 
Part 2: During the viciousness of the Death March, Father Kapaun cares for his fellow prisoners
 
Part 3: Father Kapaun emerges as a spiritual leader in prison camps

Part 4: Father Kapaun leads POWs in a quiet rebellion against the Communists, angering the guards
 
Part 5: Father Kapaun more openly challenges the guards while his health declines

Part 6: Prisoners attempt to hide Father Kapaun's illness from the guards, who isolate and kill him

Part 7: POWs begin pleading to reward Father Kapaun with the Medal of Honor and sainthood

Part 8: A medical recovery in Sedgwick County is called a modern-day miracle and is attributed to Father Kapaun