All Revolutions Are Not Equal

Large changes in the world often require a revolution. Sometimes the revolutions are peaceful, sometimes they are not. Revolutions are often glorified these days, which would be a good thing, if only the right revolutions were held up high. Unfortunately, the left and its band of useful idiots romanticize some of the most terrible, atrocious, inhumane instances in recent history. Che Guevara has been on t-shirts for three decades, a movie is being planned to portray Mao Zedong as a visionary, and Hollywood lunatics abound to visit Hugo Chavez this very year. But few if any of these useful idiots (emphasis: idiot) know what really happened in history, what is happening, or what will happen if the extreme left gets its way. The same useful idiots don't know anything about the American Revolution either, I'm sure, or any history for that matter. But if explored, one will find that not all revolutions are equal.

The French Revolution is traditionally, well, always taught as an incredibly bloody debacle. Students in America, either in high school or college, are often posed the question: was it really necessary? Not the revolution, but the sheer amount of people executed. After all, not just the king and royal family were sent to the guillotine, virtually every government official of any kind was. As well as thousands of others who were simply on the wrong side, or at least perceived to be. I do not intend to debate that question here. The point is, everyone in charge of teaching the event portrays it as exceptionally bloody. And it was.

But then, in the grand scheme of things, just how bad was it? Somewhere between 15,000 and 40,000 heads rolled in the course of the French Revolution. A notable amount, to be sure. They had to repeatedly sharpen the guillotine blades when they stopped working efficiently, because cutting through so many necks caused the blades to dull. (As for the story that the guillotine's inventor was sent to it, just so you know, it never actually happened.)

Despite all this, I have to counter, how many died during Russia's communist revolution? School teachers seem less likely to teach the details of this event, I know I had to learn about it on my own time, but it was horrific. Reports vary from nine to forty million. And that doesn't even include the twenty million more executed during Stalin's regime, so to hold on to power in the communist regime. These people were not executed humanely by anyone's standards, as the guillotine was considered to be during its use. Some in Russia were forced to drag stones with barbed wire wrapped around their bare skin. Remember, we are talking tens of millions, somewhere between about thirty to seventy, all brutally killed just so the communist Soviet regime could seize and keep power in the first half of last century.

But that's not the worst of it. General Mao's revolution that brought communism to China, all in all, saw something like forty to sixty million people murdered before his power was even established. Estimates are again rough, but the amount of innocent Chinese blood spilled was biblical in scale. A million Tibetans alone were liquidated- all unarmed people, mind you, when the commies decided to take it for themselves. Mao actually murdered roughly as many as Stalin and Hitler combined, all in the course of his so-called "people's revolution."

I'm not done. Let us not forget how Pol Pot of Cambodia tortured a million or more to death, a third of his population, after the North Vietnamese took over all of Vietnam, killing hundreds of thousands in cold blood themselves, and sending even more to "reeducation" camps. (What happens during a "reeducation," one must wonder? John Kerry probably thinks people sat at desks reading books and singing songs or something, but I imagine people were regularly tortured in reality.)

Kim Il Sung of North Korea, was responsible for 1.6 million deaths during his communist revolution alone, maybe more, as he "purged' his enemies so to hold on to communist power. Che Guevara, another darling of the left in America, and his cigar smoking buddy Fidel Castro killed at least 20,000 and imprisoned hundreds of thousands during the Cuban revolution.

What is ironic here is that, as Karl Marx would have it, and as Mao named it specifically, these communist revolutions were supposedly for the people. So they say. It is all about throwing off the chains of imperialistic (usually meaning free) regimes. Even when evil, murdering regimes were overthrown, the result was something even worse. The Russian Czars executed millions, Stalin executed millions more. Batista of Cuba is reported to have had twenty thousand killed during his regime, allegedly, yet Castro had that many killed during the takeover alone. This is what communists think is best for the people? Adding up the people killed in the revolutions mentioned above, we have what? Something like eighty, maybe a hundred million? Over the last century, as many as a hundred million innocent people were killed in the name of one ideology's revolution? What about all those killed by these ruthless regimes after that? I am willing to bet that one or two hundred million more have been killed by communist regimes since then, at least. Remember, I am not including military deaths in these statistics. Only civilians. Our fundamentalist Islamic-fascist enemy is looking almost tame in comparison to these ravenous thugs.

Let us finally contrast the above to the American Revolution. Yet again, America comes out the better. The American revolution saw war and death, of course, but it did not see purges. The Declaration of Independence was written and sent to the King George, the English tried to put down the resistance, they failed, and that was it. Now, am I claiming that not once did one revolution-sympathizing individual kill an English-sympathizing individual? Of course not. I'm sure people killed one another without it being a military target. (I know the English did.) To claim that there wasn't a single murder over a difference of opinion would be ridiculous. However, the revolution was a clash of militaries. There were no mass executions, the victorious Americans did not massacre anyone, they did not purge their own people to establish power, and there were no mass imprisonments.

Some more versed in history will protest, no doubt. The Whiskey Rebellion, for example, was a case in which America's federal government used military force against its own citizens not long after the drafting of the Constitution. However, the facts of the case are completely different. In fact, the circumstances were very similar to those of the Civil War. Both cases saw citizens were in armed rebellion. This means that they were no longer innocent civilians. They weren't people with differing opinions, they became combatants when they picked up their weapons. They were military targets. As it happened, the Whiskey Rebellion evaporated in the face of such a large force coming their way. Twenty men were arrested, two were sentenced to death. But, they were both pardoned by Washington himself.

As for the Civil War, well, it was war. All out. Terrible things happened- for military reasons. Despite the terror, massacring civilians was not the name of the game. Cutting off medical and food and weapon supplies to the south, yes. That's a military objective. Burning cities to the ground, yes. Again, military action of that nature is necessary sometimes. Sherman's march to the sea saw entire cities raised, but there were military objectives behind everything he did. War is ugly. In the end, though, Lincoln pardoned everyone who was in rebellion after the war had ended, in the spirit of peace. Again, once it was over, there were no mass executions, no mass imprisonments, and no torture camps. Lincoln knew it was the best thing for the country, and the right thing to do. You think Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Mao, or any other communist dictator thug would do such a thing after putting down a rebellion? Torture camps and mass executions seem more likely from those guys, considering that's all they ever did anyway.

All this history evidences one thing. Communist revolutions have always been the bloodiest and most brutal of any you will find in history. That is because communist regimes are exactly that: bloody and brutal. Communism is tyranny, nothing more, don't let the red-minded teachers and professors fool you. Is it any surprise that after each communist revolution, in which millions upon millions were killed, there were millions more purge" once the regimes were established? Communist ideals are of suppressing dissent and oppressing freedom, holding on to power and creating a Marxist Utopia "by any means necessary." Communism is NOT for the people. Contrasting that with the American Revolution, in which soldiers killed other soldiers, and after which a free government was created, not to mention that there were no purges, it is clear that American ideals are better. Communist regimes always have and always will find it necessary to liquidate their opposition, killing millions upon millions just to establish their power. Millions more will die violently, because suppressing dissent (they call it "cleansing") is the only way they know to hold on to power. America, meanwhile, has never massacred its own civilians. It has never had to. Even in the darkest chapters of its history, with things like slavery and the communist witch-hunts, there was never what you saw in the communist regimes. Dissent may rise, and it may fade, but it is never crushed. In fact, under the first amendment, it is embraced. In the end, the American ideals laid out by our founders are the only ideals that are truly for the people.