The Patriot Post® · Tuesday Short Cuts

Horrifying stat of the day: “An October 2016 poll by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation generated a stunning finding: almost one-third of Millennials ‘believe more people were killed under George W. Bush than under Joseph Stalin.’ And it isn’t only those silly Millennials. More than one in four Americans generally believe Bush was the bigger killer.” —Paul Kengor

For the record: “A key to the problem can be seen even in critiques of this Communist hagiography by conservatives, who remind everyone that Communism ‘doesn’t work.’ That seems a funny kind of understatement, like saying that dousing yourself with gasoline and setting yourself on fire ‘doesn’t work.’ It implies some kind of idealistic goal for which the adherents of Communism choose unrealistic means. But the bloody, grinding history of Communism — and most especially the fact that it went on and on and continues even today, many decades after no one can have any illusions — suggests that oppression and murder is the goal.” —Robert Tracinski

Upright: “If there is one lesson the communist century should have taught, it is that the independent authority of universal moral principles cannot be an afterthought, since it is the conviction on which all of civilization depends.” —David Satter

Braying Jenny: “Remember when Jesus of Nazareth came upon thousands of hungry people, and rather than feeding them, thought and prayed? And all those lepers he came upon, and rather than healing them, thought and prayed, and thought and prayed…? Such thinkers and prayers, these supposed inheritors of his faith have become. … It so happens that in the secular world we regulate things like guns through laws. And you can’t think or pray those up. Someone has to ACT.” —MSNBC’s Joy Reid

Braying Jackass: “The murdered victims were in a church. If prayers did anything, they’d still be alive, you worthless sack of sh-t.” —actor Wil Wheaton to House Speaker Paul Ryan

And last… “Bowe Bergdahl, who deserted, fell into the hands of the Taliban, and got multiple American soldiers killed because of their search for him, will get no jail time. Devon Kelley, the Texas shooter, beat up his wife, cracked his son’s skull, and got let out of military jail after a year. But the sailor who took pictures on a submarine is in jail for a year. Military justice does not seem very just.” —Erick Erickson