The Patriot Post® · Kennedy, Nixon on Castro's Cuba & USSR

By William Federer ·
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/76918-kennedy-nixon-on-castros-cuba-and-ussr-2021-01-11

Democrat Senator John F. Kennedy condemned Castro’s communism, stating October 6, 1960:

“Two years ago in September of 1958 — bands of bearded rebels descended from Cuba’s Sierra Maestra Mountains and began their long march on Havana — a march which ended in the overthrow of the brutal, bloody, and despotic dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

The slogans, the manifestos, and the broadcasts of this revolution reflected the deepest aspirations of the Cuban people.

They promised individual liberty and free elections. They promised an end to harsh police-state tactics. They promised a better life for a people long oppressed by both economic and political tyranny …”

Kennedy continued:

“But in the 2 years since that revolution swept Fidel Castro into power, those promises have all been broken.

There have been no free elections — and there will be none as long as Castro rules.

All political parties — with the exception of the Communist Party — have been destroyed. All political dissenters have been executed, imprisoned, or exiled.

All academic freedom has been eliminated …

All major newspapers and radio stations have been seized.

And all of Cuba is in the iron grip of a Communist-oriented police state.

Castro and his gang have betrayed … the Cuban people.”

Castro’s method of deceiving the people in order to gain power was earlier written by Machiavelli in The Prince, 1513:

“The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present …

A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.”

Vladimir Lenin revealed:

"The goal of socialism is communism.“

Friedrich Engels agreed in The Principles of Communism:

"Democratic socialists … favor some of the same measures the communists advocate.”

While Richard Nixon was Vice-President under Dwight Eisenhower, he was immensely popular for his stand against communism.

Nixon gave an address titled “The Meaning of Communism to Americans,” August 21, 1960:

“The major problem confronting the people of the United States … is … communism …

The test is one not so much of arms but of faith …

Communism denies God, enslaves men, and destroys justice …

The appeal of the Communist idea is not to the masses … but … to an intelligent minority …

It has failed in its promise of equality in abundance …

It has produced … disillusionment and a steady stream of men, women, and children seeking to escape its blight …

Communism is a false idea.”

Richard Milhous Nixon was born JANUARY 9, 1913.

He was a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy during WWII, a Congressman, a Senator, and Vice-President under Dwight Eisenhower.

He lost his first presidential race to John F. Kennedy by the smallest margin to that date. Kennedy was helped by Mayor Richard Daley’s infamous Chicago political machine.

In 1968, Richard Nixon was elected the 37th President and re-elected in 1972, in one of the biggest landslides in history.

Nixon ended the draft, was the first President to visit Red China, sent the first astronauts to the moon — talking to them via radio telephone — and began the Space Shuttle program.

Nixon was never impeached, but at the mere threat of impeachment proceedings, he resigned — the only President to do so.

The distinction of being impeached by the U.S. House belongs to Democrat President Andrew Johnson, 1868, and Democrat President Bill Clinton, 1998, though neither were convicted by the U.S. Senate and continued to stay in office.

In his 1960 address, Nixon compared capitalism with the communism of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics:

“Communism inevitably supplants and destroys capitalism … free trade, free selling and buying …

The Soviet Union … started by attempting to root out … every vestige of the market principle …

Production and distribution of goods were put under central direction …

It was a catastrophic failure … in appalling shortages of the most elementary necessities …

Communist theory … says nothing about how the economy shall be run except that it shall not be by the market principle.”

Nixon added regarding truth:

“Communism starts with the proposition that there are no universal truths or general truths of human nature …

The high priest of this doctrine was Eugene Pashukanis. His reign came to an abrupt end …

With an irony befitting the career of one who predicted that communism would bring an end to law and legal processes, Pashukanis was quietly taken off and shot without even the semblance of a trial …”

Nixon commented on Communist elections:

“Voters are in the end permitted only to vote for the candidates chosen by the only political party permitted to exist … the electorate is given no choice …

Knowing that it cannot achieve representative democracy, it seems to feel better if it adopts its empty forms … ”

Nixon continued on power:

“Throughout the ages, among men of all nations and creeds, law has generally been thought of as a curb on arbitrary power.

It has been conceived as a way of substituting reason for force …

Law in the Soviet Union is not conceived as a check on power, it is openly and proudly an expression of power.

In this conception … the bankruptcy of communism as a moral philosophy openly declares itself …”

Nixon added regarding freedom:

“Communist philosophy is basically inconsistent with the ideal of freedom because it denies that there can be any standard of moral truth by which the actions of any given social order may be judged …

If the individual says to government, ‘Thus far may you go, but no farther,’ he necessarily appeals to some principle of rightness that stands above his particular form of government.

It is precisely the possibility of any such standard that communism radically … denies.

Marx and Engels had nothing but sneers for the idea that there are ‘eternal truths, such as freedom, justice, etc., that are common to all states of society.’

They contend that there are no eternal truths …

If that system requires tyranny and oppression, then tyranny and oppression must within that system be accepted; there can be no higher court of appeal …

A sense of freedom can never develop under the Soviet regime.”

Despite communism’s promises, the statistics reveal that more people have been killed under atheistic communist regimes — estimated at over 150 million — than any other system, except fundamental Islam, estimated at over 270 million and counting.

He continued:

“Communism has appeared as a kind of nightmare …

Communist faith … tells men to forget all the teachings of the ages about government, law, and morality …

There is only one rule: Smash the existing ‘bourgeois’ economic and legal order and leave the rest to the ‘spontaneous class organization of the proletariat (working class)’.”

Nixon’s warning echoed an editorial cartoon appearing in the Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1934, depicting a communist writing on a large board:

“Plan of Action for U.S. — SPEND! SPEND! SPEND! under the guise of recovery —

BUST the government —

BLAME the capitalists for the failure —

JUNK the constitution and DECLARE A DICTATORSHIP.”

To the side, it added: “It worked in Russia!”

George Orwell wrote in the article “The English People,” written in the Spring of 1944, and published 1947:

“In the last generation … intelligentsia have tended to take their ideas from Europe and have been infected by habits of thought that derive ultimately from Machiavelli.

All the cults that have been fashionable in the last dozen years, Communism, Fascism, and pacifism, are in the last analysis forms of power worship.”

Many are concerned because Congress, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, continually votes to increase the U.S. national debt, which has mushroomed to more than $20 trillion.

Richard Nixon added in his 1960 warning that without “eternal truth” tyranny inevitably repeats itself — and the dragon-slayer becomes the dragon:

“How, following the overthrow of a tyranny, do you suggest steps that will prevent an interim dictatorship from hardening into a second tyranny? …

A cruel dictatorship has been overthrown … because it permitted no elections or never counted the vote honestly. Following the successful revolt … order is kept by something approaching a dictatorship.”

George Orwell wrote in 1984:

“Power is not a means; it is an end … One makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”

Lenin wrote in “Party Organization and Party Literature,” Novaya Zhizn, November 13, 1905:

“The party … would inevitably break up … if it did not cleanse itself of people advocating anti-party views.”

Orwell also wrote:

“Bolsheviks could not have retained power … without the most rigorous and truly iron discipline in our Party.”

The question to be asked is, who decides what are the “party views”? Who enforces “iron discipline” in the party?

Is it not the new ruling-class party elites?

Lenin commented in “Report on the Activities of the Council of People’s Commissars,” January 24, 1918:

“The whole history of socialism, particularly of French socialism … is … rich in revolutionary striving.”

Just as the French Revolution overthrew King Louis XVI with the promise of equality in a socialist system, but without rights that came from a Creator, and accountability to Him rather than the state, domestic instability allowed Napoleon to usurp power and crown himself emperor, with millions dying in Napoleonic Wars; so a similar thing happened in Russia.

The Russian Revolution overthrew Tsar Nicholas II with the promise of equality in a socialist system, but without rights that came from a Creator, and accountability to Him rather than the state, domestic instability allowed Stalin to usurp power and become dictator, with millions dying in Soviet Purges.

Nixon described what communist dictators do to those who helped them get into power:

“Men who were once united in overthrowing plain injustice become divided on the question what constitutes a just new order.

Militant zealots, useful in the barricades, are too rough for civil government and must be curbed. If curbed too severely, they may take up arms against the new government. Etc., etc …

The shift in power when it comes may involve only a few quick maneuvers within the apparatus of the party …

The fate of millions will be determined by processes which take no account of their interests or wishes, in which they are granted no participation, and which they are not even permitted to observe.”

To the annoyance of liberal academia, in practice, communist countries end up being ruled by dictators who kill those who threaten their power, ie:

— Mao Zedong,
— Stalin,
— Pol Pot,
— Ho Chi Min,
— Kim Jong-il,
— Castro,
— Ceausescu,
— Tito, etc.

Though proclaiming ideals of a classless society, in practice, “Communist Party members” become “the new royalty,” living in special neighborhoods with special shops and getting special treatment before the law.

They exist to enforce the dictator’s will. If they are suspected of opposing the dictator, they suspiciously disappear.

“Citizens” in communist countries are the equivalent of subjects, serfs, and peasants, with their fate dictated by a dictator and his enforcers.

Controlled media and rigged elections insure the dictator stays in power.

Naive students are taught that in communist countries, everybody owns everything equally — “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” a slogan popularized by Karl Marx in Critique of the Gotha Program, 1875.

But does this ever happen?

Who gets to decide what one’s ability is, or what one’s needs are? Who gets to do the redistributing?

A question need simply be asked:

“Who gets to live in the nice house and who has to live in the dumpy house?”

The answer is: “Someone in the government dictates those things.”

Well, whoever ultimately dictates those things is the dictator.

Explaining this deep-state mentality, George Orwell wrote to H.J. Willmett, May 18, 1944:

“Secondly there is the fact that the intellectuals are more totalitarian in outlook than the common people.

On the whole the English intelligentsia have opposed Hitler, but only at the price of accepting Stalin. Most of them are perfectly ready for dictatorial methods, secret police, systematic falsification of history etc. so long as they feel that it is on ‘our’ side.”

Socialist agitators stir up the poor against the rich through the temptation to break the Commandment, “Thou shalt not covet.”

President Gerald Ford responded to politicians who appeal to voters by promising entitlements, in his address at Rock Hill, South Carolina, October 19, 1974:

“What they don’t tell us when they propose all these benefits that they are going to give you from our Government … is that a government BIG enough to GIVE US everything we want is a government BIG enough to TAKE FROM US everything we have.”

In practice, Communism is nothing more than a monarchy makeover — a top-down system of government where one supreme leader forces his will on the others.

When Lenin fell ill, Stalin usurped control.

In 1922, two years before he died, Lenin admitted, that after years of promising the people if they violently killed off the old order they would achieve a classless society and control their fate, in the end it was all a lie, a failure, as Stalin had become a dictator:

“Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands.”

A theme expounded in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth was reflected in a statement credited to Lenin:

“Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.”

Franklin Roosevelt described Stalin’s control of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a dictatorship, in his address to the American Youth Congress, February 10, 1940:

“The Soviet Union … is run by a dictatorship as absolute as any other dictatorship in the world.”

To stay in power, Stalin conducted purges and orchestrated famines, resulting in an estimated 40 million deaths.

Richard Nixon concluded:

“Russia was … governed by a tyranny … The Soviet term is ‘the cult of personality’ …

Stalin and his followers … became infected with a mistaken view of Stalin’s proper role … Stalin ruled without the check of constitutional forms …

In the words of Aristotle, written some 23 centuries ago, ‘This is why we do not permit a man to rule … because a man rules in his own interest, and becomes a tyrant.’

It is plain that Stalin … became a tyrant.”