Robin Reed, slated to become the next president of the National D-Day Memorial Foundation on Monday, is standing by his predecessor's decision to install a bust of dictator Josef Stalin at the memorial in Bedford, Va.
I must live in some alternate universe or something. That is what I thought when we had a guest on Libertarian Politics Live tonight. The guest was a late booking, but we had Marcus Kilga of the Global Museum On Communism on the second segment. A must listen.
Marcus said that the donor that gave the money to commission the statue was anonymous. Efforts are being made to find out who it was. The pusillanimity of Robin Reed is reprehensible. I cannot for the life of me figure out how this makes sense. Russia had nothing to do with D-Day. No Russians were there. Stalin made Hitler look like a boy scout. 30 million killed is a conservative estimate, and these aren't war losses, not to mention, The American Tragedy In Stalin's Russia. They all died while FDR played his fiddle, so to speak. As Cassius Clay would say, Stalin was a Baaaad Man.
Dr. Lee Edwards of the Global Museum on Communism had this to say:
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, statues of Joseph Stalin have been torn down all over Europe and even in the former Soviet Union itself. The world is closer than ever before to a consensus on the evils of communism and Stalin's primary role in the worst crimes of the last century. And yet a statue of Stalin is included in the National D-Day Memorial, to be dedicated in Bedford, Virginia, this Sunday, June 6.
Near the statue of Stalin, a plaque catalogues Stalin's crimes against millions of people both in Russia and throughout Europe. But no mere plaque can justify the inclusion of the statue which dishonors the heroic individuals who sacrificed so much on D-Day and in the Cold War.
A bust of Joseph Stalin has no place in a memorial whose purpose is to salute the brave soldiers who made D-Day a vital victory in the crusade for freedom.
The fact that this happened under the Obama Regime isn't a coincidence my friends. Even W would have had contempt for this. It's outrageous and a legitimization of Stalin. Juxtapose this with the removal of Churchill's bust from the White House, replaced with a magazine cover of Obama walking on water, You have to wonder. The world has truly turned upside down.
Thank you for reading this blog.
17 comments:
Good show, this evening. Seems I have heard Carlos from Miami on Free Talk Live a couple of times. I'm glad you have made video taping police an issue. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-police, like many so-called libertarian anarchists are, but arrests and conviction do happen. It is important to listeners/readers who may be a bit fatigued of who's who in upcoming elections, but are interested in civil liberties to have access to good reporting, analysis, and commentary.
Regarding Stalin statue: Virginia is full of ex spec-op types who just might have a bit of C4 stashed away for those... precious moments. ;) Doesn't Richard Marcinko live in Virginia?
Also, I read "The Forsaken," the book that was talked about during your broadcast, along with a similar book published about five years ago, and written by a woman who survived the gulags as a young girl. Her family made the move with others from Ford Motors. Unfortunately, I can't remember her name, or the name of the book offhand. Very sad stories indeed.
And in case readers are interested of this time period, there was a movie about Americans in the Soviet Union, called, "Coming Out of the Ice," with John Saxon and Willie Nelson. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDnkEsiutg0
Wow! Dondero was wound up like an eight day clock this evening!
That should read John Savage, not John Saxon.
It's all the cheap beer Eric drinks. If he only drank the good stuff. Me, after the show I had some 18 year old Macallan.
I believe that since the Soviet Union caused (and this is just a ballpark figure) 3 of 4 German casualties during WWII; the commissioner felt that without the Soviet Union's involvement D-Day would have been much, much, much more violent.
A statue is a statue, we shouldn't read too much into it.
So if the statues of Stalin go then his part in the war didn't happen? I agree with the comment "don't read too much into a statue." Or on second thought maybe we should...think about it...and not ignore or brush away the hard part of war-that all good and all evil don't necessarily exist. Oh, but that might be too hard for us to admit? That we (the US government) ALLIED ourselves to Russia during the war. Shouldn't there be discussion about this in any WWII conversation? Then we are forced to remember those men and women all over Europe who lost their lives during the war for all sorts of horrible reasons.
Shall we edit our memorials, books, schools, and museums so we don't learn about the tough choices our government had to make during WWII to beat Hitler? Think we could have done it w/out the Russians? Nice thought but not likely. I think the Stalin bust is a perfect way of discussing this topic at the D-Day Memorial, something a teacher would call a "teachable moment." Also C4 comments are truly not appreciated here in VA.
Yes the soviets caused 3-4 german causalities. Let me reiterate the facts for those here that have learning disabilities: It's a D-Day memorial. Not WWII, not the European Theatre in WWII. D-Day.
I also want to say that using gracie's logi, why stop there? Why not have a bust of Hitler, extolling the virtues of Naziism and how many Jews he sent to the death camps? Or what about Emperor Hirohito? I'd love to promote his country as the premier vivisectionists of the century.
The D-Day memorial is about the invasion of Europe through France by the Americans, Brits and other english speaking allies. Pulling al the other non-sense about into it is a little much and to be honest, is an attempt to revise history. Like I said, we don't see busts of Hitler there or anywhere for that matter. Stalin was even worse than a Hitler, yet the left loves to extoll the virtues of communism and refuses to accept the horros Stalin visited on his own people, and I haven't even gotten to Mao yet, who was even worse than Stalin. Why not have him there too? The Chinese were affected by the Japanese during WWII. Lets extoll him and his Ling Chi methods. Chuck is correct about Left wingers.
"I think the Stalin bust is a perfect way of discussing this topic at the D-Day Memorial, something a teacher would call a "teachable moment."
Who are you going to discuss this with at D-day memorial, Gracie? I grew up around hundreds of WW2 vets, including my father and uncle. I bet my entire life savings that not one of these heroes would like to have you look down your nose at them with a "teachable moment." Most likely, they would tell you where to stick your beloved bust of one of the most evil people ever to grace God's green earth.
"Also C4 comments are truly not appreciated here in VA."
Appreciated by who, Gracie (B)aby? By you? Let's start with the aforementioned spec-op community who would give me a high five for making such a comment. Doesn't Fred and Jeri Thompsonn live in Virginia? How 'bout Newt Gingrich, Mark Levin, Dick Cheney, and a host of others who would give a wink and a nod to my sense of humor, that you find so disgusting.
Give it up, Gracie, I live around leftists of all stripes, your snide little comment barely raises an eyebrow... which is why I didn't unleash on you the way I do to the local retards where I live.
Peace!
And I'll add: A bust of Stalin at the D-day memorial in Bedford VA, makes as much sense as an Islamic mosque at ground zero!
D-Day didn't happen in a vacuum. Stalin had every bit as much to do with us prevailing than did any other ally. More, in fact. Stalin was an animal, but he was responsible for us defeating the Nazis. Credit where credit is due, is simple honesty.
It's funny, my now dead uncle told me about the night Berlin fell. He was half drunk which is the only reason he talked about it, because those guys who saw the hairiest shit NEVER talked about it. He and his buddy were ordered to stake out a bridge across the Rhine river. They had a mounted machine gun in a jeep and a giant shitoad of ammo. They backed in behind a little mound so the gun was just barely peeking over the ground and waited. He said, "They just kept coming and coming all night long. It was just the two of us and we were scared, but we just kept shooting and they kept coming. In the morning, we were up to our ankles in shell casings and in front of us was an acre of dead Germans." It really freaked him out. Then he told me about going into Germany and seeing piles of Jews on the roadside. Stacked like firewood. The smell was incredible. He said,"It stunk worse than a rotten Arsh Tater." (that's Irish Potato in non-hillbilly English)
Thing is, he never said anything bad about the Russians or Stalin. He was a lifelong democrat partisan and thought FDR hung the fucking moon. I miss him. He was a good man. He and 3 of his brothers went to war. He was the only one who came back.
What about hitler chuck? What about Hirohito? Why stop at Stalin?
Thanks Will.
Stalin was an ally, Jim. That's the only logical place to stop...and start.
Your line of reasoning on this is repugnant to me. It's akin to condemning this country's founders because some of them owned slaves. (If you don't hate George Washington, you must endorse slavery.)
You can't judge history in contemporary terms. It has to be compared to the alternatives available at the time.
I'll ask you,"What about FDR?" He was to the left of Mussolini. Should he be left out of any discussion of D-Day? D-Day was an astonishingly cruel thing to do to our fighting men anyway. FDR was willing to kill all those men for the sake of his own impatience. It was a WW1 style human sacrifice.
Well Chuck, if you want to be intellectually honest, then we include everyone, and in grave detail and Technicolor. No holds barred, FDR included, the scumbag. Mussolini too. They all get their 15 minutes.
And while we are being honest, Stalin was not always an ally. Remember his non-aggression pact with hitler, and then he promptly invaded poland.
No one has ever "always" been anything. What they should do is hang a placard around the neck of Stalin's statue that says, "Ironically, Stalin murdered more people than Hitler and Mussolini combined, but he did enable the US to win World War 2 and thus eventually end communism's reign of terror."
Once you are dead, you are always dead.
Hey there guys, I did want to mention before signing out of this discussion, on my first visit a few years ago to the D-Day Memorial my "teachable moment" was speaking with a former "Bedford Boy." He was a generous, knowledgeable and interesting individual who explained who each of the men in the memorial water feature were and what he'd done in Europe during WWII. I wish he were still alive to talk to about this topic, good, bad or indifferent. You guys are certainly passionate, glad we have that old 1st Amendment. Interesting posts guys but on to McCrystal blogs for me. Oh and Will, it's Gracie "Babe!"
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