Nuns, Guns, and Useful Idiots

Useful idiots:

1. Political jargon for well-intentioned, but unwitting people exploited by nefarious politicians for evil ends

There’s an idea floating about that our present liberal-progressive atheism, PC suppression of free speech, gun-grabbing naivete, and overall feckless ability to cope with reality is somehow useful. The NAACP defense of a ‘self-identifying’ white official as a black woman, Rachel Dolezal, is only the most recent imbecility to laugh at. The idea is that leftists are ‘useful idiots’.

“There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.”

– Vladimir Lenin

Falsely attributed to Vladimir Lenin, the term ‘useful idiots’, became popular with the Bolsheviks after the 1917 overthrow of last Romanov, Tsar Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russians. Many sympathetic intellectual Brits and Yanks flocked to the Bolshevik cause. These middle-class intellectuals were actually ridiculed and held in contempt by the Bolsheviks as fools weaving their own hangman’s rope. Usually, these well-meaning dupes were the first ones shot as the Bolsheviks rolled over Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain (1946-1990). Having helped the Reds disarm the civilian population, they were easy to round up and summarily execute.

"...one of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the workers (Communist) and the disarming of the bourgeoisie (the middle class)."

--- Vladimir Lenin

Prominent in this group of ‘fellow travelers’ were British writers including H. G. Wells and Doris Lessing, the Irish writer George Bernard Shaw, the American journalist Walter Duranty, and the singer Paul Robeson.

“Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.”

--- Vladimir Lenin

The term has persisted to its contemporary usage referring to those who unwittingly support a malignant cause which they naïvely believe to be somehow beneficial to humanity or ‘being on the right side of history’. The key term here is ‘unwittingly’. Some are and some are not. Under this rendering, there are politically useful idiots on the left, right, and center. As Boylston Chess Club Guru, Mike Griffin reminded me, those paranoid Texans fearing a military invasion by the Obamaistas played ‘useful idiots’ to the legislative passage of the state’s revival of open carry firearms laws this week. But, since the lefties employ the lemming approach to politics they’re just more numerous, more obvious and by far more entertaining.

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them in parliament,” --- Vladimir Lenin

The 1981 Warren Beatty film Reds depicted the unwitting American journalist, John Reed, a limousine liberal as a child and an avid communist as an adult. His firsthand account of the Bolshevik revolution, Ten Days That Shook the World, was publicly presented by communists as a masterpiece while privately ridiculed as a naive work by a useful idiot. Reed was interested in saving the starving masses in Russia. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were interested in building a one-world-wide communist regime from the barrels of guns. Buried in the Kremlin wall in one final cynical act of Bolshevik exploitation, Reed died broken and disillusioned in 1920.

In the ‘wittingly’ category of useful idiots, we have plenty of modern examples. Many theists are delighted by the success of evolutionary biologist and rabid atheist, Richard Dawkins, book The God Problem. Why? The book brought a religious debate back to the marketplace of ideas just as it was fading. With the vision of nun in a nunnery Dawkins attacks the existence of God through the myopia of a molecule. You know the amphibolous joke, don’t you?

“Why do they call them ‘nuns’? Sure, they don’t have none, don’t want none, don’t get none. You know…nuns!”

In a similar fashion, leftie gun-grabbers are unwitting useful idiots for Second Amendment defenders. Consider their lust to disarm free people by backing politicians who fear popular overthrow. Guns kill, they scream. So, get rid of all guns (except the guns of the regime, of course) and all killing will stop, they concluded. Dull minds still accept this imbecility, until the thin blue line of police collapse and flee in the face of the overwhelming mob of riotous, marauding masses. Lest we forget notorious thug, Rodney King, surely did not deserve being beaten to a pulp by regime sworn, armed and thuggish ‘police’. Sure. Agreed. But when the rapacious masses first burned down their own neighborhoods then torched greater 1992 Los Angeles looting gun stores, assaulting any white person driving in their midst, the progressives recanted with knees rattling.

One of them, a liberal-progressive gun-grabber whose name is far too prominent to mention here, called Charlton Heston and begged for a gun and some ammo. For my benefit, he put the call on speaker. “Can’t do that,” Chuck demurred, “I don't have time to teach you how to properly use it and you’d probably end up killing yourself or someone else. Sorry. You're on your own.” Anti-Second Amendment Mayor, Tom Bradley, ordered a ban on ammunition sales to citizens from the few stores not looted by the thugs. The rioting ended after members of the California Army National Guard, the 7th Infantry Division, and the 1st Marine Division were called in to stop the rioting when the local police could not handle the situation. From my balcony, I watched columns of thick black smoke rise from burned out gun stores one by one. It looked like Beruit. In total, 53 people were killed during the riots and over 2,000 people were injured. Chuck’s liberal caller hung up. “We’ll need more ammo”, Chuck announced scribbling a check out to me. Try the gun stores in Ventura, 12 gauge and 9mm.”

After distributing the ammo to Chuck and his friends on my return hours later I was greeted with a grizzly site at my own apartment complex. Bob Tivis, one of our black residents was pounding on my door frantically. His face was bloodied and his clothes torn. “They’re in the garage and they’re beating my wife.” Grabbing the Mossberg pump action shotgun and a Smith and Wesson 9mm, I approached the only way out of the garage. Mrs. Tivis lay on the ground crying hysterically. Four young black men, all armed with handguns stared wide-eyed at my shotgun. Deciding prudence the better part of valor since they were cowards that beat up unarmed women, they slid into their car and slowly passed under the muzzle of my scatter-gun, manic grins painted their faces, racial epithets dripping from their mouths. Apparently, mine was not the only such incident. Chuck later told me that Lifetime memberships in the NRA rocketed by over 500,000 immediately after the ‘Rodney King, motorist’ L.A riots of 1992. To the liberal-progressives nationwide, those riots had the same effect of a nun slapping her ruler on their knuckles. SCOTUS dropped the final hammer on the ‘militia’ interpretation of the Second Amendment in the Heller decision affirming. “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged”.

Following is the text of remarks by CBS News Commentator, Eric Sevareid at Stanford University's 80th, Commencement June 13, 1971.

In every western country there is a growing gap between ordinary men and intellectuals, and it is not clear how this is to be resolved. The intellectual is the natural creator and dissenter; but to the extent that he fosters, not dissent itself, but violent dissent, I fear for him and his status, It is perfectly clear that any people, given no alternatives, will choose tyranny over anarchy, because anarchy is the worst tyranny of all. In the latter part of his life, one of this century's great intellects, Alfred North Whitehead, thinking, I believe, of America, gave this warning: "wait for the back streets. When they move, the intellectuals are swept aside.”

When the back streets begin to move, and they are moving, street riots are no place for ‘useful idiots’.