All posts by Wintery Knight

https://winteryknight.com/

What can we learn about communist leaders from the record of history?

I have a key that will unlock a puzzling mystery
I have a key that will unlock a puzzling mystery

Now that we have atheistic communists in the majority of the House, Senate and White House, it might be a good idea to take a look at what atheistic communist leaders have done in history. First, let’s see how the atheistic worldview of communist leaders affected religious people.

Here is what Josef Stalin did during his rule of Russia in the 1920s and 1930s.

The Library of Congress offers this in their “Soviet Archives exhibit”:

The Soviet Union was the first state to have as an ideological objective the elimination of religion. Toward that end, the Communist regime confiscated church property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in the schools. Actions toward particular religions, however, were determined by State interests, and most organized religions were never outlawed.

The main target of the anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and 1930s was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest number of faithful. Nearly all of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labor camps. Theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited. By 1939 only about 500 of over 50,000 churches remained open.

What’s the attitude of Democrat candidates to Bible-believing Christians? My read is that they think that Christian values need to be suppressed by the government lest they offend Democrat voters, who seem to be very easily offended these days. You can already see their animus towards Christians in their Equality Act, which eradicates conscience rights in order to protect (some) LGBT people from feeling offended.

The Ukraine Famine

Take a look at this UK Daily Mail article about Josef Stalin.

Excerpt:

Now, 75 years after one of the great forgotten crimes of modern times, Stalin’s man-made famine of 1932/3, the former Soviet republic of Ukraine is asking the world to classify it as a genocide.

The Ukrainians call it the Holodomor – the Hunger.

Millions starved as Soviet troops and secret policemen raided their villages, stole the harvest and all the food in villagers’ homes.

They dropped dead in the streets, lay dying and rotting in their houses, and some women became so desperate for food that they ate their own children.

If they managed to fend off starvation, they were deported and shot in their hundreds of thousands.

So terrible was the famine that Igor Yukhnovsky, director of the Institute of National Memory, the Ukrainian institution researching the Holodomor, believes as many as nine million may have died.

[…]Between four and five million died in Ukraine, a million died in Kazakhstan and another million in the north Caucasus and the Volga.

By 1933, 5.7 million households – somewhere between ten million and 15 million people – had vanished. They had been deported, shot or died of starvation.

The Holodomor is just one of the atrocities committed by Soviet Union communists. You may also have heard that they operated a system of labor camps for dissidents that killed millions more. The total number of people killed by Stalin is estimated at 20 to 40 million.

Stalin actually wasn’t very good at mass murder compared to another communist, Mao Zedong.

Can you name the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century? No, it wasn’t Hitler or Stalin. It was Mao Zedong.

According to the authoritative “Black Book of Communism,” an estimated 65 million Chinese died as a result of Mao’s repeated, merciless attempts to create a new “socialist” China. Anyone who got in his way was done away with — by execution, imprisonment or forced famine.

For Mao, the No. 1 enemy was the intellectual. The so-called Great Helmsman reveled in his blood-letting, boasting, “What’s so unusual about Emperor Shih Huang of the China Dynasty? He had buried alive 460 scholars only, but we have buried alive 46,000 scholars.” Mao was referring to a major “accomplishment” of the Great Cultural Revolution, which from 1966-1976 transformed China into a great House of Fear.

The most inhumane example of Mao’s contempt for human life came when he ordered the collectivization of China’s agriculture under the ironic slogan, the “Great Leap Forward.” A deadly combination of lies about grain production, disastrous farming methods (profitable tea plantations, for example, were turned into rice fields), and misdistribution of food produced the worse famine in human history.

Deaths from hunger reached more than 50 percent in some Chinese villages. The total number of dead from 1959 to 1961 was between 30 million and 40 million — the population of California.

[…]Mao kept expanding the laogai, a system of 1,000 forced labor camps throughout China. Harry Wu, who spent 19 years in labor camps, has estimated that from the 1950s through the 1980s, 50 million Chinese passed through the Chinese version of the Soviet gulag. Twenty million died as a result of the primitive living conditions and 14-hour work days.

Whenever I bring up the historical record of communism to Democrats, they always tell me that their leaders have good intentions. But the communist leaders of the past aren’t any different from the communist leaders of today. Communist leaders all start out with noble ambitions of wanting to help the poor. The problem is that they don’t know anything about economics, so whatever they try doesn’t work. Communist policies like nationalizing private industries, printing money, purging wealthy people, imposing tariffs, and imposing price controls cause enormous poverty. And then they need someone to blame for their failure to produce the results they promise.

If we were serious about helping the poor, then we would elect leaders who had experience lifting the poor out of poverty. A business leader or a governor of a state. It’s not a popularity contest. We need to choose someone who has already had success at helping the poor. And the best way to help the poor is by helping them to find work so they can earn their own success and chart their own course. After all it’s not words that affect our lives. Or the feelings we have about words we like. What affects our lives is policies that produce results. Intentions and rhetoric don’t matter, ultimately.

Democrat Joe Biden plans to cancel all oil and gas leases in Alaska ANWR

Do you wonder why gas prices have shot up since Joe Biden and his team of environmentalist extremists took the House, Senate and White House? Well, it turns out that if you raise taxes on energy producers and regulate their businesses, the supply of energy goes down. When supply decreases, and demand stays the same, prices go up. That’s the law of supply and demand.

The Federalist reports:

The Biden White House plans to cancel all oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge until a further review of their environmental impacts are assessed, according to the New York Times Tuesday.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the paper reported citing two insiders familiar with the administration’s plans, will publish an order to formally rescind existing leases months after the new president mounted a White House crusade against fossil fuels on day one with moratoriums on new drilling in the Arctic and other federal lands.

Marcella Burke, an attorney who specializes in energy policy and is an alum of the Trump Interior Department told The Times the move to halt drilling in the more than 19 million-acre refuge was far from unexpected.

“Since the Carter administration, whether ANWR can be leased is determined by which party is in the White House,” Burke told the paper. “Developers in ANWR assume there will be a policy shift between Democrat and Republican administrations. But it’s not permanent, assuming there will someday be another party in the White House.”

The Biden administration’s animosity towards fossil fuels, featuring Haaland at the top, a climate activist-turned two-term congresswoman described as “Green New Deal Champion,” has promised to make survival harder for the industry with new restrictions which could last beyond a four or eight-year term.

A new environmental analysis may impose heavy restraints on development in the Alaskan region and possibly halt new leases altogether for the remainder of the administration.

President Donald Trump opened the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain, a nearly 1.6 million-acre stretch on Alaska’s north coast for oil and gas development in 2017 in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

During the Trump administration, you’ll recall that Trump implemented an “all of the above” solution to energy production. We had a boom in the zero-emission fracking industry, leading to extremely cheap prices on natural gas. Electricity prices went down. But now that Biden is back in, those prices are going right back up.

And this isn’t a surprise. It happens in every country that elects environmentalist extremists.

What green energy policies did to electricity costs in California
What green energy policies did to electricity costs in California

Let’s start with California. California has long been at the forefront of converting their energy production to “green” sources.

Here’s an article from Forbes that talks about their results:

California’s big bet on renewables, and shunning of natural gas and nuclear, is directly responsible for the state’s blackouts and high electricity prices.

“We will be forced today to ask utilities to cut off power to millions today, and tomorrow, and beyond,” said Stephen Berberich, the President and CEO of California’s Independent System Operator, CAISO, on a Monday morning conference call. “Demand will greatly exceed supply.”

The immediate cause of California’s blackouts is a mismatch between electricity supply and demand.

[…]The underlying reason blackouts are occurring is because California lacks reliable, in-state supply. And the reason for that is California has been closing both natural gas and nuclear power plants.

[…]Despite these capacity shortfalls, the state is moving ahead with plans to remove 2,200-MW of reliable electricity from the grid.  That’s the amount of power produced by Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, which will be closed in stages in 2024 and 2025.

Well, how about Germany? They closed down their nuclear power plants in favor of wind and solar. It didn’t work.

Daily Caller explains:

Germany’s power grid almost collapsed in January due to poor performance from wind turbines and solar panels, according to data from a major trade union.

Wind and solar power plants under-performed in January, 2017, because of cloudy weather with little or no wind, setting the stage for massive blackouts.

[…]Green energy approaches failed to meet Germany’s stated energy goals, even after spending over $1.1 trillion. The country’s “Energiewende” plan to boost wind and solar production to fight global warming hasn’t significantly reduced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and may have actually caused them to go up.

[…]Due to the inherent unreliable performance of wind power and political opposition to nuclear power plants, Germany has been forced to return to coal to generate electricity. Coal now provides 44 percent of  Germany’s power,  This shift caused Germany’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to actually rise by 28 million tons each year following the policy shift.

All of Germany’s subsidies and support for green energy have sharply increased power prices, with the average German paying 39 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity. The average American only spends 10.4 cents per kilowatt-hour by comparison.

Well, third try is the charm. How about Canada? They’ve gone Green New Deal for more than a decade. How is that working for them?

The National Post reported this in 2016:

Back in 2010, deep green environmentalist Rick Smith, then head of Environmental Defence Canada, hailed Ontario’s Green Energy and Green Economy Act regime as a cost-free operation that would catapult the province into the big leagues of renewable energy. Through fat subsidies and high prices offered to wind, solar and other renewable industry players, jobs and growth would boom and Ontario would be free of its dirty coal plants. It was the End of Coal, the government said. The birth of a renewable miracle.

Now, Canadians are paying more:

The doubling of electricity prices since 2005 is big politically, but it is just the top-line item on a long list of problems, misconceptions and outright fabrications that lurk within the Liberal government’s decade-long pursuit of radical greenism.

Because they didn’t listened to engineers… they listened to their hearts:

Ontario’s Society of Professional Engineers has issued more than half a dozen critical reports on the Liberals’ tendency to let green talk and politics override sound policy. Instead of following the expert advice of engineers and people who understand the intricacies of electricity production and distribution, the government took to issuing directives right out the Premier’s office.

We have to do what works to reduce electricity prices for the poor. What works is more natural gas (fracking) and more nuclear power.

 

How is the LGBT activism of the Biden administration affecting women athletes?

Although young unmarried women favor Democrats in elections, it’s starting to look as though Democrat policies are not good for them. Consider an article I found on the Alliance Defending Freedom web site, which is a law firm that defends free speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, etc. from secular left extremists.

It says:

I’ve lost four women’s state championship titles, two all-New England awards, and numerous other spots on the podium to male runners. I was bumped to third place in the 55-meter dash in 2019, behind two male runners. With every loss, it gets harder and harder to try again.

That’s a devastating experience. It tells me that I’m not good enough; that my body isn’t good enough; and that no matter how hard I work, I am unlikely to succeed, because I’m a woman.

That experience is why three of my fellow female athletes and I filed a lawsuit last year with Alliance Defending Freedom against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC): because girls and women shouldn’t be stripped of their right to fair competition.

The CIAC allows biological males to compete in girls’ and women’s sports. As a result, two males began racing in girls’ track in 2017. In the 2017, 2018, and 2019 seasons alone, these males took 15 women’s state track championship titles (titles held in 2016 by nine different girls) and more than 85 opportunities to participate in higher level competitions that belonged to female track athletes.

[…]Connecticut officials are determined to ignore the obvious. And unfortunately, a federal district court recently dismissed our case.

[…]My friend and fellow plaintiff Selina Soule was bumped from qualifying for the state championship 55-meter final and an opportunity to qualify for the New England championship by a male runner in 2019. Meanwhile, Alanna Smith, an incredibly talented female athlete, was the second-place female runner in the 200-meter at the New England Regional Championships, but was dropped to third behind a male competitor.

It’s discouraging that the federal district court has decided that these experiences — these lost opportunities — simply don’t matter.

Very interesting.

But wait. Why is this article posted on the ADF web site? Well, it was originally posted at the far left USA Today web site, but they had to censor the article because it hurt the feelings of people on the secular left.

This column has been updated to reflect USA TODAY’s standards and style guidelines. We regret that hurtful language was used.

Where did the idea that men and women are interchangeable begin? It began with the feminist revolution. Originally, first wave feminists argued for equal opportunity. Feminist scholar Christina Hoff Sommers calls that “equity feminism”. But later “third wave” feminists argued that men and women are interchangeable. Christina Hoff Sommers calls this new feminism “gender feminism”. Third wave feminists deny that sex differences exist, and they claim that the different life outcomes of men and women are not caused by biological differences or different choices, but by discrimination.

This column from far-left PBS explains:

Gender feminism is based on the… belief that humans are born as blank slates and all sex differences are artifacts of socialization. They believe the only way to achieve true political and economic equality is to erase all differences between men and women by rigidly socializing boys and girls to be the same.

So, it’s actually feminism that provided the framework for the idea that men can become women, and women can become men. Ironic, isn’t it?

And do you know what’s even more ironic? That young, unmarried women keep voting for this election after election.

Radical feminism doesn’t just cause women problems in the area of athletics, though. It also hurts them when they are looking for a husband to commit to them. Since feminism took over our politics and institutions, many men have withdrawn from relationships with women. Not only marriage, but cohabitation, dating, and even talking to women.

As I blogged about previously, feminism makes women extremely unattractive to men who want to commit and lead a home. When feminism gets into government, tax rates go up, leaving marriage minded men with less of their earned money. They can’t afford a marriage and children. And feminism in the education system discriminates against men, making it harder for them to succeed so they can potentially marry and support a family. Feminism in the workplace makes getting ahead very difficult for men. And men are treated very unfairly by law enforcement and the courts – not just in divorce courts, but in criminal courts, as well.

It turns out that women often don’t like the results they get, even when they get what they wanted. Isn’t that ironic?