Protests and Policy as Porn
The pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protests have spread to university campuses across the country, just as the agitators hoped (and planned) for them to do. As was also expected, some of these protests have turned violent. A Jewish student was poked in the face with a flagpole at Yale University and hospitalized; another Jewish student was knocked unconscious at the University of California, Los Angeles. Masked mobs have prevented entry of Jewish students and faculty into university facilities. Buildings have been vandalized and broken into at Columbia University, Cal Poly Humboldt and other locations. Frustrated college presidents at dozens of schools have finally begun calling in police to retake college property and clear unlawful encampments, resulting in hundreds of arrests.
Because of their youth, relative geographic isolation or inadequate education, American college students tend to have insufficient understanding of the political, cultural and economic realities outside the United States. They are therefore easy to rally under the brightly colored banners and simplistic slogans of the latest cause celebre. As we've observed during the current campus unrest, their sweeping statements, bereft of nuance, and infantile, attention-seeking behavior often reveal these "protests" to be little more than performative exercises in self-gratification.
Despite how predictably quick this demographic is to call for "revolution" or some other extreme consequence, few ask the critical question: If the regime they oppose is successfully toppled (or crippled), what will take its place?
It's likely that many couldn't answer that question about past revolutions, much less predict the future consequences of current upheavals. In the spirit of intellectual integrity (and humility), it's worth recalling the aftermath of so many such "regime changes" -- particularly (though not exclusively) those brought about by movements heralded by the Left.
Take Russia, for example. Yes, the czarist system was bad; the country's poor labored under medieval-style serfdom until 1861, by which time western Europe and the United States were 100 years into the Industrial Revolution. But the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, defended by America's intellectuals (and our press), and the privations of communism for decades thereafter were far worse. Tens of millions died of starvation, many in prisons or Siberian gulags.
Then there's Cuba. Yes, Fulgencio Batista was a dictator. But Fidel Castro and his comrade-in-camo Che Guevara were just as oppressive politically and arguably worse economically. Castro imposed dictatorial rule, imprisoned and tortured political opponents, dissidents and critics, and criminalized the press. In 1958, the year before Batista was ousted, the average wage of a Cuban worker was the eighth highest in the world. That evaporated when Castro implemented central planning and eliminated private ownership of property. Almost 70 years after the Cuban communist revolution, the country remains in a stranglehold of economic deprivation, with upwards of 70% of the country's population living in poverty.
Similar questions could be posed about Vietnam and Cambodia. France's colonialization of Indochina exploited the native populations. But the protracted civil war in Vietnam (which America entered, to our everlasting regret) cost 1,200,000 Vietnamese lives -- not including the hundreds of thousands lost to political purges, ethnic cleansing and concentration camps.
Cambodia under Pol Pot and his communist Khmer Rouge was even worse. Absurd "intellectual" social engineering theories, disastrous agricultural policies and wholesale slaughter of "enemies of the state" resulting in the deaths of nearly 2 million Cambodians -- 20% of the population.
Leftists also clamored to topple the Shah of Iran and end the monarchy. But when Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was forced into exile in 1979, the liberalizing reforms of his White Revolution, including women's rights and westernized concepts of political and economic liberty, were swept away by the new Islamic Republic of Iran, under whose repressive control the Iranian public have since suffered for 45 years.
The current condemnation of Israel -- the only democracy in the Middle East -- is even more appalling than was support for the "revolutionaries" of earlier generations, whose murderous intentions were arguably less well known.
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