These biographical details throw light on the pope’s ideological instincts. Yet many commentators have ignored them, breezily casting his leftism as a bit confused but basically harmless.

#Pope's #Communist #roots exposed... https://t.co/5RzOdb1chC

— Drudge Report (@drudgeheadlines) May 2, 2017

In the early twentieth century, as Marx’s socialism spread across the world, Pope Pius XI declared the theory anathema. “No one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist,” he said. To hear Pope Francis speak today, one might conclude the reverse: that no can be at the same time a good Catholic and an opponent of socialism.

“Inequality is the root of all evil,” Pope Francis wrote on his Twitter account in 2014. One can imagine Karl Marx blurting that out, but none of Francis’s predecessors would have made such an outrageous claim. According to traditional Catholic theology, the root of all evil came not from inequality but from Satan’s refusal to accept inequality. Out of envy of God’s superiority, Satan rebelled. He could not bear his lesser status.

He was in effect the first revolutionary, which is why the socialist agitator Saul Alinsky — a mentor to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (who did her senior thesis at Wellesley on his thought) — offered an “acknowledgment” in his book, Rules for Radicals, to Satan. Alinsky saw him as the first champion of the “have nots.”

...Evo Morales, Bolivia’s proudly Marxist president, offered the pontiff that sacrilegious image of Jesus Christ. Morales described the gift as a copy of a crucifix designed by a late priest, Fr. Luis Espinal, who belonged to the Jesuit order (as does Pope Francis) and had committed his life to melding Marxism with religion. Pope Francis had honored Espinal’s memory upon his arrival in Bolivia.

Had John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI seen such a grotesque cross, they might have broken it over their knees. Not Pope Francis. He accepted the hammer-and-sickle cross warmly, telling the press on the plane ride back to Rome that “I understand this work” and that “for me it wasn’t an offense.” After the visit, Morales gushed, “I feel like now I have a Pope. I didn’t feel that before.”

The Souls of Soviet Folk - "how people's humanity crumbles under pressure to survive"

Anya Ulinich says that in its scope & wisdom ‘Secondhand Time’ is akin to ‘War and Peace’ https://t.co/FbrHns0ix2 via @WSJ

— Jordan Tarwater (@jordantarwater) May 30, 2016

The Souls of Soviet Folk - "how people's humanity crumbles under pressure to survive" https://t.co/5ep1REcxbJ

— Danilo Delgado (@danilodelgadocu) May 29, 2016

Communism kills.

Communism kills. We need a museum to remind people of this. https://t.co/O4yT9OdJsO pic.twitter.com/9sChtZ3DGW

— The Spectator (@spectator) March 3, 2016

#FeelTheBern

#WeAreBernie because we cannot excel in our own lives. We celebrate mediocrity! Full video https://t.co/9M0MhSXOyJ pic.twitter.com/HI3yK9XRMx

— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) January 23, 2016

#WeAreBernie when we act like idealistic fools while ignoring the lessons of the past. pic.twitter.com/APJFlmTcrP

— Bill Sanderson (@BanCollectivism) January 23, 2016

#WeAreBernie because who needs responsibility when you can just take someone else's stuff! pic.twitter.com/O8VodbnuuB

— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) January 23, 2016

“Our goal as socialists is to abolish private ownership of the means of production” - #DSA David Green #WeAreBernie pic.twitter.com/wiCLifqr9m

— Trevor Loudon (@newzealblog) January 23, 2016

China abolishes 1-child policy, allows couple to have two children

China abolishes 1-child policy, allows couple to have two children: https://t.co/PO2BsFUalX pic.twitter.com/LZ6koLXZKh

— ABC News (@ABC) October 30, 2015

Great news for mothers expecting twins . @ABC

— Rufus Johnson☆ (@Mikes_idea) October 30, 2015

The Twilight of China’s Communist Party

◼ President Xi Jinping may be gathering unprecedented power in China—but perhaps it is more the flaring of a candle before it gutters. - Michael Auslin/Wall St. Journal

“I can’t give you a date when it will fall, but China’s Communist Party has entered its endgame.” So says one of America’s most experienced China watchers to a small table of foreign diplomats at a private dinner in Washington, D.C. The pessimism from someone with deep connections to the Chinese government is notable. Washington should start paying attention if it wishes to avoid being surprised by political earthquakes in the world’s second-largest economy.

The China scholar at my table is no conservative. Nor are the handful of other experts. Each has decades of experience, extensive ties to Chinese officials and is a regular visitor to the mainland. No one contradicts the scholar’s statement. Instead there is general agreement.

“I’ve never seen Chinese so fearful, at least not since Tiananmen,” another expert adds, referring to the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy student demonstrators in the heart of Beijing. When prodded for specifics, he mentions increased surveillance, the fear of being investigated and increased arrests.

Just as there is no dissent from these views, there is unanimity on the cause of the new atmosphere of fear: President Xi Jinping.

◼ The Coming Chinese Crackup - David Shambaugh/Wall St. Journal

The endgame of communist rule in China has begun, and Xi Jinping’s ruthless measures are only bringing the country closer to a breaking point

...Despite appearances, China’s political system is badly broken, and nobody knows it better than the Communist Party itself. China’s strongman leader, Xi Jinping , is hoping that a crackdown on dissent and corruption will shore up the party’s rule. He is determined to avoid becoming the Mikhail Gorbachev of China, presiding over the party’s collapse. But instead of being the antithesis of Mr. Gorbachev, Mr. Xi may well wind up having the same effect. His despotism is severely stressing China’s system and society—and bringing it closer to a breaking point.

Peggy Noonan: Normalizing relations with Cuba will not, as Sen. Marco Rubio passionately put it in these pages, grant the Castro regime “legitimacy.”

◼ The Cuban Regime Is a Defeated Foe - Peggy Noonan/Wall St. Journal

Nothing can grant it legitimacy.

Fidel Castro ruined his country for a dead ideology and the whole world knows it. It may be closer to the truth to see the Castro brothers’ eagerness for normalization as an admission that they’ve run out their string. They’ve lost everything that kept them alive, from the Soviet Union to once-oil-rich Venezuela. The Castro government is stuck. Their economy is nothing. They have no strength. They enjoy vestigial respect from certain quarters, but only vestigial. They’ve lost and they know it.

So why not move now?

Nothing magical will immediately follow normalization. The Castro brothers will not say, “I can’t believe it, free markets and democracy really are better, I had no idea!” Nothing will make Cuba democratic overnight. But American involvement and presence—American tourists and businessmen, American diplomats, American money, American ways and technology—will likely in time have a freeing effect. With increased contact a certain amount of good feeling will build. And that could make Cuba, within a generation or even less, a friend.

And that would be good for the American national interest, because it’s better to have a friend 90 miles away than an active and avowed enemy.

The opening to Cuba may also spark a re-Christianizing effect among a people who’ve been denied freedom of religious worship for generations. That would be good too, for them and us.

◼ Peggy Noonan’s Wishful Thinking on Cuba - Joel B. Pollak/Breitbart National Security

CASTRO: CUBA STAYS COMMUNIST!

◼ President Raúl Castro declared victory for the Cuban Revolution on Saturday in a wide-ranging speech, thanking President Obama for “a new chapter” while also reaffirming that restored relations with the United States did not mean the end of Communist rule in Cuba. - New York Times

In a televised speech before Parliament and a group of favored guests — including Elián González, the center of a tug of war in 2000 between Cuban exiles and Havana, and the three men convicted of spying in the United States who were released as part of the historic agreement announced on Wednesday — Mr. Castro alternated between conciliatory and combative statements directed at the United States.

He stoked the flames of Cuban nationalism, declaring near the end of his statement, “We won the war.” But he also praised Mr. Obama for starting the biggest change in United States-Cuba policy in more than 50 years.

Cárdenas, Cuba, home to Elián González, is a growing city of contrasts and contradictions, where some still celebrate Che Guevara.Crucible of Cuban Zeal Redefines RevolutionaryDEC. 19, 2014
“The Cuban people are grateful,” he said, for Mr. Obama’s decision “to remove the obstacles to our relations.”

Obama gives the Castro regime in Cuba an undeserved bailout

◼ On Wednesday, the Castros suddenly obtained a comprehensive bailout — from the Obama administration. President Obama granted the regime everything on its wish list that was within his power to grant; a full lifting of the trade embargo requires congressional action. - Washington Post

Full diplomatic relations will be established, Cuba’s place on the list of terrorism sponsors reviewed and restrictions lifted on U.S. investment and most travel to Cuba. That liberalization will provide Havana with a fresh source of desperately needed hard currency and eliminate U.S. leverage for political reforms.

As part of the bargain, Havana released Alan Gross, a U.S. Agency for International Development contractor who was unjustly imprisoned five years ago for trying to help Cuban Jews. Also freed was an unidentified U.S. intelligence agent in Cuba — as were three Cuban spies who had been convicted of operations in Florida that led to Cuba’s 1996 shootdown of a plane carrying anti-Castro activists. While Mr. Obama sought to portray Mr. Gross’s release as unrelated to the spy swap, there can be no question that Cuba’s hard-line intelligence apparatus obtained exactly what it sought when it made Mr. Gross a de facto hostage.

No wonder Yoani Sánchez, Cuba’s leading dissident blogger, concluded Wednesday that “Castroism has won” and predicted that for weeks Cubans will have to endure proclamations by the government that it is the “winner of its ultimate battle.”...

The Vietnam outcome is what the Castros are counting on: a flood of U.S. tourists and business investment that will allow the regime to maintain its totalitarian system indefinitely. Mr. Obama may claim that he has dismantled a 50-year-old failed policy; what he has really done is give a 50-year-old failed regime a new lease on life.

.@WashingtonPost Slams Obama's Cuba Move http://t.co/Ggr5g4XbcQ

— National Review (@NRO) December 19, 2014

Castro's Hipster Apologists Want to Keep Cuba ‘Authentically’ Poor http://t.co/jCJnMWZC2i pic.twitter.com/Fbd05bsL33

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) December 19, 2014

Important essay from an insightful historian: "Why We Isolated Cuba for 53 Years" http://t.co/eBkgfIMHZN @DailySignal

— Ryan T. Anderson (@RyanT_Anderson) December 18, 2014

Q&A on Obama’s Policy Changes Toward #Cuba -- @Ana_R_Quintana http://t.co/gqB6E4ujAx

— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) December 18, 2014

RT @Heritage: Q & A on the President’s Recent Policy Concessions Toward #Cuba @Ana_R_Quintana http://t.co/mvE2qHuPqJ

— James Jay Carafano (@JJCarafano) December 19, 2014

The 2016 Potentials React to Obama’s #Cuba Plan -http://t.co/joigv9Bw1c pic.twitter.com/Q0EvvPtW75

— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) December 18, 2014

Rubio Delivers Remarks On U.S. Policy Toward Russia At The Heritage Foundation

While it’s important to tell the truth about Mandela as he was and South Africa as it is that doesn’t solve the media problem nor counter the club that the left/media will use on us with low information voters.

◼ Time for us to Play the Mandela Card Against the Left - datechguy/Minority Report

The secular sainthood myth of Mandela is based on a single undeniable fact, that he is pretty much the only Leftist communist revolutionary in history that didn’t abuse the power he eventually won to gain wealth & power for himself and repress and slaughter those who disagreed with him using either government or extra government methods.

...That is so atypical, so extraordinary (even the peaceful Norwegians after liberation from the Nazis executed Quisling) that I have no problem calling Mandela “great” but more importantly what if we on the right embrace that standard and hold the left to it?

For example, when the left praises Castro, we put Uncle Fidel up against the Mandela Standard

Mandela: Didn’t keep power for himself for 50 years.
Mandela: Didn’t keep a secret police watching his political foes.
Mandela: Didn’t keep dissidents from leaving
Mandela: Held free elections with multiple parties
Mandela: Didn’t have the wives of jailed prisoners beaten

Do you see? The left always seems to have excuses for murderous communist tyrants and dictators, but when we play the Mandela card how do they justify these acts when Mandela himself didn’t do them?

And that doesn’t have to be applied only to foreign affairs consider:

Mandela never used the tax system against his political foes
Mandela never summarily suspended law
Mandela didn’t use the government to suppress his political foes....

◼ link - Andrew Kaczynski/Buzzfeed
◼ Everyone liked Andrew Kaczynski's Seven Nelson Mandela Quotes You Probably Won't See In The U.S. Media. - Discussion at Lucianne
◼ The Mandela Myth - Daniel Greenfield/FrontPage

What happens when healthcare evolves from a privilege to a right

◼ According to the President, his goal is to make health care more than just a privilege — he wants it to be a right for all. - Red Alert Politics

...But the right to health care opens up Pandora’s box in terms of what the government does and does not need to provide to its citizens....

“If health care is a constitutional right, then everything associated with good health would fall into the civil rights category. So your entire environment, house, food, clothing, transportation, mental health would all have to be paid for by the state if you could not afford it,” O’Reilly said during his “Talking Points Memo” segment. “That’s a form of communism because no country could afford those payments without seizing the assets of everybody else. It’s impossible.”

America is a long way from communism, but O’Reilly raises an important point. If health care becomes a fundamental right granted by the U.S. government, what’s next?

John McCain's Answer to Putin's Op-Ed

◼ John McCain aims broadside at Vladimir Putin with reply editorial: US senator answers Russian president's New York Times article by branding him a repressive leader and friend to tyrants - The Guardian

When Pravda.ru editor, Dmitry Sudakov, offered to publish my commentary, he referred to me as “an active anti-Russian politician for many years.” I’m sure that isn’t the first time Russians have heard me characterized as their antagonist. Since my purpose here is to dispel falsehoods used by Russia’s rulers to perpetuate their power and excuse their corruption, let me begin with that untruth. I am not anti-Russian. I am pro-Russian, more pro-Russian than the regime that misrules you today.

I make that claim because I respect your dignity and your right to self-determination. I believe you should live according to the dictates of your conscience, not your government. I believe you deserve the opportunity to improve your lives in an economy that is built to last and benefits the many, not just the powerful few. You should be governed by a rule of law that is clear, consistently and impartially enforced and just. I make that claim because I believe the Russian people, no less than Americans, are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

A Russian citizen could not publish a testament like the one I just offered. President Putin and his associates do not believe in these values. They don’t respect your dignity or accept your authority over them. They punish dissent and imprison opponents. They rig your elections. They control your media. They harass, threaten, and banish organizations that defend your right to self-governance. To perpetuate their power they foster rampant corruption in your courts and your economy and terrorize and even assassinate journalists who try to expose their corruption.

They write laws to codify bigotry against people whose sexual orientation they condemn. They throw the members of a punk rock band in jail for the crime of being provocative and vulgar and for having the audacity to protest President Putin’s rule.

Sergei Magnistky wasn’t a human rights activist. He was an accountant at a Moscow law firm. He was an ordinary Russian who did an extraordinary thing. He exposed one of the largest state thefts of private assets in Russian history. He cared about the rule of law and believed no one should be above it. For his beliefs and his courage, he was held in Butyrka prison without trial, where he was beaten, became ill and died. After his death, he was given a show trial reminiscent of the Stalin-era and was, of course, found guilty. That wasn’t only a crime against Sergei Magnitsky. It was a crime against the Russian people and your right to an honest government – a government worthy of Sergei Magnistky and of you.

President Putin claims his purpose is to restore Russia to greatness at home and among the nations of the world. But by what measure has he restored your greatness? He has given you an economy that is based almost entirely on a few natural resources that will rise and fall with those commodities. Its riches will not last. And, while they do, they will be mostly in the possession of the corrupt and powerful few. Capital is fleeing Russia, which – lacking rule of law and a broad-based economy – is considered too risky for investment and entrepreneurism. He has given you a political system that is sustained by corruption and repression and isn’t strong enough to tolerate dissent.

How has he strengthened Russia’s international stature? By allying Russia with some of the world’s most offensive and threatening tyrannies. By supporting a Syrian regime that is murdering tens of thousands of its own people to remain in power and by blocking the United Nations from even condemning its atrocities. By refusing to consider the massacre of innocents, the plight of millions of refugees, the growing prospect of a conflagration that engulfs other countries in its flames an appropriate subject for the world’s attention. He is not enhancing Russia’s global reputation. He is destroying it. He has made her a friend to tyrants and an enemy to the oppressed, and untrusted by nations that seek to build a safer, more peaceful and prosperous world.

President Putin doesn’t believe in these values because he doesn’t believe in you. He doesn’t believe that human nature at liberty can rise above its weaknesses and build just, peaceful, prosperous societies. Or, at least, he doesn’t believe Russians can. So he rules by using those weaknesses, by corruption, repression and violence. He rules for himself, not you.

I do believe in you. I believe in your capacity for self-government and your desire for justice and opportunity. I believe in the greatness of the Russian people, who suffered enormously and fought bravely against terrible adversity to save your nation. I believe in your right to make a civilization worthy of your dreams and sacrifices. When I criticize your government, it is not because I am anti-Russian. It is because I believe you deserve a government that believes in you and answers to you. And, I long for the day when you have it.

Pravda: Americans, never give up your guns

◼ For those of us fighting for our traditional rights, the US 2nd Amendment is a rare light in an ever darkening room. Governments will use the excuse of trying to protect the people from maniacs and crime, but are in reality, it is the bureaucrats protecting their power and position. - Stanislav Mishin/Pravda

This will probably come as a total shock to most of my Western readers, but at one point, Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth. This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar. Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns were everywhere, common items. People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered. Fighting knives were a prominent part of many traditional attires and those little tubes criss crossing on the costumes of Cossacks and various Caucasian peoples? Well those are bullet holders for rifles....

For those of us fighting for our traditional rights, the US 2nd Amendment is a rare light in an ever darkening room. Governments will use the excuse of trying to protect the people from maniacs and crime, but are in reality, it is the bureaucrats protecting their power and position. In all cases where guns are banned, gun crime continues and often increases. As for maniacs, be it nuts with cars (NYC, Chapel Hill NC), swords (Japan), knives (China) or home made bombs (everywhere), insane people strike. They throw acid (Pakistan, UK), they throw fire bombs (France), they attack. What is worse, is, that the best way to stop a maniac is not psychology or jail or "talking to them", it is a bullet in the head, that is why they are a maniac, because they are incapable of living in reality or stopping themselves.

The excuse that people will start shooting each other is also plain and silly. So it is our politicians saying that our society is full of incapable adolescents who can never be trusted? Then, please explain how we can trust them or the police, who themselves grew up and came from the same culture?

No it is about power and a total power over the people. There is a lot of desire to bad mouth the Tsar, particularly by the Communists, who claim he was a tyrant, and yet under him we were armed and under the progressives disarmed. Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question. They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.

So, do not fall for the false promises and do not extinguish the light that is left to allow humanity a measure of self respect.

Recently, Obama has been re-elected for a 2nd term by an illiterate society and he is ready to continue his lies of less taxes while he raises them. He gives speeches of peace and love in the world while he promotes wars as he did in Egypt, Libya and Syria. He plans his next war is with Iran as he fires or demotes his generals who get in the way.

◼ Obama's Soviet Mistake - Xavier Lerma/Pravda

...President Vladimir Putin could never have imagined anyone so ignorant or so willing to destroy their people like Obama much less seeing millions vote for someone like Obama. They read history in America don't they? Alas, the schools in the U.S. were conquered by the Communists long ago and history was revised thus paving the way for their Communist presidents. Obama has bailed out those businesses that voted for him and increased the debt to over 16 trillion with an ever increasing unemployment rate especially among blacks and other minorities. All the while promoting his agenda....

Let's give American voters the benefit of the doubt and say it was all voter fraud and not ignorance or stupidity in electing a man who does not even know what to do and refuses help from Russia when there was an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Instead we'll say it's true that the Communists usage of electronic voting was just a plan to manipulate the vote. Soros and his ownership of the company that counts the US votes in Spain helped put their puppet in power in the White House. According to the Huffington Post, residents in all 50 states have filed petitions to secede from the Unites States. We'll say that these Americans are hostages to the Communists in power. How long will their government reign tyranny upon them?

Russia lost its' civil war with the Reds and millions suffered torture and death for almost 75 years under the tyranny of the United Soviet Socialist Republic. Russians survived with a new and stronger faith in God and ever growing Christian Church. The question is how long will the once "Land of the Free" remain the United Socialist States of America? Their suffering has only begun. Bye bye Miss American Pie! You know the song you hippies. Sing it! Don't you remember? The 1971 hit song by American song writer Don McLean...