DC is a communist

[Anonymous]

My DC was a radical Marxist in high school. Her SAT essay featured crowds burning down a building.

She's finishing college in June and registered as a Republican last year.

I advise not helicoptering your kids' political philosophies.

[Anonymous]

Read what she is reading and talk to her about the specifics that you have read. Have a good conversation. Treat it like a book club.

[Anonymous]

I just read a great book about Pasternak—ostensibly about the CIA’s efforts to get dr zhivago publshed, but really more about Pasternak himself and early 20th century russia. Suggest she read dr zhivago and that book.
Maybe also mastering the art of Soviet cooking, which is a quick read and a great family history/‘memoir.
Together, these books really underline one of the core problems with communism, which is the subjegation of the individual personality to the community. Most kids today have a strong sense of individuality, and I think would be turned off by that aspect of communism.

I think the other big issue with communism lies in the vanguard of the proletariat, which was Lenin’s take on Marx’s work. Like with a group school project, someone needs to take the lead and once you’ve got that, you don’t really have real communism anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just read a great book about Pasternak—ostensibly about the CIA’s efforts to get dr zhivago publshed, but really more about Pasternak himself and early 20th century russia. Suggest she read dr zhivago and that book.
Maybe also mastering the art of Soviet cooking, which is a quick read and a great family history/‘memoir.
Together, these books really underline one of the core problems with communism, which is the subjegation of the individual personality to the community. Most kids today have a strong sense of individuality, and I think would be turned off by that aspect of communism.

I think the other big issue with communism lies in the vanguard of the proletariat, which was Lenin’s take on Marx’s work. Like with a group school project, someone needs to take the lead and once you’ve got that, you don’t really have real communism anymore.

Agreed. I always found it peculiar that young people should be so attracted to Marxism/Communism when it demands total subjugation of the individual into the community. The real attraction, methinks, is you have kids at an age when the world seems so unfair and they're still thinking in the black and white terms of childhood, and Marxism offers an easy explanation for why things are unfair and how it should be redone. The concepts are simple and easy to digest and easy to justify. The real world, of course, is not simple and not easily justified.

It's common to say that true Marxism never really happened, but in that case ask why it never happened and what actually does happen when you marry the ideology of Marxism with human nature. The result is extremely clear: disaster.

[Anonymous]

If you want your child to stop being communist, talk about how cool it is for old people to be communists.