Thanks for the reply. First, Marci Shore’s previous work *Caviar and Ashes* won a National Jewish Book Award, so I’m thinking she’s probably not an apologist one way or the other. Nor am I, and I have never written an Amazon review on any book so let’s dispense with unfounded characterizations of my intent in mentioning the work. It’s a short walk from hurling unfounded statements to paranoia. Neither are especially productive over the long term.
The Ashes book and Bloodlands are both fresh and thorough evaluations (and in some instances, reevaluations) of a region which suffered immensely over the past century. How much of what occurred in those countries was due to the complete failure of national leaders to grasp and make a successful transition from agriculture to an industrial economy? And when the consequences of that failure began to seep into the day to day life of people in the region, the politicians came making promises they had to know the people they made them to would be asked to underwrite with their own blood. I’d ask the Kulaks how those political promises grounded in economic redistribution worked out for them, but there aren’t many around these days. Right?
All of this concerns me because one does not have to look far to see a similar failure emerging in the American education and labor arenas with regard to both the development and application of technology. My concern is to avoid Blood and (later) Ashes and part of that is to avoid what didn’t work last time, leading to Eastern Europe’s horrific 20th century.
Unfortunately somewhere north of half of American voters in the past two presidential elections demonstrated the consequences of an inadequate education. This coincides with our arrival at a point where failed states have to pass on the tab for their failures to the national government. But states are a funny thing— much easier to view Illinois and Texas as separate planets rather than states in the same federal system of national government.
Long term the issue becomes not what Illinois can pass on, but what Utah or Texas or Arizona or Tennessee will tolerate.
I think what should really scare the hell out of the left is that they need the right to pay for their programs. The right on the other hand doesn’t really need the left. That sets up the scenarios described in Bloodland and Ashes. Particularly a Bloodland scenario— which hopefully we can all agree is something to work to avoid. But it will be difficult because so many have come to accept the idea that they have a (recurring) right to the fruits of other’s labors. The others doing the labor increasingly have a different opinion, and have begun to wonder what are the limits to charity (or tzedakah), particularly in light of the ingratitutde of the recipients. At some point compelled contribution becomes injustice.
I’ve read both Goldhagen and Shirer, and I’m not making any arguments beyond saying that the explanations, to date, as to causation are incomplete. The European holocaust can be and is studied because it is so well documented on both the micro and macro levels. Mao and PolPot weren’t meticulous record keepers. But to look at such documentation I’m looking at effects, the consequences of decisions long since taken.
Again: I do not understand how something of the scope and intensity of the Holocaust occurred. Period. Don’t assign ulterior motives to that statement, because there aren’t any. At least you did a more adequate job of camouflaging hyperbole than another respondent.
With the opening of government archives in post-Soviet Eastern Europe, there was bound to be a reevaluation of what had been written about the first half of the 20th century in that region. When new primary source material becomes available, reevaluation is appropriate. Depending on the content of that primary source material, revision may be called for. It may also be called for if people who played a central role in important events come to see matters in a different light. Both of these circumstances are now occurring in Eastern Europe.
To the degree you are Jewish and conservative, I understand that entails no small measure of difficulty (and frustration) in political matters. But also understand that unpleasant questions— such as those found in the middle chapter of Shore’s book— are being raised in academia and that those will percolate through the broader culture over time. If I were Jewish, I would want demand some serious scholarship on the kibbutz movement. And as long as were being candid, it should be revisionist because the kibbutz is, in my opinion, derivative of Europe’s Romantic nationalism. And Romantic movements never end well.
Over and against the questions raised by Shore should be read the work of Brandy Aven at Carnegie-Mellon and her peers. Before the kibbutz there were extensive trade networks. Both should be re-evaluated in terms of sustainability and consequences. The answers are much more clear in that regard than they were even 20 years ago.