Posted on 11/07/2009 7:28:51 PM PST by Saije
In the dense forests of the idyllic Danube island of Persin, home to the endangered sea eagle and the pygmy cormorant, lie the ghastly remains of a communist-era death camp.
Hundreds "enemies of the regime" perished from beatings, malnutrition and exhaustion in 1949-59 in Bulgaria's Belene concentration camp, where dead bodies were fed to pigs.
Twenty years after the fall of communism, Belene is largely forgotten -- only a small marble plaque tells its horrific story. And nostalgia for the past is growing in the small Balkan country and across the former Soviet bloc.
Capitalism's failure to lift living standards, impose the rule of law and tame flourishing corruption and nepotism have given way to fond memories of the times when the jobless rate was zero, food was cheap and social safety was high.
"(The bad) things have been forgotten," said Rumen Petkov, 42, a former guard now clerk at the only prison still functioning on the Persin island.
"The nostalgia is palpable, particularly among the elderly," he said, in front of the crumbling buildings of another old jail opened on the site after the camp was shut in 1959. The communists imprisoned dozens of ethnic Turks here in the 1980s when they refused to change their names to Bulgarian.
Some young people in the impoverished town of Belene, linked to the island with a pontoon bridge, also reminisce: "We lived better in the past," said Anelia Beeva, 31.
"We went on holidays to the coast and the mountains, there were plenty of clothes, shoes, food. And now the biggest chunk of our incomes is spent on food. People with university degrees are unemployed and many go abroad."
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Great, that means we should too. Let’s emulate these successful societies, since we’re all equal.
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If they can wait one more year, they can move here and get all the communism they want.
SPECIAL REPORT: Liberal media pines for communism
Democracy is little better than socialism. Rule by the mob versus rule by elites. Take your pick. That’s why our founders chose a republic.
Another missing component is the Christian ethics that drove our country. Love of God before self, concern and respect for others (who are seen as spiritual equals), hard work, honesty, civil society, the Golden Rule, etc. I’m not saying Christian ethics are the only way to build a civil society, but they certainly help.
If these folks want prosperity, they have to earn it.
“It was easier when we didn’t need to buy feed for the pigs.”
They can have my spot here in the United Socialist States of Amerika.
What isn’t discussed is that anyone who had any brains or drive either emigrated away or were killed by the nazis or the soviets. The people left there probably have an IQ of 90, and I’m being kind.
People who have never known genuine liberty and the security of a virtuous culture can find freedom a rocky road to poverty, especially when their old socialist masters continue to rob them blind. They want the soft, Democratic Socialism of Western Europe, but that won’t be what they get in the end. That kind of Socialism requires wealth makers to plunder. Guess what these people will get.
“Capitalism’s failure to lift living standards, impose the rule of law and tame flourishing corruption and nepotism have given way to fond memories of the times when the jobless rate was zero (busy work), food was cheap (more like scarce) and social safety was high (you just died)”
There, fixed it.
pallis: “That kind of Socialism requires wealth makers to plunder.”
True. So true.
Everyone wants to live off of others.
It just doesn’t work.
Coming to America.
Someone has to pick up the trash and serve the food after someone else cooks it.
It really sucks to have to work. Socialism, where the powerful get rich and those who produce don’t.
Actually, this is the democrat solution to our illegal alien problem. Zero’s socialism will dry up the flow and maybe reverse it.
BELENE, Bulgaria .....
Bulgaria, and a few of the neighboring countries
were the lowest of the low and the several decades of Communism, it would take years and supportave help to get their countries on a footing.
Eastern and Central Europe were one and two generations into Communism and before that in some cases Nazism.
After the fall of Russia soon after was 8 yrs. of Clinton who did’t have as a major focus helping get up to speed these countries.
I was in East Germany in 1983. You don’t know the smothering of Communism and the dynamics.
Pallis #11: You’ve hit one nail on the head about the failure of much of the old Soviet Union satellite countries (i.e. captive nations), to make much progress towards a better standard of living, of more democratic political structures/institutions, and a cleaning out of the old communist Old Guard.
There is another psychological phenomenon at play here, namely the fact that Communism so poisons the soul/mind of man, that even when free, he is still imprisoned by marxism/communism.
This happened to some prisoners in German concentration camps. When they were freed by Allied forces, they did not want to leave their hellhole for the unknown. They preferred the known (the prison barracks, little food, etc,) for the unknown beyond the wire. Most eventually got over this mental blockage, but they still suffered for a long, long time, some, forever.
Communism is not only a poison, it is also a cancer that eats away at one’s self esteem, drive, discipline, and desire to achieve things in life. One becomes a political zombie, living only to exist.
That is what Obama is trying to bring to America, and he is doing a pretty good job of it. Some still long for the days of FDR and the Depression and Obama is doing his damnest to bring back those times.
Democrats are either the camp prisoners who still follow their oppressors or who do a “Stockholm Syndrome” and become a part of them.
A Bob Hope/Richard Carlson scene from a movie about ghosts, had a line somewhat paraphrased here that describes what I’m talking about.
Richard Carlson, after seeing zombie-like people. “It was horrible. They were walking around lifeless, like zombie, empty stares, and mindless.”
Bob Hope: “Oh, you mean like Democrats.”
Nuff said.
Pallis #11: You’ve hit one nail on the head about the failure of much of the old Soviet Union satellite countries (i.e. captive nations), to make much progress towards a better standard of living, of more democratic political structures/institutions, and a cleaning out of the old communist Old Guard.
There is another psychological phenomenon at play here, namely the fact that Communism so poisons the soul/mind of man, that even when free, he is still imprisoned by marxism/communism.
This happened to some prisoners in German concentration camps. When they were freed by Allied forces, they did not want to leave their hellhole for the unknown. They preferred the known (the prison barracks, little food, etc,) for the unknown beyond the wire. Most eventually got over this mental blockage, but they still suffered for a long, long time, some, forever.
Communism is not only a poison, it is also a cancer that eats away at one’s self esteem, drive, discipline, and desire to achieve things in life. One becomes a political zombie, living only to exist.
That is what Obama is trying to bring to America, and he is doing a pretty good job of it. Some still long for the days of FDR and the Depression and Obama is doing his damnest to bring back those times.
Democrats are either the camp prisoners who still follow their oppressors or who do a “Stockholm Syndrome” and become a part of them.
A Bob Hope/Richard Carlson scene from a movie about ghosts, had a line somewhat paraphrased here that describes what I’m talking about.
Richard Carlson, after seeing zombie-like people. “It was horrible. They were walking around lifeless, like zombie, empty stares, and mindless.”
Bob Hope: “Oh, you mean like Democrats.”
Nuff said.
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