It's a strange question.
"What if Hitler had computers?"
The answer is chilling.
If Adolf Hitler had computers, Nazi Germany might have won World War II and plunged the world into a thousand years of darkness.
At the very least, if Hitler had computers, his attempt to exterminate the Jews might have been more successful.
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For sure, if Hitler had computers, his genocidal killing machine would have killed many, many more.
We should all be thankful Hitler did not have computers. I think all reasonable people can agree on that.
So why am I posing this hypothetical question out of the blue?
It's not being asked as a matter of historical curiosity. It's not being asked as a warning about how technology can be used by evil people to do evil things. It's not being asked to induce nightmarish concerns about technology in the hands of a new breed of totalitarian mass murderers.
No, it's being asked by those who truly believe Josef Stalin had the right idea, just poor execution.
And no one, save Rush Limbaugh, bats an eye over it.
In the article by Malcolm Harris in the once-respectable, liberal intellectual journal, it refines the question thusly: "What if the problem with the Soviet Union was that it was too early? What if our computer processing power and behavioral data are developed enough now that central planning could outperform the market when it comes to the distribution of good and services?"
You get the drift?
The New Republic is now promoting undisguised "central planning" over market economics. And it is even using Stalin as the model for central planning. The poor guy just didn't have computers.
The trouble with this hypothesis is that Stalin was an even bigger mass murderer than Hitler. The article never mentions that. Presumably, if Stalin had computers, first and foremost, he would have been an even more efficient mass murderer than he was. And he was damn good as mass murderers go.
While Hitler executed millions of people, Stalin executed tens of millions.
Nevertheless, Stalin is not seen as a monster by many in the left – certainly not in the new circles of New Republic's new management and new staff. Gone are the days, apparently, when the New Republic championed a "mixed economy." Now it's about refining "central planning," which, by the way, is the opposite of free enterprise, where ordinary people get to choose what they do with their lives. It's the opposite of a free republic, in which the citizens are sovereign and their leaders are their servants. It's totalitarianism – rule by an elite.
Are you surprised you haven't heard about this promotion of the Stalin death cult ideology by the New Republic? Don't be. Because we already have rule by the elite in the popular culture and media world. Who else would highlight the floating of such a psychotic, twisted ideology in a once-respected opinion journal?
Another thing that occurs to me in reading this piece is horror and a feeling of revulsion: Why do we have to go back to Stalin to ask this question? Aren't their nations practicing central planning and Marxist economics today? And don't they indeed have computers? So why hasn't anyone, in all these years since Stalin, actually been able to create a real workers' paradise? Where's the utopia now that everyone has computers?
No answer provided by the New Republic.
They're true believers. Marxism is, after all, a religion, not science, not economics, not even mere ideology.
Only true believers can continue to think communism and socialism are going to succeed, even though it never has yet at any time or place in the history of the world.
Media wishing to interview Joseph Farah, please contact [email protected].
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