A Rebuttal of Dean Dettloff's "The Catholic Case for Communism" Part Two.

"It is necessary — secretly and urgently to prepare the terror." - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1918

The toll in lives.

 This is the second in a series of blog entries rebutting a "Catholic" defense of communism authored by Dean Dettloff in the Jesuit magazine America on July 23, 2019 that downplayed the crimes of communism much like the perpetrators.  Counter-intuitively, the counter-argument began at the end and now work its way to the start.

At the beginning of his essay, Dettloff quoted Catholic convert and social activist Dorothy Day's observation that “[i]t is when the Communists are good that they are dangerous.” 

There is nothing more dangerous than being principled, honest, true believing, consistent, persistent, and hardworking in the service of a murderous ideology.

At the conclusion of the essay Dettloff stated that "[i]t is when the communists are dangerous that they are good."

Years ago in a television studio in Lima, Peru a Maoist Shining Path movement spokesman interviewed on a television talk show denounced Fidel Castro for betraying communism Cuba. This true believing, consistent, and honest communist denounced the Cuban dictator for not executing two million Cubans in 1959.

Communist writings and ideology demands the use of revolutionary terror to take power and transform society believing they could create a paradise on Earth, but that it would require sacrificing large numbers of people to arrive at their utopia. 

Khmer Rouge victims photographed and numbered prior to execution

 2017 marked the 100th anniversary of the founding of the first communist dictatorship that murdered the Russian royal family, plunged Russia into what would be a bloody century of war, repression, manufactured famines and terror that claimed tens of millions of lives. Children were not spared. 

Think of it, over a 100 million lives over the span of a century. One million state engineered violent deaths a year for one hundred years. The death toll of communism can clearly be seen today rising in places like Venezuela, North Korea, and China but the killings although lower profile also happen in other communist regimes.

Despite the high body count the utopia was not achieved. Karl Marx wrote plainly: "We are ruthless and ask no quarter from you.  When our turn comes we shall not disguise our terrorism."

German Nazi and Russian Communist soldiers greet one another in Poland (1939)

 Marx's prediction came true. Communists are ruthless and do not give quarter to advance their goals. They starved millions of farmers, engaged in revolutionary terror campaigns. They allied with Nazi Germany and started WW2 with the joint invasion of Poland in 1939. 

The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, killed two million Cambodians from overwork, starvation and mass executions over the course of three years and two months in power in the 1970s. They were also guilty of targeting ethnic Vietnamese and Cham Muslim minority groups.

Watch the documentary S-21 and witness how dangerous a good communist is.