Bolsheviks

8 Conservative Glossary Items #2

The Bolsheviks were a group of Russians who belonged to a hard-line faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. Their leader was an individual you may have heard of named Vladimir Lenin. The Bolsheviks would eventually rename themselves the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik). The Bolsheviks believed in a party structure that rejected compromise or cooperation with any other political party. They believed that a core group of professional revolutionaries should control the party centrally. After taking over the government, some of their opposition was executed without trial. The Bolsheviks were, essentially, the beginning of the Soviet Union that would terrorize Eastern Europe for decades.

So, is President Obama, as CNBC's Jim Cramer has referred to him, a Bolshevik and is he "taking cues from Lenin"? Rush Limbaugh has made the same claim.  To make this claim as anything other than a cheap political slur is simply dumb and dishonest.

Let's not forget that capitalism has already been rescued by the Democratic party once in our national history. (That would be F.D.R. during a time when much of the nation would have been primed for social revolution. Instead, he made capitalism work for people at every level of our society.) This is what Obama and the Democrats in Congress are attempting to do now. 

Frankly, Bolshevism is much too rigid for the Democratic Party. We are pragmatists. We do not follow doctrine whether communist or market oriented. We take the economic system that includes the most freedom, capitalism, and we get it to work for the most people possible. We couldn't possibly be Bolsheviks.

Previous Entries in this Series (An Introduction, Communism)