David wrote:
Why not? I listen to your CEI and AEI people. You must listen to all
sides of an argument then use your truth decoder ring.

Cato replys:
Well, ya,.... you might say that I already
have. You see, I was bona fide member of the left - socialist
movement in the sixties, seventies and early eighties. One of my
courses in college was the History of Modern Communism. I was a
student organizer of the college N.D.P. movement up here. (The N.D.P.
is the New Democratic Party. The socialist political party up here in
Canada.
I read Marx, Engles, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao etc. (Even had
one of Mao's "Little Red Books". Still have it as sort of a "Souvenir"
of the time.
Helped organize student protests for various left wing causes. We
even shut down the Peace Bridge international bridge between Buffalo,
New York, and fort Erie Canada for a while and got ourselves on T.V.
(*We were protesting U.S. testing of nuclear weapons under Amchitka
Island in Alaska. We even tried to convince people that it could start
earthquakes up and down the west coast section of the "Ring of Fire")
Had well known leftists come to speak to our organization. (Stephen
Lewis was one.) As well as N.D.P., we even had communist party members
come and talk. Ya, we were heavily involved with the socialist-
communist "Peace Movement" which in reality was a onesided affair
trying to get the West, especially the U.S., Britain, and France, and
NATO in general to disarm. After all, the U.S.S.R. and the Warsaw Pact
were peaceloving people. Lots of organized protests up here in Toronto
and other cities.
I know a hell of a lot about the tactics used by the socialist-
communists. I was one of them for a long time.
There are ways to make the Other Side look foolish. Ways to shut
them up. Ways to shock them into silence.
And then, I read Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago", and
then " One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". I read some other
books. My eyes were opening up. I started to listen to Shortwave Radio
late at night. Both to free countries, and communist. Both sides. A
friend of mine, it took his grandmother two years to get permission to
visit Canada for just two weeks to see her family. She could not
believe the huge shopping malls, supermarkets, grocery stores. she
said, "This is were you take foreigners to make them think it is good
here.," She could not believe their color t.v.s private luxery cars,
privately owned homes, and even a computer in the house. (Home
computers had just started to come on the market. My friend bought
one. (A machine built by Ohio Scientific. Had 16 k of RAM. WOW!)
Her explanation for all these things? "You must have important
friends and connections in the Party." The poor woman returned to
Ukraine in disbelief.
Then I knew, that all along, I had been wrong. When I left the
socialist movement, (by then I was rubbing elbows with Marxists and
othe Communists,) some of my former comrades did their best to ruin
me. I received threats. These were people that had been my friends,
compatriots. Turning against the movement is not something that you do
without possible reprisals.
I started investigating exactly how powerful the Soviet military
was. What were they building? What were their civil defence
preparations. I can go on, and on.
I became a Libertarian. Individual freedom, personal
responsibility, as little government as possible. That is what I now
defend.
Someone once said, "If at twenty my son was not a socialsit, I
would say he had no heart. If at thirty he was still a socialist, I
would say he had no brains." Hmmmm, interesting. Isn't it? I am not
syaing that is me. But it seem to be the route I took. I could go on,
and on. It is a really long story........
Cato