Ignoring the failures of socialism

A lot of people blame capitalism for things the system is NOT responsible for. These same people will not blame socialism for the same issues they denounce capitalism for. For instance:

   The left loves Castro of socialist Cuba. Fidel Castro overthrew a dictatorship in Cuba with wonderful promises to the Cuban people. But Castro lied and established his own dictatorship that was more brutal then the one he helped overthrow. Cuba has been communist for 50 years and has not advanced at all in that time. Cuba has lots of economic problems - problems that would be held high as a failure of capitalism if Cuba were capitalist. For instance, at a Dec. 2006 speech to the Cuban National Assembly, Raul Castro said to “Tell it as it is.” The one-day session discussed high food prices and deficiencies in housing and public transport, the three main complaints among Cubans. Cubans stand for hours waiting for packed buses, some of them wagons pulled by trucks, and many live in dilapidated houses, often crowded with more than one family. But because Cuba is socialist, it is your effort that counts - not the results.  The left seldom if ever condemns socialism for all their shortcomings.

    Let’s take the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl in 1987 in the old Soviet Union.  Soviet authorities tried to keep the accident a secret.  It was only after radiation was detected in Sweden days later that the Soviets admitted there was a nuclear accident. Thousands of people in Kiev and other nearby cities were exposed to high levels of radiation as a result. Every worker on the shift at the reactor building was jailed - though most died within a couple of months from lethal doses of radiation. Thousands of men were ordered to assist in the cleanup without knowledge of the dangers and without proper protective clothing. There was no outcry against the Soviets from either the political or religious left.

     Apparently, the socialist paradise of Russia and the former Soviet Union isn’t such a paradise. On Jan 1, 2010, the Russian government doubled the price of vodka in their latest effort to combat chronic alcoholism.  Past Kremlin leaders have struggled unsuccessfully to keep the nation of traditional hard drinkers sober. In 1985, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to prohibit alcohol in a wide ranging campaign, but this was eventually scrapped as a failure.(1)

     The radical left, both religious and political are blind to their own prejudices.