The Most Fundamental Problem with Democrats' Push for Reparations

William Sullivan  "In 1927, several socialist-leaning American academics visited the Soviet Union, anxious to bring back stories of how successful the new Communist regime had been in its decade of infancy, and how it was exceeding American prosperity by cobbling a technocratic, redistributive path into the future. 

"Many returned with fantastic stories about how America was, by contrast, backward in its reliance upon free markets and aversion to Soviet-style economic principles.  But among those mildly disillusioned by the trip was Roger Baldwin, the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, who seemed to recognize that, despite whatever fondness he held for redistributionist economic policies, the Soviet Union lacked something which was most fundamental in America, and, incidentally, would lead to the horrific injustices that the Soviet Union would later inflict upon its people.

"That is, in America, we’ve long held the notion of individual liberty as sacrosanct.  The “social justice” promised by Soviet Communism offered no such protections to its people.

"Like many in America, Baldwin was a critic of the treatment of Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti.  Soviet propaganda had made the two immigrants the poster boys of American capitalists’ intolerance and political tyranny.  When Baldwin spoke to a group of airplane factory workers about the injustices in America, the Soviet workers began to chant “Sacco and Vanzetti,” as the two had been executed since Baldwin had left America.

"Baldwin felt compelled, however, to tell the Soviet factory workers that Sacco and Vanzetti had “enjoyed the full defense of the law.”  He then related a contrary story, according to Amity Shlaes, in her excellent book, The Forgotten Man.  Baldwin said to the Soviet factory workers:

But what about yourselves? Two months ago, a group of bank clerks were arrested at two o’clock in the morning.”  Here, the interpreter stopped and refused to go on…. “They were tried at four o’clock and executed at six.  Where was their right to assemble witnesses, to engage counsel, to argue their case, and, if convicted, appeal?”

"What Baldwin would “remember for decades” is a woman “approaching him with a countering argument” afterward.  “You only talked about individual justice,” she said.  “This is a bourgeois idea.' ” . . .