Eighty Topics You'll Want to Understand Well if You Plan to Run for Elected Political Office

     I created the following two images in 2015, to help myself organize information about topics I would need to understand in order to create my congressional platform and structure it in a way that makes sense. I offer these images as learning aids, to assist any of my readers who may wish to run for office - especially federal or national office - in the future.

     Before deciding whether to run, make sure that you have some thoughts and opinions about how and why the laws need to change or stay the same, regarding the topics that pertain to the duties of the office for which you are running. You can check both the requirements of the office, and the state or federal constitution, to find out what those duties are. You might decide that your strengths would be better applied to a different office with different duties that cover different policy areas.
     Note: Policing, and alternative economic and taxation systems (such as Land Value Taxation) are not included, but probably should have been.

Click on the images, and/or open them in a new tab or window, to enlarge and see in full detail

Images created in August 2015

This article published on September 4th, 2020

Edited on August 4th, 2021

Forty Legislative Reforms Which I Think Most Minor Parties and Independents Would Support

     1. End the wars and bring the troops home: Dismantle at least 800 overseas U.S. military bases, and drastically reduce the number of countries in which at least one U.S. troop is deployed (which is currently about 160).

     2. Repeal the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, repeal any and all A.U.M.F.s (Authorizations for the Use of Military Force) against Afghanistan and Iraq, and end the national state of emergency over the Korean conflict.

     3. Repeal or amend the War Powers Act, strictly requiring congressional declaration of war before troops can be deployed to a new country.

     4. End torturous “enhanced interrogation” and extraordinary rendition (illegal torture abroad).

     5. End warrantless wiretaps, and stop spying on American civilians and our allies abroad.

     6. End entangling alliances, end all foreign aid, and exit N.A.T.O. (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization).

     7. Prohibit the use of drone warfare, and the deployment of drones in foreign countries, without a congressional declaration of war (and, if possible, the host nation's permission).

     8. Abolish active registration for the Selective Service (i.e., military draft).

9. Repeal the “Clinton omnibus crime bill” (a/k/a the Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act of 1994) in its entirety.

     10. Ensure equal protection under the law: Stop denying due process and fair trials to terror suspects and suspected undocumented immigrants. If they're not made subject to our protections, then they shouldn't be held subject to our laws.

     11. Amend the 13^th Amendment to prohibit involuntary servitude in all cases of punishment for committing victimless crimes.

     12. End police brutality by taking away police officers' rights to kill during unlawful arrest and “have sex with people in their custody” (i.e., raping people).

     13. Protect children by amending child trafficking laws, and making age of consent laws more uniform.

     14. Respect the principle that the just powers of government derive from the consent of the governed, by making participation in all government programs voluntary, and by repealing taxes on all harmless productive economic activities.

     15. Require that constitutional justification for all new bills and departments, must be included within the bill.

     16. Require sunset clauses for all new legislation, strictly adhering to the Constitution's two-year limitation for all military-related expenditures.

     17. Achieve free, fair, and open elections, by improving ballot access for minor parties and independents.

     18. Annually audit, and eventually end, the Federal Reserve System, sending its powers back to Congress. Additionally, ban Fractional Reserve Banking and prosecute it under anti-usury laws.

     19. Balance budgets, achieve fiscal solvency, and produce surplus budgets A.S.A.P. to pay down the debt.

     20. Let states experiment with Universal Basic Income, the Negative Income Tax, and state public banks.

     21. Let states and communities experiment with Land Value Taxation and Community Land Trusts.

     22. De-politicize issues related to science, medicine, the environment, technology, budgets, finance, banking, the judiciary, election fairness, governmental ethics, redistricting, the arts, etc..

     23. Protect the planet and the people over profits by creating a blueprint for ecologically sustainable production.

     24. Shorten medical patents, to allow generics to come onto the market sooner, to reduce medical prices.

     25. Reduce medical prices by eliminating unnecessary taxes on health goods and services.

     26. Legalize alternative medicine and make vaccines optional.

     27. Reduce medical costs by allowing non-profit medical organizations to operate tax-free.

     28. Let non-profits operate tax-free, because they cannot be taxed without being forced to operate at a loss.

     29. Clarify Roe v. Wade: Craft a nationwide amendment on abortion which clarifies the meaning of a “reasonable state restriction to abortion access”.

     30. De-politicize the issue of abortion by ending all involuntary taxpayer funding of abortion services.

     31. Legalize growing cannabis at home; in order to 1) lower marijuana prices, 2) eliminate all excuses for federal intervention in marijuana on interstate commerce grounds, and 3) eliminate the need for state licensing and permits for growing.

     32. Take cannabis / marijuana off of Schedule I, as it is not a drug that lacks legitimate medical uses.

     33. Fight for a free, fair, and open economy by eliminating all unfair subsidies to business, and by prohibiting government from contracting with monopolies.

     34. Increase the use of the federal government's antitrust power to break up monopolies.

     35. Amend the 1935 Wagner Act (N.L.R.A.) to make it easier to form a second union in a workplace or collective bargaining unit.

     36. Restore the full right to boycott, and engage in secondary labor actions, by repealing the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act.

     37. End the trade war, and re-negotiate N.A.F.T.A. so that importers and exporters are not unfairly targeted for taxation.

     38. Fix our nation's crumbling infrastructure (roads, bridges, tunnels, etc.), as long as areas other than the Bos-Wash corridor on the East Coast receive a fair share of transportation spending.

     39. Make the Postmaster General a cabinet-level position again, and allow the U.S. Postal Service to receive taxpayer funds.

     40. Help the poor, homeless, and refugees, by legalizing mutual aid. Remove barriers to providing humanitarian aid; by legalizing squatting and camping, lowering residency duration requirements in order to claim homesteading rights, etc.. Additionally, prohibit housing subsidies whenever and wherever the number of empty residences exceeds the number of people in need of permanent shelter.

     The set of proposals listed above were developed in connection with the policies I called for in my earlier outline of a platform for a yet-to-be-founded hypothetical Humanitarian Party. That platform can be viewed at the following link: http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/07/towards-free-united-populism-proposal.html

Written on August 30th and September 1st, 2020

Published on September 1st, 2020

Political Questionnaire: Are You a Joe Kopsick Voter? #2

Click on the above image in order to view in greater detail

Questionnaire created and published on May 12th, 2020

Updated (guns question edited) on August 27th, 2020

How to Easily and Permanently Memorize the Enumerated Powers of Congress

     The Enumerated Powers of Congress are found in the 18 clauses that make up Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States. The first seventeen clauses list the legislative powers that are expressly delegated to Congress by the people. These are the issues that we allow Congress to legislate upon.

     Many Americans believe that the federal government has the power to regulate on matters such as health, education, welfare, unemployment and retirement insurance, etc.. This is simply not true, however; because, according to the 10th Amendment, all powers not granted to Congress remain vested in the states or the people.

     Programs and departments which have expanded government - like the various departments of health, education, welfare (etc.) which have existed over the years - have become part of our government, despite the fact that Congress is supposed to have nothing to do with those issues.

     These programs and departments have, for the most part, become part of our government, through unconstitutional acts of Congress, which the Supreme Court negligently failed to identify as unconstitutional. Several unconstitutional federal departments exist because the president at the time abused his "presidential reorganizational authority" to organize his cabinet, so as to pretend that he had the authority to "re-organize" whole industries and issues into the executive department.

     Neither the General Welfare Clause (Clause 1), nor the Interstate Commerce Clause (Clause 3), nor the Necessary and Proper Clause (Clause 18) permit regulation by Congress of issues not explicitly enumerated (that is, listed or named) in Article I, Section 8. Nor does Clause 17 permit the federal government to own and manage anywhere near the amount of land it currently owns. Nor do Amendments XI through XXVII of the Constitution. Nor do the "unenumerated rights" recognized in Amendment IX, denote the existence of unenumerated authorities given to the government; that's actually the exact opposite of what the 9th Amendment really means.

     The supposed needs to "promote the general welfare", "regulate interstate commerce", and do whatever is "necessary and proper", have all been used as convenient excuses to grow the government, based on intentional misreadings of the law.
     The "general welfare" doesn't mean "whatever benefits anybody in the country"; it refers to the idea that taxes and spending should be done for the benefit of well-being of all people in the country, which requires indirect taxes to be equally apportioned and direct taxes to be uniform.
     The need to "regulate interstate commerce" should not be construed to imply that the federal government may legislate on any and all matters pertaining to interstate commerce which it desires; Clause 3 only permits the Congress to keep commerce regular, meaning free from undue and unwarranted interruptions in the free flow of commerce. In fact, the federal government itself has usually been the major cause of that interruption; either through intervening in commercial affairs which pertain to solely the state itself and nobody else, or through refusing to crack down on states that give their businesses unfair advantages. by taxing their residents to subsidize their own in-state domestic commerce (and labor, jobs, and production) over the commerce of other states. This  allows a states to ignore the need to maintain America's interstate free trade compact, for the purpose of giving the state permanent rewards in the market, and increasing monopolization of the industries within it.
     The Necessary and Proper Clause was never intended to allow the federal government to do whatever it wanted to do. Its purpose is do authorize the federal government to do what is necessary and proper to execute "the foregoing powers", meaning the powers previously listed in Clauses 1 through 17. Clauses 17 and 18 don't say the federal government can take over whatever lands and buildings it needs in order to do whatever it wants; they say that the federal government only has exclusive jurisdiction over a territory less than 100 miles square, that it must purchase whatever lands it owns (and Amendment V says it must compensate owners fairly), and that the government should use whatever resources it requires, only to execute the powers vested in it under Clauses 1 through 17.

     This may be a narrow interpretation of the Constitution, but it is probably a correct one. [Note: Admittedly, I have neglected to mention several important duties of Congress which are distinct from the "4 M's, 3 T's, and 2 P's" listed below; such as trying cases of treason, trying impeachments, admitting new states to the union, and establishing election days. It is worthwhile to note that the Enumerated Powers authorize Congress to do closer to thirty-five things, rather than 17 or 18.]. This narrow interpretation of the Constitution may not "allow the federal government to do much", but that is the point.
     We have an amendment process for a reason; so that we can change the Constitution easily, but not too easily. We are not supposed to change the Constitution for "light and transient causes". It is no use begging for a vote on an unconstitutional matter, or spending a decade and trillions of dollars on unconstitutional legislation, when those efforts will eventually and inevitably be overturned by courts, vetoed by governors, or ignored by presidents.
     Strictly limiting Congress is the only way to prevent new departments from being ushered into existence in the federal government, where they can easily be taken advantage of, and perverted away from their original intentions, by administrations that either don't think the federal government should be involved in such matters, or (worse yet) by administrations that have an active disregard for the harmful activity that the department is supposed to be regulating. The George W. Bush Administration's, and Donald Trump Administration's, actions, concerning the Environmental Protection Agency, perhaps demonstrate this idea best.

     The fact that an issue or power is specifically listed in one of the clauses in Article I, Section 8, does not necessarily mean that the federal government is authorized to wield an exclusive monopoly over providing the service in question, nor does it necessarily mean that the federal government is authorized to legislate concerning any and all topics vaguely related to that issue.
     The states and the people, in most or all cases (save for the specific mention of exclusive jurisdiction over federal lands in Clause 17), still retain authority to legislate concerning the parts of the issues mentioned which are not specifically described in the language of the law.

     For example, the authority to "establish Post Roads" does not, by itself, confer a legal monopoly over the delivery of postal mail; a later Supreme Court decision did that. Also, the power to "establish a uniform rule of naturalization" is arguably the Congress's only immigration-related power. It doesn't specifically say in the Constitution that the federal government has the right to decide where immigrants settle, nor whether they can be eligible for social services.

     The federal government will not have those authorities until the amendment process is utilized, to properly authorize the government to do such things.

     Even though the set of issues which the Congress can regulate, is narrow, there is still a total of seventeen separate clauses which explain what the Congress is allowed to do. Since it can be difficult to remember all seventeen clauses, here are my suggestions about what I think is the best way to memorize and simplify those seventeen things.

     When attempting to teach or memorize the Enumerated Powers, I suggest that the clauses be separated into three main categories: 1) Topics beginning with the letter M; 2) topics beginning with the letter T; and 3) topics beginning with the letter P (and, additionally, a fourth category, consisting of the final two clauses).

     In teaching the Enumerated Powers in this manner, the contents of the first sixteen clauses should be referred to as "the four M's, the three T's, and the two P's":

The Four M's:
     Military, Money, Mail, and Migration

- Clauses 11 through 16: the Military

- Clauses 5 and 6: Money

- Clause 7: Mail (post roads)

- Clause 4: Migration (uniform rule of naturalization)



The Three T's:
     Taxes, Tribes & Trade, and Tribunals

- Clauses 1 and 2: Taxes (and borrowing)

- Clause 3: Tribes & Trade (and commerce)

- Clause 9: Tribunals (and courts)



The Two P's:
     Patents and Piracies

- Clause 8: Patents (arts and science)

- Clause 10: Piracies (and felonies)



Other Clauses:

- Clause 17: Authority over lands purchased by government

- Clause 18: Enabling Clause / Necessary and Proper Clause




Read more about the Enumerated Powers of Congress
     http://tenthamendmentcenter.com/historical-documents/united-states-constitution/thirty-enumerated-powers/
     http://constitutioncenter.org/blog/article-1-the-legislative-branch-the-enumerated-powers-sections-8/

Written on February 27th and 28th, 2020

Published on February 28th, 2020

Speech to the Waukegan City Council on August 5th, 2019 (Third Draft)

     In the matter of the mayor appearing in ads for the Waukegan Music Festival, the legal issue at hand is this: Whether it constitutes taxpayer fraud (an illegal use of taxpayer funds) for elected officials to appear in advertisements for public events.

     Since this is a tradition started by a previous mayor, we shouldn't blame the current mayor for this; we should only find fault if he continues this practice. You see, it unfairly benefits incumbents – not just the mayor, but all elected officials who are up for re-election – whenever sitting public officials allow their names, faces, or titles to appear in ads. It's arguably a misappropriation and misdirection of public funds to promote an incumbent candidate's campaign.

     The only thing appropriate for the current mayor to do about this controversy, for now, is to recuse himself from it, due to the possible conflict of interest involved. But I'd like to ask the rest of the city council to do whatever is in its power to cease including the names and faces of all elected officials in advertisements for the Waukegan Music Festival - and all other public events - and also to refrain from including the title of any elected official in the name of any public event. It must be made perfectly clear to voters that this is the people's festival, not the mayor's, and that the mayor did not personally give this festival to the people of Waukegan.

     This is a delicate legal issue that should be handled by the Illinois Supreme Court, not argued out between the mayor and one of our aldermen. Even if it turns out that this practice is totally legal, the appearance of public officials in ads still unfairly helps incumbents. So, for the sake of fair elections, this practice should end immediately; before someone gets charged with taxpayer fraud, and before the courts have to get involved.

     The set of career opportunities which the city will stand to offer our young people, following the opening of this casino - is appallingly disappointing.

     The city council should not be encouraging kids who just graduated high school, to join the police – nor enlist at Great Lakes Naval Base - because they could get shot and die before the age of 20. That should be obvious, but judging from the last meeting, it's not obvious to the city council.

     To the parents present: If you value your children's career prospects, and their lives and health (which you should not be willing to trade for career prospects), then you should offer them something better than the three most prominent career choices in this area once the casino moves in, which will be:

     1) deal cards, or serve alcohol (a neurotoxin and central nervous system depressant), at a casino or bar to men who will flirt with them and leer at them;

   2) join the police or military, and get beaten up, pepper sprayed, and injected with strange chemicals as part of basic training; or

     3) work for a company that makes medicine while polluting the air we breathe.

     The purpose of the Waukegan City Council should not be to abide by a jobs policy that lets outside companies exploit Waukegan residents' need for jobs; nor to allow local government to passively enable local parents to expose their young adult children to these very real dangers in exchange for the prospect of money and jobs. It's not worth it.

     Even if your kid ends up in government (or tourism), he's just going to convince a bunch of criminal businesses to set up shop in this polluted county. And who will that help? Only the exploiters and polluters.

     I'd like to thank the council for celebrating that a federal court ruled against including a citizenship question in the 2020 Census. However, on July 29th, N.P.R. reported that the U.S. Census Bureau sent out census forms including the citizenship question to 240,000 households.

     The Trump Administration says this was only a test. However, they've been criticized for not doing this test long enough before the 2020 census, before it can be approved in its final form. There are five months left until 2020.

     It was completely predictable that the administration would keep pushing on this issue, because pushing and doubling-down is what this administration does. We shouldn't wait for the Supreme Court to stop them from doing something illegal; they will find ways to keep enforcing policies even when they know they are unconstitutional, improperly authorized, or could easily be enforced differently or not at all.

     We should endorse Jeffersonian nullification. Although using a "states' rights" solution could be politically unpopular (or even offensive), the same power could also be used to justify keeping Illinois a "sanctuary state".

     What are you going to do, Waukegan City Council, to stop peaceful undocumented immigrants from being deported? I'll tell you what you're going to do; you're going to urge the public to cooperate with law enforcement personnel at all times, because that's your job, and that's the law.

     So if you don't intend to do anything to stop the continued operation of an illegal federal department that didn't even exist just 17 years ago, then you cannot rightfully claim that what you do promote either freedom or public safety, which I believe are the tasks with which you're charged.

     The city council should demand that Governor Pritzker use his power to nullify unconstitutional federal law, to stop federal agents working for the unconstitutional Immigration and Customs Enforcement, from attempting to operate within the state legally (that is, without being arrested).

     Is it really worth the cost of freedom involved, if all of us be encouraged to cooperate with law enforcement - including in the enforcement of a census that includes a citizenship test (which could carry with it the risk of deporting beloved members of our community who committed no violent crime)?

     The only benefit we get from cooperating with the census, is a guarantee to federal funds. The number and location of people determines where district lines are drawn, and how much money they get. Our elected officials make money off of the fact that we live in their districts. That sounds like slavery to me.

     The census is a deportation and extortion racket, and I urge my fellow citizens not to participate in it.

     Finally, it is Monday night. I do not come to the Waukegan City Council to pray. Who even prays on a Monday night? Which religion is that?

      I thought we were supposed to have a separation of church and state. Instructing all people present to pray for the public officials before them, seems like enough of an endorsement of religion by a public institution to me, to potentially conflict with the freedoms listed in the First Amendment.

     We cannot truly consent to anything if we are under such intimidating circumstances, because we could easily become intimidated into refraining from expressing our disagreement. I will remind you that children have been physically assaulted in American schools for failing to salute the flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance; this shouldn't happen to children or adults.

     I would ask that the city council stop inviting everyone to stand and pray. This should upset not only those who don't believe in any gods; it should upset the Christians who just went to church yesterday that they have to stand and pray again today... for the government... while the government watches them. When they'd rather be praying inside of a church.

     This is not only a First Amendment violation, it is just plain rude, and creepy. It tests our abilities to do what is in our conscience, when everybody around us is doing something that we are not doing. If the city council will not discontinue this practice of public prayer, then it should pass an ordinance that if your friend jumps off a bridge, then you have to too.

     We should not be urged to pray for our elected officials; that is feudalism-era thinking. If anything, our elected officials should be urged to pray for us. After all, their job is salvation; their job is to save us.

     And we need the city council's help, in order to save us.

     And it can do so by helping us to protect ourselves; from the casino, from companies that pollute our air, from companies whose H.R. departments want to exploit us, from the fascist administration that's currently running the federal government, and from government overreach in general.

     And also, from possible white supremacists in our police departments who may want to cooperate with I.C.E. and let them operate within the state, and from people in our government who excuse the continued operation of I.C.E. under completely baseless constitutional foundation.

     And I understand why you'd want to keep a casino away from schools, but not from churches. Where are Waukegan fathers going to go for repentance, after they've gambled away all of their family's rent and food money on card games and alcohol? Any casino approved, should be required to be near, even surrounded by churches.

     What on Earth do you think you're doing? Please do the exact opposite of what you're currently doing.

Source:
http://www.npr.org/2019/07/29/746158231/why-the-2020-census-citizenship-question-hasn-t-gone-away

Read previous, more detailed drafts of this speech at:
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/07/taxpayer-funded-local-events-should-not.html
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/07/licensing-breeds-licentiousness-speech.html
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/07/speech-to-waukegan-city-council-on.html

Speech to the Waukegan City Council on August 5th, 2019 (Second Draft)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Waukegan Music Festival Controversy

3. Young Waukegan Residents Urged to Join Police Force

4. Council Tolerates Poor Set of Local Career Opportunities

5. Why the Council Urges Cooperation with the Census

6. Census Carries Deportation Danger

7. Local and State Government Must Avoid Betraying the People
8. Religion in the Public Square
9. Conclusion

Content

1. Introduction

     My name is Joe Kopsick, I'm originally from Lake Bluff, and moved to Waukegan a year and a half ago.

     When I last spoke here, on July 15^th, I talked about garage sales, the census, immigration, and permits. I meant to explain my criticism of the casino approval, but I didn't have time then, so I'll address it today. But not before sharing my thoughts about the Waukegan Music Festival.

2. The Waukegan Music Festival Controversy

     At that last city council meeting, a citizen shared her concern that it might be a case of illegal taxpayer fraud, that the mayor appears in advertisements for the Waukegan Music Festival. I feel that that citizen's concerns were not adequately explained.

     Please imagine, for a moment, that someone else is the mayor of Waukegan. We don't know the person's name. But they're facing re-election, like all mayors do. If the mayor's name, likeness, and/or title, appear in advertisements for public events, then it's reasonable to expect that that incumbent mayor would get an edge in the election, because of that ad, right?

     We should not blame the current mayor personally for the fact that he has appeared in advertisements for public events, because – as he explained - this is a tradition which was started by an earlier mayor. But we can blame the mayor who started it (if indeed this is an improper and illegal use of taxpayer funds). We can't blame Mayor Cunningham for starting this tradition, but we can blame him if he doesn't end it.

     Elected officials – or at least those whom are incumbents and are actively running - gain an unfair advantage from being allowed to appear in ads for public events. The issue of whether this constitutes taxpayer fraud, should best be decided by either the Illinois Supreme Court, or by the voters gathered here in this room; not through a shouting match between the mayor and an alderman.

     The city council allowed the mayor to be his own judge, and acquit himself, without any charges being filed. The mayor should have done the legally appropriate thing, and recused himself from this controversy, seeing as he is a party to it. Either the state Supreme Court should be consulted on the legality of this matter; or if there is no question about the illegality of these ads, then charges should be filed against the mayor (and/or the city department that plans public events).

     The appearance of incumbent candidates in advertisements for public events, unfairly hurts the election chances of new candidates who wish to unseat incumbents, whom should have the same chance as the current mayor to get elected. Finally, the name of the festival should not contain the name, nor title, of any public official, for all the reasons I have explained above.

3. Young Waukegan Residents Urged to Join Police Force

     I have to express my concern about the city council congratulating high school students, who have their whole lives ahead of them, to sign up to be police officers. Eighteen-year-olds may be adults, but they are not old enough to decide whether to sign up to work as police officers and soldiers.

     What would you sacrifice to make sure that your child has a good career? Would you sacrifice their very health and safety? Police and military recruits are often subjected to being pepper sprayed and tased. Military recruits are injected with strange mixes of chemicals that they're never told what it is.

     Do Waukegan parents really think that whatever their kids are getting paid, is enough to offset the emotional and medical cost of enduring beatings in the military, and an onslaught of poisonous chemicals? Is this what you're willing to put your kid through, in order to secure them a job?

     We're told that we're supposed to be proud when young adults – especially racial minorities – join the police force. “Make the police look like the communities they serve”, they tell us. Well, it just so happens that tyrannical regimes throughout history, have co-opted the local communities, and found members of them who were willing to sell all the others out, and chalked it up as a mark of social progress and racial equality.

     For example: European colonizers got African tribal chiefs drunk, and bribed them into letting the colonizers round up their people as slaves. Other colonizers got Native American tribal chiefs drunk, and bribed and defrauded them into letting them claiming the land and kick everybody off. When the Nazis conquered Ukraine, Poland, and Western Russia, they found local military leaders who were willing to compromise with the Nazis. Similarly, the Jewish Ghetto Police enforced Nazi rule over the ghettos (with some degree of Jewish self-governance), while maintaining communications between imprisoned Jews and Nazis.

     Tyrannical regimes co-opted native peoples they conquered, and used the fact that a representative has been chosen from among them, to pretend that that conquered people has given their consent to be ruled. It is a lie, and the idea that more minority police officers will improve a deeply racist, intrinsically violent law enforcement mechanism, is a complete hallucination.

     We should not be encouraging our children to join the police force, especially not at such a young age. God forbid they get shot to death at the age of 18; not even in a war zone, but on the streets of America while doing their job (when they could have chosen any other job, most of them much safer for a young adult whom, again, has their whole life ahead of them).

     Lastly, I must note that I find it laughable that the city noted that the students present, decided to become police officers because of their feeling that “being a cop isn't just for the stupid kids”. I mean, if these are the smart kids, I'd hate to see the stupid kids! Especially the ones who want to become cops. By the way, I hope the city council warns those students against becoming police officers in New Jersey, where courts have ruled it's legal to refuse to hire police applicants if their I.Q. is too high. Because I'm not so sure that the world has any need for smart cops; not until we start training them to de-escalate violence (instead of escalate it) in the course of carrying out orders.

4. Council Tolerates Poor Set of Local Career Opportunities

     And what career opportunities the graduates of Waukegan High School have these days! Why, they can volunteer for the police, and get pepper sprayed and tased as part of training! Hell, why not bring police training directly to the high school, as one town down south did? Why not tase and pepper spray these kids right in their classrooms!? God knows that school security officers have tased and pepper sprayed younger children in public school classrooms in recent years; why stop now?

     But suppose the kid doesn't want to be a cop. They can go to Great Lakes Naval Station, and sign up to be in the military! And be injected with mysterious chemicals, and routinely beaten up as part of basic training, for a very difficult to determine amount of money. Fantastic.

     If your kid doesn't want to be a cop or a soldier, luckily, that new casino is coming to town! Your 17- and 18-year-old daughters can take this opportunity to work at the casino, dealing cards or serving drinks to older men. Men who will probably leer at them, and get away with it because your child will be expected to flirt with them as part of earning tips. Swell.

     Don't want your kid to be a cop, soldier, casino employee, or bartender? Well, she can work at Medline, or a cement company, or the local Sterigenics plants. Why not help her make some money polluting the air that we all have to breathe?

     Waukegan City Council, you are not protecting us. You're not protecting our job opportunities, because none of them are any damn good. You're not protecting public health, nor public safety. And you're not protecting our children's prospects for a clean environment, and a future with decent, honest, respectable careers.

5. Why the Council Urges Cooperation with the Census

     Anyone who was paying attention during the last meeting, will remember exactly why the city council urged us to cooperate with the 2020 U.S. Census survey. The first reason was that a court ruled that the Trump Administration could not include the citizenship question on it. But I ask the members of the city council: What will you do to protect us, if the administration insists on including it anyway (whether they figure out how to do it legally or not)?

     The Constitution authorizes the federal government and its census takers to collect no information other than the number of people. All questions about ethnicity, race, religion, country of origin or birth, and citizenship, are thus illegal, and laws providing for those questions to be asked are unconstitutional. We cannot legally be obligated to answer any of those questions, and I urge residents not to answer them.

     The second reason why the city council urged us to cooperate with the census, is that our elected officials use the census to make money off of us. Making sure that everyone participates in the census, is how government makes sure that congressional districts have equal numbers of people. But the number of people in the district also secures that district federal funding, as part of its “equal share” of federal funding. Of course, it matters to almost nobody that spending and the tax burden are not shared anywhere near equally by the districts and states. But the fact that equality is not furthered in determining where these districts lie, should show that the census's main purpose is to secure whatever funding the district can manage to get.

     This is nothing more than a scam to defraud us, the voters and taxpayers and residents, of our financial power (through our right to those funds), and our legal power (through allowing our elected officials to take away some of our power of attorney, and in so doing, to appropriate more of those federal funds towards themselves and their own offices than towards We the People).

6. Census Carries Deportation Danger

     Aside from the census being a money-making scheme for our legislators, it is also a plot to track us, and harvest our private personal information. Government-regulated credit rating agencies and banks routinely lose millions upon millions of people's personal information; do you really trust government to handle your personal information wisely?

     Moreover, the census could potentially be used as a way to round-up non-citizens and other “undesirables” or “enemies of the state”. I repeat, what do you – the city council – plan to do, if the Trump Administration goes forward with its plan to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census (whether legally or illegally)?

     Well, I know what you're going to do; You're going to urge cooperation at all times, because to do otherwise would be against the law, and the opposite of what you're supposed to do as elected officials. Which is to urge faith in all public institutions at all times. And you might think that elected officials and police have an obligation to do their jobs, and do as ordered.

     But if your job is to threaten force against people who entered this country illegally but without threatening force themselves, then your job is immoral, and you doing your job conflicts with the public's moral obligation to peacefully resist unjust laws.

     The Waukegan City Council should urge Governor J.B. Pritzker to instruct the Illinois National Guard, and all public police in Illinois, to refrain from cooperating with federal authorities. And that goes for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.), and agents of the 2020 census, alike. That's because the vast majority of these agencies' activities (and questions) are unconstitutional.

     Under no circumstances should the Illinois public be urged to cooperate with federal authorities in pursuit of these unconstitutional aims. The governor should immediately issue an order nullifying the federal law which authorized I.C.E.; effectively removing the authority of I.C.E. to operate legally within the boundaries of the State of Illinois. If necessary, Illinois National Guard troops should be mobilized to arrest federal troops or agents, and/or prevent more of them from entering the State of Illinois, if they insist on enforcing unconstitutional federal laws.

7. Local and State Government Must Avoid Betraying the People

     Just as the Waukegan City Council is doing its residents no service to help them find a clean environment or decent careers, it is also doing them no service to recommend that they cooperate with the Trump Administration.

     Even if the administration doesn't use the census to carry out deportations, it's deporting peaceful undocumented immigrants now. I.C.E. is hassling Hispanic-Americans who were born in America now. Seasonal farm workers are being trapped in America at the end of harvest season, and mocked and driven into the shadows for being here illegally (through no fault of their own), now. Immigrants are being funneled away from points of entry where they could easily declare asylum, and instead are forced to trek through dangerous desert, now.

     Whether the Trump Administration's immigration, deportation, and census policies going forward, will be legal and constitutional or not, why should you urge us to cooperate with those “authorities”? Aren't you supposed to protect public safety? The city government is supposed to work for the people, not the other way around.

     If the police and National Guard of Illinois do not come to the aid of all non-violent residents (not just citizens who pay them) during deportation raids, then neighbors will come together to protect vulnerable residents of Illinois who are in the United States without proper permission.

     And if that happens, then it will be the members of local government – of this city council - who will have urged resident and police cooperation with federal authorities, whom will be remembered as the people who urged cooperation with a blatantly authoritarian regime, and nearly suckered us into becoming fascist collaborators (in turning-in our undocumented neighbors).

     The Waukegan City Council is either against fascism and for its own people, or else it is against its own people and it is enabling the fascist Trump Administration and the companies that are polluting our air and our social culture. Now is the time to choose.

8. Religion in the Public Square

     Finally, I must express my dismay at the fact that these city council meetings begin with a public prayer. Participating in the prayer may be voluntary, but for some 98% of audience members to stand at being urged to pray for the officials here gathered today, should by any reasonable person's standards constitute at least the appearance of government endorsement of religion (even if not some particular religion).

     The people should not be instructed to pray for their legislators. If it is a legislator's job to be concerned with the problems and salvation of the people, then if anything, it's the legislators who should be instructed to pray for the people, not the other way around.

     Residents, look at the way your elected officials are gathered before you. How was Jesus displayed when he was crucified? He was elevated, as a mark of sarcastic reverence towards someone who was said to be a king. Well, your elected officials are elevated in front of you too. Of course, modern legislative chambers and courtrooms are modeled after royal courts; so it should be obvious that this was done intentionally. Under monarchies, kings got their power from God, and everyone below the king (including judges) got their power from the king, who got it from God.

     Fellow citizens, I came to the Waukegan City Council meeting on a Monday evening. I did not come here to pray. I did not come here to watch 98% of you turn this place, intended to promote civic engagement, into a place where we pray for our king as if we were in feudal times, ask the government to answer our prayers, agree to sacrifice our own neighbors for the sake of federal funds and the illusion of civil order, and agree to sacrifice our children's health and safety for the sake of humiliating jobs and depreciating money.

9. Conclusion

     Waukegan City Council: You have no intention of protecting us against fascist federal authorities enforcing unconstitutional deportation orders. You are poisoning your people physically and morally. You are behaving as if the public commons were a church. You are thus a usurpation of God. Everything you are doing is wrong and has no authority, because it comes from neither God nor the people.

     I urge the people to arm themselves, and to resist the census. The federal government has the authority to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, not to enforce it, nor to establish any other types of immigration policy; and the federal government has no obligation to collect census data in addition to the number of people.

     Moreover, the governor would be fully within his right to nullify I.C.E., deportation orders, and additional census questions, and in so doing make Illinois a “Sanctuary State” (although I would not recommend that this designation be made in a way that secures Illinois federal funds). Thus, I also urge the people, and the police, to refuse to cooperate with federal authorities enforcing all immigration laws.

     The Waukegan City Council, and Governor J.B. Pritzker, have a decision to make: Whether they are on the side of freedom and the American people, or whether they want government to be a religious cult, in which we may trust nobody to solve our problems, except for the elected officials who happen to be in charge at the moment. And those officials may only attempt to solve those problems by enforcing whatever set of laws happens to be on the books.

     The Waukegan City Council does the youth of this community no service, by ruining their respect for the importance of civic engagement for the remainder of their lives, by blindly urging cooperation with - and trust in – government, even when the officials and laws we are expected to trust have authoritarian and fascist intentions.

     But even if the city council does put a generation of young adults off of the idea that the government deserves to be trusted, then frankly, so be it; it's not such a bad thing after all. Because government doesn't work - more bad untested laws and more violent enforcement don't work – and so, we should not teach young people to trust the government. If we do, then the next thing you know, their baby is missing, and they've been pepper-sprayed in the eyes, injected with toxic chemicals, and handed a wad of cash.

     Until the Waukegan City Council can start offering more than words when criticizing the Trump Administration's desire to implement legislation they know damn well is unconstitutional – if the council could offer condemnation and plans for action – then it could show a generation of young Waukegan residents that America is about not only civic engagement but also freedom and resistance to tyranny, and that the American people stood up to fascism, and will stand up to it again.

Written on July 30^th, 2019

Based on "Public Officials Should Not Appear in Ads for Public Events:
Speech to the Waukegan City Council on August 5th, 2019"
(which can be read at the following address:
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/07/taxpayer-funded-local-events-should-not.html)

Edited on August 19th, 2019

Stalin Killed Fewer People Than Hitler Did, and How Stalin Tricked Hitler with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Table of Contents

I. Introduction
II. Stalin Killed Fewer People Than Hitler Did
III. How Stalin Tricked Hitler with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
IV. Post-Script

Content

I. Introduction

     I have decided to publish this written, expanded version of my 2018 video for YouTube which is entitled ""Stalin Killed More Than Hitler" Borders on Holocaust Denial". That video was written, filmed, and published in October 2018.
     What piqued my interest in this topic was the research which followed the production of my video "Ben Shapiro's 'Socialism is Theft' Ignores WWII, NATO, Corporate Privilege", which can be viewed at the following address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8kQcpvDFIE. In that video, I criticized Ben Shapiro's erroneous attribution of millions of Eastern European deaths to Stalin rather than Hitler. That video can be viewed at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y1Md5zEG8k
     I have decided to publish this written version, because the video ""Stalin Killed More Than Hitler" Borders on Holocaust Denial" has been categorized as "controversial" by YouTube, and risks being taken down. What follows is an expanded version of that eight-minute video which I improvised on October 18th, 2018. That video can be viewed here:
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0Frkru0Dcs&t=1s&bpctr=1556707612

II. Stalin Killed Fewer People Than Hitler Did

     I spent the first half of October 2018 researching World War II, the short-lived Nazi-Soviet pact (the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact), and Hitler vs. Stalin death totals, and I found out some really disturbing things. Most importantly, that the U.S. has been engaging in a 75-year-long propaganda campaign against its own citizens, to make them think that the U.S. was the most important and primary actor in World War II on the Allied side, when it was really the U.S.S.R., which lost 20 to 27 million people.

     The number of deaths attributed to Hitler in Eastern Europe are deliberately downplayed in Western media, in order to get Hitler's numbers lower, and Stalin's numbers higher, than they actually were. I believe that this is being done in order to lead people to think that America single-handedly defeated the Nazis, instead of that it was Stalin's brilliant diplomatic and manufacturing maneuvers which saved the world from Hitler.
     Contrary to popular American belief, America was not the most important victor, nor victim, of the Allied participants in World War II; that title goes to the U.S.S.R. (both because it was attacked before the United States was, and because it suffered between 50 and 75 times as many deaths as the Americans did).
     In a 2011 interview with RussiaToday, British historian Geoffrey Roberts says that "it was primarily the Soviet Union that won the Second World War, made the greatest sacrifices, was the greatest victor of the war. It didn't win the war on its own by any means - it won it in association with Britain, the United States, and other countries - but nevertheless... the Soviet Union was the key to victory over the Nazis in the Second World War." Roberts also concluded that, without American help, the Soviet Union would have eventually won the war by itself; it just would have taken longer. (Note: that interview is available at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2xW6veHY9U).

     Furthermore, few Americans are aware that American businesses financed the death camps of the Nazis. This occurred through the actions of Nazi financier and industrialist Fritz Thyssen, Brown Brothers Harriman, the Union Banking Corporation, the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company, and other agents. Prescott Bush - the patriarch of the Bush American political dynasty - handled Thyssen's American accounts, resulting in the construction of a network of forced labor camps centered in Oswiecim, Poland; which were eventually converted into extermination operations. But we forget about that, and we forget that the Soviet army liberated that same extermination camp; whose Polish name Oswiecim was Germanized to "Auschwitz".

     The consequence of misremembering history in this way, is that we have allowed ourselves to be led to believe that America and the U.K. deserve all the credit for winning World War II.
     Moreover, Hitler is beginning to look good in comparison to Stalin in the eyes of many Americans. Days dedicated to the remembrance of Holocaust victims and victims of fascism - and now, even May Day (which in 2019 occurs on the same day that Holocaust Remembrance Day begins in Israel)- are being perverted by anti-communist opportunists, by being turned into events dedicated to the remembrance of "victims of communism". That's a problem because "victims of communism" is a group of people which would logically include Nazi and fascists collaborators, because they were murdered by communists too.
     Additionally, Stalin, Communism (and socialism, in all their forms), and Vladimir Putin are routinely demonized in the West, as if they were all in the same category, all one and the same, and all equally deserving of the charge of having killed some 80 to 100 million people. Nothing could be further from the truth.
     Ironically, those who pretend that anarcho-communism and totalitarian socialist autocracy are exactly the same thing, are often the same people who enthusiastically admit that infighting amongst leftists is a common cause of lack of socialist resolve in decision-making and in fighting back against fascists. Anti-communists thus acknowledge leftist infighting, while pretending that all leftists are the same.
     Many even claim that the Nazis were socialist simply because they labeled themselves as such (Note: I have addressed this topic thoroughly, in my September 2017 article "Debunking the Top Six Claims that the Nazis Were Socialist"; which can be viewed at the following link: http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2017/09/debunking-top-six-claims-that-nazis.html). The ludicrous idea that the National Socialists were merely nationalist versions of the Soviet Communists, practically reduces World War II to nothing more than a bout of socialist infighting. The idea that the Nazis were socialists, is one of the lies that anti-communists use to deliberately inflate the death tolls of socialist regimes (that is, by adding Nazi victim counts to socialist death tolls).
     If we want the Cold War, and American military belligerence and intervention, to end, then the record regarding U.S. and European relations with the Nazis and the Soviets during World War II must be set straight.

     Stalin perhaps deserves some credit for saving the world from Hitler, so I would not blame anyone for being appreciative of this fact (especially not the 50 to 70 percent of modern Russians who today still view Stalin as an admirable defender of the nation). But on the other hand, Stalin once said that  “Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs”. So even by Stalin's standards, we don't have to be appreciative towards Stalin for defeating the Nazis if we don't want to.

     But even if we are not completely prepared to accept the idea that a world with Stalin and without Hitler is better than a world with Hitler and without Stalin (which is the choice that the people of Europe had to make), we can still examine fairly which of these men actually caused the deaths of more people (whether through direct orders, or through willfully or misguided decisions that caused destruction and affected millions). And that is what I intend to examine throughout the remainder of this essay.

     Many people died at the hands of the Nazis, and during Stalin's regime; there is no doubt about that. Getting a consistent and reliable death total, however, can often be difficult when studying atrocities, or when studying regimes that lasted twelve or thirty years. But why is there such a big discrepancy between the totals usually offered in regards to Stalin and Hitler? Some say that each killed about 20 million, but other sources say that Stalin killed 60 million or more. But what are the facts?

     Hitler is remembered for having killed six million Jews. But he also killed five million people who weren't Jewish in Germany, like Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals, and disabled people. But there were also the nine million German political dissidents, many of whom were Christian. So that's twenty million right there. And then you throw in the military deaths – the Battle of Stalingrad alone saw the death of nearly a million people, and about half a million Soviet troops – and you add the 20 to 27 million Soviet citizens who died during World War II to the Nazis' murders of 20 million people inside Germany, you've got a total of 40 to 47 million killed by the Nazis.

     Some say that Stalin killed more people than Hitler did. First of all, that's not conclusively true. Second, do you remember who Stalin was killing? He was killing Nazis. If Stalin was killing Nazis – while cooperating with the U.S. and U.K. against Hitler, no less - then I hope Stalin killed more people, if it means that more Nazis would be dead.

     Some claim that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn estimated, in his book The Gulag Archipelago, that 66.7 million deaths were caused by Stalin. As far as an accurate death total caused by Stalin goes - or even just occuring during Stalin's rule - that number is bogusly inflated, and could only have been arrived at if you got confused and added together either: 1) all deaths caused by Stalin and Hitler put together; 2) all deaths that occurred in the U.S.S.R. during Stalin's 30-year-long regime, whether their death had to do with Stalin or not; and/or 3) all Soviet subjects who ever entered the gulag system once, while reasoning that since they all eventually died, it must have been Stalin's fault. None of these are appropriate ways to arrive at an accurate count of the number of people Stalin killed or ordered killed.

     Only about 830,000 people were formally ordered killed by Stalin. Capital punishment is terrible, but it is not as though none of these executions had any cause. Some people in Poland today still claim that the Katyn Forest Massacre was an act of attempted genocide against the Polish people. To claim that the Katyn Forest Massacre was an act of genocide trivializes the fact that Poland was housing German death camps, and diminishes the ethnic cleansing character of the Holocaust against the Jewish people. That's because the 18,000 Polish officers who were executed had refused to cooperate with Russians after being captured, when doing so would have allowed the Poles and Russians to join forces against the Nazis (although, of course, Poland would have to agree to be a protectorate and satellite of the U.S.S.R., which it eventually did).
     (Additional note on Poland: The Soviet Union may have played a role in the destruction of the Polish government, but it also arguably helped save the Polish people from the hubris of its military command structure, which foolishly thought itself strong enough to fend off the Nazi threat by itself, without Soviet assistance).

     Not every single death that happened in the U.S.S.R. between 1924 and 1953 is attributable to Stalin. The 20 to 27 million deaths of Soviet citizens in World War II are not attributable to Stalin. Some say that they are attributable to Stalin; supposedly for the large number of Red Army troops which Stalin "threw wave after wave of, at the Nazis", owing to Stalin's alleged shortfalls as a military general.
     Well, when your army's main strength is that you have a lot of men, what are you going to do? Resist the urge to "throw your men at them", and instead wait patiently for the enemy to show up at your door? If you expect the Soviet army to have waited for the Nazis to show up at their doorstep, I have some bad news for you: they tried that. Operation Barbarossa happened, the Nazis showed up right outside Moscow, and the Soviets didn't begin to regain territories lost in Operation Barbarossa until after the Nazis had already begun to encircle Moscow.

     The Soviet army was, unfortunately, ill-prepared technologically for the Nazis' onslaught. Those deaths are regrettable and to be mourned, but the fact that these people died fighting for Stalin doesn't mean that Stalin caused their deaths. The blame for their deaths should go to the officers who commanded Nazi troops (or Italian, Romanian, etc.) to shoot at them.

     To believe that the 10 to 20 million Soviets who died of disease, starvation, and natural disasters during Stalin's nearly 30-year-reign are all attributable to Stalin, is equally fallacious. Natural disasters, mechanical errors, distribution inefficiencies (like mass concentrations of wealth), and government failures, can all cause significant increases in rates of starvation, disease, and death. But that doesn't mean that Stalin, or the Soviet government, were capable of saving all their subjects from death, given these many manmade and natural odds against them.

     To suggest that Stalin should have done something more to alleviate the starvation in Ukraine which caused the Holodomor, is to ignore history; and it is to ignore, once again, that Stalin did do something to try to alleviate the starvation; he collectivized farms, confiscated grain, and redistributed it. Stalin did not cause that episode of mass starvation in Ukraine; the famine did. Stalin was trying to fix it. The farmers were making the famine worse; by slaughtering their livestock, and refusing to turn food over to authorities, choosing instead to try to profit off of the desperation of starving people.
     And in case you'd like to criticize Stalin for doing something instead of nothing, Stalin did wait several years before undertaking any direct measures to relieve the effects of the famine.

     To expect a government to be responsible for saving the lives of all its citizens – to the point where you blame whomever is nominally in charge of the government for any and all disasters, manmade and natural alike, that result in people's deaths – is ridiculous. It is to expect government to be able to completely subvert nature to human control. It is to expect government to be as powerful as God, and as much in charge of whether and when we die as God is.

     Historians acknowledge three main sources of mass deaths which occurred under Stalin: 1) deaths from forced collectivization; 2) deaths in the gulags; 3) deaths in purges and show trials.

     Low estimates for deaths from forced collectivization under Stalin was 3 million. The medium estimate is 5 million. The high estimate, by historian John Heidenrich, is 7 million.

     For the gulags, the low estimate is 2.3 million, but John Heidenrich's estimate is 12 million. This wide discrepancy will make a reliable average estimate all but impossible.

     For the purges, John Heidenrich makes a high estimate of 1.2 million killed by Stalin, while low ranges run from 600,000 to 750,000.
     While Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 66.7 million claim is the highest, John Heidenrich's totals come out to 20.2 million, while mid-range estimates have Stalin's death totals at 8 million, and low range estimates are 5.3 million. [Note: Solzhenitsyn's estimate refers to the total number of executions ordered by the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1959].

     The Soviets did not kill sixty million people or more. The population of the Soviet Union increased during Stalin's reign. Maybe Stalin directly or indirectly caused the deaths of 20 million people, maybe that figure is 5 or 8 million; we could probably debate that all day. But this much is for sure: if you're looking for someone who killed 60 million people, then look no further than the fascists. If you add together the 40 to 47 million people killed by the Nazis, to the deaths caused by their allies (Franco in Spain; Mussolini in Italy; Hungary, Romania, and others), it adds up to nearly 60 million dead in Europe at the hands of the fascist, imperialist Axis Powers.

     The 20 to 27 million Soviet citizens who died during World War II – as well as another 8 million Slavs outside of the U.S.S.R. who died – were nearly all attributable to the Nazis, not Stalin.

     Up until 1939, Stalin killed more people than Hitler did, and more quickly. But during the time period that matters most – World War II – it was Hitler who killed more people more quickly. And he also killed more people; at least twice as many people, in fact. If Stalin's death tolls amount to only 5.3 or 8 million, then it's possible that Hitler may have killed even as many as six to ten times as many people as Stalin did.

     If it upsets you that I’m appearing to defend forced labor, and the many deaths that it caused, just remember what the costs would have been - while fighting the Nazis - to allow people to go days or weeks at a time without working.

     First off, they would starve to death, because working was necessary for them to survive, even independently. Remember that survival is the main objective here, which requires both material sustenance and physical protection. And in that spirit, secondly, in the face of impending Nazi invasion, some of these people’s labor would have to benefit the state, and its war effort, if the Soviet citizens were to expect adequate protection by the Red Army, and/or to expect to be able to perform effectively as a soldier in it.

     This idea helps explain why the Soviets treated people who refused to work as if they were Nazi collaborators. People who refused to work were not only harming themselves by avoiding the efforts necessary to be self-sustaining; they were deemed to be effectively cooperating with the Nazis, because they refused to let the product of at least some of their labor go to fund the armament of the nearest armed agency that was willing and able to physically protect them from Nazi aggression (i.e., the army of the U.S.S.R.).

     The deaths which resulted from forced labor which occurred under Soviet control are not horrors of Stalinist totalitarianism; they are sacrifices which should and must always be remembered and mourned. Keep in mind that Stalin embarked upon the Five Year Plan to rapidly industrialize the U.S.S.R. knowing that Germany would eventually find itself in war with Russia, war with itself, or both. Much of the product of people’s labor did indeed end up in the hands of the state, and to some extent that is a betrayal of Marxist principles. However, the strength of the Soviet war machine – technologically flawed though it may well have been – turned out to be the source of the strength and protection of the Soviet people (if we’re talking about the moment it mattered most).

     Whether they liked it or not, people who died from being worked to death under the Soviet regime, gave their lives to the cause of producing enough armaments and produce to help a hundred million Soviets survive in the face of Nazis’ threats of death. The Nazis, whom – by the way – attacked the Soviet Union first; and initiated the conflict in the first place.
     In order to protect large numbers of people from grave threats to life and limb during wartime, it is sometimes necessary for some people to die without wanting to, so that others may live. It’s not something that has an ethical resolution, but then again it’s not something that we ought to expect to be able to resolve ethically.
     Maybe it’s not so crazy to suggest that, if the cause of a war is just, and if people must die in it besides the enemy, the allies who contributed the least to defeating the enemy, are at least an acceptable (if not preferable) loss, compared to the costs we would incur in failing to defeat that enemy.

     [Note: You can read more about my views on forced labor in my articles “Reflection Upon the Use of Forced Labor Camps by Anarchists and Communists”, and “The Gulags Were Less Harsh Than American Prisons Are”, which can be found at the following links: http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2018/02/reflection-upon-use-of-forced-labor.html and http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-gulags-were-less-harsh-than.html

III. How Stalin Tricked Hitler with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

     By most any and all measures, what Stalin did to protect his people and hang onto power, was not as bad as – and, in many cases, was both necessary and objectively better – than what Hitler did in order to achieve those same goals for himself.

     Not only did Stalin succeed in commanding his army to occupy most of Berlin and Western Germany, and in forcing a Nazi surrender; he also succeeded in tricking Hitler with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which allowed Stalin to lead Hitler into this trap in the first place. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was also known as the “Nazi-Soviet pact” to “carve up Poland” between Germany and Russia.

     However, this pact was not a military alliance (at least not explicitly), although many people believe that it was. The pact was merely an agreement establishing friendly trade, and non-aggression and non-intervention concerning one another's military affairs. Additionally, the idea that any formal, explicit military alliance took place between Hitler and Stalin is false. The only remotely “military” aspect of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, pertained to establishing a state of non-aggression between the two countries, and to preventing each country from working with each other's enemies. The Soviet Army did train German military units; but this stopped in 1933, the year Hitler took power, so the idea that the Soviets provided direct military assistance to the Nazis is also false.

     True; Poland was practically reduced to the status of a Soviet buffer zone against Nazi aggression in the process of its occupation. And true, the boundaries which were delineated in the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement did serve to mark the maximum extent of the spheres of influence of Germany and the U.S.S.R. in Polish territory (and, in that sense, allowed the Soviets to move troops in). But this was at least as much a blessing for the Polish people as it was a curse.
     The Polish had recently been at war with each Germany and the Soviet Union, and thus were not initially prepared to accept Soviet orders even if it meant better protection from the Nazis - did benefit, on the whole, from the protection afforded by Soviet occupation.

     What Stalin did, objectively served a more protective and peaceful purpose than what Hitler did.

     We hear horror stories of people sent to work in the cold, far east of Siberia. Why do you think Stalin sent people to Siberia? Yes, to sentence them to several years of harsh labor. But that labor served to support the war effort in part. Additionally, sending people far to the east in Russia, also served the purpose of getting those people physically far away from the front line so the Nazis can't hurt them; to a place where the Nazis couldn't reach them unless they attempted a full-scale invasion of all of Russia. Stalin even authorized the creation of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast region in Siberia. Relocating people to the East was strategic, in the same way that relocating factories had been strategic; protecting them from the Nazis.

     While the Soviet Union's occupation of Poland was not initially welcome, it served not only a “buffer zone” purpose for the Soviets; it allowed the Poles cover from the Nazis. Furthermore, the Soviets protected the Polish people from their own hubristic government, which thought its army capable of protecting against the Nazi armies' advance. They needed the Red Army's help and were ashamed to admit it.

     Don't forget, though; all of this happened immediately after - and as a result of – mass attempts at Nazi appeasement. Not just by the U.K. and France, regarding Czechoslovakia. Nearly every country in Europe attempted to appease the Nazis. The King of Belgium even gave his troops an order to stand down as the Nazis drove through his country, bypassing the Maginot Line in the northeast of France.

     So blame Stalin for bargaining with Hitler if you must; the Soviet Union was the last significant player in World War II to attempt to bargain with Hitler. Moreover, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact allayed Hitler's concerns about a possible Eastern Front building up between Germany and Russia, which allowed Hitler to prepare for his attacks against the U.K. and France.

     Don't get me wrong – Britain and France were American allies, and fought Hitler alongside the U.S. – but agents in Britain and France had both attempted to appease fascists. France had just recently been governed by the fascist Daladier, the racist Churchill made attempts to cooperate with Mussolini and Franco (albeit against Hitler), and Wallis Simpson was eyeing the British throne while at the same time having an affair with Nazi diplomat Joachim von Ribbentrop.

     Americans attempted to appease fascists too. I have already addressed above, the role which American business interests played in the construction of the forced-labor-camps-turned-death-camps in and around Auschwitz. But moreover, American authorities allowed the Nazi-sympathetic German-American Bund to march in Grafton, Wisconsin; and even to hold a rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20th, 1939.
     Franklin D. Roosevelt repeated his “I hate war” slogan that got him elected. At this time, 84% of Americans opposed U.S. involvement in the war. The 1938 Evian Conference to address the global refugee crisis (which F.D.R. called for) failed to provide for an adequate accommodation to mass displacement of Jews. Additionally, Roosevelt's mother, his vice president Harry Truman, and his advisor Henry Stimson, were all anti-Semites. Henry Stimson, in fact, advised F.D.R. to refuse to allow a ship full of Jewish refugees, the M.S. St. Louis, to dock on American shores in 1939. They had been sold fraudulent disembarking passes by people in Cuba. Canada accepted some refugees, but 300 of the 900 passengers returned to Nazi-occupied Europe.

     The Americans, the British, the French, and the Soviets could all be said to have attempted either appeasement, non-aggression, and/or friendly trade with Nazi Germany; and/or to have attempted to cooperate with the Nazis' fascist allies, evidently in order to try to work with some fascists to destroy others. But given Germany's size and industrial output, it was inevitable that the Soviet Union would make Germany into its trading partner, at least temporarily (and moreover, the U.S.-German volume of trade was higher than the Soviet-German volume of trade in 1940).
     But also, it was inevitable that Germany and the Soviet Union would go to war with another, after trading peacefully for a time. The large border between Germany and the U.S.S.R. which existed only after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact went into effect, allowed Stalin to create a war front where there needed to be one (because Stalin knew that Hitler was up to no good), while before the pact went into effect, there was no border between Germany and the Soviet Union.
     Unfortunately for Poland, however, the creation of a battle front between Germany and the Soviet Union meant that Poland would temporarily disappear from the map. But Poland stood in the way of the Soviet destruction of the Nazis. And fortunately for the Soviet Union and its protectorates (which includes Poland), the Molotov-Ribbentrop allowed Stalin to maintain an air of neutrality concerning Germany's military affairs, while the Soviet Union continued to benefit from Germany's sale of resources to it, which were crucial to the maintenance of the Soviet war machine. Which was essential to the destruction of the Nazis.

     The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact thus allowed the Soviets to buy time to prepare for Hitler's eventual betrayal of the pact. In the meantime, vital industrial operations which could not be allowed to fall into the hands of the Nazis, were moved East. We are told in the West that Stalin was taken off guard by Hitler's betrayal, but it is quite possible that the Molotov-Ribbentrop was an ingenious ploy by Stalin that he was counting on Hitler to eventually betray. Which could allow Stalin to trap him.

     And so, perhaps it was worth it for Stalin to buy his large number of Soviet subjects a little temporary safety, while through little fault of Stalin's own, Hitler would shake the relatively smaller populations of Britain and France like a hornet's nest, in a tragic act of payback for their attempts at appeasement of the Nazis (which were more enthusiastic and consequential than the Soviets', and not intended as tricks). Maybe that was the only way that Western Europe could have been stirred into action, could have resolved to end their appeasement attempts and start fighting, could have accepted Stalin's help despite their fear of Communism, in the name of defeating their mutual enemy, the Nazis.

     Maybe that's the only way that such a united front could ever have been built up against Hitler in the first place. Maybe Stalin knew exactly what he was doing by making the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The “Nazi-Soviet pact to carve up Poland” should not scare us anywhere near as much as the fact that nearly 20 European countries attempted some form of non-aggression, trade, or appeasement policy towards the Nazis and/or their allies. Not just Russia, not just Britain and France, not just America; eighteen or more European countries and the U.S..

     Regarding the aftermath of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Woody Guthrie sang that if he were a Polish farmer, he would have been glad if the Red Army came in. In my opinion, Poland should have agreed to become a protectorate of the U.S.S.R. as soon as possible. Why should it have formed an alliance with the U.K., which was much farther away from Poland than Russia is? From a purely logistical perspective, that arrangement could not have been effective.

     Guthrie also said at the time that Stalin was trying to figure out whether the Nazis or the liberal democracies of Western Europe were going to try to devour the Soviet Union first; and whether Fascism or democratic capitalism was a bigger threat to Communism. After all, they were both equally hostile to the Communists.

     Recently, conservative American viewers of Fox News were wrongly told that the Japanese imperialists who allied themselves with Hitler were “communists”. Americans are told to be fearful of Communists and Nazis, almost as if they were the exact same thing. This, of course, neglects the fact that during the most recent major world war, they were enemies to the death, and also the fact that the conflict between them is continuing; just in other forms.

     Americans are told that Stalin killed on the basis of nationality, just like Hitler. That is not true; Stalin may have ordered killed military officers on the basis of what country they fought for (and refused to stop fighting for when captured), and also prominent people who were leading nationalist uprisings within the Soviet Union, thus undermining it and risking collaboration with the Nazis. But those executions had a purpose; protecting the Soviet people from political influence from the outside world.

     It may seem cruel and totalitarian to us to shield your people from outside political influence, but remember that this occurred at the time of the Anti-Comintern Pact. The Soviet Union was, at that time, surrounded by sixteen different capitalist enemies (in Eastern Europe, Japan and the U.S., as well as neighbors in the Middle East, etc.).
     Outside political influence on the Soviet Union would have meant the collapse of the U.S.S.R., and the deaths of many Soviet subjects as a result. But deaths increase after any regime ends; when the U.S.S.R. collapsed (and submitted to capitalism), caloric intake declined, and alcoholism and suicide rates increased. Additionally, the Soviet Union had a larger population than any other country in Europe at the time (and still does), so there were a lot of people who need protecting; particularly including in comparison to those in Western Europe who were targeted by the Nazis while the Soviets were preparing for the Nazi invasion.
     The deaths of Britons, Frenchmen, Czechs, and others at the hands of the Nazis are regrettable, but the alternative would have been that the Soviets would have had to fight the Nazis on their own. Not that the Soviets wouldn't have won that war eventually; it just might have taken much longer without help from the British, French, and Americans.

     Moreover - without American, British, and French assistance to the defense of the U.S.S.R. - it's possible that those three powers might have even joined the fascist against the Soviets. It may sound dubious, but the British and French handing Czechoslovakia over to Hitler - and other appeasement moves, as well as Churchill's arguably genocidal actions in Bengal and Kenya, and attempts to reach out to Mussolini and Franco, whom were at times allied with Hitler - should suffice as ample evidence showing how far Britain and France were willing to go to keep Hitler happy (or at least for the first year or two of the war).
     And can you imagine what would have happened, if Stalin had tried to demonstrate his resolve against the Nazis, by having the Red Army attack the Nazis first? What makes you so sure that the U.K. and France wouldn't have treated such an attack as an initiation of aggression against the Nazis? Until such an attack by the Soviet Union were to happen (and it didn't), a British-French-Nazi pact would not have been out of the question. That is, provided that the Nazis would have been able to make their case to the British and French that the U.S.S.R. had attacked Germany without provocation.
     But the fact of European appeasement of Nazis, should not be construed to excuse the Americans' relentless self-congratulation for helping to win World War II. That's because this self-congratulation is mainly done to applaud the imperialist, fascistic, pro-capitalist, and anti-communist aims which have been pursued by the United States and the United Kingdom since the very day the Allies celebrated victory over the Nazis.
     Once the Nazis surrendered, Churchill immediately began conspiring to order the killing of Stalin, the hero of World War II who commanded the Red Army to march towards Eastern Germany while Hitler cowered in his bunker contemplating suicide. Stalin, having won World War II almost single-handedly, was reduced right back to persona non grata, the moment that the European front of the war was over.

IV. Post-Script


     To find evidence supporting the above assertions, please visit the following link, to find a list of links that will help illuminate the goals of Stalin, and the worldwide refugee crisis which preceded World War II in the 1940s, and followed the wave of nationalist sentiments which overtook Europe in the 1930s:

http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/02/60-links-that-will-change-way-you-think.html

(not an original meme)

Based on an Improvised October 18^th, 2018 YouTube video

entitled ““Stalin Killed More Than Hitler” Borders on Holocaust Denial”

Edited and Expanded Version Published on April 30^th, 2019
Edited and Expanded on May 1st, 2019
Links Added on May 1st, 2019
Edited on May 2nd, 2019
Edited and Expanded on May 10th, 2019

Meme Added on May 10th, 2019