Mail: a Bourgeois Luxury

I’ve been reading God’s Smuggler again. What a great recommendation.

One thing about the book that startled me was the way it illustrated the astounding cruelty of leftism. Brother Andrew said he went to Rumania to meet with the Christians there and bring them Bibles. A lady there was shocked to learn that Christians in other countries thought about Rumanians. They were not allowed to mail letters, and they hadn’t received any from abroad in thirteen years.

Maybe that doesn’t sound atrocious the first time you read it, but think about it. Sitting here on my rear end, I can contact people all over the world, instantaneously. If I felt like it, I could send and receive a hundred emails a day. And my penpals and I could attach photos, audio, and video. Now imagine going thirteen years with no contact with anyone beyond a few miles from your home. It would be like living in an aquarium, on another planet. It would be almost as if the rest of the world had disappeared. Even prisoners in the US can mail letters. And when we send our soldiers to war, we work very hard to make sure they can communicate with people here at home.

It’s true, the leftists provided a certain amount of “news.” Citizens of Eastern bloc nations heard wild stories about Holland being occupied by the USAF, and they were told that the Dutch were oppressed by capitalists. But people behind the Iron Curtain didn’t really know what was going on in the world.

If it doesn’t hurt you to think about millions of people cut off from the rest of the world, it ought to. But that’s how leftism is. People are objects; it doesn’t matter what you do to them, because the state…and CHANGE…are all that matters. Rumania, Cambodia, China, North Vietnam…it’s always the same. Only the degree varies.

It really is a shame God didn’t make human beings intelligent enough to see through the poisonous promises of leftism. We’re just bright enough, on average, to realize we like things like trees and clean air and fairness and freedom from poverty. Most of us are too dumb to realize leftism won’t bring us these things–that it has never brought these things to anyone. In fact, it makes life much, much worse. It tends to increase the very problems it purports to fight.

More and more, I think a good monarchy is better than a republic in which unintelligent people get to vote.