Fan Divorces the NHL's Vancouver Canucks

By A Colleague
Thu, Jan 14, 2021 12:34 a.m.

Fan Divorces NHL Vancouver Canucks

https://www.eurocanadian.ca/2020/12/serving-vancouver-canucks-with-my-divorse-papers.html#disqus_thread

N.S.: The essay in question makes many good points, but some passages are all wrong, especially the following paragraph.

“‘McCarthyism’ was the ‘cancel culture’ of the 50s that resulted in the blacklisting of performers and writers who were accused of having ties to the Communist Party, like the infamous ‘Hollywood Ten’. In the following two decades, the ‘Left’ led the charge against this injustice by waving the banner of free speech. That’s right, in those days it was the Left, the ‘progressives’, who championed free speech and expression. They fought for the right of people like Lenny Bruce and Larry Flint and Angela Davis and Pete Seeger to express themselves as American citizens are entitled to do. The ACLU was of course, in the vanguard of this fight. Hard to believe it, but it’s true. The American Civil Liberties Union once cared about free speech. For everybody.”

Sen. Joseph McCarthy was one of America’s greatest heroes, not just of the immediate post-war period, but ever.

The blacklist did not concern “performers and writers who were accused of having ties to the Communist Party, like the infamous ‘Hollywood Ten.’” Initially, at least, it concerned only card-carrying Communists. The “Hollywood Ten”: Alvah Bessie (1904–1985); Herbert J. Biberman (1900–1971); Lester Cole (1904–1985); Edward Dmytryk (1908–1999); Ring Lardner Jr. (1915–2000); John Howard Lawson (1894–1977); Albert Maltz (1908–1985); Samuel Ornitz (1890–1957); Robert Adrian Scott (1911–1972); and Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976) were all card-carrying Communists.

I also disagree with the writer’s position that nobody should be fired for his views. The FDR years saw the infiltration, by communists and socialists, of every institution in America, particularly the federal government. Had McCarthy and his allies not routed the Reds after the War, this country would have fallen to Communism much earlier than it eventually did.

During my childhood, being an open communist was grounds for, among other things, dismissal from jobs as public school teachers. Circa 1970, my big sister’s social studies teacher openly espoused communism, and got sacked for it. My late, Stalinist, Aunt Ruth (1921-2016) and Uncle Frank (1904-1992) led a double life, while she was a public school teacher in Bellmore, and he was a civil engineer for The Phone Company (from 1945 ‘til their retirement, circa 1968).

What was my aunt and uncle’s dream? The slaughter of tens of millions of Americans, the seizure of all private property, and the imposition of a totalitarian dictatorship. That’s what it means to be a communist.

As Uncle Frank once said during the early 1970s, “Stalin did what had to be done!”