Here’s what I think is an elegant demonstration of the bias in how history is taught: Ask a few friends if they were taught that the Nazis opposed communism. I’m sure there are plenty of people who don’t remember much of anything they were specifically taught about the Nazis, but I’m guessing most will answer yes. To those who do, ask this follow-up question:

Were you taught that the Nazis opposed capitalism?

My own experience is that almost no one remembers being taught that — presumably because almost none of us ever were taught that.

Even those who know and remember that “Nazi” is an abbreviation for…

National Socialist German Workers Party

… often fail to think through what the name might mean.

Here’s Joseph Göbbels in a 1932 pamphlet:

I can love Germany and hate capitalism. Not only can I, I must. Only the annihilation of a system of exploitation carries with it the core of the rebirth of our people.

[…] If we make clear to the man of the left that nationalism and capitalism, that is the affirmation of the Fatherland and the misuse of its resources, have nothing to do with each other, indeed that they go together like fire and water, then even as a socialist he will come to affirm the nation, which he will want to conquer.

[…]

Socialism will become reality when the Fatherland is free.

Why Are We Socialists?

We are socialists because we see in socialism, that is the union of all citizens, the only chance to maintain our racial inheritance and to regain our political freedom and renew our German state.

Socialism is the doctrine of liberation for the working class.[…]

According to Wikipedia, Göbbels had written an open letter to “my friends on the left” seven years earlier, urging unity between socialists and Nazis against the capitalists. “You and I,” he wrote, “we are fighting one another although we are not really enemies.”[source]

George Reisman makes a point that I have often thought, but I don’t think I’ve written anywhere: that the same Left that so happily adopted for itself the label of “reality-based community” back when the neocon warhawks were trying to spin their psychoses as visionary new policy, the same Left that claims to have unanimity on climate science, the same Left that ridicules the biblical literalists for their dogmatic rejection of the evolution of species, that very same Left ignores hundreds of years of economic science whenever it contradicts their socialist and interventionist aspirations.

At least traditional conservatives have the decency to reject reason outright. Leftists pat themselves on the back for logic and intellect, while desperately protecting their faith.

To quote Professor Reisman:

See also:

“And Then a Miracle Occurs” by Gary Galles

“The 3 ‘E’s of the Minimum Wage” by yours truly