Stalin Was Bad, But...

GetReligion has posted this ditty on Pete Seeger, a commie folk singer from the '60's who apparently has a soft spot for evangelical praise music. From a constitutional law standpoint, Seeger may be best remembered for expanding our jurisprudential understanding of the term "religious belief."


Question: But didn’t Stalin turn out to be one of the worst despots of the 20th century?

Answer: Well, when it comes to big ones. But there’s bad ones all over. And, you know, for 50 years, the United States has helped control the politics of Latin America. And they have the School of the Americas, they call it, in Fort Benning, Ga. Training military — Latin American military men — how to torture, how to massacre, how to assassinate.

Question: But the U.S.S.R. really was an enemy of the U.S.A., yes?

Answer: Not necessarily. The communists claimed, I won’t say they all believed it, that they would encourage revolutions all around the world. But the people of each country had to make their own revolution. It wasn’t Soviet soldiers helping Mao Zedong take over China. They could applaud them and perhaps even help them. But they didn’t likewise in Vietnam or Cuba.