The value of history.

If you want to read about Communism as a philosophical topic, read Karl Marx or some originating source. Any other source will be biased. I was at the Lincoln Library book sale and saw several books on Communism by authors who were in the service of presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, and Nixon. I had to laugh because of the obvious conflict of interest. Sources should be news stories of actual events, not opinions.

One should look at the idealized version of Communism; look at the historical outcome of the proposed ideology. From this we can see the value of history, and subtract the failures from the idea to get a judgment about human behavior in general. Did communism fail under its own weight, or was it not allowed to proceed as an experiment?

The point of history should not be reverence, but reference.

We have been taught to remember accomplishments and to revere those who made those accomplishments, and that's fine, but those accomplishments are over. When one can look at the historical record of how an accomplishment was planned and the result of its execution, we can distill an understanding of the limitations of basic human behavior.

We can understand the personal obstacles faced by historical figures and the capacity of the public of that period to understand and execute the plans and ideas.

Learning from the limitations of human behavior, we can formulate a "work-around" to create bigger and better plans and ideas. Did history class in public school give you that?