Vladimir Lenin’s post-revolutionary destruction of lower class entrepreneurs — the kulaks — is understood by both Marxist and liberal historians to have been both cruel and counterproductive. In the 1970s, even as our own post-FDR, post-Truman, post-Eisenhower, post-LBJ and ongoing Nixon eras of big federal government bloomed and grew — young and old Americans alike still vocally condemned interference with economic freedom, particularly the economic freedom of the lower classes. The Civil Rights movement, and the subsequent women’s equality movement, were fundamentally about economic freedom. For affected minorities, the lower social and political classes, these shifts meant freedom to move, … Continue reading Cognitive Dissonance