CONTRASTS
My secretary advised me that we needed one more article to finish off this newsletter. I thought about it for a day and then the morning paper carried two contrasting articles worth mentioning. A Los Angeles Times article blames the U.S. for the migrant crisis. Our financial support of Central American governments that fought left-wing insurgents led to the article’s conclusion that the U.S. is the root cause of the crisis in Central America. In both North and South America indigenous people are primarily leftists. Peru just voted in a communist president. The killing of these leftists in El Salvador ostensibly backed by the U.S. leads the author to roundly condemn America.
Compare these supposed sins with the crimes of communist regimes. It’s no wonder that successful people oppose them. 80 years ago this June, Russia made a hideous deal with the Nazis and occupied the Baltic states. In Lithuania, the land owners, professionals, and business people were shot or deported to Siberia. Some 280,000 innocent people rode in wagons to the gulags and few, if any, survived or returned. The agony and suffering of these good citizens dwarf anything you might blame the U.S. for. This is just the tip of the iceberg for the communists that so many now want to run things.
Years ago, a client who bought gold from us explained how he escaped from Latvia. The Russians checked your hands. If they were soft, they shot you. He hid in the woods and rubbed his hands on the bark of trees until calluses formed. They were now the hands of a laborer and the Russians let these workers pass through the checkpoints. His father had hidden some $20 gold pieces in the wall of their house. He extracted the coins and used them to obtain passage on a cargo ship to Sweden.
