Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism - HOUR ONE

A Useful History
These documentaries trace the rise and fall of the socialist idea. It began as a utopian plan for living not in Russia or Germany but in democratic England in plans formulated by Robert Owen. It was tried and it failed in a place called New Harmony in the American State of Indiana.

Some would say it became perverted in the mind of Karl Marx and in the hands of Mussolini and Lennin, and especially Stalin. Others, such as myself, assert that since "Utopia's" literal meaning is "No Place" it was bound to fail no matter where or in what form it was tried, whether as the Israeli Kibbutz or the Soviet collective farm or the planned economies of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

These three documentaries taken together trace socialism's imposition, voluntary and involuntary, on different societies and its failure. As the sainted Margaret Thatcher put it so well, "Sooner or later you run out of other people's money."

Horribly Overpriced, Horribly Biased
[p.s. I initially wrote this as a review of the 3 hour series...which I absolutely
could not recommend at $14.99. Now I realize that Amazon is trying to sell
EACH flawed hour for that...making this inadequate series an insane $45.]

Okay, I should have been smarter: I sat down hoping/expecting to see
a reasonable, thoughtful examination of the history of Socialism.

Since I constantly hear "socialism" used essentially as an epithet in the U.S.
--despite the lack of any worthwhile agreed-upon working definition of the term--
I sincerely hoped to learn something.

My first clue that something was very wrong, was that the intro was by Ben Wattenberg.
Now, I like and respect BW, but anyone who knows anything about his politics
knows that he's absolutely not the guy to give you an objective treatment of socialism,
an institution he hates. It would be like a Raiders fan making a YouTube video
about my San Diego...



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