I agree. It seems to me he provided material support (secretly) for communist causes.
As he said, no one was killed by his actions. He did, however, break some laws to provide this support.
Now, he is providing material support (publicly) for anti-communist causes. As far as I can tell, he is not breaking laws for those causes.
What more does he, personally, have to atone for? The cause he supported is responsible for all kinds of evil. He himself is not.
Other than giving reparations to the drug dealers he mugged, I cannot see a need for restitution (and I'm not for restitution to those victims, either).
What Communist activities has Mr. Vanderboergh been involved with back when he was a Communist? What has he actually DONE for Communism? That is the main question that we must answer to determine this whole 'expunging' thing.
I was not the one who brought up expungement. Vanderboergh wrote ""we ex-communists, motivated by guilt at what we did in the name of totalitarianism. This guilt we must expunge by our every action for the rest of our lives." I have merely queried what he has done in the way of expungement.
I am quite distressed that Microbalog and Makattak would suggest that because nothing substantive came of his time as a communist (his claim, unsupported except by assertions that "no-one died"), Vanderboergh is entitled to a free pass on his communist days.
As an exercise in what-if-ing, I ask this: What if Vanderboergh had publically renounced communism and others then in the fold saw that he was right and they also had been wrong? What impact might their defections/leavings have had on the movement in America or elsewhere?
Now I understand that Vanderboergh has stated, and I have no reason to doubt him, that at the very moment of his leaving such a public denunciation of the communist cause and his compatriots would have been a life-threatening choice. But I ask, is he still under such a death threat, even after depositing his communist-era papers with the Ohio State Library?
Vanderboergh brought up expungement. All I did was ask for evidence of it as it relates directly to his days as a communist. What I received in response was that he is now a Constitution-loving, oath-keeping former militiaman and Minuteman who devoted himself to exposing the BS of Clinton's antiwar years until Waco awakened him to the larger issue of how the USA has allowed the .gov to run wildly rampant over what were once assumed to be inviolate rights. Lincoln, Garfield, Harding, T Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR, Kennedy/Johnson, Nixon, Carter and BushI/BushII (as a small gathering of fellow travellers) seem to be ignored.
As far as I'm concerned, my question remains on the table.
stay safe.
skidmark
