A message to the FOCKs: What a real mea culpa actually looks like.

Confíteor Deo omnipoténti

et vobis, fratres,

quia peccávi nimis

cogitatióne, verbo,

ópere et omissióne:

mea culpa, mea culpa,

mea máxima culpa.

("I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault." -- The Catholic Confiteor.)

The FOCKs (Friends of Christian Kerodin) are, with varying degrees of ignorance and malice, making much of the fact that I am an ex-communist. (See comments to Red Dot Arms offers a Three Percent upper.)

For example, Anonymous said:

"Kerodin may have stole, but you were a communist. Not only that, you were in the INNER CIRCLE!!! How much worse does it get? Kerodin could have stolen $1 from 10 million people and what you did was 10 times worse. How can we trust that you are a patriot? Because you give a few speeches? Oh, yea, i'm convinced. You may very well be a commie double agent."

"Cavmedic68w" sez, quoting me:

"Advocates of the murder of innocents do not, in my opinion, constitute the Three Percent principles that I laid out originally."

Really, I find that comment extemely ironic.

The last time I checked, the forces of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao(and those wishing to fill their shoes) not only advocated the same, but joyfully performed that slaughter throughout the entire 20th century.

By the way, you wholeheartedly rolled with those collectivists once upop a time.

Did you not?

It is as if they have discovered a great dark secret of mine that I have been trying to hide. Of course, I have NEVER made a secret of what I refer to as my "Benedict Arnold period." (Note my talk on "Intentions of the Enemy" in the upper right corner of Sipsey Street.) In fact my previous service to the dark side informs and motivates me to fight for the Founders' Republic. Early on at Sipsey Street I tried to explain this and my journey into the light with A Missed Anniversary: "Vous les Americains Sont Pires que les Francais."

Among other things, I wrote:

The memories always hang heavy on my heart. This is not merely because it was hardly my country's finest hour, but because I bear personal guilt for it. You see, as the NVA gradually overran South Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge overran Cambodia, I cheered the fall of every province, marking them on a map. This was during my Benedict Arnold period, when I was a communist and an avowed enemy of the constitutional republic of the United States. As a member first of the peacenik anti-war movement which I joined in 1967, then later the Students for Democratic Society, the Young Socialist Alliance, the Socialist Workers Party, the Workers Action Movement and finally the Maoist Progressive Labor Party, I had demonstrated, leafleted, marched, rioted, been tear gassed, billy clubbed and briefly, arrested (but later released without charges), eight years of street-level radicalism, all with an eye toward this day. . .

So when Cambodia and South Vietnam fell, I was one of the happiest traitorous bastards around. I just hoped "the Revolution" would start here in my lifetime. Yeah, I was that stupid. I suppose I would have continued on being terminally stupid until I became stupidly dead, if it hadn't been for a kindly old ex-Wehrmacht surgeon named Richter who, at the end of his life, decided to wrestle the devil for my soul. . .

I once did a radio show with Dr. Russ Fine, who then had the evening call-in show on a certain station here in Birmingham. David Horowitz' book Radical Son had just come out, about his conversion from being a red diaper baby into a real American. David was pimping his book and Russ was happy to talk about it and to have someone experienced from that period of history to chat with Horowitz as someone with similar background.

After exchanging bona fides about the extent of our previous sins, I asked him the question that had, since my encounter with Herr Doktor Richter, most preyed on my own mind:

"David," I asked, "do you ever feel Benedict Arnold looking over your shoulder?" He was quiet for a moment, you could hear the slight crackle of that long phone line to California. Then he said, slowly, solemnly, "Yes."

"But if you're like me, you'll never get caught on the wrong side of your faith or the Constitution again, will you?"

"No," he replied firmly, "I won't."

And believe me, there is no greater anti-communist than an ex-communist. We know all the lies, first hand.

We also know that we can't go back.

We have burned our bridges and will live or die on the ground we have chosen. Of course twelve-step ex-leftists like Horowitz and me aren't brave at all compared to the Kit Carsons, nor did we recant in the expectation that we were joining a losing side like George Orwell or Whittaker Chambers. THOSE guys changed sides in the belief that while it was the right thing to do, they were probably joining a losing cause. Both were under the impression that either Sovietism or fascism was going to win in the end. But still they denounced the lies and stood on the truth, expecting death at the wall or in a ditch rather than reward. . .

And one other thing. As near as I can tell without a god-like glimpse into other men's souls we are all, 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. We cannot backslide, we cannot be fooled, or fool ourselves, into believing the lies ever again. . .

And I spoke about the moral agony of recovering your conscience too late:

Do you begin to understand the guilt for someone who has recovered his conscience too late? The blood of Khy Hak's family is on my hands, just as the blood of Russian kulaks was on Whittaker Chambers' hands. When you recover your conscience, the only thing you can do is make sure, to the best of your ability, that it never happens again.

We do not choose the circumstances of the world we live in, yet we must react as best we can to its challenges. For me, I have no choice. I must continue to walk along the path Herr Doktor Richter showed me more than thirty years ago in that hospital room on Nine East. My fate was set, and my Master selected, when I turned my face from pagan collectivist evil under the patient tutelage of a wise, slight-statured old man with a perpetual smile and white hair.

I can never and will never go back.

So when somebody whispers in your ear, "Well, you can't trust him, he used to be a communist," think twice. For he may be the only one who sees clearly enough to point your way through the minefield of bad choices that collectivism -- any and all collectivism -- represents.

And when I cross over to that place my Master has chosen for me, I can only hope Khy Hak is there, so I can finally beg his forgiveness for the sins of my youth. Until then, I will think of him and the millions like him every April, when spring reminds me of my guilty complicity in collectivist mass murder.

That is the reality I live with every day and what I have never been shy about sharing. Whether I am sincere or not, I leave that to you, gentle readers. I know that I've spent the last decades trying to atone for that sin. I also know that I have seen no such self-reflection on the part of Kerodin, who is no mere thief as Anonymous characterized him, but an unrepentant extortionist. Kerodin's main problem seems to be that he got caught and it's all your fault for pointing that out. And to this day he still specializes in threatening people if they don't genuflect before his altar.

But to all you FOCKs I will confess: Yes, you got me, I'm an ex-communist. And your point is?

NOTE: The comments on this post are now closed, awaiting further developments.