Isaac BrodskyComing to terms with one’s own delusions is a difficult task, as a new poll in Russia where respondents said Joseph Stalin was the greatest figure in history.

Marian Tupy writes:

As a student at a British university in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I was struck by the nu-mber of Marxist students and professors I encountered. (That British universities remain a hotbed of leftism was confirmed recently, when large numbers of British university students turned out to vote for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in the recent general election.) As someone born behind the Iron Curtain, I found the intellectuals’ attachment to Marxism puzzling and sometimes, like when I was told that the people of Eastern Europe “betrayed” Marx’s ideas, objectionable.

Later I realized that ideology, like religion, can form a core of personal identity and changing that identity is almost impossible. That appeared to be especially true of my university professors, who spent most of their professional lives promoting Marxism. Few people, I suspect, have the time and the energy to evaluate their core beliefs in the face of new evidence, and the courage to embrace ideas they spent their entire lives despising.

In any case, coming to terms with one’s own delusions is a difficult task that is not limited to individuals alone. Entire nations can remain beholden to some very strange ideas.

View this article.