Republicans need a "Secret Speech"

After the Soviet Union emerged victorious from the Great Patriotic War and Stalin's death, a great deal of turmoil swirled around the new leader of the Red Empire.

The extent of the repression, brutality and stupidity of Stalin's rule were only beginning to dawn on select members of the Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev one of them. He was locked in a struggle for the future course of the Soviet Union with the hard-line Stalinist faction led by Molotov and Melenkov. The popular opinion of party members was that it was difficult to critize Stalin and the job that he did. If the Stalinist view persisted, the Soviet Union would continue down a dark road of repression and terror, with the support of the rank-and-file Communist Party member.

In early 1956, at the 20th Communist Party Congress, or Party Convention, Krushchev delivered a speech entitled On the Personality Cult and its Consequences, in which he exposed and denounced many of Stalin's worst crimes and excesses to a closed audience, hence it being referred to the Secret Speech. Even in that era, however, a speech of this magnitude could not be kept secret, and its contents were leaked across the world. Later that year, a summary of Krushchev's four-hour-long speech became required reading at all Communist Party meetings, and was open to non-members.

This led to an era in Soviet history known as the Krushchev Thaw, which saw a renaissance of communistic ideological thought and discussion throughout the Eastern Bloc.

Now that the eight year reign of Republican era is over, we see that the Republican party is now mirred in the same ideological quagmire that the Soviets were in fifty four years ago. And they are having the same trouble breaking free of the ideological mistakes that had brought them down in the first place.

Republicans cling to these repressive and anti-democratic tenants, like warrentless wiretapping, indefinitely detaining terrorist suspects in Gitmo, and denying classifying detainees as "enemy combatants" so as to deny them the right to habeas corpus, even though these acts either have nothing to do with or are completely antithetical to the traditional Regean-esque small-c conservativism that many of them say they believe. The rank-and-file Republican fails to change his opinions, as wrong as they are, because no high-ranking Republican dares to diminish the legacy of the Bush-era, such as it is.

Now, I don't mean to dump on Bush. I think he was the victim of falling into a bad crowd of people with their own agendas to push more than anything else. He tried to make up for this in his second term, but by then the damage to his legacy had been done. But none of the Republican bigwigs have come out to denounce the mistakes of his administration. Instead, they cowardly defend the inexcusable acts. This intellectual inflexibility is a reason why the Republicans have such a hard time gaining traction with the educated of America.

It will require someone from the Republican Party to dare to make a speech that properly exposes and refutes the illegal, anti-democratic actions undertaken by the Republican administration of 2001-2008 to finally end the intellectual stagnation in the party and allow them to engage the American people once again. The Republicans need their own Secret Speech to save themselves.

Isn't it ironic that the example set by a Communist is what could save the Republican Party?