"Truth is one of those odd things which always seems out of reach."

Oh, yeah? If you take up the example of your own birthday (or mine, for that matter, or millions of others), you might see the error in your statement.

The moral: just because some facts stand in dispute, that is nowhere near reason enough to indict the whole concept of truth.

I wonder why some people insist on this elementary error.

We gotta get the right birth-date so we can do a correct astrological chart, so we can see exactly how Stalin's life went.

Indicting the CONCEPT of truth? You'll have to look elsewhere for that. My complaint is that it's so damned elusive, and too often considered secondary to other considerations. Take your birth. While it is true that you were born (and thus have a birthday), if you tell me what it is, how do I know that your assertion is correct, that your documents haven't been forged, etc.? If historians are unable to agree on something so basic as a major figure's birthday, that does not indict truth, but it certainly entitles me to skepticism about many so-called "facts."

I'm confident that the Georgian church records (which Stalin kept secret) are correct, and they show that Stalin was born on December 6, 1878 (old calendar) which is December 18, 1878 modern style.

Therefore, this chart would appear to be correct.

But my confidence in something is not necessarily guaranteed to be the same thing as the truth!

I have a book on astrology (with a sexy picture of Mata Hari) that says Stalin was born under the planet Saturn. Hmmm.... I don't think holy Dawn and her holy Negro wife Norma would like hearing that too much, because they recently returned from a voyage to Saturn's rings -- and they hate all Communists.

Interesting epistemological questions you raise. I've sometimes entertained a conspiracy theory that my birth certificate was a forgery, that I wasn't really born in 1955, that there was no such year as "1955", that it's all made up, all lies, like some "Mission Impossible" set-up. Everything I know is false. Every place I haven't been to is non-existent (or it's all the same place and they just keep changing the scenery around), and all history before my birth is a fantastic tale.

Who is behind it all? Who are my parents and my brother and all the rest of my family and all of my friends really working for? The Zionists? The Nazis? The Freemasons? The Jesuits? The Bilderbergers? The Birchers? Satan? God? Santa Claus? Nixon? Was my Dad only pretending to be an atheist and an opponent of Nixon? Hmmm....

Did the stork bring me here? The Stork sisters, Janet and Susan, who we went to high school with, were very sexy....

Agnew?

On another note...:

As you noted in another post, Communists always get a pass that Nazis never do. I've often thought about that fact. In the mass media, the schools, the general culture, Communism is spoken of as an alternative social system or as a noble ideal that has never been tried (or was tried by the wrong people), while Nazism is simply pure evil. EVERYBODY is anti-Nazi, while anti-Communism is an eccentricity confined to a fringe on the Far Right or to McCarthyite witch-hunters.

But there's a flip side to that. Nazism and Hitler have been glamorized and even eroticized in a way that Communism has never been. Precisely because the unmitigated heinousness of Nazism is publicly acknowledged and emphasized, it has been deeply embedded into the psyches of most of us in a way comparable only to Satan in the Middle Ages and the Reformation. I myself used to have nightmares about the gas chambers.

Because Communism is thought to be "nice" though perhaps "impractical", it has appealed to the altruistic "do-gooders" and Mother Teresa types who populate so much of the Left. Nazism, by contrast, appeals to "bad boys", the rebellious naughty boys like Bart Simpson and his buddies or their real-life equivalents. "Hitler was cool!", is what kids think. And the more their parents or teachers are shocked or outraged, the "cooler" he gets to be in their minds. S&M people often love to dress up in Nazi uniforms, or to see others dressed up in Nazi uniforms. I have never known of anybody wanting to be tied up or whipped by somebody dressed as a Communist. Communism isn't sexy. Nazism is, to many. (Not to me any more, I must confess, though it used to be.)

The Right, as I've often noted, is sexier and has better _style_ than the Left. There are endless debates as to whether the Nazis (National Socialists) were on the Right or on the Left. But the Nazis did at least use Right-Wing symbols, imagery, and rhetoric to promote their agenda.

The very first time I ever heard of Hitler was kids in 1st grade going around yelling "Heil Hitler!". It sounded like "Hi, Hitler!", and I had no idea who or what they were talking about. We did get the idea that our parents disapproved, especially since my Dad had fought the Nazis in World War II. It was a baby sitter who told us about the concentration camps, the rounding up of Jews, the shootings, the gas chambers, etc.. I had no sense of history back then and thought it all took place in the Roman Empire ("Ben-Hur" was popular then).

(Ironically, when my Dad tried to explain who Jesus was, I had the impression that Jesus lived in _his_ time! Funny switcheroo: Hitler in the Roman Empire, Jesus in my Dad's generation...)

All the "bad kids" in high school, including me, were extremely fascinated with Hitler and the Nazis. So.... It's no mystery to me at all why Stalin's birthday gets so few references and Hitler's birthday so many.

Anyway... A very interesting commenter in Dean's World, Arnold Harris of Mt. Horeb, WI., made a very interesting point. He noted that, every Saturday morning in the synagogues, the Jews pray that the memory of the tribe of Amalek, who attacked Moses and his people in the desert some 2000 or so years ago, be blotted out from under the Sun. The irony is this: The only people who remember Amalek at all are the Jews!

They also pray that Hitler's name be erased. And, yet, they rightfully remind us that we must never forget lest it happen again. It's a dilemma... Interesting questions about it all.... Hmmm....

Let's get the kids interested in Nixon instead, I say!