DNA Tests at Home

Michelle Crouch wrote in May 2019 about DNA home tests:

1.       It’s a statistical guess based on a company’s database and the method used. For this reason, as more people are added to the database, the guess percentages change.

2.       If you are European, the guess is more precise. The more people are in the database from your specific ancestral home, the more accurate the test. Results from southern and eastern Europe aren’t as accurate. (according to Hank Greely)

3.       Native Americans or Black Americans cannot be told specifically what ancestral tribes they came from.

4.       Genetic abnormalities cannot be predicted with a home DNA test (40% of the time they are wrong). Certified labs can give more conclusive results for higher fees.

5.       Genetic DNA home tests can affect one’s ability to get insurance. An insurance offering you long-term care and life insurance are allowed by law in most states to ask for your DNA test results. It is thus a good idea to postpone the DNA test until insurance has been purchased.

6.       Police and other agencies do use family tree DNA databases to solve crimes.

7.       A relative’s DNA could make an innocent person a suspect in a crime.

8.       Genetic information can be sold to third parties for profit.

9.       Genealogy websites can and were hacked – private information of users was released.

10.   Diets based on genetic testing do not help people lose weight.

11.   Personality traits can be correctly predicted with DNA tests.

12.   Athletic ability cannot be predicted with DNA tests despite the claims.

13.   Family secrets may be revealed through a DNA test.  One may find a half-sister, half-brother or some other inconvenient truth.

The National Museum of Civil War Medicine

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2019

Frederick, MD, a town settled in 1745, is the location of the two-story National Museum of Civil War Medicine. Following the Battles of South Mountain and Antietam, the city of Frederick became one vast hospital with hospital beds in schools, churches, hotels, and any public buildings suitable for use. A photo exists of the interior of the Evangelical Lutheran Church looking like a hospital ward filled with hospital beds.


The museum is important in so many ways because the Civil War was described as a “watershed” in the history of medicine in regards to medical school education, recruiting and enlisting of soldiers, camp life, treatments, drugs, evacuation of the wounded, field dressing stations, field hospitals, and pavilion hospitals.


American medicine prior to the Civil War struggled with the general idea that disease was caused by a bodily poison triggered by a nervous constriction of the small blood vessels. Doctors used sweating, bleeding, cupping, blistering of the skin, and drugs to induce vomiting in order to purge the poison from the body. Bleeding was even used to stop internal hemorrhaging or to fix wounds to the chest. 


Few really believed in sterilization to stop the spread of disease from patient to patient. The [Henry] Craig Microscope was sold as a novelty through the mail, a single-fused lens in a tube mounting. But few understood microorganisms and the spread of disease through contact.

Battlefield first aid kit

Surgeons treated the death wounds, the burning fevers, the wasted bodies, and the broken constitutions and understood the life-long effects of battle – the shattered limbs, the pain, and the life-long physical and mental handicaps.

Surgical instruments and tools

Medicine was not entirely primitive as many are inclined to believe. The soldiers did not just “bite the bullet” in order to withstand surgery. Chloroform and ether were used in low doses in approximately 95 percent of Civil War surgeries in order to render the wounded oblivious to pain. 

Battlefield medicine chest, Museum 

Medicines used to treat diseases or pain included quinine and substitutes, alcohol, mercury-based drugs, creosote, morphine, chloroform, iodine, ether, opium, patent medicines (developed locally, of questionable efficacy and full of alcohol, opium, and mercury), iron supplements, tinctures for pain relief, and homeopathic medicines. Sutlers would sell patent medicines to soldiers or they received them in home packages.

Medicines found in care packages from home

Morphine and opium were used as painkillers and quinine was used to combat malaria. A hospital drug chest on display contained 48 medical containers made of glass and porcelain which were full of different compounded drugs or mixtures used to treat various diseases. A surgeon’s complete operating kit with stainless steel tools was manufactured by “Hernstein & Son of New York,” contracted suppliers for the Union physicians.

Autenrieth medical wagon

In 1864 the Union Medical Board approved the Autenrieth medical wagon for field use. The earlier 1862 medical wagon was improved and the Autenrieth version was presented with “sliding shelves and drawers to hold medicines and supplies as well as a sliding flat work surface that could be pulled out when the wagon was opened.” It held about 77 different drugs and tinctures, hospital stores, 16 surgical instruments, various dressings, furniture, and bedding (blankets and covers). It was a vast improvement over the hospital drug chest with 48 medicines.

It was not uncommon for military surgeons to use their private amputation kits such as the surgical instruments manufactured by Edward F. Snyder of Philadelphia who produced instruments from 1841-1855.


Middleton Goldsmith experimented with bromine to treat hospital gangrene after a severe outbreak in Memphis in 1863. He discovered that the survival rate improved dramatically with the use of bromine. The U.S. Sanitary Commission endorsed the use of bromine immediately and cases diminished in the last years of the war.


Despite the general belief that doctors were simple butchers, the reality is that most Civil War surgeons went to medical school and were trained with an established doctor. They had to pass an exam to serve as a war surgeon. 


Wounds were quite severe due to the new rifle musket technology and the French Minié ball which made repairing the damage impossible due to time constraints and potential deadly infections. For this reason, three out of four surgeries performed were amputation which resulted in nearly half a million soldiers coming out of the Civil War disabled.

Surgeons were often spoken of as “sawbones” due to the large number of amputations performed. Soldiers often reached for their weapons when they saw a surgeon approach.  The damage done by the musket balls called Minié was so devastating that they had no choice but to amputate.

Not all broken limbs were amputated during the war. A fracture box was used to align the broken bones as well as various sizes and shapes of splints on display. 

The .58 caliber rifled musket used in the Civil War was different from the Revolutionary War musket. The cone-shaped bullet had a hollow grooved base that expanded and spun with full force when fired. The accuracy and velocity of these Minié lead bullets did more damage, shattered the bones into many splinters, destroyed the surrounding soft tissue, and the lead remained inside the body.  “Approximately 94 percent of all recorded injuries were caused by the new Minié ball. Seven out of ten injured soldiers were wounded in the arm or leg; two out of ten in the body; and one out of ten in the head or neck.”

Hospital cot - Museum

Orthopedic hospitals were established in the South starting in March 1865 where disabled soldiers were fitted with prosthetics – artificial hands, arms, legs, and cosmetic appliances for facial wounds. In the State of Mississippi, “One-third of the soldiers were killed or crippled during the War. In 1866 one-fifth of the state’s revenue was expended on artificial limbs and for amputees.” (from “God & General Longstreet” by Connelly & Belles)


Field hospitals were usually a barn or a tent, with the barn doors removed to serve as surgical tables. Casualties were triaged into three categories: mortally wounded (abdomen, chest, head), slightly wounded, and surgery candidates. 


Surgeon Z. Boylston Adams of the 32^nd Massachusetts Infantry describes the battle: “The front was filled with the sulfurous odor of smoke. There was a constant rattle of musketry mixed with the blood curdling yells and shouts. Artillery shells were exploding in the treetops. Leaves and branches fell about … Minié balls could be heard thudding into the surrounding trees. And so, the field hospital went into operation.”

One famous Confederate surgeon was John Julian Chisolm from Charleston, S.C. “In April 1861, Chisolm treated Union soldiers wounded at Fort Sumter.” He worked during the war in the military hospitals in Richmond.

Mary Edwards Walker, a New York surgeon, received her medical degree from Syracuse Medical College in June 1855. She treated wounded soldiers after the battles of Manassas and Fredericksburg, Virginia. Most of her medical colleagues did not support her when she was assigned with the 52^nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment in January 1864. On April 10, 1864 Walker was captured by Confederate troops, sent to prison in Richmond, and exchanged four months later for a Confederate officer. President Andrew Johnson awarded Walker the Congressional Medal of Honor for Meritorious Service in 1865.


According to the museum archives, prior to the Civil War, the U.S. Army had a 40-bed infirmary in Kansas. A hospital was a poor house where the poor went to die. However, by 1865 the Union Medical Department had 181,000 beds in 187 pavilion style hospitals and the Confederates had a similar number of beds to treat the wounded and the sick.


U.S. hospital railroad cars were retrofitted and used as early as August 1861 to transport the wounded from the battlefield to metropolitan hospital centers. Stretchers were suspended in railroad cars with vulcanized rubber rings in order to provide shock absorbers for a smoother ride and to be able to suspend more stretchers inside a car.


“River boats and later steamships were leased or purchased and refitted as hospital ships at first in the West and later in the East. The City of Memphis carried 11,024 sick and wounded in 33 trips up and down the Mississippi. The D.A. January transported and cared for 23,738 patients during the last 3 years of the war.” They were floating hospitals. 


Nursing care was provided at first by convalescent or non-combatant soldiers until such a time that they were able to return to their regiments. Since 1863 the Union Veteran Reserve Corps supplied nurses, clerks, ward masters, guards and cooks to the general hospital. A famous male nurse, L.A. Thorpe, head nurse at Foster Hospital in New Bern, NC, died of yellow fever in 1864. John C. Sinclair was nurse at Trinity Hospital in Washington, D.C. 

Museum Archives Photo

Walt Whitman visited hospitals in and around Washington, D.C. from December 1862 until December 1865, aiding the sick and wounded soldiers on both sides, talking to them, helping them write letters home, and bringing them small gifts of money, food, writing paper, and scarce items.

Civil War nurse - Museum photo

Slowly, the Catholic sisters and concerned female caregivers gained entrance into hospitals – they cooked, cleaned, bandaged wounds, reading and writing letters. Most “nurses” were anonymous but a few Southern women like Ella King Newsom, Sally Tompkins, Julie Opie Hopkins, and Northern women like Dorothea Dix and Clara Barton became recognized for their efforts. 


President Lincoln invited to the White House one famous nurse, Caroline Johnson, a former slave who nursed in Washington hospitals.


Black slaves built hospitals, cooked in hospital kitchens, and served as laundresses. Richmond, Virginia’s Chimborazo Hospital was built almost entirely by black labor. Often blacks were assigned the task of burying the dead. Three-quarters of the women who nursed at Chimborazo hospital in Virginia were black. “The use of black women in Northern hospital wards was not authorized until 1864.” 


“Susie King Taylor was the best known of the thousands of black Civil War nurses. Her memoir, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp, is the only surviving account of the Civil War experiences of a black nurse.”


Army chaplains assisted with surgeries and comforted the dying. “Of the approximately 165 regiments of the U.S. Colored Troops, only 14 had black chaplains.” Union Army regulations required that regimental officers elected chaplains.


“Mrs. D. H. Hastings, a hospital matron with the 30^th U.S. Colored Troops is listed as non-commissioned officer on the regimental muster roll – an extremely rare honor for a woman.”

The Chimborazo hospital in Richmond was like a small city that could serve “more than 8,000 patients in 150 wards, a bakery that produced 10,000 loaves of bread a day, a 400 keg brewery, a newspaper, five ice houses, a soap factory, cultivated fields, and a large herd of livestock.”


Benevolent societies raised money and donated to the U.S. Sanitary Commission for soldiers’ relief - $70 million in four years through contributions from every state and territory in the Union including almost $18,000 from the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii). In 1861 the U.S. Christian Commission came up with the idea of “coffee wagons” in camp to compete with the “liquor sellers,” the sutlers.

Hospitals provided bands for the entertainment of the wounded, held lectures, concerts, and theatrical performances in addition to medical care. 


One of the Civil War doctors, Lewis Henry Steiner (1827-1892), was a fifth generation of the Steiner family to reside in Frederick, MD. He earned his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1849. Dr. Steiner was an inspector for the U.S. Sanitary Commission and was present when the Confederate troops entered Frederick. He remained there until the Union troops arrived. He described the Confederate troops on September 8, 1862:


“How the rebels manage to get along no one can tell. They are badly clad. Many of them without shoes. Uncleanliness and vermin are universal. The odor of clothes worn for months, saturated with perspiration and dirt, is intense and all-pervading. They look stout and sturdy, able to endure fatigue, and anxious to fight in the cause they have espoused.”


The Union Army of the Potomac counted 1500 days of service but only 45 were spent in battle. The rest of the time they fought diseases of the camp caused by contaminated water supply, refuse and excrement from humans and animals, fleas, lice, and flies which carried bacteria and viruses to the soldiers and their rations. “Of the nearly 620,000 soldiers who died during the Civil War, two-thirds died of disease and only one third died of wounds,” diarrhea being the number one killer. 

Civil War stretcher 

“The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion reported 44,558 deaths in the Union Army attributed to diarrhea and dysentery,” the deadliest diseases of the Civil War. Other killer diseases were: erysipelas (streptococcus pyogenes infection at the wound site), hospital gangrene (streptococcal flesh infection which also spreads through contact to nurse, other patients, and doctor), malaria (from mosquito bites), measles, rheumatism (actually RA or “reactive arthritis with joint swelling from rheumatic fever, venereal infections, intestinal disease, dysentery), smallpox, STDs (syphilis and gonorrhea, 182,800 cases among Union troops), typhoid fever (caused by bacterium Salmonella typhi), typhus (bacterium Rickettsia), tuberculosis (bacterial infection known as consumption), and scrofula (tuberculosis of the lymph nodes of the neck). “For some reason, black troops were five times more likely to contract the scrofula.”


According to the Museum, the 65^th U.S. Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.) had the most deaths from disease (755) of all Union regiments. The 49^th U.S.C.T. lost 465 men to disease compared to 62 killed in action. Ten thousand black sailors served in the Union Navy and 179,000 black soldiers enlisted in the Union Army.


As ghastly as the Civil War was, forcing brother to fight against brother, in the end, a lot of the measures developed to deal with casualties of war became the basis for modern military medicine. For example, the ambulance system developed by Jonathan Letterman is still part of the present-day military evacuation plans.

Medical personnel, just like today, treated the wounded from both sides of the war. A field dressing station, the precursor of our modern first responders, bandaged wounds and administered whiskey for shock and morphine for pain.


Triage was first developed during the Civil War in order to set priorities for treatment of the wounded based on the severity of the injury.


The Civil War used embalming to send home soldiers killed in battle. It was a chemical process that had not been used prior to the Civil War.


The physical and mental impact of 60,000 amputees forced the reunited country to deal with the casualties and establish mental hospitals and care for the veterans.


The condition first diagnosed as nostalgia and irritable heart during the Civil War, shell shock during WWI, became PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) today.


Apothecary wagons developed during the Civil War to ensure medication was available to soldiers for treatment.


Water and sewer systems used in pavilion hospitals during the Civil War paved the way for our modern hospitals. Wards were self-contained to minimize the spread of disease.


Modern military medicine has roots in these advancements made during the Civil War and in turn, civilians today benefit from continuing medical developments made in military medicine.

In 1863, the first veterans’ organizations were established in both the North (Grand Army of the Republic) and the South (United Confederate Veterans), with the goal to care for veterans, honor the dead, preserve friendships of those who survived, honor the dead, and provide for widows and orphans.


Soldiers were not the only enlisted in the fight, horses and mules were unwilling beasts of burden and victims in the war. Every cannon and its attached limber (two-wheeled ammunition chest) was pulled by six horses. Six-horse teams also pulled each of the six four-wheeled caissons that carried additional ammunition. An artillery battery consisted of six guns which means that 72 horses were necessary to move the battery. Additional horses were necessary to pull the forge, carry the officers, and be replacements. 


The Army of the Potomac used in 1864 more than 4,000 six-mule team wagons in the Wilderness Campaign, with a total of 56,499 horses and mules that moved the war machine. Veterinary surgeons tended to the animal injuries and tried to maintain the health of their charges. “Large infirmaries were developed to treat horses and mules which were too sick or worn-down to serve the armies.”

A soldier spent most of his day in camp or marching rather than in battle. Marching means that they had to carry extra clothing, personal hygiene items, blankets, tin utensils, a “soldier’s housewife” (items necessary to mend clothing and darning socks:  scissors, needles, thread, patches, pins, buttons, and yarn), items from home, and their weapons. And some also carried items such as pressed flowers, homemade identification tags, business cards (carte de visite), the New Testament, the Book of Common Prayer, and the daguerreotype photo of a loved one.


Most soldiers marched 13 miles daily, carrying 30-50 lbs. of equipment, and such strenuous outlay of energy caused many health problems:  “dehydration, malnutrition, hypothermia, sunstroke, headaches, nerve damage, bone spurs, bone degeneration, muscle soreness and tearing, torn or early loss of cartilage in knees and hips, leaking fluid sacks in knees, joint and back pain, blisters, bruises, lacerations, infections, and chronic cough.”


“War is an organized bore,” one said. But Private Wilbur Fisk of 2^nd Vermont wrote, “If a man wants to know what it is to have every bone in his body to ache with fatigue, every muscle sore and exhausted, and his whole body ready to sink to the ground, let him … shoulder his knapsack, haversack, gun and equipment, and make one of our forced marches, and I will warrant him to be satisfied that the duties of war are stern and severe.”


Food focused on “hard-tack” (a hard wheat flour cracker) and salt-cured pork.  Fresh meat and vegetables were issued sometimes in camp and canned food, meat and seafood. Confederate letters describe meals of canned food captured from Union supply trains.  The deficient diet caused major nutritional diseases such as scurvy (vitamin C), night blindness (vitamin A) and malnutrition. There were 46,000 cases of scurvy in Union records.


Coffee, tea, birch beer, and sarsaparilla were available.  The soldier had to grind the beans included in their rations in order to make coffee. Alcohol was not allowed in camp, but officers were not restricted. Sutlers made alcohol available to anyone though just outside the camp.


Tallow and lard were used to make candles for illumination. The “Betty Lamp,” a simple pot filled with oil and a wick, provided light at night. Soldiers entertained themselves in camp with cards, dice, and playing baseball. 


After the bombardment at Fort Sumter in Charleston, S.C. in April 1861, President Lincoln called for 75,000 ninety-day volunteers to squash the rebellion. Companies were organized with 100 volunteers; ten companies formed a regiment; the volunteers chose officers, one regimental surgeon, and two assistant surgeons. 

Johnny Clem, Museum photo

The average volunteer soldier was 25 years old, but Curtis King of 37^th Iowa Infantry was 80 years old. Boys younger than 18 served as musicians, stretcher-bearers, nurses, ships boys, and even soldiers. Avery Brown of the 31^st Ohio Infantry and Edward Black of the 21^st Indian Infantry were 8 years old. At the age of 10, Johnny Clem ran away from home and became a drummer in the Union Army. He enlisted at 12, fought in several battles, was captured and briefly jailed by Confederate soldiers.


Women served in the Civil War, with a documented number of over 300 Union and Confederate females serving disguised as men. This happened because physical examination was often superficial or nonexistent in the rush to gain more recruits for the war. Many joined the army already seriously sick with bronchitis, fevers, TB, STDs, etc.


Soldier’s clothing was made of rough-hewn wool in the North and a mixture of cotton, linen, and wool in the South. The material was itchy and of poor quality and did not last long. Soldiers wore softer underwear to prevent itching. When uniforms wore out, they put on civilian shirts and clothes, even in battle. Shoes did not last long due to long marches.


The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion recorded the staggering numbers of enlistment and the final tally of combatants who were killed, injured, and died from their wounds and disease:

Union Army Enlistment 2,893,304                                   Confederate Army Enlistment 1,317,035
Battlefield deaths               110,070                                   Battlefield deaths                          94,000
Death from Disease            224,586                                  Death from Disease                     164,000       
Death from Accidents in the Union Army        24,872 (suicides were also included in this number)

A high percentage of soldiers on both sides died from gunshot wounds (94%). Artillery fire killed 5.5% of them and 0.4% of men perished from sabre or bayonet. 

The final death toll percentage of soldiers fighting their own countrymen in the Civil War was 12.4% (Union) and 19.6% (Confederates). 

The museum was a somber place to reflect on our country’s history forgotten by so many.

Mimi Johnson's Essay on the 30-Year Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2016

In other news around the globe, today marks thirty years since the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. I remember Peter Jennings reporting it on ABC news. I was in 4th grade and had a different understanding than most American children. You see, my mother and grandmother fled a third world communist country and even at a young age, I understood the significance of this wall coming down, uniting broken families and overthrowing a systematic, oppressive government.

Next month, it’ll be thirty years since Romania gained its independence from communist dictator Ceaușescu. The people and militia rose up against 50 years of starvation, lack of water, medicine, jobs, fear for their lives, women being taken against their will by the communist police and raped, having no clothes, shoes, standing in line for bread, milk, being rationed everything and having no free choice of anything; they finally had the courage to say ENOUGH, yet after all that, I cannot believe the global sentiments.

It’s amazing to me, how quickly we forget the pain and suffering millions of people endured and how hard they fought to eradicate totalitarian regime out of their lives. Yet here we are, at the end of 2019, and there has been a massive global wave wanting to bring back this horrific and failed system of government citing “justice for all.” The apropos motto would be “justice for none.”

I wish society viewed communism in the same vein that they view other atrocities, such as slavery and the holocaust; history must not repeat itself. My friends, think hard before you champion something like this coming to our shores. I implore you to talk with people who have experienced horrific tragedies and escaped to tell the story. There are many proud immigrants in this country that are seriously frightened about their existence here in their new chosen home land. Not because they will be deported, but that their haunting history will follow them here, feeling as if they could never escape the proverbial prisons in which they lived.

The U.S. is at a major crossroads and it’s evident every single day. The communist ideology has already snuck in. I watch video after video of people being beaten and spit on for their political beliefs, or losing friendships over opinions, no tolerance for anything that is different from their wavering thoughts. We have become a society of carnivorous animals waiting to pounce on innocent, unsuspecting prey. The offense monster is terrorizing a city near you. No one is civilized anymore.

We now have natural segregation occurring, yet still complain about race relations. If a member of one race attempts to ingratiate themselves into another, there’s an uproar! How dare you! The U.S. has gone beyond being a nation of multiculturalism, more over putting everyone into groups and not assimilating to our inherent value system that makes this nation so appealing to the masses. True multiculturalism is bringing the best things from your country and melding them with others, not segregating yourselves in cities where no one unlike you is allowed.

Our freedoms are disappearing under our noses, yet no one seems to care. Instead we idolize political leaders and follow them like rats to the pied piper. Political figures aren’t deities, yet we expect them to be. This is serious and dangerous behavior and thought.

Even terms like “open-mindedness” have become an oxymoron because the caveat is that you’re only open-minded if you think “this” or “my” way. We the people are responsible for our societal demise, not politicians. The inherent truth is that we are a melting pot of religions and ideologies, however, one message that resonates loudly in most religions is to love thy neighbor and do good unto others.

Let’s get back to that original premise.

My Musings on Bolshevik Confiscation

Holodomor genocide

When the Bolsheviks started coming around the farms in Romania, the farmers met them with suspicion and refused to listen to Russian agents who spoke marginal Romanian.  Some fell for the ruse and the empty promises of socialism. Those who did not were eventually shot in front of the village as an effective terror tactic and their priests, who often preached against the Bolsheviks, were thrown from the church tower and killed, again in front of the entire village for maximum effect of brutality.

The city people did not have much to lose, of course, as you know, there were sweat shops everywhere and the lure of getting something for nothing, of getting even with the rich and stealing their stuff was too much for such poor and famished people. They fell for Bolshevism quite quickly. By the time they realized that the Bolsheviks had no intention of dividing what they stole but kept it for themselves, it was too late - guns had been confiscated, land, personal property, etc., and villagers had been moved by force into grey concrete block apartments in the city, built quickly and unsafely to house as many of them as possible.

The more prominent useful idiots such as journalists, doctors, engineers, teachers, professors, and other boot-licking lackeys had been killed too in order to frighten into compliance what was left of them so that they would become good little socialists and then communists if the communist party agreed to take them in.

My grandfather had buried a small tractor in his back yard but the neighbors told the Bolsheviks and they dug it up. They stole even his mantel clock so he could not tell time. The smirking Russian hanged it around his neck with a thick farm chain.

The Bolsheviks slaughtered his cow, the pig, the chickens, and all other domesticated animals that could have made a meal for the angry Russian soldiers who were the "liberators" at the end of WWII. They took the family jewels and all the money.

During WWII, the Germans had been garrisoned at the edge of the village (Romania was allied with Germany in World War II, Ploiesti had rich oil reserves and several refineries to process it into gasoline) and they seldom took anything from a farmer without asking and without just compensation.

I have no sympathy for the Nazis and their evil war machine and empire, but their doctors took care of the village sick according to my grandfather. One skilled surgeon stitched the face of mom's best friend (10 years old), who had been bitten by a horse that had ripped her entire right cheek off. There was no cost to the family and minimum scarring. In other words, the Russian soldiers and the Bolsheviks that followed in their footsteps were worse than the German soldiers during WWII and at the end of the war.

Hitler conquered his people through total bribery at first. When he took over the Social Democrat Party, they had a little over three dollars in their treasury and argued whether they should spend it to buy a rubber stamp or save it; the Weimar Republic was a total disaster and people were suffering economically. How hard was it for him to promise economic reforms and a better standard of living and actually delivering on those promises? He was a charismatic speaker and he became a "Gott" overnight. He promised a Volkswagen for every family. Germany prospered under his rule but then he showed his real face and started demonizing certain groups of people, confiscated their businesses and wealth, invented the faux superior race, and the rest is history.

You already know what Stalin did to his people and the deliberate starvation of millions of Ukrainian farmers at Holodomor in 1932-1933..

The Deliberate Misconception of Socialism

Meme found on Facebook

If you do a Google search of the definition of socialism, you will find a progressive definition of socialism and a progressive definition of socialism in history, both of which are historically incorrect. Both definitions bear a glaring discrepancy to reality and embody the progressives’ utopian dreams.

The first progressive definition of socialism is a “political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.” This could not be further from the truth. No community could regulate or own anything under socialism.

The definition of socialism in history is also factually incorrect. It defines socialism as a “range of economic and social systems characterized by social ownership of the means of production and workers’ self-management.” Workers never self-managed under socialism. They may have hidden at work in a warehouse to take naps during the workday but that would be the extent of self-management.

The real definition of a socialist society is the government’s ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. Not at any point could the proletariat self-manage, they were told what to do by apparatchiks under the strict guidance of the Communist Party. Socialism was and still is a pre-cursor stage to communism.

The aggressive mass media, academia, and social media controllers’ agenda of indoctrination of the population is obvious at every corner by those of us who studied real (not manufactured) history and have lived under socialism.

The handsomely paid agents of indoctrination know what they are doing, and it seems to be working well with the low information voters and their fellow travelers who use Facebook and other social media as a source of information via memes cleverly designed for maximum misinformation/disinformation.

For example, a recent meme designed by Uncle Jack states “Republicans want you to be afraid of socialism! ‘Socialism’ means that we pool our resources to provide things for everyone! In America today, that includes: fire departments, police departments, public schools, public hospitals, veterans benefits, national weather service, roads and bridges, unemployment insurance, drinking water, military, NTSA, Medicare, Social Security, FEMA, G.I. Bill, Food and Drug Safety, CDC, NASA, sewers, bank deposit insurance, hazardous waste disposal and clean-up.” It continues by asking in boldface lettering reminiscent of Halloween, “So which of these current SOCIALIST programs scare you?”

For starters none of those listed represent socialism, they are services provided by the local, state, and federal governments with taxpayer funds accumulated from taxation, dues, fees, etc.

Schools are paid by property taxes in the U.S.  Under socialism, nobody owns property because the government controls everything. Schools are indoctrination tools run by the government and their indoctrinated teaching agents.

Police departments in the U.S. can apply for grants from the federal government under strict guidelines from agencies such as the USDA’s Community Facilities Direct Loan & Grant Program. Tax dollars from citizens pay for police and firefighters and each state is vastly different. Under socialism, the government controls the police and its funding under different levels of monitoring in order to keep the population under control.

Public hospitals are funded by the Department of Health. Patients pay a small nominal fee.

Health care is paid for by government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, private health insurance, and by out-of-pocket expenditures.

Developed countries except for the U.S. have partially or fully, publicly funded health care systems. They are not free; they are either financed by heavy taxation or via compulsory health insurance. Nothing is FREE.

In the U.S., state and local health departments receive their funds from grants (taxpayers’ money) given by the Prevention and Public Health Fund established under the Affordable Care Act passed by Obama in 2010 at Christmas time, with only Democrat input.

Medicare is financed through payroll taxes, premiums, and federal tax revenues.

Medicaid is tax-funded and administered by the individual states which operate the program with federal guidelines. Some individuals get free medical care while others must pay a nominal fee. Illegal immigrants and asylum refugees receive free care from the moment they cross our borders unlawfully.

In 2017, the U.S. spent about $3.5 trillion or 18% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health expenditures more than twice the average among other developed countries.

According to taxpolicy.org in 2018 the federal government alone spent $1.1 trillion on health care; $583 billion on Medicare, $399 billion on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance (CHIP) and $70 billion on veterans’ medical care.

Medical organizations are funded by credit, venture capital, donations, grants, savings, subsidies, and taxes. Such medical organizations did not exist under socialism.

Veterans benefits was approved by Congress’ $86.5 billion in discretionary funding. The money comes from federal taxation which all working Americans pay. The U.S. Department of Veteran affairs requested a total of $220.2 billion in fiscal year 2020, a 9.6 percent increase over 2019.

Veterans were promised benefits for their service for their country and active duty in peacetime and wars. Their salaries are much lower and are not commensurate with their sacrifice. These veteran benefits are not welfare, they have earned them. They pay health insurance premiums for their medical care.

The national weather service (NWS) is an agency of the United States federal government and is funded by taxpayer dollars. We did not have a national weather service system under socialism. We were on our own when disaster struck, and nobody warned us beforehand. The government did not see fit to invest in such endeavor because nobody paid ANY taxes. We were serfs to the government’s whims.

Roads and bridges are funded through federal grants to state and local governments via taxation. One-quarter of spending on roads and bridges comes from the federal government, the rest financed by state and local governments. Gas taxes, tolls, user fees, license plate taxes, income, sales and property taxes are used to maintain infrastructure which varies from state to state. The Highway Trust Fund for highway and mass transit programs awards grants to localities and states. Under socialism, paved roads were scarce and deficient because there were no taxes levied by the government or paid by the proletariat.

Unemployment insurance is paid by employers and is not a feature of socialism.  It is a tax collected by state and federal governments. It is part of payroll taxes. The employer payroll taxes include: Social Security taxes (6.2%), Medicare taxes (1.45% of wages), and federal unemployment taxes (FUTA).

Drinking water is controlled by the Safe Drinking Water Act which authorizes the EPA, a federal agency supported with taxpayer dollars of those who pay taxes. The act establishes minimum standards to protect tap water and requires all private, public owners or operators of public water systems to comply with the standards. Water infrastructure includes systems of water supply, treatment, storage, water resource management, flood prevention, and hydropower. Different private and public owners and agencies control the water infrastructure. It has nothing to do with socialism, on the contrary.

Under socialism, the government controlled the water supply and delivery. Rivers and canals were polluted, water was substandard, and it was delivered whenever the government rulers decided to do so. A few hours during the day cold water flowed, but hot water was in short supply or non-existent, and, in summer time, there was no water at all as the mighty government had to do maintenance for three months and the people were supplied drinking water via cisterns that combed the neighborhoods.

Sewage treatment is the responsibility of each municipal wastewater treatment plants. It is a service provided to the citizens for a monthly fee. It is not socialism either as these are owned by various towns and even private companies that have invested in the wastewater treatment facilities.

The four branches of the military, Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force are funded by Congress through the federal budget. The money comes from taxation and again, it is federalism, not socialism. For FY 2019, the Department of Defense budget is approximately $693 billion.

Social Security is not socialism, on the contrary, it is welfare for the federal government which dips into the fund to transfer money to other agencies, for other spending as they see fit. The Social Security program is funded by the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) tax, a payroll tax. The tax is assessed at a rate of 6.2% of income paid by employer, and another 6,2% paid by employee. The self-employed pay the full 12.4% tax. “The money that employees and employers pay into the fund through taxes is not the same money that you will receive later in life.”

FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency established by executive order by President Carter in 1979 which merged many disaster-related responsibilities at the federal level. It is funded by taxpayer dollars. It is not socialism at all. Socialist governments usually leave their citizens to deal on their own with natural disasters and wait on capitalist nations such as the U.S. to donate food, water, blankets, medical help, and other resources when disasters strike. I know because we survived a terrible earthquake in 1977 and we went hungry, cold, and homeless for days, and had to find our own sources of water.

G.I. Bill is a term that refers to any educational benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs to members of Active Duty, Selected Reserve and National Guard Armed Forces, and their families. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (the G.I. Bill) was a law that provided a range of benefits for returning WWII veterans. The G.I. Bill is part of their otherwise low military pay, for their service, sacrifice, and putting their lives on the line, it is not an entitlement and not socialism as the lefties imply.

Food and Drug Safety falls under the purview of the Food and Drug Administration (a taxpayer funded bureaucracy) which “protects the public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices, and by ensuring the safety of our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation.” There is no socialism there.

CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is a federal agency (taxpayer funded) under the Department of Health and Human Services and as such it receives federal funding from Congress with funds from taxpayers.

CDC Foundation receives charitable contributions and philanthropic grants from individuals, foundations, corporations, universities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other organizations to advance the work of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is not socialism. Socialist governments do not have the equivalent of the CDC.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the civilian space program. It is funded by research opportunities with other government agencies, private, and non-profit sectors. It has nothing to do with socialism, on the contrary, it benefits from the existence of capitalism. Socialist governments did not have money for such research or even other types of research. There is a reason why most discoveries came from capitalist economies, never socialist ones. Barack Obama defunded NASA’s shuttle space flights and research in 2010. Since then, NASA bought seats on the Russian space flights.

Bank deposit insurance protect deposits of individuals covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). This is a private corporation with shareholders even though the name federal implies ownership by the U.S. government – it is not. The deposit insurance fund is mandated by law for each Federal Reserve Bank to set aside money and to pay back up to $100,000 per depositor in case of failure of a financial institution.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) does not receive Congressional money, it is funded by insurance payments made by banks. So, it has nothing to do with socialism, on the contrary, it is capitalist finance. Socialism has one bank only, that which is owned by the central government and they do whatever they want with the depositor’s cash. They often confiscate at whim the funds of citizens they don’t deem socialist enough or who have offended the socialist government in some way.

Hazardous waste disposal and clean-up funding comes from taxpayers; states pay ten percent of cleanup costs, fifty percent if the state operated the facility responsible for contamination, and the company which polluted is responsible for cleanup. By law, the parties responsible for use, transportation, storage, and disposal of hazardous substances/waste and oil are liable for costs. This is not socialism at all.

As we can plainly see, the disinformation of the Left is quite insidious and unfortunately millions and millions of low information voters and illegal aliens who vote but don’t speak English, fall for the Left’s inflammatory, misinformed, deceitful rhetoric and memes which are generously funded by billionaires who stand to profit from their deception.

A Comforter for Comfort

Photo wikipedia

An unknown grandma in her winter kitchen that looked 

just like grandma Elena's

The temperatures dropped overnight to almost freezing. I added another snowy white cotton blanket on the bed and, as the soft material flurried to the bed surface like pristine snow, a flashback from my childhood hit me – grandma Elena’s heavy comforter, “plapuma” as we called it, maroon on one side and dark blue on the other. It was stuffed with plenty of wool for warmth, extremely heavy, and just big enough to cover the full-size bed.  I had no idea how she washed it, I never saw her do it, I only saw it hanging on the fence, airing it out from time to time. It had a duvet soft cover which was washed periodically.

The comforter was hand-quilted on both sides with heavy wool and a very large and long needle that managed to penetrate all the layers of wool batting. We had to sleep in fetal position, cuddling for warmth, lest feet and hands dangled outside and got cold during the night in such low temperatures that often frosted the windowpanes.

The pillows were stuffed with the chicken feathers we sacrificed for protein from time to time when the hens stopped laying eggs. Feathers were still attached to quills that would poke us through the pillowcase fabric and sometimes made their way out floating to the ground. The inner cases were made of thick and heavy fabric meant to contain the feathers. The outward decorative pillowcases were a work of art, hand-embroidered with flowers and intricate stitchery, starched and pressed with love and perfection. Such pillowcases and matching embroidered sheets were part of a bridal trunk dowry. Nobody had fitted sheets for their mattresses or a box spring for that matter.

If we were lucky the mattress was stuffed with seaweed or shorn wool, washed, combed, and dried. Many in the village had rough jute mattresses stuffed with straw and were glad to have it.

In summertime the beds were adorned with thin woven blankets with intricate patterns and quite colorful. Aunt Ana was a master weaver who made such beautiful blankets in her loom which occupied a small room in her home. I still see her sitting in front of the threads of the looms, feeding wooden spools of thread through, one row at a time, a work of art that took months to complete. It was fascinating to watch her work so fast, never missing a string in the complicated weave. Row after row she had to change the spools with colors that completed whatever complicated patterns she was working on. She never used a paper blueprint, it was all in her head, her eagle eyes, and her hands.

I am looking at my comforter, silky synthetic material probably woven and manufactured in China by skillful hands. The cleaners will dry it on their racks or driers, no exposure on the fence or pooping birds while drying it fully. It is comfortable, light, warm, and useful but it is not a work of art made by aunt Ana’s skillful hands.

I remember grandma Elena making small rugs from hand-woven strips of old clothes, rugs just big enough to step on when we first got out of bed and the room was just above freezing temperatures. She did not want us to step on the cold floor. And the ever-present chamber pot was hidden under the wooden bed which grandpa had fashioned in his little shop attached to the house, a modest lean-to that was absolutely frigid in winter.

The communists did not bother to produce comforters, it was up to a few skilled hands in the city or in the village who produced enough to sell to other people for a modest fee. I was always in awe that the Communist Party allowed such home-artisans to make something. I suppose since it was such an unprofitable endeavor, if you took into account the number of hours devoted vs. the actual price, they did not bother to censure its existence.

If Socialism and Communism Are Great, Why 100 Million Victims and So Many Freedom Fighters

The mainstream media outlets inform us, reading from the daily Democrat Party briefings, that 7 in 10 Millennials are burning to vote Socialist even though they are not sure what Socialism is and 1 in 3 Millennials think Communism is great even though they’ve heard nothing about the millions of victims of communism around the world, many buried in mass graves which are still being discovered.

It is clear to those of us who escaped communism that Millennials and their assorted fellow travellers have been asleep in history classes or were reading the radical Howard Zinn’s “nuanced” social justice history book from the 1980 which is widely used in America’s schools.

Rostislav, who escaped Soviet oppression, said the following regarding the Millennials and the low information voters. “I remember a really heroic story which was secretly told to me in Arctic Siberia by Moldovan exiles. It was about Toma Arnautu group of simple peasants, who had more than enough ‘high-information’ to fight against Communists ten long years from their wild hideout deep in the mountains, until some greedy ‘compatriot’ sold them out to be tortured and shot by the Securitate henchmen. So, what I’d like to say? I’d like to say that, whatever any modern voters for theoretical Socialism may say, I don't care about their cheap reasons and justifications: I do know the horrible practices of their precious theories only too well. Hence the memory of great freedom fighters like Toma Arnautu is always helping me to be true to our mutual ideals of freedom.”

The anticommunist resistance in Romania was a popular uprising against the communist dictatorship and the Soviet occupation; it started in Bucovina in 1944 when the Soviet Red Army invaded North Bucovina and lasted through the very repressive Ceausescu years of the 1980s.

The first act of resistance against the Bolsheviks was organized by the Romanian monarchy itself which established a special battalion in Bucovina to fight against the Soviet invasion. Armed partisans organized as well shortly thereafter. After the partisan support ended in 1946 the partisans took to the mountains and organized a resistance there where it was harder to track and capture them. But the traitors among them enabled the communists to take control in the 1950s of most of those who mounted an armed opposition to communism and executed the leaders and the followers.

When the Russians “liberated” Romania, they robbed and disorganized the country. I remember grandpa telling me that the Russian liberators of their village stole everything that was not nailed down. He had a precious mantel clock stolen; the Russian soldier hung it with a chain around his neck as he was departing.

The two hundred or more Russian communist community organizers, who spoke broken Romanian, appeared overnight and fanned out around the country to spread anarchy and to install people to power who were foreign and did not care about the laws of the country, they only cared about the spread of their ideology – communism. https://despredemnitate.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/cicerone-ionitoiu-rezistenta-anticomunista.pdf

Records released after 1989 show that the resisting armed partisans called themselves “haiduci,” causing disruptions to the Communist Party dictatorship. Dispersed but ever-present around the Carpathian Mountains, they caused constant headaches for the communists who presented said “haiduci” as ordinary isolated thieves in the employ of the evil capitalists.

Any “structural opposition of the cultural and intellectual elites” was eliminated with the help of the Security forces and the Soviet agents working in Romania. The state, with centralized power in the hands of uneducated and ignorant Communist Party apparatchiks, was in shambles due to the inability of the communists to plan for a successful economic outcome. The extraordinary numbers of informers among the population propped up the pillaging communists who remained in power through coercion, fear, and population starvation.

The intensive surveillance, repression, and oppression started with Teohari Georgescu, “the head of the Ministry of the Interior between 1948 and 1952. That period was a stage of adjustment of the Securitate’s leaders to the staff policy of the newly created institution.” Georgescu’s Securitate goons became the weaponized arm of the Communist Party. He used the Securitate police forces to maintain the power and control of the Communist Party and of the oppressive state. http://www.cnsas.ro/documente/caiete/Caiete_CNSAS_nr_7-8_2011.pdf

There is a long list of doctors, engineers, teachers, priests, lawyers, painters, farmers, even socialists themselves who were deemed not socialist enough, and other professionals who were executed by communists because they dissented and refused to be oppressed by the Russian Bolsheviks and their new communist recruits in Romania. http://www.procesulcomunismului.com/marturii/fonduri/ioanitoiu/morminte2/docs/morminte2p_7.htm

Cicerone Ionitoiu wrote, “For 12 years (1946-1958) anti-communism fighters, supported by the population from the villages nearby, resisted heroically to attacks by Securitate troops. Thousands of people were involved in this fight. The population of villages at the bottom of the mountains who provided them [patriots] with food and clothing, if not executed themselves right away, filled the jails and concentration camps.” Cicerone memorialized events, names, and villages.https://despredemnitate.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/cicerone-ionitoiu-rezistenta-anticomunista.pdf

The resistors fought hard against the Soviet-aided communist theft and confiscation of property, arrests and crimes committed by Bolsheviks and their newly indoctrinated recruits. These communist crimes lasted for forty years. The Romanian people never collaborated with the dictatorship, but traitors existed who sold their families for extra food and other privileges. https://despredemnitate.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/cicerone-ionitoiu-rezistenta-anticomunista.pdf

By the time communism “fell” in 1989, few dissidents were still alive, and the former communists regrouped into a liberal class of entrepreneurs who stole funds from the former communist regime, a class of prosperous men and women with no scruples and a conscience. http://www.cnsas.ro/documente/caiete/Caiete_CNSAS_nr_7-8_2011.pdf

Executed in front of their families, thrown from church towers, or shot en masse in front of the entire village or neighborhoods in order to make an example of them and stifle any possible future resistance, these victims deserve to be remembered in a memorial dedicated to their sacrifice in the fight against communism. The victims of the communist regimes around the world over decades have grown to 100 million.  When will they have their museum and a Nuremberg-style trial to reveal the horrors of communism?

Unfortunately Millennials in America will never understand what socialism and communism are because their history textbooks gloss over that part of history and glorify murderous individuals like Che Guevara, Castro, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ceausescu, and other communist dictators who were responsible for the death of millions of dissenters to communism.

In a positive step, President Klaus Iohannis of Romania inaugurated in May 2016 a monument dedicated to the communist resistance and had it placed in front of the Free Press House, the very place formerly adorned in 1960-1990 by a huge statue of Lenin. https://cersipamantromanesc.wordpress.com/tag/securitatea-si-miscarea-anticomunista/