Happy Earth Day/Lenin’s Birthday

Bill Croke at the American Spectator has a good article reminding us all that Earth Day just happens to be the birthday of the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

Coincidence?

Croke writes

[…] I’m always reminded of this when yet another Earth Day approaches (always on April 22). Most people, especially school kids, participating in the annual green fetish don’t know that it only dates to 1970, the first one held on the centenary of Lenin’s birth (April 22, 1870). The Earth Day back-story is that the Lenin anniversary was purely coincidental, at least according to the occasion’s two founders, the late Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisc.) and environmental activist Denis Hayes. Fine, it’s a coincidence.

But if indeed there is even a subtle connection, I wonder how many of the millions worldwide participating in Earth Day festivities actually know who Lenin was? Do the ones who do have an inkling know that he was one of history’s great monsters, a cold-blooded nihilist whose minions and successors were responsible for the deaths of scores of millions, and the sufferings of many more? But Earth Day as a holy-day-of-obligation of the Left (like May Day) has its ironies even if you put aside lethal political expediencies. […]

Green is, after all, the new red.