“ANSWER, Dwighty, Matthew and their ilk “….a certain reluctance to admit that Communism was not only physically lethal and mentally repressive but also a total failure.””
Rubbish. Communism was obviously a massive failure. It’s a fundamentally broken economic system, a totalitarian social and political system and appalling for the people who live under it.
Of course … you probably need to explain what’s happening in china, but life’s never completely simple. 
But now that we’ve agreed that communism was crap, that doesn’t mean that you can just apply the label to things you don’t like and declare them to also be crap. The problem with all ideological systems is that they ignore evidence and reason. Communism is stupid, but there’s still a role for government in efficiently, peacefully and justly managing the affairs of a country. Requiring every kid to get an education, and making sure the resources are allocated for them to do so, isn’t communism. Making sure that there are hospitals and fire departments and police isn’t communism.
In short: Declaring one simplistic and broken model to be bad doesn’t automatically support another simplistic, broken model. To take the current cause of the moment, I’ve seen a rational, efficient public health system work. The US could save money (on an individual and national level) if you just copied what australia does. Your manufacturing industry would be more competitive, your people will be wealthier and healthier, and nobody need fall through the cracks. But it’s up to you. If you want to declare anything like that to be “communism” and keep a broken system that costs twice as much as it should, then that’s fine by me. I’m happy in my “communist” hell hole 
(that said, I’m not in queensland … things aren’t so good there today)
