Retired in Rome Journal: In Eastern Europe, discussion about communism is only a bunk bed away.
I will say I was once a closet Marxist. My University of Oregon’s entire sociology department was Marxist. I took Sociology of Education, Sociology of Sport, Sociology of Sport. I found myself walking around campus wearing a black trench coat and a Cossack hat. My education leaned heavily toward a need for more even distribution. The core of evil in society is the discrepancy of wealth, of the bourgeoisie taking advantage of the proletariat. Karl Marx, whose childhood home in Trier, West Germany, I toured in 1978, was a genius. Everyone pulls for the state and the state pulls for everyone. The working class gets equal pay and the state takes care of the rest: housing, food, education.
Then I graduated. I went behind the Iron Curtain and realized something: My sociology professors had never been east of Hartford, Conn.
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