"MILLENNIALS ARE CLUELESS ABOUT COMMUNISM. HERE'S WHY THAT'S A PROBLEM." - Jarrett Stepman / November 03, 2017 / http://dailysignal.com/2017/11/03/millennials-clueless-communism-heres-thats-problem/ [AS I SEE IT: As the world notes 100 years this month since the founding of the Soviet Union, I find articles and news programs like this alarming. For instance, knowing how the leaders of the country continue to persecute believers, I was stunned to catch the concluding part of a PBS program that applauded the greatness of Vietnam today. When you consider how there has never been a communist country that has not suppressed its people and how NONE of the people living under communism have enjoyed economic prosperity but only poverty (you only have to look at North Korea and Cuba to know this), it's insane that young people today would actually want that kind of government. You just have to point them to China to see how they have improved the life of their people (while still suppressing them) by introducing "evil" capitalist economic changes to see how even communist leaders are recognizing the failure of their system. Of course, the Soviet Union learned it the hard way when it collapsed from within because it spent more money on it's weaponry than on it's people. It's crazy that college students today actually go into debt to learn false explanations about communism from their teachers. Then again, what are youth today learning as early as in high school? - Stan]
The collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union ended the Cold War, but it didn’t end the ongoing battle of ideas between liberty and collectivism. A recently released survey by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation revealed some disturbing facts about what millennials think of communism and socialism. Some of the results are a little disturbing and could have big implications for the future of our country.
For instance, the poll found that about half of millennials said they would rather live under socialism or communism than capitalism.
The poll also found that nearly 1 in 5 millennials think Joseph Stalin was a “hero.”
“Millennials now make up the largest generation in America, and we’re seeing some deeply worrisome trends,” said Marion Smith, executive director for the Victims of Communism, according to MarketWatch. “Millennials are increasingly turning away from capitalism and toward socialism and even communism as a viable alternative.”
The findings of this study should be a wake-up call to those who think that communism is no longer a threat to the United States and the West. Young people, who had little personal experience with the half-century battle between Soviet tyranny and American freedom. It is a sad indictment on a generation that grew up with more prosperity than any in human history would turn on the system that brought them there. Alas, socialism appears to be the opiate of prosperous utopians.
Perhaps in the decades of unchallenged international supremacy, Americans let their guards down to real threats to our way of life. We were lulled into a false sense of security about our future and have now fallen into the trap of bringing back dangerous doctrines that we have had the good fortune to escape.
Yet, apologies and even wistful nostalgia for the high tide of communist revolution are being peddled in the pages of mainstream liberal outlets like The New York Times. [note link below]
The Times has shockingly featured a section called “Red Century,” which is all about the 100-year anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and its aftermath. While the section has editorials about the evils of communism, it also features numerous pieces that actually celebrate or make excuses for it. It has run a puff piece on Vladimir Lenin being an environmentalist, praised the sex life of women behind the Iron Curtain, and published flattering profiles of Communist Party organizers, among numerous other absurdities.
While it’s certainly reasonable to have a discussion of communism’s legacy, it’s jarring to see so many favorable columns devoted to the primary geopolitical existential threat to the United States in the 20th century. As John O’Sullivan noted in National Review, the whole tenor of the section treats communism like “a noble experiment conducted in less than ideal conditions.” One has to ask: Would the Times have had a similar section with glowing pieces about fascism at 100 years? Of course not, and for good reason.
But this is part of a larger cultural normalization of a destructive creed that lay dormant but was never entirely extinguished in the last few decades. And now its back in vogue.
It’s no wonder that so many millennials have a fanciful view of the ideology that took more lives than any other creed in human history, that destroyed civilizations, and nearly plunged the world into darkness.
This is a dire warning that we need to do a better job of educating young Americans about history and the blessings of liberty that have imperfectly, but ultimately, flourished in this country. Perhaps we need to see school choice and the revitalization of our education system as a higher priority. As historian Sean McMeekin wrote in his book, “The Russian Revolution,” after communism’s “century of well-catalogued disasters … no one should have the excuse of ignorance.”
“Today’s Western socialists, dreaming of a world where private property and inequality are outlawed, where rational economic development is planned by far-seeing intellectuals, should be careful what they wish for,” McMeekin wrote. “They may just get it.”
[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]
Jarrett Stepman is an editor for The Daily Signal.
"The New York Times Continues Its Tradition of Whitewashing Communism" - Jarrett Stepman / August 21, 2017; http://dailysignal.com/2017/08/21/new-york-times-continues-tradition-whitewashing-communism/
"As Communism Turns 100, a Brief Look at the Death and Destruction It Has Wrought" -
Ed Feulner / November 07, 2017 / http://dailysignal.com/2017/11/07/communism-turns-100-brief-look-death-destruction-wrought/
"Trump White House Recognizes 100 Years of Victims of Communism" - Fred Lucas / @FredLucasWH / November 07, 2017; http://dailysignal.com/2017/11/07/trump-white-house-recognizes-100-years-victims-communism
"Q/A: Daniel Hannan on the Biggest Brexit Myths and Communism’s 100 Years of Cruelty" - Rob Bluey / November 08, 2017 / http://dailysignal.com/2017/11/08/qa-daniel-hannan-on-the-biggest-myths-of-brexit-and-communisms-100-years-of-cruelty/
[The following is taken from an interview with Daniel Hannan, conservative member of the European Parliament.]
Bluey: Let’s talk about something that’s the opposite of freedom. This year marks the 100th anniversary of communism. Could you share your reflections on communism?
Hannan: I was 18 when the Berlin Wall came down, and I actually was able to spend my gap year traveling around much of Eastern Europe and meeting people in this amazing process of transformation the first half of 1990 in most of those countries, what we still called Eastern Europe in those days. I was there when the free elections had been scheduled but not yet held, so the communists were still in power and the change was on its way. That experience is partly why I always saw the power of the state, because I can remember the motive force of those crowds being the patriotic one. They were fed up with the Soviet occupation.
The Atlantic slave trade killed maybe 10 million people. The Nazis killed maybe 17 million. Communists killed 100 million people.
Communism, in terms of crude numbers, must be reckoned the most lethal ideology ever devised by human intelligence. The Atlantic slave trade killed maybe 10 million people. The Nazis killed maybe 17 million. Communists killed 100 million people. Some of them were shot into pits, some of them were arrested at night and worked to death in Gulag, some of them were starved as deliberate policy to force collectivization. You don’t get more murderous than that. Why is it acceptable to wear a Che Guevara T-shirt now? Why isn’t that in the same moral category as wearing an Adolf Hitler T-shirt or an Osama bin Laden T-shirt?
The argument that is made is, “Well, we mustn’t confuse socialism with the authoritarian regimes that happened to call themselves socialists.” To see why that is such an absurd argument, try substituting the word fascist. Imagine somebody saying, “Well, we mustn’t make the mistake of judging fascism by the autocratic regimes in the 1930s that called themselves fascists.” We would all see that that was an absurd and self-serving argument. Every communist regime in the world—Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Cuba, all the way down—every single one has relied on Gulags, torture chambers, secret police, firing squads. You don’t find a single exception. Maybe the fact that every time the experiment is tried, it ends the same way is telling us something about the nature of what it is we’re dealing with.
[bold, italics, and colored emphasis mine]
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