MORGAN: The horrors of communism are being forgotten

It’s been 36 years since the world watched the fall of the Berlin Wall on their television sets. The wall was a symbol of the repressive nature of communism and its fall was the beginning of the end of communism in Europe. The Soviet empire crumbled soon afterward, and while Eastern Europe still struggles with some elements of freedom and democracy, it is incontrovertible that they are much better off than they had been under communist regimes.Unfortunately, as time passes it's being forgotten just how odious communism was. The siren call of a fantasy world of happiness and equality under an all-controlling benevolent government offering communism is beginning to take hold on the younger generation and it will end poorly for the Western world if this sick ideology isn’t countered decisively and soon. It's a mind-rot that festers until fools manage to implement communism to prove yet again, that it’s an untenable system that offers nothing but corruption, suffering, and death.Without active, communist states to serve as an example to the West, it becomes easier for people to forget the ills of the system. Generation X grew up with the imagery of people risking their lives as they climbed the Berlin wall while being shredded by razor wire and fearing a bullet from a Soviet soldier. We witnessed people desperately building ramshackle rafts to try to reach Florida from Cuba and many died in the trip.The most effective voices against communism were those who had directly endured it. They counseled their children about what they suffered and what must never happen again. They offered stories and experiences to help a generation visualize what it was like living in a system where the state controlled every aspect of their lives to the point where they were willing to risk their lives to escape it. Now these people are senior citizens and their grandchildren are being indoctrinated by an education system dominated by privileged idealists who speak of the ills of capitalism while earning six-figure incomes and living in gated communities. The education system doesn’t tell students how communism killed 148 million people between 1917 and 1987. Instead, it rails against capitalism which created the highest standard of living within the most peaceful and free nations on earth.Polling indicates that younger North American people are assuming an increasingly negative view of capitalism. They have been taught that capitalism is responsible for all ills, from social inequity to financial inequity to unhappiness. The consequences of this shift are dangerous and real. Socialist Zohran Mamdani easily won New York City's Democratic mayoral primary on a platform of state-run grocery stores and a rent freeze. He may very well become mayor and his policies will be a catastrophe.Socialism is the kissing cousin of communism. Socialist policies are used as incremental steps toward communism. As socialism creeps in more deeply, authoritarianism follows. China initiated reforms in the late 1970s to transition from pure communism. That led to economic growth, but they still never shed the authoritarianism. Governments never willingly grant new freedoms. Those must be retaken by citizens.People who value freedom, people with talent, and people with ambition all chafe under socialism, thus try to flee it. That’s why its only communist countries that block citizens from leaving their nations. We never see people trying to move into North Korea, and folks aren’t taking rafts from the United States to Venezuela. Communism only works in theory and when those who have experienced it fade away, theorists in academia will dominate the discourse.Universal basic income (UBI) schemes are the latest policies socialists are pushing. They are using the excuse of AI impacts on the economy to pitch making every citizen dependent upon the state through welfare payments in a UBI scheme. Some claim that economist Milton Friedman supported a UBI system but they misrepresent what he was pitching. Friedman’s vision involved a negative income tax system with the vision of shrinking the size and scope of government. His approach to UBI is as unrealistic as the contemporary proponents of the system. What it would do is create massive class of parasites while the productive will be squeezed harder to sustain them until the system collapses.Survivors of communism didn’t just teach us all about the economic failures of communism. They related the life of fear living within an authoritarian society. The secret police and the lack of personal freedoms.Many of today’s youth didn’t think twice when complying to COVID restrictions. The state learned how easily compliant citizens have become and authoritarians have even banned citizens from walking in the woods. Forty years ago, such moves would have led to mass protests from the young who learned at the feet of their parents what the dangers of authoritarianism are. Now, they shrug and stay confined to quarters without question as ordered by the state. Young, ambitious people who value freedoms are supposed to be our bulwark against creeping tyrany, and now they are docile and compliant.We must reach out and get the survivors of communism to speak out one more time. There should be a public education push to remind every generation that no matter how appealing communism may appear at a glance, it has a 100% failure rate. It’s a piece of history the world can't afford to repeat.

MORGAN: The horrors of communism are being forgotten

Related Stories