Suppose you learned that one in three young people is convinced the earth is flat. And that many believe the Moon landing was faked in a NASA studio. Imagine you read that a third of young folks will tell you the Holocaust never happened. Would this news disturb you? If it did, would you think […]
Suppose you learned that one in three young people is convinced the earth is flat. And that many believe the Moon landing was faked in a NASA studio. Imagine you read that a third of young folks will tell you the Holocaust never happened.
Would this news disturb you? If it did, would you think our education system maybe has a few holes? After all, these people are not long out of school. And a third of them amounts to many millions. You would not think loony cultists could capture that many minds.
Would you perhaps place some blame on social media? Knowing that they are the primary sources of news and information for millennials.
Perhaps you would blame time. The years that have passed. You know, young people know so little about World War II and the slaughter of Jews. And they were not around to follow the astronauts and their voyage on television.
A recent survey found that more than one-third (36 percent) of American millennials and those in Gen Z have “favorable” feelings about communism. And, almost double that number said they would vote for a socialist (according to a YouGov poll conducted for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation).
For sure, there are many culprits who contributed to these beliefs. Educators, for instance. Many young people had teachers who failed to teach the evils of communism. Many had professors who praised communism and socialism. The profs downplayed the bad publicity communism earned. They claimed communism and socialism are good, but bad guys hijacked it in some countries and gave it a bad name.
We had such idiots even from the 1930s to the 1950s. Communism was alive and butchering then. Yet many profs, journalists, and Hollywood types of those years were gulled by the propaganda. They knelt at the communist altar. Claimed the USSR was nirvana.
Hell, we have profs today who sing communism’s merits.
Anyone over age 50 who praises communism belongs in a padded cell.
Free and informed people ought to agree upon a few things: Eggs don’t bounce. No bones in tripe. You can’t straighten bananas. And communism has been abominable.
The USSR adopted communism. It rammed it down the throats of its own people. And later down the throats of millions of semi-slaves. In countries it took over after World War II. It sponsored and encouraged the spread of this disease to more countries.
Under its beloved communism, the USSR butchered tens of millions of people. It imprisoned them within its borders. It flung countless folks into unspeakable gulags. The nation tortured them for speaking out. It deliberately starved them to force the state ownership of farming. It ruled by poisonous brutality.
China took up communism under Mao. Under that system it doubled up on the atrocities of the USSR. Mao’s regime tortured, savaged and murdered 50-60 million people. Today, Chinese communists imprison over a million Muslims in concentration camps.
Cubans have exterminated thousands for their resistance to communism. Two million Cubans have fled that miserable failure of a country.
Oh, if you visit you are guided to parts of Cuba that look rundown but okay. But Cuba, by law, squelches freedoms you take for granted. It virtually imprisons its people. It tortures anyone who steps out of line.
Communism is a despicable system. It leads to mass killings, to starvation, to brutalities. It fosters ghastly sadism.
And yet more than one-third of our young people think favorably of it? What does this say about our education system, then? Do millennials also love Bubonic Plague?
If this country can turn out such ignorance, we ought to be turning our education system upside down. Its wheels have fallen off.
If we cannot educate our young people on the atrocities of communism we might as well bring back witch burning, worshiping of goat dung, and the like.
From Tom…as in Morgan.
Tom Morgan writes about political, financial, and other subjects from his home in upstate New York. You can write to Tom at tomasinmorgan@yahoo.com, read more of his writing at tomasinmorgan.com, or find him on Facebook.