We live in a day and age when saying one wrong thing, a bad tweet, an ill-conceived social media post, the wrong word, someone inferring something you didn’t imply, can get you cancelled. The legions of social media police will hunt you down, destroy your name, ruin your reputation, and try to take your livelihood away because you happened to express a non-approved speech. Nobody died. No bones were broken. And no apology will be accepted. You will be banned on social media. Safe spaces must be maintained at all costs because protecting our sensibilities is more important than protecting people’s bodies and lives.
Saying the right thing has become more important than doing the right thing. The free exchange of thoughts and ideas must always remain “safe”, so they must always be pre-approved. We cannot challenge each other’s ideas and beliefs. We cannot push each other to think about things a different way, look at different perspectives, or see some else’s point of view. No. We must stay in line, parroting the party line of accepted speech. We must know that every shot we take will go in before we take it because if we shoot and miss, we will be cancelled. We are hell-bent on removing any and every evil, destructive ideology, philosophy and thought from our society.
Therefore, the question remains, why hasn’t Communism been cancelled already? Why aren’t proponent of Socialism, Communism’s little brother, banned on Twitter and Facebook? The record of history is crystal clear when it comes to Communism and Socialism. These are the most evil ideologies in human history. There has never been an ideology that has left a path of death and destruction in its wake as Communism. But yet not only will you not get cancelled on social media for promoting Marxism, Communism or Socialism, you will be praised and elevated.
The misery that these ideologies inflicted on the world in the 20th century is unprecedented. Communist governments killed over 100 million of their own innocent citizens, mainly for exercising basic human rights that we here in America use so frequently that we take for granted. Stalin killed 40 million citizens. Mao killed 30 million. Pol Pot, Castro, East Germany, North Korea, Vietnam, all killed millions of their own citizens, not to mention Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania where hundreds of thousands were murdered by their Communist leaders. And let’s not forget Nazi Germany where Hitler said, “National Socialism and Marxism are the same thing.” So, according to its founder, Nazism is Marxism. These are not rogue regimes. Every Communist country turns into totalitarian nightmares. They are bastions of injustice. Their human rights records are abysmal. And the dead bodies are stacked miles high.
Communism is still inflicting misery in countries like China, Cuba and Argentina to name a few. But why isn’t there more outrage against Communism. Go over to China and ask the hundreds of millions of people slaving 15 hours a day in sweatshops for dollars a day, if they are living in a Communist paradise. It’s interesting how the people in the Unites States who are embracing Communism, who are demanding a $15 or $20 minimum wage in this country do not say a word about the slave-like working conditions and human rights violations rampant in Communist China which produces many of the goods we use every day.
There are pregnant women climbing into makeshift rafts to travel through shark infested waters to make the trip from Cuba to Miami Beach so their baby can breathe the air of freedom and opportunity of America. Does anyone ever do the reverse trip? Are there people risking their lives to leave Miami so they can live in Communist Cuba? Never. It has never happened. Capitalist countries have to build walls to keep people out. Communist countries have to build walls to keep people in.
Why doesn’t supporting an ideology that was responsible for this much death, destruction, and oppression get you cancelled? 30 million Democratic voters cast votes for Socialist candidate Bernie Sanders in the last two primary elections. Bernie Sanders will say his Socialism is different. It’s called “Democratic Socialism”. That is the biggest ruse of Communism, they masquerade their evil ideology behind pleasant sounding names; German Democratic Republic, Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, People's Republic of China, National Socialist German Workers' Party. All these were evil regimes. All murdered millions of their own people.
All the Socialists claim that their version is different, that their version of Socialism will work, only if you turn all power over to them. They are the angels. They are the benevolent dictators that will save the world, as if they are not human, that they are not corruptible, that they cannot be seduced by power. But they always are. As British historian Lord Acton said, “power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Communism requires absolute power, and that power always and inevitably corrupts. And their countries all turn out the same; death, destruction, starvation, poverty. Communism and Socialism always makes every country that institutes it poorer while free market capitalism always makes its country richer.
The need to limit power of those empowered is the reason why the founders of the United States set up the system they did. The three Co-equal branches, checks and balances, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, the right to assemble, the right to bear arms, all designed to keep power from corrupting the empowered.
But yet politicians like Bernie Sanders and AOC proudly display their support for the most evil and murderous political ideology ever implemented, and no one even thinks twice about canceling them. AOC’s Green New Deal reads like the Communist Manifesto with total government controls and redistribution of wealth schemes. Bernie Sanders and AOC are not the next Stalin or Moa, but they are advocating for a political ideology that always ends up in totalitarian murderous regime. Stalin was not part of the Bolshevik revolution that seized power from the Czars, but decades later when he was able to wrest the control of that consolidated power, he used it to murder any and all dissenting voices, and kill millions of peasants.
I am for total freedom of speech. I decry the cancel culture which is strangling legitimate political discourse. But if we are not doing away with the cancel culture, if we are cancelling evil and hateful speech, then Communism should be number one on the list of speech that gets you cancelled. It is an ideology which is the epitome of evil and hate.
But no matter how evil and destructive the Communist system has proven itself to be through history, Communism will never be cancelled. It’s a feel-good ideology that makes the people who advocate for it feel better about themselves, even though it makes those in its path worse off. But that is what politics in our country has become, a self-indulgent past time, used not to make the world a better place, but to make political advocates feel better about themselves.
In the end, Communism can never deliver what it promises, because it requires a totalitarian regime which always destroys what it promises to deliver. And the origins of totalitarianism almost always stem directly from the limiting of speech which we are witnessing in the cancel culture of modern-day America.
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