[I post today’s ‘Presidential Message on the National Day for the Victims of Communism’ in memory of the 100-200 million people, including members of my family, killed by communists and communism over the past century. This is the system to which today’s Left is repaving the road of return. gjr]
On the National Day for the Victims of Communism, we honor the memory of the more than 100 million people who have been killed and persecuted by communist totalitarian regimes. We also reaffirm our steadfast support for those who strive for peace, prosperity, and freedom around the world.
Since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, we have witnessed the effects of the tyrannical communist ideology—anguish, repression, and death. Communism subordinates inherent human rights to the purported well-being of all, resulting in the extermination of religious freedom, private property, free speech, and, far too often, life. These horrors have included Ukrainians deliberately starved in the Holodomor, Russians purged in the Great Terror, Cambodians murdered in the killing fields, and Berliners shot as they tried to escape to freedom. The victims of these and many other atrocities bear silent testimony to the undeniable fact that communism, and the pursuit of it, will forever be destructive to the human spirit and to the prosperity of mankind.
Today, we remember all who have been denied the great blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness under oppressive communist regimes. Together, we mourn the unbearable losses so many have endured under communism, and we renew our pledge to continue advancing the cause of freedom and opportunity for all.
[9nov18 update] From one of our more prominent leftwing commenters – “almost 30 years ago one wall came down in Berlin and today another one is going up here.” (see comment stream below)
That is the reason our two polarized sides can no longer profitably talk to each other. From what I and others of the conservetarian bent see, there is nothing that we can say to the now radicalized Left which today 1) has an enormous intellectual deficit regarding shared history, and 2) little or no ability to incorporate elemental reasoning into their conversations.
These pages are witness to repeated assertions by the progressives that securing our border with a wall is exactly the same as how the communist dictators secured their borders with walls. No matter how many times here, and in other publications and broadcasts, people have patiently sought to explain to the terminally deficient that the two kinds of walls serve diametrically opposite functions – communism’s walls are built to keep their citizens IN, i.e. from escaping tyranny so as to prevent emigration; the border walls of liberal democracies are meant to keep illegal aliens OUT, and are built to minimize illegal entry so as to control immigration. This enormous distinction has always been too difficult for a liberal mind to comprehend – for them a wall is a wall, and even more so if they can glibly ignore that significant nuance to promote their anti-capitalistic message to those equally dense.
From such simple distinctions, things go down when the conversation turns to more complex subjects such as the forms of governance, their dynamics and provenance. For example, when now and again such leftwing worthies dip into their rich trove of historical knowledge and attempt to, say, deny the socialist underpinnings of the Nazis. Here they go one up on the walls question, and claim that the American right, which wants to maximize individual liberties and reduce the size of government, is equivalent to Germany’s Nationalist Socialists who did everything to minimize individual liberties and maximized the size of their government. Simply mind boggling. And they want us to think like they do!!


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