Before Americans casually embrace socialism or communism as the answer to America’s problems, we should stop and ask a simple question: What has happened to the people who have actually lived under communist governments?
Karl Marx died in 1883, long before the communist regimes of the 20th century. But his theories became the ideological foundation for revolutionary movements that eventually produced one-party communist governments around the world.
The exact number of people who died under those governments is debated by historians. Depending on what is counted — executions, political purges, forced labor, deportations, civil conflicts, and government-caused or government-aggravated famines — estimates range from many tens of millions to approximately 100 million. The exact total is disputed, but the enormous scale of the human tragedy is not.
Under Joseph Stalin, millions died through executions, political terror, forced collectivization, deportations, forced labor and famine. The Soviet famine of 1932-1933 alone killed millions.
Under Mao Zedong, China’s Great Leap Forward produced one of the worst famines in human history. Scholarly estimates vary widely, but approximately 36 million famine deaths is one widely cited estimate. Millions more died during Mao’s political campaigns and the Cultural Revolution.
Under Pol Pot, Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge attempted to create a radical communist society. Approximately 1.7 to 3 million people died between 1975 and 1979.
North Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, Cuba and other communist governments produced additional victims through political repression, executions, prison camps, forced labor and other policies.
Add these regimes together and the historical record is unmistakable: communist governments were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people.
But there is another kind of destruction that is much harder to count: the destruction of independent thought.
America has not experienced the mass killing that occurred under Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot. Thank God. So when I talk about the “killing of minds,” I am not saying that an American child taught socialist or communist ideas has suffered the same fate as someone executed by a communist government.
I am talking about something different: What happens when young people are taught to stop questioning, stop thinking independently and accept political ideology as unquestionable truth.
A free society cannot survive without independent thinkers.
Our young people should learn about America’s failures — slavery, segregation, poverty, discrimination and every other dark chapter of our history. But they should also learn about the Constitution, individual liberty, private property, free enterprise, freedom of speech, the rule of law and the responsibilities that come with freedom.
They should also learn the history of communism — not from political slogans, but from the historical record.
Because ideas have consequences.
Marx began with an idea. Lenin turned revolutionary Marxism into a government. Stalin turned that government into a system of terror. Mao imposed his own version of communist revolution upon hundreds of millions of people. Pol Pot attempted to remake an entire society by force.
The sequence matters: Ideas become movements. Movements become political power. Political power can become government control. And when government controls everything, there may be nobody left to stop it.
That is why the battle for the minds of America’s young people matters. California provides a warning worth discussing.
California is not a communist state. It is a constitutional democracy with elections, competing parties and legal opposition. But when one political party holds overwhelming control of the Legislature and most statewide offices, the danger of one-party thinking becomes a legitimate subject for debate.
The question is not whether California is secretly communist. The question is this: What happens to a democracy when one political philosophy becomes so dominant that young people begin to believe there is only one acceptable political answer?
That is where the “killing of minds” becomes important.
A bullet can kill a person instantly. An ideology can take years to change a person’s understanding of freedom, responsibility and the proper limits of government. We must teach our children history — all of it.
Not to indoctrinate them in one political direction, but to give them enough knowledge to recognize propaganda, question authority and make their own decisions.
The greatest defense of liberty is not a government program. It is a citizen who understands liberty. A nation does not necessarily lose its freedom when soldiers take over the streets. Sometimes freedom begins disappearing when a generation no longer understands what freedom means — or why it is worth defending.
The bodies killed by communist regimes are a historical fact. The battle over the minds of America’s next generation is the warning we should not ignore.