Communism/Socialism Aren't Dirty Words

My mother and grandmother never missed a minute of the televised 1950s McCarthy Hearings. They avidly read every word about it in our morning and afternoon newspapers. They talked about the danger of communists in our midst. Their friends were also scared.

As kids we hid under desks for regular bomb tests when the siren blew.

The TV Show I was a Communist for the FBI  and a companion radio program reinforced the fear of communism.

It took years for people to realize even after Lawyer Joseph Welch said, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" cCarthy was red baiting.

There was also the fear of creeping socialism which I discovered as a cub reporter covering Reading's Town Meeting. What was the creeping Socialism? Fluoride in the town water. 

It's happening again. Only this time the president is using the threat of communism is the scare tactic. The president said, “There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success.

“Communism is the enemy of free people everywhere, everywhere in the world, never works, it’s the enemy of the Constitution, above all, it’s the enemy of July 4, 1776 – it is the enemy indeed.

"Americans will never let anyone take our freedom away . . . And all these talks from the communists, they haven’t got a chance. We don’t want communists in our country. Never worked, and it never will work. . .Right now, it’s happening in New York and California, but you’ll live in squalor . . .There will be no food, there will be no housing, there will be no military, and there will be no law and order. There will be no nothing. You’ll be a Third World country in every way, and everyone will suffer or die. That’s what happens. Crowds of evangelicals and Catholics who are part of the nonprofit Faith and Freedom Coalition which advocates for traditional family values and religious liberty. "These ruthless communists will attack all religions, but in particular Christianity. They always do."

Many countries have communist parties some in almost total control like China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea.

When I was first in France I was shocked to see election posters saying "I'm a communist and I vote"  Je suis communiste et je vote. At work in Switzerland, a very un-communist country, one of my staff was communist as was all her family. I see offices for the communist party sometimes as I drive through towns in France. 

There's nothing like a scare technique to promote a political party. We've had: Hordes of insane immigrants swarming the border to take jobs. Soon the immigrants will take over the whites. Now its the communists that are the danger.

Freedom House, Founded in 1941 in Washington, D.C. to promote Freedom and pro-democracy puts out a list each year on the ranking of Freedom Countries.

Notice the U.S. is on the bottom of the list. Notice at the top of the list are the countries the current American government considers socialist. 

 

 

 

 America is not in danger of being taken over by communists, democrats, democratic socialists. They are in danger of being destroyed by the current administration starting with their scare tactics.