Western Standard - 36 Years After the Berlin Wall： Why Communism Still Threatens the West

00:00:00.000 So I'm going to talk about communism here, guys. It's been 36 years. Yeah, some of it's

00:00:05.360 great enough to remember it. The world witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall on their TV sets.

00:00:09.620 The wall was a symbol of the repressive nature of communism, and its fall was the beginning

00:00:14.460 of the end of communism in Europe. The Soviet empire crumbled soon afterwards, and while

00:00:19.460 Eastern Europe still struggles with some elements of freedom and democracy, it's incontrovertible 0.98

00:00:23.740 they're much better off now than they had been under communist leadership. But unfortunately,

00:00:28.200 as time passes, it's being forgotten just how odious communism was. The siren call of a fantasy

00:00:35.020 world of happiness and equality under an all-controlling, benevolent government that's

00:00:38.840 offering communism is actually starting to take hold on the younger generation, and it's going to

00:00:43.200 end really poorly for the Western world if this sick ideology isn't countered decisively and soon. 0.97

00:00:48.720 It's a mind rot that festers until fools manage to actually implement communism to prove yet again 0.99

00:00:53.620 it is an untenable system that offers nothing but corruption, suffering, and death. Without active 0.99

00:00:58.740 communist states to serve, though, as an example to the West, it becomes easier for people to forget

00:01:02.860 the ills of the system. Generation X, of which I'm a part, grew up with the imagery of people risking

00:01:08.980 their lives as they climbed the Berlin Wall while being shredded with razor wire and fearing a bullet

00:01:13.360 from a Soviet soldier. We watched people desperately building ramshackle rafts and try to reach Florida

00:01:19.340 from Cuba, and many died on that trip. The most effective voices against communism were those

00:01:24.740 who'd actually lived in it and endured it. They counseled their children about what they suffered

00:01:29.440 and what they must never happen again. They offered stories and experiences to help a generation

00:01:33.840 visualize what it was like living in a system where the state controlled every aspect of your life

00:01:38.640 to the point where you're actually willing to risk your life to escape it. Now those people are senior

00:01:42.920 citizens and their grandchildren are being indoctrinated by an education system dominated

00:01:47.260 by privileged idealists who speak of the ills of capitalism while earning six-figure incomes and

00:01:52.180 living in gated communities. The education system doesn't tell students how communism killed 148

00:01:57.560 million people between 1917 and 1987. Instead, it rails against capitalism, which created the highest

00:02:03.240 standard of living within the most peaceful and free nations on earth. Polling is now indicating that

00:02:08.200 younger North American people are assuming an increasingly negative view of capitalism. They

00:02:12.340 really don't know where their bread's buttered. They've been taught that capitalism is responsible

00:02:15.660 for all the ills from social inequity to financial inequity to unhappiness. They really need to try a

00:02:20.440 little time on a Soviet breadline. The consequences of this shift are dangerous and real. Socialist 0.93

00:02:26.480 Zoran Mamdani easily won New York City's Democratic mayoral primary on a platform of state-run grocery

00:02:33.260 stores in a rental freeze. He may very well become the mayor of one of the largest cities on earth,

00:02:37.880 and his policies are going to be a catastrophe. Socialism is the kissing cousin of communism.

00:02:42.880 Socialist policies are used as incremental steps towards communism. And as socialism creeps in more

00:02:48.340 deeply, authoritarianism always follows. China began reforms to move from pure communism in the

00:02:53.400 late 70s. That led to economic growth, but they never shed the authoritarianism. Governments never

00:02:58.160 willingly grant new freedoms. Those have to be taken back by citizens. People who value freedom,

00:03:03.280 people with talent, people with ambition, all chafe under socialism, and they try to flee it.

00:03:07.180 That's why it's only communist countries that actually have to block citizens from

00:03:10.720 leaving their nations. We never saw people trying to move into North Korea, and folks

00:03:14.440 aren't taking rafts from the United States to make a new life in Venezuela. Communism only works in

00:03:19.160 theory, and when those who have experienced it fade away, the theorists dominate again,

00:03:24.620 and they're in academia, and they're dominating the discourse. Universal basic income policies.

00:03:29.400 That's the latest thing the socialists are pushing. They're using the excuse of AI impacts on

00:03:33.240 the economy to pitch making every single citizen dependent upon the state through welfare payments,

00:03:37.460 in a UBI scheme. Some claim that economist Milton Frieden supported a UBI system, but they're

00:03:43.060 misrepresenting what he was pitching. His vision involved a negative income tax system with a vision

00:03:47.620 of a shrinking government, the size and scope of it getting ever smaller. And it's not going to happen.

00:03:52.500 This approach is as unrealistic as the contemporary proponents of the system. What it will do is

00:03:56.800 create a massive class of parasites, while the productive will be squeezed harder to sustain them 0.86

00:04:01.140 until the system collapses. Survivors of communism didn't just teach us about the economic failures 0.83

00:04:06.500 of communism. They related the life of fear, living within an authoritarian society, the secret police,

00:04:11.500 the lack of personal freedoms. But look at it now. Many of today's youth didn't think twice when

00:04:15.980 complying to COVID reactions. The state learned how easily compliant citizens have become, and

00:04:20.160 authoritarians now even ban citizens from not walking in the woods. Forty years ago, moves like that

00:04:24.820 would have led to a mass protest from the young, who learned at the feet of their parents what the dangers

00:04:28.580 of authoritarianism are. Now they just shrug and stay confined to their quarters, play video games

00:04:33.120 without question as ordered by the state. Young ambitious people who value freedoms are supposed

00:04:38.560 to be our bulwark against creeping authoritarianism. Now they're docile and compliant. We should be

00:04:44.140 reaching out to the survivors of communism to speak one more time. Get out there, guys. There should

00:04:48.980 be a public education push to remind every generation that no matter how appealing communism might appear

00:04:53.560 to the vacuous at a glance. It has a hundred percent failure rate. It's a part of history that we can't

00:04:59.300 afford to repeat. All right. That's where I wanted to go, guys. Communism is like herpes. It's never

00:05:06.080 gone. At best, it goes into remission for a little while.

Western Standard - August 16, 2025

36 Years After the Berlin Wall： Why Communism Still Threatens the West

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