36 Years After the Berlin Wall： Why Communism Still Threatens the West
Episode Stats
Summary
The siren call of a fantasy world of happiness and equality under an all-controlling, benevolent government that's offering communism is actually starting to take hold on the younger generation, and it's going to end really poorly for the Western world if this sick ideology isn't countered.
Transcript
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So I'm going to talk about communism here, guys. It's been 36 years. Yeah, some of it's
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great enough to remember it. The world witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall on their TV sets.
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The wall was a symbol of the repressive nature of communism, and its fall was the beginning
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of the end of communism in Europe. The Soviet empire crumbled soon afterwards, and while
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Eastern Europe still struggles with some elements of freedom and democracy, it's incontrovertible
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they're much better off now than they had been under communist leadership. But unfortunately,
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as time passes, it's being forgotten just how odious communism was. The siren call of a fantasy
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world of happiness and equality under an all-controlling, benevolent government that's
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offering communism is actually starting to take hold on the younger generation, and it's going to
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end really poorly for the Western world if this sick ideology isn't countered decisively and soon.
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It's a mind rot that festers until fools manage to actually implement communism to prove yet again
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it is an untenable system that offers nothing but corruption, suffering, and death. Without active
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communist states to serve, though, as an example to the West, it becomes easier for people to forget
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the ills of the system. Generation X, of which I'm a part, grew up with the imagery of people risking
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their lives as they climbed the Berlin Wall while being shredded with razor wire and fearing a bullet
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from a Soviet soldier. We watched people desperately building ramshackle rafts and try to reach Florida
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from Cuba, and many died on that trip. The most effective voices against communism were those
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who'd actually lived in it and endured it. They counseled their children about what they suffered
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and what they must never happen again. They offered stories and experiences to help a generation
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visualize what it was like living in a system where the state controlled every aspect of your life
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to the point where you're actually willing to risk your life to escape it. Now those people are senior
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citizens and their grandchildren are being indoctrinated by an education system dominated
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by privileged idealists who speak of the ills of capitalism while earning six-figure incomes and
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living in gated communities. The education system doesn't tell students how communism killed 148
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million people between 1917 and 1987. Instead, it rails against capitalism, which created the highest
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standard of living within the most peaceful and free nations on earth. Polling is now indicating that
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younger North American people are assuming an increasingly negative view of capitalism. They
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really don't know where their bread's buttered. They've been taught that capitalism is responsible
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for all the ills from social inequity to financial inequity to unhappiness. They really need to try a
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little time on a Soviet breadline. The consequences of this shift are dangerous and real. Socialist
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Zoran Mamdani easily won New York City's Democratic mayoral primary on a platform of state-run grocery
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stores in a rental freeze. He may very well become the mayor of one of the largest cities on earth,
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and his policies are going to be a catastrophe. Socialism is the kissing cousin of communism.
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Socialist policies are used as incremental steps towards communism. And as socialism creeps in more
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deeply, authoritarianism always follows. China began reforms to move from pure communism in the
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late 70s. That led to economic growth, but they never shed the authoritarianism. Governments never
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willingly grant new freedoms. Those have to be taken back by citizens. People who value freedom,
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people with talent, people with ambition, all chafe under socialism, and they try to flee it.
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That's why it's only communist countries that actually have to block citizens from
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leaving their nations. We never saw people trying to move into North Korea, and folks
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aren't taking rafts from the United States to make a new life in Venezuela. Communism only works in
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theory, and when those who have experienced it fade away, the theorists dominate again,
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and they're in academia, and they're dominating the discourse. Universal basic income policies.
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That's the latest thing the socialists are pushing. They're using the excuse of AI impacts on
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the economy to pitch making every single citizen dependent upon the state through welfare payments,
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in a UBI scheme. Some claim that economist Milton Frieden supported a UBI system, but they're
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misrepresenting what he was pitching. His vision involved a negative income tax system with a vision
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of a shrinking government, the size and scope of it getting ever smaller. And it's not going to happen.
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This approach is as unrealistic as the contemporary proponents of the system. What it will do is
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create a massive class of parasites, while the productive will be squeezed harder to sustain them
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until the system collapses. Survivors of communism didn't just teach us about the economic failures
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of communism. They related the life of fear, living within an authoritarian society, the secret police,
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the lack of personal freedoms. But look at it now. Many of today's youth didn't think twice when
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complying to COVID reactions. The state learned how easily compliant citizens have become, and
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authoritarians now even ban citizens from not walking in the woods. Forty years ago, moves like that
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would have led to a mass protest from the young, who learned at the feet of their parents what the dangers
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of authoritarianism are. Now they just shrug and stay confined to their quarters, play video games
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without question as ordered by the state. Young ambitious people who value freedoms are supposed
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to be our bulwark against creeping authoritarianism. Now they're docile and compliant. We should be
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reaching out to the survivors of communism to speak one more time. Get out there, guys. There should
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be a public education push to remind every generation that no matter how appealing communism might appear
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to the vacuous at a glance. It has a hundred percent failure rate. It's a part of history that we can't
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afford to repeat. All right. That's where I wanted to go, guys. Communism is like herpes. It's never
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gone. At best, it goes into remission for a little while.