Dennis Prager’s logic is right on the money. He points out that Communists were just as ruthless and horrible in their years of dictatorship as the Nazis were – perhaps even worse. The Communists literally killed tens of millions of people in the 20th century – some say even more than 100 million people. So why don’t Communists have a horrible reputation like Nazis? IS it because they also did battle against the Nazis. Perhaps. But that is only part of the story.
Dennis Prager explains that Communism has the tacit non-criticism of much of the left that is dominant in Western academia today. The most common form of discussion on Communism by intellectuals today is one that discusses Soviet Communism as the perversion of “true” Communism. Meaning if only the Communists would have done it right, then maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad. That is a frighteningly wrong attitude. Prager is so right on the nose with all of his reasons.
His last reason is the most interesting. Since the present left’s leadership largely grew out of the protest movement against Vietnam, there is a lot of confusion about the battle against Communism. But, in truth, Vietnamese Communism was indeed pure evil that did need to get checked somehow. Korean Communism was also pure evil that needed to get checked. Otherwise the tentacles of Communism would very probably have spread even more and threatened the entire world. So, even if how the wars of Korea and Vietnam should have been fought is a subject of legitimate dispute, the evil side of Communism should not be a matter of dispute. Wherever Communism spread, evil spread. Reagan was right when he labeled the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire.”
The term “Communist” should not make us think of McCarthyism. It should make us think of evil. We must keep any traces of communism out of our society in order to preserve the way of life of freedom and non-collectivist attitudes. Let the masses determine their fate, not a few centralized non-elected leaders who collectivize massive amounts of power. Prager is right – as usual.