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| Khrushchev Photo from WikiTimes |
By Donna Ziccardi
At the age of three, I noticed my father
had a finger missing. I asked him where
his finger was and he explained he lost it fighting in “The War”. Being a curious child, I asked him why he
fought in a war and he explained so I could live in a “free country”. As I grew a little older, I realized he was a
very Patriotic Man and he taught me many things about politics, the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He
always reminded me how lucky I was to be born in a country where I could grow
up to be anything I wanted to be, express my ideas and beliefs and not have to
worry about government oppression. He
really loved his country.
As years went by, we would watch the evening news together and I learned more from his comments and interpretation than I did from school. It was the years of the Cold War and I was learning how fragile our democracy really was. Then in 1960, Nikita Khrushchev addressed the United Nations and delivered a speech I will never forget...“Your children’s children will live under Communism. You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept Communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of SOCIALISM until you will finally wake up and find that you already have Communism. We won’t ever have to fight you; we’ll weaken your economy until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands. We do not have to invade the United States, we will destroy you from within”.
I was scared! I looked at my father and asked him if Khrushchev’s words were possible. He replied, "we are only as strong as our leaders". At that time, I was writing poems and short stories and thought of Alexsandar Solzhenitsyn, sitting in a Russian Labor Camp (Gulag) because he wrote articles and novels that criticized his government. Tapes were playing in my head of how lucky I was to live in American where I am protected by the Constitution and God’s inalienable rights, among them freedom of speech and expression. I saw how, under communism, there was no right to independent thought or free speech. But I was young and naive and thought our leaders were stronger than that.
Fast forward to today. Khrushchev was a visionary. Not only has our economy rotted, but we have been fed Socialism bit by bit, that we don’t even know we are being conquered from within. And now “Communism” is out in the open and “in our Face”. Yesterday I read that the MIT Press has put out a children’s book entitled, “Communism for Kids”, used to teach children from 3 to 7 years old that Communism is the cure-all for Capitalism, turning a deadly ideology into a Fairy Tale. And portraying Capitalism as the Evil Villain of the Human Race. What makes this book so dangerous to young developing minds is the fact that it leaves out the forced labor, oppression, poverty, and mass murder that results in a tyranny from a Communist ideological form of government.
Another problem we face is the ignorance of today’s students to the facts of American History. The Millennials of today are ignorant about what occurred under the Soviet Union and other communist regimes just a generation ago. One-third of millennials surveyed believe more people were killed under President George W. Bush than under Stalin. I remember when I was in High School, we Read “Animal Farm”, by George Orwell, and got an excellent picture of the hardships and oppression of life under Communism.
As years went by, we would watch the evening news together and I learned more from his comments and interpretation than I did from school. It was the years of the Cold War and I was learning how fragile our democracy really was. Then in 1960, Nikita Khrushchev addressed the United Nations and delivered a speech I will never forget...“Your children’s children will live under Communism. You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept Communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of SOCIALISM until you will finally wake up and find that you already have Communism. We won’t ever have to fight you; we’ll weaken your economy until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands. We do not have to invade the United States, we will destroy you from within”.
I was scared! I looked at my father and asked him if Khrushchev’s words were possible. He replied, "we are only as strong as our leaders". At that time, I was writing poems and short stories and thought of Alexsandar Solzhenitsyn, sitting in a Russian Labor Camp (Gulag) because he wrote articles and novels that criticized his government. Tapes were playing in my head of how lucky I was to live in American where I am protected by the Constitution and God’s inalienable rights, among them freedom of speech and expression. I saw how, under communism, there was no right to independent thought or free speech. But I was young and naive and thought our leaders were stronger than that.
Fast forward to today. Khrushchev was a visionary. Not only has our economy rotted, but we have been fed Socialism bit by bit, that we don’t even know we are being conquered from within. And now “Communism” is out in the open and “in our Face”. Yesterday I read that the MIT Press has put out a children’s book entitled, “Communism for Kids”, used to teach children from 3 to 7 years old that Communism is the cure-all for Capitalism, turning a deadly ideology into a Fairy Tale. And portraying Capitalism as the Evil Villain of the Human Race. What makes this book so dangerous to young developing minds is the fact that it leaves out the forced labor, oppression, poverty, and mass murder that results in a tyranny from a Communist ideological form of government.
Another problem we face is the ignorance of today’s students to the facts of American History. The Millennials of today are ignorant about what occurred under the Soviet Union and other communist regimes just a generation ago. One-third of millennials surveyed believe more people were killed under President George W. Bush than under Stalin. I remember when I was in High School, we Read “Animal Farm”, by George Orwell, and got an excellent picture of the hardships and oppression of life under Communism.
Read the entire article, here.
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