Today is May Day. Since 2007, I have advocated using this date as an international Victims of Communism Day. I outlined the rationale for this idea (which I did not originate) in my very first post on the subject...
Our relative neglect of communist crimes carries a real cost. Victims of Communism Day can serve the dual purpose of appropriately commemorating the millions of victims, and diminishing the likelihood that such atrocities will recur. Just as Holocaust Memorial Day and other similar events have helped sensitize us to the dangers of racism, anti-Semitism, and radical nationalism, so Victims of Communism Day can increase awareness of the dangers of extreme government control of the economy and civil society.
Education, politics, and anything else that catches my attention.
Thursday, May 01, 2014
"Victims of Communism" Day
For those of us who came of age during the years of communism, and who joined the military specifically to protect this country from communism, this post may have some resonance:
Mr. Volokh does have an excellent idea in the appropriation of May Day as a day of remembrance of the victims of Communism. Not the least of the reasons to seize the day from the left is that it would result in widespread head-exploding but while I love the idea I'd expand the holiday to a Victims of Socialism day.
ReplyDeleteCommunism may be dead everywhere but on college campuses, news rooms and Washington D.C. but it's nasty variation, socialism, lives on and it, like Communism, continues to blight lives, increase poverty and infringe liberty. One very well known socialist, an icon for evil, hardly gets any mention as a socialist and purposefully tying him to socialism would help highlight where the philosophy inevitably leads if not forcefully resisted.
I'm referring, of course, to Adolf Hitler who Communists revile to this day with nary a mention that he's their philosophical twin brother. Victims of Socialism day would put him right next to Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot and other, lesser, Socialist monsters where he deserves to be.