Life Matters - April 22, 2025
United States Senator Joseph McCarthy (yes, he of McCarthyism fame - or infamy, if you will) has been posthumously (to my mind) vindicated for his fears about the silent invasion of Communism into the country which he vehemently spoke for in the Senate. McCarthy diligently helped to spread fears about Communist influence in American institutions. In the late 1950s McCarthy gradually lost his popularity (perhaps entrenched politicians have short attention spans on such matters?) and finally his credibility, after several of his accusations were found to be false. The record doesn't say how often he's been shown, since those days, to have been right...
A major split occurred between the Communist Soviet Union and Communist China in 1960 and widened over the years, shattering the unity of the Communist bloc. Tensions eased somewhat in the 1970s as I became a teenager. By 1989-90 this 3 decades oldster now raising a family was relieved to hear of Soviet party leader Gorbachev acquiescing the fall of Communism in eastern Europe - marked in America by President Ronald Reagan's "Tear down this wall' speech - addressing Mr. Gorbachev about the wall built by Communists in 1961 to separate free West Germany from Communist shackled East Germany. Germany had been partitioned into East and West, post World War 2, upon the Allied powers seizing control of then-Nazi Germany.
Two unlikely bedfellows, uncomfortable allies, America and Soviet Russia, had taken over the governing of Germany, west and east respectively. The fear-driven Communists were losing approximately 1,500 citizens a day to the west and in 1961 built a wall, first with barbed wire then with concrete, 96 miles long, to keep defectors from leaving through West Berlin. Beyond the Berlin Wall, another 850 miles of border between East and West was heavily fortified b y the Communists with a system that included high metal fences, barbed wire, alarms, minefields, anti-vehicle ditches, over 600 watchtowers, and being patrolled by around 50,000 armed soldiers, creating what came to be known as a 'death strip'. It was all designed to prevent East Germans from escaping to the West; another sad commentary on Socialist ideology fulfilled in Communist practice.
But in the 1970s the Cold War between America and Russia was still a big deal in the Intelligencer Journal daily newspaper that Dat perused and this youngster amused himself with in the 'funnies' page and concerned himself about in the political sphere of the news. When the Berlin wall was gleefully and ceremoniously torn down in 1989-90 by finally unified civilians and government, Germany rejoiced and the world rejoiced with them. Rightly so, as the crumbling wall symbolized the crumbling of oppression and a new dawn of freedom. The centralized powers of oppression built the wall and eager hands driven by a universal desire for liberty tore it down.
The desire for liberty is ever present in the human psyche. Until it is not. When Communism fell in eastern Europe and people were set free...a new difficulty presented itself. Responsibility. Russia, Romania, and other countries in the Communist bloc had generations of repressed people who had learned a dependent sort of survival in being told what to do, when, and how. That is a good start for adolescence but disastrous when an entire population is repressed from growing out of it. Because responsibility carries with it an innate awareness of accountability, as responsibilities have outcomes and outcomes determine success or failure. Hence the accountability that comes with responsibility. And hence the need for innovative diligence, whether the occupation be farming, fishing, or production of all kinds. It is a learning curve for every up and coming healthy and physically able adult and gives even a carnal society a sense of equilibrium as those who yield to this law that God has woven into nature are stabilized by their yielding to it.
That Communism - through its more palatable and more deceptive form called Socialism - which is merely the soft forerunner of Communism, has silently invaded American learning institutions is now without question as evidenced by Left-wing politicians, the far-Left ideas oozing out of major universities such as Columbia, and by Left-favoring learning materials being pushed by Teachers Unions as exposed by conservative organizations such as Freedom Alliance and concerned parents.
Methinks Joe McCarthy would feel vindicated were he still here. So could, I suppose, Margaret Thatcher, former UK Prime Minister (1979-90) who put a proper perspective on socialism when she said, 'The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money.' Perhaps that is how Communism survives for as long as it does, by seizing the property of the citizens it kills. Communism to date has killed, whether directly or indirectly, an estimated 100,000,000 of its own citizens. Yes that's 100 million. Killed by their own governments as they pushed communal living for the masses while the leaders wallowed in luxurious misery, well aware of the cognitive dissonance between reality and what reality is supposed to be like in a socialist order of society.
Socialism just hasn't been done right, they say, while every attempt by governments have been plainly shown to be a miserable failure. In the meantime, communal living based upon Christian ethics within Hutterite church communities here in South Dakota and beyond have survived and thrived for past centuries and to this day. Do they have issues to deal with? They do. Don't we all, at times? We do. It is imperative that we deal with problematic personal, church, traditional, and cultural, issues with a generous sprinkling of God's Word interpreted to us by the Spirit of the Living God, the indwelling Spirit of Jesus Christ.
Life Matters!