One in four Americans, according to a new report, believe more people were killed under the United States presidential administration of George W. Bush than were killed under Soviet communist leader Joseph Stalin.
For this, we can thank – among other things – the one-sided ideological teaching in today’s universities, the lack of intellectual curiosity for the truth in many adults, the news stories-turned-opinions presented by many media outlets and the internet, where one can find support for any truth one wants to posit.
For the record, scholars and historians put the number killed under Stalin between 20 and 60 million. Under Bush, fewer than 5,000 U.S. soldiers were killed during wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation’s report on U.S. Attitudes Toward Socialism is stunning and scary in what it says about our country.
For instance:
* Only 37 percent of millennials (individuals born approximately 1984-2000) have a “very unfavorable” view of communism.
* Nearly half (45 percent) of Generation Z respondents (defined by the survey as ages 16-20) would vote for a socialist, and one in five (21 percent) would vote for a communist.
* Nearly seven in 10 respondents (68 percent) believe more people were killed under Adolf Hitler (some 10 million) than under Stalin.
* While 64 percent of Americans ages 65 and over had a favorable opinion of capitalism, only 42 percent of millennials did.
“One of the concerns the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has had since its establishment,” said Marion Smith, executive director of the organization, “is that an emerging generation of Americans [has] little understanding of the collectivist system and its dark history.”
Dr. Paul Kengor, commenting on the survey in a recent article for The Center for Vision and Values, said the problem is not a failure to teach history but a failure to teach it objectively.
“Importantly,” he said, “that failure is often the result of ideological biases, especially among leftist teachers and professors. Liberals and progressives do not suffer the same historical negligence when it comes to teaching the crimes of fascism and Nazism. They do a bang-up job with Hitler’s crimes, but not Stalin’s.”
Thus, we have to chuckle a bit today when, wherever we turn, we see the American political left intimating that Russia – about which it traditionally has been soft – had a hand in influencing the 2016 presidential election. It’s the Cold War-era Union of Soviet Socialist Republics they’re hoping we can envision.
They want us to imagine, we guess, Khrushchev-era spies in trench coats stopping people outside their polling places and warning them to vote for Donald Trump, or else Aunt Minnie is history.
The Russians, they apparently want us to believe, have manipulated the very voting machinery in Ozaukee County, Wis., Keeweenaw County, Mich., and Montour County, Pa., to shift a sure vote away from Hillary Clinton.
(The completed Wisconsin presidential recount, by the way, gave Trump a net 162 more votes.)
Oh, we’re not so naive to think one country might want to influence the election in another. Why just a year ago the Obama administration – through a nonprofit organization funded by the State Department – attempted to influence elections in Israel and oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a bipartisan congressional report.
Also, let us not forget Obama’s 2012 hot-mic whisper to outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that incoming President Vladmir Putin should give him more “space” and that [a]fter my election, I should have more flexibility.”
And we have no problem with an investigation into any meddling the Russians may have done in the election and beforehand. Indeed, that might have been a bit of business the Obama administration should have been working on a little more diligently, especially given allegations of the Russians (or others) hacking into Hillary Clinton’s unsecured State Department email server.
But globalization and the global economy the Obama administration have been touting for eight years includes Russia. To criticize Trump or potential cabinet members for any dealings they may have had or tried to make with the country is folly. No such deal should undermine the United States, but any legitimate business should cause no concern.
Nevertheless, we should remain vigilant about this relic of communistic/socialist rule. While the country is not the totalitarian regime it used to be, it remains the same nation that – just during the Obama years – annexed the Crimea, continues to roil Ukraine and has been supportive of a corrupt Syrian government.
Maybe what Trump has in mind for the U.S., then, is to follow the adage of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.