Should anyone remain at the real end of history to chronicle a list of
humanity's worst systems for the benefit of any left to read it, the legacy
of communism is sure to be at, or near, the top.
That's why it is especially appropriate that in Washington, D.C., this week
a Victims of Communism Memorial will be dedicated.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the quick collapse of the
Soviet Union, many embraced the idea that the world had become free, or was
headed in freedom's direction. That one-quarter of the world population
remained under communist dictatorship in China seemed of less concern than
the dissolution of Soviet Russia. The Tiananmen Square Massacre in June of
1989 reminded the West that communism was as deadly to those who opposed it
in China as it had been in the Soviet Union. But the West's attention span
is short and soon American companies were happy to do business with China
because our commitment to the bottom line is stronger than it is to the
moral line.
Lee Edwards, the chairman of The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
(VOCMF), has attracted bipartisan support for the memorial, including Rep.
Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), who are offering
remarks at the dedication. It comes on the 20th anniversary of Ronald
Reagan's Berlin speech during which he famously said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear
down this wall."
The brutality of communism was quickly swept under history's rug, in large
part because so many on the left had embraced it as the solution to
humankind's problems. The memorial stands as a rebuke to such twisted
thinking.
"The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression" by Stephane
Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panne, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel
Bartosek and Jean-Louis Margolin lists by country the number of people
murdered under communist regimes: 65 million (and counting) in China; 20
million in the Soviet Union, 2 million (and counting) in North Korea, 2
million in Cambodia, 1.7 million in Africa, 1.5 million in Afghanistan, 1
million in Vietnam, 1 million in communist Eastern Europe and 150,000 in
Latin America.
In short, communism, an evil ideology unlike any the world has seen, is
responsible for the slaughter of more than 94 million human beings. It tops
all plagues, natural disasters, crime, and other political ideologies,
probably combined.
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