“In this election, the Democrats have nominated the most extreme and dangerous group of candidates for the House and Senate ever to seek office,” said President Donald Trump last month. “If they win, the greatest legislative body in history will, for the first time ever, be controlled by a communist caucus.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a socialist, explained her mirror-image take on the stakes of this year’s elections: “What we do is we break open the entire political calculus in America — period,” she said Monday at a closed-door fundraiser for Abdul el Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan. “Because if you can win, if Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere. Anywhere.”
On this issue, they’re both right. The stakes in next month’s elections are enormous. The outcome of the midterm elections may propel a change of direction for America that puts us on a quite different path than the one on which we’ve traveled for the last 250 years — a path we would soon come to regret deeply.
To give my audience an opportunity to learn more about the consequences of such a decision by America’s electorate, I recently interviewed survivors of communism for my daily political talk show, The Jenny Beth Show.
I wasn’t interested in the theory. I wanted my audience to learn what happened under communism — what happened to their families, their food, their churches, and their futures. I wanted to hear from real people who had lived under communism, to hear their first-hand accounts of what life in a communist state is truly like.
For those who have studied the history of the 20th century — and, in particular, the history of the Soviet Union, or communism — what comes next won’t be news. But for the vast majority of the American electorate — half of whom were 13 years old or younger when the Soviet Union ceased to exist, and, consequently, came of age politically after the end of the Cold War — the information gleaned from the interviews was eye-opening. And terrifying.
My guests came from a wide variety of countries — the Soviet Union, China, Hungary, Romania, and Nicaragua — and had a wide variety of backgrounds. Not surprisingly, they had a wide variety of experiences to share. Yet on fundamental matters, they were in agreement.
First, as noted by Manuella Callini, who was born in Romania under Ceausescu, the lure of government control could be attractive: “Government power arrives wrapped in beautiful words: safety, fairness, equality, compassion, security, and rights.”
Second, as explained by Ovidiu Frusina, who also grew up in communist Romania, “In order to have wealth distribution, first you have to have wealth.” All agreed that in their lived experience, government control of the economy meant shortages and rationing of heat, of bread and other foodstuffs, of virtually everything.
Callini remembered the ration cards: “We had these cards where it said how much you were allowed to [buy]. So even if you had money to purchase it, you had to wake up at 4 a.m. or earlier just to buy a piece of bread.”
Orren Wang, born in communist China in the early 1960s, said it succinctly: “The shortage is the feature of socialism.”
Third, the loss of economic freedom is a deliberate strategy by the communist government. Frusina explained: “My cat and my dog, they love me because I feed them. So, if I control how much food and water I give them, that’s how much love I get back. … So, it’s not about the ration or the lack of food, it’s the government control of it. So, then you don’t go and protest. You don’t go and say things.”
Fourth, the loss of economic freedom comes first, followed soon thereafter by the loss of religious freedom, and then, ultimately, by the loss of political freedom. And the party demands total obedience and turns the populace itself into the regime’s enforcers. As Robert Ratonyi, who grew up in Hungary, explained: “Communists created a society where people whispered. Neighbors informed on neighbors. Workers informed on coworkers. Sometimes even family members informed on each other.”
This is what awaits any nation that sets itself on a path to communism.
THE DSA ISN’T NAIVE — IT’S SEDITIOUS. OUTLAW THEM NOW
Clearly, this is a choice election. Democrats have allied themselves with, and are led by, men and women who place the exaltation of the state itself as the ultimate priority of the government. Republicans, by contrast, defend the constitutional structure that for 250 years has prioritized the protection of the individual rights our creed says were granted to us by our Creator.
The choice is clear. Choose common sense.
Jenny Beth Martin is chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action.