With recent socialist victories at the polls, conservative Americans are becoming understandably alarmed at trends suggesting a growing acceptance and even embrace of the destructive ideology.
We might be tempted to dismiss these outcomes as aberrations and evidence of a radical fringe – but we’d be foolish to ignore the troubling rise happening in real time and in real states and cities.
It’s an old adage that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Fascination with collectivist or heavy government reliance has ebbed and flowed over the years, but it’s certainly not new. Almost fifty years ago, Ronald Reagan saw a mostly younger generation advocating for the disastrous and even deadly theory – and spoke out eloquently and forcefully about it.
After his term as California governor ended and before he became president, Ronald Reagan recorded daily commentaries broadcast by about 350 radio stations and heard by tens of millions of Americans. Listening to a collection of these broadcasts, it sounds like Reagan was warning us about the socialism being preached by many of today’s radicals.
All Americans ought to be aware of those same words of warning.
Throughout his nearly five-year radio run, Reagan preached that the promises of socialism were lies. He noted that we often grow so accustomed to them, however, that we lose the fear of the ideology itself.
In one of his commentaries, Reagan quotes a line he once spoke in a play highlighting the far-left ideology’s danger: “I never knew what freedom was until I saw you lose yours.”
In another commentary, the future president tells of a young man debating a socialist who criticized anyone wanting to pursue the finer things in life.
“Socialists ignore the side of man that is of the spirit,” Reagan said back in 1975. “They can provide shelter, fill your belly with bacon and beans, treat you when you’re ill – all the things that are guaranteed to a prisoner or a slave. But they don’t understand we also dream, yes, even of owning a yacht.”
History has always had a way of repeating itself, partly due to ignorance but also attributable to human nature. When German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published “The Communist Manifesto” in 1848 it appealed to idealists, painting a utopian vision of a more just world where poverty was nonexistent and everyone worked together in peace and harmony.
One popular English translation of “The Communist Manifesto” ends with the words: “Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!”
Sound familiar?
But if we should have learned anything since communism went from a theory to the foundation of a tyrannical government following the Russian Revolution in 1917, it is that communism and its cousin socialism did not create utopias. Instead, they brought nightmares to life.
By any objective standard, communism and socialism have destroyed economies, left people impoverished and sometimes starving, and brought about brutal dictatorships that deprived people of the precious freedoms guaranteed to Americans under our Bill of Rights – including freedom of speech, of the press and of religion.
The old saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely has proven true again and againaround the world wherever Marxism has been embraced.
That’s why Reagan’s words are as wise today as when he recorded them – many years before some of today’s radicals were even born.
We’d be wise to heed Reagan’s warnings and take his advice.
Back when Reagan was broadcasting his commentaries, communist regimes were officially atheist. They were dedicated to destroying religion, which they saw as an ideology competing with Marxism.
Marx wrote in 1843: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
Reagan warned against Big Government becoming a nanny state, trying to run our lives even with the best of intentions.
Reagan was born in 1911 – long before television. He grew up with radio and loved the medium and considered it far more intimate and a better fit for him than TV.
According to his wife Nancy, Reagan worked through his ideas for commentaries during long, hot showers and would then put pen to paper, scribbling out each three-minute essay on yellow legal pads as he crisscrossed the country or rested in the evenings at home.
The familiarity of Reagan’s pleasing, mellifluous voice is what first struck me as I listened to his decades-old commentaries. I miss him. But beyond the enjoyable vocal serenade was the substance of what Reagan was saying back in the 1970s – and just how well the subjects, warnings and insights have held up over the last five decades.
Reagan gave up radio commentaries on Nov. 13, 1979 – the day he announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. During that televised announcement the future president evoked many of the same themes he had been advocating for years.
“The citizens of this great nation want leadership, yes, but not a man on a white horse demanding obedience to his commands,” Reagan said. “I believe this nation hungers for a spiritual revival … to see government once again the protector of our liberties, not the distributor of gifts and privilege. … Government cannot be clergyman, teacher and parent. It is our servant, beholden to us.”
Reagan was right then – and his words remain just as true today.
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