Here we are, on the crest of a stunning victory for Ronald Reagan-brand conservatism over Communism, and an equally stunning victory of capitalism over socialism, both manifested by the dramatic uprisings of the Captive Nations. But the liberal media pundits have been putting out the ridiculous line that conservatives are unhappy because “the Cold War is over.”
The problem with these liberal commentators is that they spend their time talking among themselves and don’t understand conservatives at all. Liberals simply don’t want to admit the obvious lessons of what is going on in Europe.
The truth is that conservatives and Reaganauts are completely vindicated by the dramatic turn of events in Eastern Europe, and conservatives can rise up every morning and say, “I told you so.” We’ve said all along that Communism was the worst thing that could ever happen to any country, that socialism is a failed system which canNOT produce enough goods, and that the capitalist free-market system is the only way to prosperity.
Communism is the 20th century’s most horrible demonstration of slavery, torture, and oppression. Communism is always imposed by “masters of deceit” and maintained by terror.
Communist-ruled countries are like giant slave labor prisons, in which people are kept only by barbed wire, mine fields, shark-infested waters, guard towers, and border patrols. Allow a crack in the Iron or Bamboo Curtain, and people come streaming out, willing to leave behind all their worldly possessions and often even other members of their own families.
Does anybody really think that the people behind the Iron Curtain suddenly discovered in 1989 that they were prisoners in the “evil empire” and wanted to get out? Certainly not! What happened was that Hungary opened a crack in the border in the summer of 1989 by letting their guards look the other way, and East Germans who were visiting in Hungary grabbed the chance to run out.
The hundreds of escapees quickly became thousands, and the little trickle became a mighty river of fleeing East Germans. In this age of television and communications technology, news traveled faster than ever before, and the demand for freedom became contagious.
The celebrity TV commentators are trying to manufacture a myth out of whole cloth when they pontificate that conservatives are unhappy about this turn of events. Conservatives have been predicting the uprising of the captive peoples for decades and we are thrilled that our forecasts have come true!
Conservatives have always believed that what we’ve witnessed in 1989 could have happened in 1953 at the time of the death of Joseph Stalin. All behind the Iron Curtain, the oppressed people would have then risen up and thrown off their shackles IF they had received some signal of encouragement from the West.
Conservatives have always bitterly criticized the failure of the United States to respond to the cry of the Freedom Fighters for help during the Hungarian Revolution 1956. We have repeatedly said that, if President Eisenhower had done only as much as President Bush did last week for Cory Aquino in the Philippines, the Freedom Fighters would have remained in control. But that word of support never came from the West, and the Communist slave state remained intact for another three decades.
For 40 years, conservatives have railed against the liberal lie that “poverty causes Communism”; no evidence exists for that phony hypothesis. Communism is an ideology mouth by well-to-do intellectuals who just talked about poverty in order to get power.
Conservatives have always preached the reverse, namely, that Communism CAUSES poverty. Now, all Americans can see on television every night that we are exactly right.
When the East Germans cross into West Berlin, the “sights” they seek are the food stores! Ask yourself, when you go on vacation, is the most exciting part of your trip a visit to the local grocery store?
At the end of World War II, the devastated, bombed-out country of West Germany was fortunate to have a conservative economist named Ludwig von Erhard chart his nation’s course toward capitalism and private enterprise instead of toward socialism or even Keynesian-style government spending and regulation which was then so trendy in the West. Almost single-handedly, he laid the foundation for the West German prosperity of which the East Germans are so envious today.
What is so exciting about the events of this year is that now, because of television, all Americans can see the failure of socialism and the proven superiority of a private-enterprise economy. History has vindicated the conservatives and, indeed, we are very happy about the exciting events of 1989.
