Victims of Communism Day (May Day) 2018

Every year on the first day of the fifth month May Day is celebrated to honor workers and their ‘rights.’ Known also as ‘International Workers’ Day’ or ‘Labour Day,’ the celebration of the working classes is straight out of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto ideologically. And literally.

May Day is pushed by an international labor movement that seeks to unite the proletariat (working classes) against the bourgeoisie (business owners) and destroy individual rights in the process.

It’s not as if the philosophy subscribed to by May Day believers hasn’t been tried before. It’s actually been attempted a good many times, ending in utter humanitarian disaster, starvation, and unimaginable death every time.

Within that context, instead of May Day, this day should be taken to honor the victims of communism, and all other forms of collectivist philosophy while we’re at it. After all, it was originally celebrated by not just communists, but the whole strata of collectivists, from socialists, to unionists, and so on.

The amount of death that these Leftist ideologies have resulted in is absolutely staggering. While the Soviet Union was the first and most infamous communist state, even the death tolls racked up by Lenin and Stalin pale in comparison to that of Mao Zedong in China.

From 1958 to 1962 Mao’s Great Leap Forward (communist) policies directly led to the death of 45 million people. 45 million. In four years. This represents the largest mass murder in the history of the world.

That’s what happens when collectivist policies are applied to the most basic of life sustaining endeavors like farming and food distribution.

Though China has been the on the most accelerated trajectory toward wider prosperity on the globe over the past 30 year or so, the progress has only been possible because of the introduction of targeted market reforms that borrow the capitalist market principles of Western Civilization.

But the totalitarian collectivism celebrated on May Day is not merely relegated to the history books – it’s actually very relevant still today.

North Korea is perhaps the purest example of the tenets of communism in the world today, and they just wrapped up a year in which they attained nuclear weapons. The North Korean state publishes recipes for its malnourished people to help mitigate persistent famines. The recipes include instructions for making soup out of tree bark, along with other tantalizing dishes to avoid starvation. All while Kim Jong Un spends money to build nuclear bombs.

Closer to home, Venezuela is currently in the throes of this evil political ideology, leading the people of one of the richest resource nations in the world to be one of the most desperate, most violent, failing countries in the world. Venezuelans are now engaing in food riots on a regular basis, holding up food delivery trucks at gun point to avoid starvation; their currency, the bolivar, has the highest rate of inflation in the world; and, more than half a million Venezuelans fled for neighboring South American nations in the last 8 months to avoid the humanitarian disaster perpetrated on them by the very ideas celebrated on May Day.

So as school kids are encouraged to dance around the maypole; when activists celebrating May Day riot and burn symbols of capitalism in Paris; protesters demand more ‘workers’ rights’ in Turkey; or, ‘anarchists’ foment violent riots in Portland – just know that they are brutishly advocating for a system that leads to nothing but misery, death, and a soiling of the human spirit.

This IS the foundation of the Left’s political ideology, the only difference being a matter of degree – all of the policies slope toward the same end.

The United States of America, fortunately, was founded on principles directly opposed to this collectivist philosophy. America was founded on the premise that individuals have inalienable rights, that they are sovereign in their mind and body, and that these rights must be protected first and foremost from government, but necessarily from a tyranny of a majority that collectively strips every man, woman, and child of their right to his or her own life.

While plenty of Big Government collectivist policies have steadily crept into our institutions (social security, healthcare entitlements, welfare, progressive taxation, etc.), May Day should be a reminder that America, at its core, is a nation of individual rights and for that very reason has become the freest and most prosperous nation in the history of mankind.

As individuals, we should use May 1 to honor the hundreds of millions of victims of communism, and fight tooth and nail to make sure such policies, no matter how Leftists cloak them in compassion, don’t gain traction in our Shining City on a Hill. If they do, that light will be quickly extinguished.