We must learn lessons from history or fail

As a student of history, the rise and fall of governments intrigues me. We are moving toward a historic date that calls for closer examination. The date to which I refer is not the Presidential Election, November 6, but the date is December 25, 1991. That date stands in history as the time when the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, admitted he could no longer be the leader of the Communist nation of Russia.  It would be In January of 1992 that the nation would collapse. In these twenty-one years since the fall of that totalitarian centralized government, historians have sought answers as to why such a thing happened. There is not enough space in this column to address every issue that brought down the once thought-to-be mighty empire, but I will suggest one major issue we should always remember. The issue to which I refer is the need for public debate on how we are to be governed. I am a believer in a two party system of government with input from the largest number of citizens as is possible. This year, we are facing in our nation a public debate on how we are to be governed. We have before us a clear example of a choice to be made. The issue at hand is our determination to remain a free capitalist people. We are facing a major decision about how our government will be structured. Do we want a strong centralized government structure headquartered in Washington D.C or do we want to have a government of the people, by the people and for the people?

The most interesting assessment of the collapse of the Communist system in Russia was actually penned before the fall of the government. In January 1990, Joe Slovo, the head of the Communist Party in South Africa, wrote a major essay titled; “Has Socialism Failed?” The summary of what Slovo said was that Socialism/Communism did not and would not fail  He admitted that the ideology of Socialism had fallen on hard times and was facing a crisis in the decade of the 90’s due to allowing of the encroachment of capitalist principles in government.

To me, the most interesting aspect of the examination of the collapse of the Communist regime in Russia is that it took place twenty-one years ago and many of the young college graduates in the Western world today were never exposed to the evil of the totalitarian control by a centralized government. The young leftists of today do not know of the horrors of the old Soviet state. The liberal media has become unhinged following the Republican National Convention where Mitt Romney was nominated to carry the banner for the party into the Presidential Election in November. The horror that is evidenced by the radical leftists media types is seen in that they have bought into the false idea that government knows best and that government must be controlled in a centralized manner with only a few at the top making decisions for all people. That is the only fair way they can see for government to function. They could not be more wrong.

In April of 1992 following the fall of the government in the old Soviet Union, I was there. I had the chance to engage many different people in conversation about what had happened to their government structure. The most interesting fact that came to light was the reality that following the takeover by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the first thing that happened was the total loss of freedom of speech, the press, religion, and free expression of ideas. The media trumpeting the positives of total government control lost their freedoms first. The very people who want to defend against a populist movement of freedom of speech will be the first to loose their freedom to speak as they deem necessary in a takeover by a socialist’s regime.

History records for us that it was the reforms restoring freedom of speech and the move toward capitalism that is now pointed to as the biggest mistakes Mikhail Gorbachev made as he tried to save the empire, which then led to the collapse of the police state of Communism.  As we move toward the anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union and the Presidential Election, we must learn the lessons from their history or we will be where they once were.