Teaching my Grandson about Communism, and Evil

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

Today’s kids, even with all of the info people like me try to make sure they have in their heads, fall way short of understanding history, or political concepts.  This is why they are being picked off so easily by the liberal left and are obedient revolutionaries by the time they get through college.  They are willing to hear the feel-good lies by the liberal left because their “feelings” have been prepared for the B.S. their entire lives.  The side of good (liberty, constitutionalism, American values, Christian worldview) is evil, and the side of what was once considered evil (socialism, identity politics, government control, moral depravity) is now something they are willing to fight for.

I am currently out of town, with my adult son holding down the fort in Southern California.  We are on the Oregon Coast, in the woods about five miles from the beach.  The place, as my wife likes to joke after watching so many horror movies, is a “cabin in the woods.”  Yeah, what could go wrong?

We have no television, no internet (except for moments like this when I flip on my cell phone as a hot spot), and no city distractions.  We are surrounded by trees, hills, deer, elk, and an occasional bear or mountain lion.  Down the road wild turkey or quail sometimes pop into view.  I can’t see my neighbors, and the road is made of dirt and gravel.  In other words, it’s paradise.

Over the last year or so I have begun moving a lot of my stuff up here, with an intent of moving in permanently to the small house on 80 acres in the near future.  As a result, since I can access pretty much anything entertainment-wise online at home, my VHS and DVD movies are all up at the house in Oregon.  So, since there is no television, and no wifi for their devices, at night after dinner we’ve (myself, my wife, and three of my grandchildren) been popping in movies from my collection and watching them.  Last night the film was “The Hunt for Red October.”

The first Jack Ryan movie based on a book by Tom Clancy has a very young Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan, and Sean Connery as a Russian submarine captain seeking to defect from the Soviet Union.  On his boat he has a bunch of other crewmen who wish to defect with him, and they have devised a plan to do so in such a way that an observant American would need to be able to figure out that is what they are up to.  Jack Ryan is a CIA Analyst, and he’s the guy that has figured out Connery’s character means to defect.

“What does ‘defect’ mean, Grandpa?” asked my thirteen year old grandson.

I was surprised by the question, but deep down appreciated it.  What an opportunity to teach my grandson about some of the more critical concepts of living in liberty, and standing against tyranny.

“It’s when someone is not happy with their country or political environment, so they escape, literally turning their back on their own country.”

“What country is he from in the movie?”

“Russia,” I replied.  “But, back then, it was the Soviet Union.  A communist country.  Like China is today.  The Soviet Union was an evil empire and they controlled a lot of countries, forcing them into communism.”

“So, all of those people on that submarine are communists?”

“Yes, but some of them want to get away from communism.”

“They don’t sound like bad people.”

I had to understand his worldview, and what he had been taught.  In the movies the bad guys are normally easy to spot.  They are the sinister ones with evil plans and black uniforms.  They march like NAZIs and carry frightening weapons.  They torture, and cheat as they laugh at you with evil laughter.  They cause chaos with an evil plan, but the good guys always find a way to stop them.  The bad guys have low voices with ominous breathing patterns, or scars on their faces as they sneer at the hero.  They are demons, or NAZIs, shouting profanity and spewing bullets across the room in the hope of killing innocent people.  The bad guy is always easy to spot in the world of fantasy.

“Evil always masquerades as an Angel of Light,” I said.  “And, sometimes the people carrying out an evil deed don’t realize what they are doing is evil.  For example, NAZI soldiers in World War II were often just Germans serving in their country’s military, carrying out orders they didn’t fully understand the full ramifications of.  All they knew is Jews were considered unhealthy for them personally and for their country, and the communists were coming to take them over if they didn’t take up arms and fight back.  On the surface, nobody questioned the soundness of the philosophy.”

The conversation ended there, but I wondered how much he understood.

And I understood how easily he could be so confused.  In today’s world, shortly before he was born, we finished up with the presidency of George W. Bush, an evil globalist, who we elected not because we were unaware of his globalist views – his daddy, who was president just a couple administrations earlier in our history, was happy to proclaim he wanted a “new world order” to rise up – but because he was less evil than his progressive leftist counterpart, Al Gore, who would have been a nightmare compared to the lesser evil of Dubya.  9/11 occurred long before he was born, and is nothing more than a twisted moment in history.  Most of my Grandson’s lifetime up to this point was during the presidency of Barack Obama, the first black President in U.S. history, yet, despite a black man becoming a resident of the White House and holding the highest office of the land, the kid is now being told this country is sick with white supremacy and systemic racism.  Blacks are unfairly treated and have no chance to do anything great in this country.  Just ask President Obama, or all of those wealthy sports stars.

He has been told by the media and his schools that evil sounds like Donald J. Trump.  Evil sounds like senior citizens calling for a return to the old ways.  Evil is what has always been, and the very communism that Sean Connery’s character was trying to escape from in The Hunt for Red October is now the good guys, or at least that is what he is being taught.

Rioting in the streets with Black Lives Matter and Antifa is good, but walking through the Capitol in single file lines inside the ropes after attending a Trump Rally and after infiltrators created a false flag to make it look like Trump supporters violently entered the Capitol is evil.  Wanting us to act as individuals and achieve for ourselves based on our own skills, desires and hard work is evil, but a herd mentality of socialism calling for defunding police, letting criminals roam the streets (by either releasing them from prison or letting them cross the border unimpeded), reducing penalties for criminal behavior, encouraging vagrancy, and taking away a person’s ability to defend themselves with gun control is somehow not evil and must be pursued. The Constitution is a racist document, but telling white people they must bow down to minorities because of their white skin is somehow not racist.  Stealing an election is acceptable, but stating it may have been stolen is evil and must be silenced.  Creating wealth is evil, but stealing that wealth and redistributing it to people who did not earn it is not.

No wonder the kid is confused.

This is the same kid who gave me a hard time for not wearing a facial armband.  “It’s just a mask,” he said.  “What’s the big deal?  Don’t you want to save lives?”

I responded, “It’s just an armband with a Swastika on it, and a yellow star on someone’s blouse.  What’s the big deal?  Don’t you want to save Germany?”

He had no clue what I was saying.

I try to teach him when I get a chance, but he’s getting a different story from his public school indoctrination.  It’s like he’s been programmed, and I am trying to erase the garbage and reprogram him.  And he’s the oldest of the grandkids.  God help me when it comes to the younger ones.  Or, as my granddaughter likes to say, “You don’t understand, Grandpa, because you’re old. People don’t think your way anymore.”

“Give us one generation of small children to train to manhood and womanhood and we will set up the Bolshevist form of the Soviet Government.” – American Communist Party slogan, 1919.

In Germany, Hitler outlawed home schooling (a law that is still on the books today in Germany), and used education to further the NAZI philosophy. In a speech delivered in 1939, Hitler proclaimed, “When an opponent declares: ‘I will not come over to your side,’ I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already. What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.”

Communists agree, as well. The Tenth Plank of the Communist Manifesto is “Free Education For All.”

– Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary