April 23, 2023

In a December 26, 1955 article in Time magazine, George Meany of the AFL-CIO warned Americans that

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[t]oo many in the free world fail to see the real nature of Communism as the mortal foe of everything that we hold dear, of every moral and spiritual value. Too many are still prisoners of the illusion that Communism is, historically speaking, a progressive system  [or] … extreme liberalism temporarily making bad mistakes. Actually, Communism … is an anti-social system in which there are embedded some of the worst features of savagery, slavery, feudalism and life-sapping exploitation manifested in the industrial revolution of early-day capitalism.

Meany forcefully asserted that

[t]oo many in the free world seem to have lost their capacity for moral indignation against the most brutal inhumanities when they are perpetrated by Communists. It is painful, but we must face the cruel facts of life. It is disturbing to me that many people in our country who call themselves liberals … never find the time to utter a word of condemnation against the Communist imperialist destruction of the national independence and democratic rights of hundreds of millions of people in Europe and Asia.

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It was unfathomable to Meany that liberals could not perceive that “communism is the deadliest enemy of liberalism.”

With great prescience, Meany recognized that “[t]he conflict between Communism and freedom is the problem of our time.  It overshadows all other problems.  This conflict mirrors our age, its toils, its tensions, its troubles and its tasks.  On the outcome of this conflict depends the future of all mankind. I pray that … we of the free world can muster the moral courage and total strength to preserve peace and promote the freedom of the men and women of every continent, color and creed.”

In January of 1956, Meany took aim at the American business community when he explained that “[s]omehow or other, many in our American business community are not sufficiently alert to the danger of world Communism[.]”  Meany urged American business “not to let the prospect of monetary profits blur your vision.  Know your enemy.  Don’t help him.”

Yet consider that presently, major American corporations and athletic companies simply cave to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) despite the horrific treatment of Chinese people.

In fact, no matter how many times communism proves to bring nothing but the degradation of people, it still rears its ugly head.   As W. Cleon Skousen wrote in 1958 in The Naked Communist,

[o]ne of the most fantastic phenomena of modern times has been the unbelievable success of the Communist conspiracy to enslave mankind.  Part of this has been the result of two species of ignorance — ignorance concerning the constitutional requirements needed to perpetuate freedom, and secondly, ignorance concerning the history, philosophy and strategy of world Communism.