A few days ago, I had a conversation with a college student who did not remember the US beating the USSR in the 1980 Winter Olympics. He could not relate to the story off the ice or what the world was like when that game was played. So I told the student to read a bit about President Reagan and get back to me for more conversation about communism..
Like many of his generation, President Ronald Reagan was a strong anti-communist. He understood the evil empire and knew that you have to negotiate from a position of strength rather than weakness. Over the Christmas holidays, I found this from the late President Reagan:
“How do you tell a communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin.
And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”
In my life, I have found that this is true. Most people who favor communism in polls do not really understand what it means or have lived under it. They see it as some romantic idea based on false promises of equality and justice. On the other hand, we Cubans, along with others from who experienced communism directly, see it for what it is.
Communism was, and is, a great lie. We need to keep teaching that to the new generation.
