If a hero like King David (a man after God’s heart) could not resist the temptation to abuse his throne, just imagine the evils that might be perpetrated by ruthless and godless politicians. Indeed, history shows us that Marxism results in horrific travesties every time it is attempted. Communist regimes of the 20th century were responsible for the deaths of more than 100 million people. Whenever communism was exported to another country, it resulted in tyranny, brutality, misery, starvation, and extreme poverty. 

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn experienced communism up close. He spent eight years in a Soviet gulag, and he earned the Nobel Prize for his literary works recounting the ordeals of ordinary people. In The Gulag Archipelago, he compiled firsthand accounts from survivors of the gulags. He described the Soviet campaigns to indoctrinate the youth, to silence and intimidate political dissidents, to arrest opponents, to abolish individual rights, and, finally, to slaughter millions of political adversaries. He wrote, “They tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse.”

Older generations of Americans, who learned about the horrors of the last century, overwhelmingly reject Marxism. However, Governor DeSantis is right to be alarmed by shifting public sentiments among the youth. In 2017, the Fraser Institute found that more millennials now prefer to live in a “socialist, communist, or fascist nation than a capitalist one.” In 2018, Gallup also found that more Millennials preferred socialism (51%) than capitalism (45%). This seismic shift in ideology caused The Economist magazine to run a cover story with the headline: “The Rise of Millennial Socialism.” A 2019 Axios poll found that 61% of younger Gen Z adults held a positive view of socialism.

This should concern us for the future of America. We have failed to educate our kids. While it’s admirable for younger generations to prefer a political system that helps the poor and vulnerable, the reality is that Marxism is especially devastating for the poor. 

During the 20th century, fifty-seven nations adopted communism. During that era, the life expectancies in capitalist nations soared due to advances in technology and healthcare. Meanwhile, life expectancies in communist nations fell. In the West, rates of infant mortality plummeted, but communist nations saw the opposite results. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a flurry of nations abandoned communism to adopt more free market principles. As a result, between 1990 and 2011, the U.S. Agency for International Development reported that the global poverty rate fell from 43% to 21% with more than a billion people being lifted out of poverty. 

In 1960, communist China was poorer than most African nations. After enacting economic reforms to allow more economic freedom in its markets (e.g. decollectivizing farmland, allowing entrepreneurship, and allowing some privatization), Chinese citizens enjoyed a thirteen-fold increase in real income from 1990 to 2014. Perhaps nothing in history has done more to lift people out of their poverty than freedom. One study conducted by the Foundation for Economic Education found that “the income earned by the poorest 10 percent in the most economically free countries is an astonishing eight times greater compared to the income earned by those living in the least economically free countries.” 

The last three decades have established a direct correlation between economic freedom and the wellbeing of the poor. Free markets are better than Marxism, and it’s not even close. Students need to be educated so they can fend off the radical Marxist professors infesting our nation’s colleges. Young people are particularly susceptible to Marxist teachings because they offer the empty promise of helping the poor and most vulnerable. Tragically, anyone who still believes that centralized planning, economic controls, and forcible wealth redistribution will uplift the poor has failed to learn from history.