Perhaps a minor story in the grand scheme of things but I was drawn towards the Charlotte Observer headline: “Conservative UNCC students created anti-socialism display. It disappeared overnight.”
From that same October 23 article written by Bruce Henderson:
A conservative student group at UNC Charlotte says a display it created on campus, lampooning socialism, disappeared overnight.
Members of Young Americans for Freedom say they put up the display — a mock “socialism graveyard” with fake tombstones — in a grassy area near the Student Union on Oct. 14.
By 10 a.m. the next day, they say, the display was gone.
More so than reflecting a strict definition of socialism, the display at UNCC put a numerical figure on those that were killed by Marxist totalitarianism around the globe. The estimate of those killed is generally recognized as around 100 million.
UNC Charlotte says they didn’t remove the display and it’s not productive to blame anybody right now since there is no knowledge yet on why or who may have removed it. However, it does seem like we are losing a sense of astonishment on the evils and dangers of central planning and communism. What I mean is that on most college campuses and the act of putting these numbers out for public viewing seems subversive rather than an ordinary act. It makes me wonder if there is much teaching of books like the “Gulag Archipelago” by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn or “Fear No Evil” by Natan Sharansky. Where the death camps and gulags would be unimaginable except that we have the great witnesses and literature that testify to its horrors.
In this post-Cold War era, there is certainly less focus on what this nation has sacrificed for freedom. With many of the younger generations, the word “free” seems to replace or is even synonymous with “freedom.” But at a deeper level, one of the best contrasts between free people and those enslaved by Marxist systems is that the human person is above the state and materialism. We are losing some of the stark contrasts today. We even see incoherence from those like Lebron James in the controversy over the NBA and freedom for Hong Kong.
Most importantly, you don’t have to be conservative to be anti-socialist or anti-central planning. These were once values that united and solidified so much of the nation. However, the politicization of everything has some people defending socialism and even Marxism, merely for the purposes of partisan politics and tribalism. For them, it’s okay to cheer for the silencing of people or the silencing of another’s views because they disagree with their politics. “But if we are to deprived of the concepts of good and evil, what will be left?,” asked Solzhenitsyn, “Nothing but the manipulation of each other?”
The good news is there are still Americans and lots of young people disseminating truth on college campuses. It’s having an impact because those that practice censorship are not confident in their views or are afraid of having their lies exposed.