“Those who promote socialism are usually massive hypocrites…They know that socialism is a beautiful theory, but a ghastly reality. This is why they espouse the virtue of socialism while living utterly capitalist lives.” – An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West
All nations are not alike. By the end of the 20th century, 170,000,000 people would be intentionally murdered by their own countries, with the Soviet Union, Communist China, and Nazi Germany, rounding out the top three. All were led by authoritarian despots, whether communist or fascist. Growing evidence suggests there is a direct correlation between freedom and violence; when one is diminished, the other rises. Democracies, therefore, are inherently less violent as their foundational principles ensure representative government and greater personal autonomy. Yet, despite these chilling numbers, growing Westernophobia threatens to upend the prosperity and freedoms we have all come to enjoy.
On his never-ending apology tour beginning in 2009, America’s 43rd President, Barack Obama, took his contempt for all things Western on the road, brazenly rejecting American exceptionalism and everything it gave us. Unable to hide his disdain for his nation of birth, he saw only her flaws, and never her virtues. Instead, he spent his two less-than-stellar terms endeavoring to implement policies like universal healthcare and free education in an attempt to be more like them than us. He steered us into a new normal, a reduced standard of living, to punish us for our sin of affluence. Being too successful, too wealthy, and too free was turned upside down when progressivism began to teach Americans to loathe what we have. Yet, despite the left’s anti-American rhetoric, these complainers never leave for the fairyland they claim is everywhere but here, even as America remains the top choice for immigrants anxious to leave behind the fool’s paradise of their own countries.
In Konstantin Kisin’s 2022 book, “An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West”, Kisin tells his personal story from his birth in the Soviet Union, in the early 1980s, to his eventual escape to the UK at the age of 11. Although Kisin, one-half of the politically charged Triggernometry podcast, was still young at the time of his exit, he had become accustomed to his homeland’s contempt for free speech and its default position of poverty. As a child, Kisin’s first life lesson was to keep silent. His grandfather had made the mistake of privately criticizing the government to friends and was eventually betrayed, arrested, and forced to leave the country. Amid a failing education system, the Kisins packed up their eldest child and shipped him to a boarding school in 1993. This book is Kisin’s wake-up call for those who criticize the West, thinking the grass may be greener on the other side of the world. And to those who think the West is inherently evil and unfair, Kisin lays waste to the façade of equality in communist nations. Although happy to have been rescued by the West, he fears that those who have not learned the lessons of the past will be doomed to repeat them.
While the West continues to be measured against some utopian ideas of how society should be formed, non-Western countries are always given excuses for their dystopian outcomes. The Soviet idea was nothing more than a smokescreen that feigned equality, even as it made everyone equally poor. In the 1920s, an anti-Soviet law was enacted against dissenters who attempted to overthrow or weaken the regime. This anti-communist sentiment got comrades sent to the Gulag creating even more fear in those inclined to speak out. Now, that same iron fist that once doled out harsh punishment in the Soviet Union is being camouflaged in the West as a velvet glove. Here, the show of soft persuasion is being sold as democracy, working its magic by infecting and then perverting the mind.
While Bolshevik political correctness once demanded strict adherence to the regime, modern-day political correctness in the form of wokeness, seeps into society under the banner of social justice, convincing unsuspecting Americans of sins long settled. Now, after being guilted by progressivism, Westerners have forgotten how good they have it. The winning combination for the West has been representative democracy and free market capitalism built on a foundation of individualism, personal responsibility, free enterprise, equality of opportunity, and love of country. Free speech, the antithesis of the anti-Soviet agitation laws, allowed unlimited complaints aimed at the American government. But freedom isn’t free. It needs constant nurturing and protection from the growing desire to curtail it in the name of decency.
A comedian in the UK, Kisin’s star rose following a public smearing for refusing to sign a “safe space agreement” at a 2018 charity event, requiring that no joke hit outside of allowable opinion. Now, with comedy clubs supporting trigger warnings for speech that might offend, a growing number of comics have succumbed to self-censoring. Unlike most comedians, however, Kisin understood that the role of comedy in society, as equal opportunity offenders, must not be abandoned. Adding levity to divisive topics, comedians pushed the boundaries of comfort to reveal gaping holes in the echo chambers of partisan politics. Unfortunately, comedy is no longer funny as it has devolved into political pandering and polarization.
The authoritarianism espoused by modern progressives brought starvation, bloodshed, and depravity to millions just one century ago. Now, an immigrant who was raised under the false promise of communism hopes to save us from the same path of destruction. Freedom can be lost through attrition or taken by force. Like Kisin, we must suit up and enter the game before it’s too late.
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