Educating the Next Generation About the Failures of Communism

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. With us today is Dr. Eric Patterson, and he’s the president and CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. And, well, doctor, tell us a little bit about that foundation and what you do and what the foundation does.

0:17 Speaker 2 John, thanks for having me. The Victims of Communism Foundation is Its mission is to educate all generations about the terrible crimes, history, ideology, and legacy of communism in all of its forms. And we do that through teacher training, through education programs. We do it at the Victims of Communism Museum near the White House in Washington, D.C. We

0:40 do it through policy-relevant research on China and Cuba and other terrible regimes today. And we put that into the hands of the media and policymakers so they can make wise decisions.

0:50 Speaker 1 I mean, what some of these socialist teachers are doing now, and I hate to say that because I went to public school and there were great teachers in that time, is they’re teaching, they’re trying to teach the kids that they’re victims of capitalism.

1:07 Speaker 2 You know, you’re exactly right in many quarters that there is a, in the last 20 years, there’s been a neo-Marxist turn in American education to say the story of America is all about oppressors versus the oppressed. And sure, we have some sins and scars, but real American history begins with the values, the values we’ve celebrated this year

1:28 in the Declaration of Independence and the steady march forward towards greater freedom and greater opportunity and all the blessings that democracy and free markets have brought to us. Last year, we were in front of over 9,000 teachers at 20 teachers conferences, passing out materials, making our curriculum available and doing teacher training.

1:49 Speaker 1 I mean, I tell you, I got a great education in public school and I enjoyed it. And the public school teachers really, really cared about the students and the I mean, was it different 30 years ago, 40 years.

2:03 Speaker 3 Ago than now?

2:05 Speaker 2 You know, it was different. Like you, I had a great public school education. I taught at a public high school early in my career. And there still are many, many, many great public school teachers out there. But there has been this shift in the way we teach about American history that is just plain wrong. And I’ll give you

2:22 just one example. We’ve seen in that just yesterday there was the primaries for the Senate race in Oklahoma. and a self-proclaimed democratic socialist won the Democrat Party nomination. And that individual said that countries that have socialism are thriving. Well, that’s just false. Look at what happened in 20 years in Argentina of socialism. Look at Venezuela. Look at these

2:48 countries that have had socialism. The poorest country in Western Europe is the one country that avows socialism, Portugal over the past 30 years. So She was just wrong, and she’s been taught wrong at the university and at the other levels, and we have to work to change all that.

3:05 Speaker 3 Well, what are we actually doing?

3:09 Speaker 1 I mean, the teachers unions and the teachers, it’s such a big organization.

3:14 Speaker 3 It’s like trying to move, forgive me, the Titanic.

3:20 Speaker 2 You know, it may not be as bad as we think, and let me give you a couple reasons. The first one is that thanks to COVID, if there’s any blessing from that insane era, it’s that parents woke up. Ten percent of our kids are outside of public education, which is millions of families and their children and their teenagers.

3:39 So we ought to not neglect that ten percent. Second, lots of states. have passed our victims of communism legislation, like Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Arizona. And they are now in the process of requiring the teaching of why democracy and why free markets are good and why communism is always misery, drudgery, and murder. So we and that’s at the public school

4:06 level in states like Florida that have taken the lead. And we provide curriculum. We provide videos of the witnesses of communism on our YouTube page and other things right there for the classroom. So all is not lost, but it takes it really takes vigilant work.

4:23 Speaker 1 Well, thank you, Dr. Eric Patterson. Thank you for everything you’re doing for our kids because we do worry about our kids. And we have another lady, Lynn Shaw, who runs Lynn’s Warriors, does similar things, worrying about our kids.

4:39 And maybe I will put the two of you together. You never know.

4:43 Speaker 3 Two plus two might equal five.

4:45 Speaker 2 I would love that. And we make all these things available on our Amazon page, Victims of Communism Amazon page, on our website and elsewhere. We want to be of service there in New York, where things have gotten very crazy, as well as across the country.

5:00 Speaker 3 Thank you so much. And we’ll catch up soon. Thank you.

5:03 Speaker 2 John, thanks. Have a great day.