Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announces he is signing a bill requiring high school students to learn about the "evils of communism and totalitarian ideologies." The bill also creates a library that allows students to learn about "real patriots" who escaped communism and socialism. pic.twitter.com/x9cvBv5jXK
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 22, 2021
I was born in Miami in the early 1980s.
I was taught about the evils of socialism, fascism, and big government by two groups of people: old Jews who experienced the Holocaust and old Cubans who experienced the Cuban Revolution.
There are many Holocaust memorials and museums that have captured the history of what happened.
There are very few museums that really capture the horrors of the Cuban Revolution.
If DeSantis really wants to do something significant, he needs to send stenographers and historians down to Calle Ocho and Little Havana in Miami and collect the oral histories of the Cubans who saw the Communist take over of the country and create a museum equivalent to the DC Holocaust Museum to tell their story.
We had Communists committing genocide 90 miles off the coast of his state and people today walk around in Che shirts and think the pictures of the old Chevys in Havana are quaint.
The real history of the Cuman Revolution needs to be captured before the people who saw it are all dead, and the horrors that they saw need to be taught in Florida public schools.
It is a moral duty.
Florida high school graduates should leave school with a burning hatred of Communism and a desire to punch the shit out of out-of-state college classmates who wear Che shirts.
Amen!
ditto
Have you written him? You should suggest it! It’s a brilliant idea. Ask anyone who has escaped that kind of tyranny — Venezuela, Korea, USSR Poland, wherever. They are frequently the strongest advocates for America and our Constitution because they have lived both ways and know the truth.
A friend of mine once drove from Florida to California with some friends who were Russian Jews who benefited from Reagan’s immigration policies. They came here with nothing and built a great life. Reagan was out of office and in the early stages of his dementia. He had penciled in a short meeting with them but ended up spending a couple of golden hours talking with them about their experiences. We all need to hear their stories.
Much older than you are, born in the early ’50s. My dad was a WWII combat vet. Nearly every male teacher I had in school served in the military, the female teachers served on the home front, working at traditional male jobs to “free a man to fight.” We heard first hand about the evils of the German and Japanese dictatorships. My high school Spanish teacher was a Cuban refugee. Yeah the government put out a lot of propaganda about the “Godless Commies” but there were people that we knew who had first had experience with Communists, NAZIs, Japanese fanatics, et. al. that gave credence to the somewhat over the top jingoism of the government’s propaganda. Yes, we are loosing the people who have that experience, and need to capture their stories before it’s too late.
Hell, I thought that had already been done! They were talking about doing that back in the late 70s… damn…
Florida used to have a required ‘Comparative Political Systems’ class, but by the time I took it, 1980ish, at my high school, it was a joke. No meat, easy A, nothing about the horrors of socialism, communism, fascism or any other ‘ism’ that isn’t capitalism.
Got shut down in the early 80’s. The Teachers’ Union was the primary push to kill it. Go figures.
Good luck with that. The guy who Wrote Chaos Monkeys, his grandparents fled Cuba and he spits at the name of Castro or Che. But he literally in the book around page 256ish says there is no difference between communism and capitalism. I think he may have missed a couple of points in the stories he heard from his grandparents.