November 25, 2022
From a Time When Communism Was Taught Right
By Kent D. Worley
When I was a senior in high school, I was required to take and pass a government class as a condition to graduate. My teacher was a retired Illinois state trooper. Naturally, my teacher had certain opinions about the criminal justice system and the courts. My teacher was not a big fan of the Miranda decision. His issue was not against informing a suspect about his rights; it was more about how the landmark decision was used to invalidate many good arrests on picayune issues. He complained that career criminals, especially murderers, would have their charges dropped by weak judges for matters not related to the arrest.
With this particular teacher, things were black and white, either right or wrong. There was no middle ground. I think that because of his law enforcement background, he was also very anti-communist. He spent minimal time on the U.S. and Illinois Constitution, but we painstakingly labored over the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and The Gulag Archipelago. We spent several weeks reading and discussing summaries he passed out in class.
The final exam was even more intense. We spent a whole month reading various accounts of Russian MiG pilot Victor Belenko's life under communism and his final decision to defect to the West. Each of us in the class had to read the newly printed Reader's Digest condensed book on the subject. We had to read and become familiar with MIG Pilot: The Final Escape of Lieutenant Belenko. We had to read about his childhood, his education, and his interactions with party officials and their inane attempts to convey how wonderful life was under the regime. Without giving away the plot of the story, some of the pieces illustrate how insane the leaders will go to spread propaganda, no matter how ridiculous.
The teacher also had a refugee from East Germany come and speak to our class. This young man had jumped out of a hotel window and run across a guarded street to freedom. The former citizen of East Germany told our class about the perils of living under communism — shortages of food and basic needs, long lines waiting for food and basic items. The communist government controlled every aspect of your life and job, including where you lived. Most of all, the former East German told us that he had no rights. The government could search you or jail you at any moment. It was even possible for someone to just disappear and never be seen or heard from again.
Understandably, the class came away with an understanding of the evils of communism. In a small way, he successfully showed us the superior nature of our republic and its constitution. In short, we had rights.
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