Things I Learned Under Communism!

I was young when I left Romania. Not even ten, not really understanding what was happening, I was plucked from a life I knew and tossed into a world I could not begin to understand until much later in life.

Seeing what this nation is becoming, seeing the steps it is taking toward embracing what so many risked life and limb to escape, lately I’ve been thinking about my early years, trying hard to remember things I thought long forgotten, and piece together some sort of explanation as to why a nation would willingly capitulate its hard fought and hard won freedoms to embrace a system proven time and again to be a failure on a grand scale.

Make no mistake, we are swiftly nearing what can only be defined as socialism, and though some might revel in the idea of it, the reality of the thing is sinister, grisly, hopeless, and joyless.

Some things sound far better on paper than they are when implemented.

As I said, I write these lines as one who has lived through what America is becoming, and one whose parents and grandparents were permanently scarred by a system which willingly provides for its citizenry’s survival, but demands total submission, obedience and subservience in return.

Truth is, as long as you are willing to forfeit your individuality, dignity, faith, morals, and convictions, life in a socialist system is close to bearable.

One of the most profound things I learned even as a child is that most men fall in line long before being threatened with anything as untoward as violence. Neighbors, friends, and even folks we thought of as brothers or sisters, all merrily reported any ‘suspicious activity’ even if those performing said activities were their own spouses, children or parents.

If you are willing to conform, and don’t mind living in a police state, then the next couple years shouldn’t be all that traumatic for you.

The scales are tipped definitively when more than half the population of any given nation comes to realize that whether earned, taken, or freely received bread tastes the same and fills the belly just as readily.

‘Dignity doesn’t smooth over callouses or heal blisters, so why work when you don’t have to?’

Once we stopped teaching conviction, once we stopped teaching that one’s principles mattered, once we began to encourage one and all to take the easy way out rather than make a principled stand, our course was inevitable and our destination a foregone conclusion.

Freedom is like that longsuffering and faithful friend we take for granted, dismiss, and ignore until one day we come to realize they are no more. It is only when freedom is stripped from a nation that men begin to long for it once more, but by then it is too late, and the monster we thought we could control by force of will alone at long last bares its fangs and reveals its true self.

Nothing in this world is free but the love of God. Everything else has strings attached whether we see them at present or not.

There is one other thing I learned while under communism: that a man’s true self is revealed and his true character uncovered most readily during times of distress and turmoil. The few who stood, stood to their honor. The many who fell, fell to their shame.

Stand or fall, your true self will come to light in the coming days.

1 Corinthians 10:11-13, “Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages of have come. Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.”

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.