Memorial to the Victims of Communism

A congressionally authorized "Memorial to the Victims of Communism" is going up on Tuesday in Washington, DC, according to WorldNetDaily.

According to the article, it will go up at the intersections of Massachusetts and New Jersey Avenues, about two blocks from Union Station and within view of the Capitol.

Many in our own country have for years ignored the oppression of those forced to live under communism, and some, such as Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, have actually been active in fighting our efforts to combat communism and have even aided our communist enemies against us.

Much of the blood of the 100 million victims is on our American hands because of our indifference and because of our treason against freedom. In a sense, the monument is as much an indictment of our moral failure as it is a memorial to those victims.

Yet the U.S and the Western world has a "great moral blind spot" when it comes to understanding the impact and threat of communism, say the organizers of the memorial.

"It is a great moral failing for a free society to misunderstand the extent of communism's atrocities," they say. "While the horrors of Nazism are well known, who knows that the Soviet Union murdered 20 million people? Who knows that China's dictators have slaughtered an estimated 60 million? Who knows that the communist holocaust has exacted a death toll surpassing that of all of the wars of the 20th century combined?"

Inscriptions on the memorial, which was conceived by scholar Lee Edwards and former Ambassador Lev Dobriansky, will read: "To the more than 100 million victims of Communism and to those who love liberty," and "To the freedom and independence of all captive nations and peoples."

Edwards told American Spectator senior editor Quin Hillyer the purpose is not only to memorialize victims of communism but to honor those who resisted it, "real leaders" such as Ronald Reagan, Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa, Harry Truman, Pope John Paul II and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

A third purpose is to educate, Edwards said.

"We want to educate people about what a terrible tyranny it was," he told Hillyer. " … There is not the same kind of recognition of the communist holocaust."

My only criticism of this memorial is its location. It should have been right across from the Capital Building.

That way, all the communist sympathizers still in congress, all those who still worship at the temple of Marxism, would have to see this every day. The horrible and inevitable destination of this barbaric philosophy that many even now flirt with might then have a chance to sink into their brains over time, and they might eventually embrace the Judeo-Christian principles of freedom and individual responsibility that spawned our own great nation.