In his latest post, Radley Balko asks if he was being boorish by helping to point out the true meaning of the hammer and sickle emblem to a student wearing it at a seminar. Not only do I think that he acted correctly but I believe he fulfilled an obligation, which all of us who hold the classical liberal position have, to educate. When Professor Bobb brought up the 100 million dead associated with communism he may have been jeered but he also created cognitive dissidence within the audience. Exhibit A that the introduction of the above dead into the mind of that student caused a conflict with his world view, which could not be resolved without change, is the sweater later covering the emblem. We need more not less of this.

There are two books that could greatly contribute to the end of Soviet chic if they were more widely read on today’s campus. The first is The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression an exceptionally complete account of the absolutely and sometimes indescribably evil deeds and policies, which have accompanied communist rule wherever it has been attempted. The book documents those 100 million deaths mentioned before, as well as, the myriad other forms of misery imposed upon people by that malevolent scheme. The most important message of this book is that it happens every time, no matter who is running the communist system, brutal repression and poverty are the outputs.

As powerful as the above book is, there is another volume that I believe could have an even more profound effect on student's thinking, Everyday Stalinism, Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s by historian Sheila Fitzpatrick. This work is an excellent narrative of urban life under Stalin in the 1930s. It describes the ways in which people coped with the unrelentingly vicious conditions of daily life forced upon them by communism. No sane person would ever want to live in the inhuman society documented by Fitzpatrick. Yet, all through my reading of this book the constant thought that this type of policy is becoming an integral part of our way of life, kept coming into my mind. We need students to ask, is this book about the past or is it about the future?