I mean, was it different 30 years ago, 40 years ago than now?

You know, it was different.

Like you, I had a great public school education.

I taught at a public high school early in my career.

And there still are many, many, many great public school teachers out there.

But there has been this shift in the way we teach about American history that is just plain wrong.

And I'll give you just one example.

It's like trying to move, forgive me, the Titanic.

I mean, was it different 30 years ago, 40 years ago than now?

You know, it was different.

Like you, I had a great public school education.

I taught at a public high school early in my career.

And there still are many, many, many great public school teachers out there.

But there has been this shift in the way we teach about American history that is just plain wrong.

And I'll give you just one example.

It's like trying to move, forgive me, the Titanic.

And, uh, I mean, was it different 30 years ago, 40 years ago than now?

You know, it was different.

Like you, I had a great public school education.

I taught at a public high school early in my career and, and there still are many, many, many great public school teachers out there.

But there has been this shift in the way we teach about American history that is just plain wrong, and I'll give you just one example.

You may have seen in the, that just yesterday there was the pr- the primaries for the Senate race in Oklahoma, and a self-proclaimed Democratic socialist won the Democrat Party nomination, and that individual said that countries that have socialism are thriving.

Well, that's just false.

It's like trying to move, uh, forgive me, the Titanic.

Here's Dr. Patterson.

We have a problem with both practical socialism and ideological socialism.

We've raised a generation of practical socialists, meaning their every need and desire has been provided for by an external authority with apparently no personal cost.

Why shouldn't this support extend into one's twenties and beyond? On the ideological side, many of us were not paying attention when the media and public education radically changed the fundamental narrative taught in our schools.

No more the hard-fought American dream.

Instead, they were taught that our history is one of oppressors, usually white and Christian or Jewish, grinding the oppressed, and therefore today we need a radical restructuring of American institutions.

Ideas do have consequences.

Here's Dr. Patterson.

New York's mayor, self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, promised low-cost groceries, subsidized rent, free public transportation, an army of new social workers, and other freebies as a candidate.

This summer, the public is carefully eyeing his plan to impose big-box, state-funded grocery stores across New York.

How should we evaluate all of this? The place to begin is with our fundamental principles of stewardship and accountability.

Just last week, a group of small businesses, many of whom are immigrants to the United States, sued Mayor Mamdani over his grocery store plan.

Why? Because New York is home to over 13,000 neighborhood grocery stores, known as bodegas.

These independent mom-and-pop grocers operate across the entirety of New York.

But how do you How do you see it? What is it at your museum that if we went and took a tour that we would learn and maybe we would know democratic socialism is probably not going to work here?

Well, you're exactly right.

It never works in any form of socialism.

And here at the museum or when we do teacher trainings, for instance, we were at 20 teachers' conferences last year in front of over 9,000 teachers.

We have curriculum from college down to elementary school, all of it available either on our website or on our Amazon page.

All of those resources, the history is clear that socialism and communism never work.

Now there are some distinctions in these terms, and I'm going to grossly simplify by saying Karl Marx saw socialism as the first step towards communism.

How do you tell people or convince people if they don't know this already? How do you reach them with these lessons in that message?

Yeah

... that the values of the Declaration of Independence are somehow tired and not for today.

Any, any groups that start making those types of arguments, whether on the far right or the far left, is a problem for our entire society.

But there's so much more of a wave of this on one side, and so this is a challenge for Democrats, but it is also a national challenge, and part of it is based on age.

Part of this is, is that there is a widespread sentiment among people under a certain age that there's an older generation that is keeping things from them, that politicians are old, businessmen are old, their parents are old, their grandparents are old, and they don't understand what it's like to have to start from scratch and build something.

Now, that's a, that's a myth.

That's a fallacy.

There are distinctions, but I think there are hallmarks that are similar that we could take from these other places and say, "The United States is different, and we don't need to try these failed experiments." But how do you, how do you see it? What is it at your museum that if we went and, and took a tour that we would learn, and maybe we would know, hmm, Democratic socialism is probably not gonna work here?

Here's Dr. Patterson.

Today's self-described Democratic socialists, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, have identified real frustrations: bureaucracy, inefficiency, red tape, lack of accountability, and the mounting costs of urban life in places such as Baltimore, New York, and Chicago.

But they fail to see that these problems were caused by decades of progressive government, ever larger bureaucracies, restrictions on private property and innovation, and policies that made citizens more dependent on government.

Should Americans be worried, or is this merely youthful enthusiasm? True, there's a faddish pop Marxism among many young adults and teens.

It is fashionable to rage against the machine, and more attractive still when government promises to subsidize college, housing, groceries, and transportation.

But something more serious is at work.

Americans should ask three questions about any political candidate, platform, or party.

Why is it important now more than ever to remember what took place that day?

We host this annual event at the beautiful Goddess of Liberty statue that's here in Washington, DC that the foundation funded and put up in 2007.

And we hold this annual event.

First, it's important to commemorate the incredible heroism of students, not just in Beijing at Tiananmen Square, but in a dozen cities around China who were, who were leading a call for change, a call for human rights, a call for democracy, and to remember that they were slaughtered or imprisoned in the streets, thousands of them by, by most estimates.

The other reason that we remember this is not just as a historical token, but because that same regime behaving in a similar fashion is there today.

So whether it's the repression in Hong Kong, the repression in Tibet, the repression in Xinjiang, repression of religious minorities, this powerful communist regime is behaving the same way today.

So w- this is a, a living memory, not just of the past, but of today's crimes and atrocities.

Talk to us about some of the pitfalls of when people do want to learn the truth, even in our education system here.

United States connection.

Well, I think that one of the things that President Trump has faced on the world stage is having almost no peers.

Part of that is, is the maturity level of his age group.

Part of it is the things that he's done.

And so when, when you look on the world stage, there really are only, on the international stage, only two other people who are kind of at his peer level.

One is Vladimir Putin, and one is President Xi.

And then maybe there's a couple of others, uh, two notches down or something, uh, for instance, in Turkey and the current leader in, in Egypt, who's a close American ally.

That I think is something we've been missing for way too long.

Why do you think that is?

Well, certainly, as you said, on the first hand, there's a terrible problem of global propaganda in universities, on TikTok, a widespread set of campaigns that's to soften the image of China and to try to demonstrate that the CCP-led government and society is very efficient, that it takes care of its people, etc.

And it doesn't look at the insidious persecution of religious groups like Christians and Falun Gong or ethnic minorities or just the raw bullying of its neighbors across the region.

At the same time, you've noted a problem that we have in the West and in the United States and Canada and Europe, and that is a statistic this last summer said as many as 62% of America's young adults and teens think that socialism or communism in some form is a good idea for our country.

why is this the case well part of it is a rewriting of western history to call it imperialistic and aggressive and undermine the values of the declaration of independence the achievements of human rights and fundamental liberties that we have in the united states and among our allies and the second part of this is a growing dependency by young people on someone else taking care of them And socialism sounds pretty good if it's wrapped in a package, as we've seen in New York City under this current mayor.

We'll give you free rent.

We'll give you free transportation.

And with this year being 250 or the nation celebrating its 250th year, what's your message to those who do think that the China model is a better system than America?

But where is that line where, for instance, in this case, Pop Mart is now basically complicit in repression?

That's right.

So Pop Mart has rapidly expanded from something like a dozen to 20 to 70 to 100 stores in the US.

A first step is the US government targeting those stores and, and shutting them down for their complicity in using, uh, this product.

This is not something that they don't know about.

This...

And, and one thing to remember about when we talk about what, what can we do, and, and particularly we sometimes think about corporations as big faceless entities, but that's not the case.

How important is the issue of human rights? Do you see President Trump bringing up that issue to Xi Jinping? For instance, he's mentioned bringing up the case of Jimmy Lai.

Here's Dr. Eric Patterson.

John, thank you for having me and this opportunity to talk a little bit about just war theory, or what be better to be called just statecraft.

As you said, we're just in a dynamic situation.

It's only been about forty-eight hours since the United States had a military operation alongside Israel striking these targets in Iran, killing the supreme leader and a number of other military officials, striking military targets across the country.

And of course, Iran has retaliated with strikes in at least five neighboring countries, which is nothing new for them.

And so let me say something about the Christian tradition about thinking about issues of war and peace, but first remind us that going back to the Iranian revolution of 1979, Iran has been a rogue actor in international affairs, attacking its neighbors and attacking the United States.

It's estimated by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, for instance, that there have been at least 180 attacks by Iran and its proxies on the US in recent decades.

Are, are, are you, are you kind of like, uh, you know, uh, approximating Saint Augustine here to kinda jump out and, uh, throw in a new category, or how are you thinking about this?

Well, thanks, John, for mentioning that book, and there's two...

I'd d- done two recent Christian books, that one and another, another one called Just War in Christian Tradition that looks at denominational perspectives on the unique Christian approach to thinking about issues of war and peace.

Uh, the reason that, that I emphasize this term about just statecraft is just because we, we, we sometimes only are talking about hot war, and we forget that when we think about issues of justice and security, we're talking about political leaders, and we're talking about the intelligence community.

We're talking about humanitarians who try to assuage poverty and destruction.

We're talking about the diplomats who are, at all points, before a war and after, trying to deter and to shape the environment towards peace and away from hot conflict.

And of course, all of those actors are working through the hot conflict on the back end.

But, you know, that was the first strike, and then there has been retaliation, and certainly when you look at Iran's retaliation around the region, are they violating that kind of how to wage w-w-war in a just way? Are they violating those principles?

What are you hoping that more people are learning from your, your organization?

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation & Museum is a, is an educational nonprofit, just like you said, and our primary mission is to educate all generations about the horrific legacy, ideology and history of communism.

And we do that in part by commemorating the loss of 100 million people murdered by communism in the past, in places like the Soviet Union, Eritrea, Cuba and elsewhere.

And being an advocate for people who are still held captive by totalitarian regimes today in places like China, Venezuela, North Korea and elsewhere.

And we really do it in three ways.

One is we operate, uh, since 2022, a new museum in Washington, just two blocks from the White House that's part history museum, part art museum, and we also have current events and educational programming as well.

Second, we train teachers and professors and other educators.

But would you agree with that kind of assessment that the work that you're doing, you know, raising awareness about communism, um, the, the detrimental, the horrible impacts that it has, people that are still living under communism, kind of takes on new importance as we're watching a democrat socialist almost seeming to run away with this election here in New York City?

What are you hoping that more people are learning from your, your organization?

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation & Museum is a, is an educational nonprofit, just like you said, and our primary mission is to educate all generations about the horrific legacy, ideology and history of communism.

And we do that in part by commemorating the loss of 100 million people murdered by communism in the past, in places like the Soviet Union, Eritrea, Cuba and elsewhere, and being an advocate for people who are still held captive by totalitarian regimes today, in places like China, Venezuela, North Korea and elsewhere.

And we really do it in three ways.

One is we operate, uh, since 2022, a new museum in Washington, just two blocks from the White House that's part history museum, part art museum, and we also have current events and educational programming as well.

Second, we train teachers and professors and other educators.

We do student programming from elementary school up through college on how to expose the lies of Marxism in all of its forms, and how to be for freedom, for democracy, for human rights.

But would you agree with that kind of assessment that the work that you're doing, you know, raising awareness about communism, um, the- the detrimental, the horrible impacts that it has, people that are still living under communism, kind of takes on new importance as we're watching a Democrat Socialist almost seeming to run away with this election here in New York City?