American Minute With Bill Federer “Iron Curtain” & “Bamboo Curtain”: Socialism-Communism vs Freedom & Faith

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” announced President Ronald Reagan at the Berlin Wall, JUNE 12, 1987.

Begun after Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Soviet Union existed from 1922 to 1991.

With its motto “Workers of the World, Unite!” the Soviet tactic was to train agitators, community organizers, labor organizers, and agent provocateurs-provoking agents.

These would divide naive citizens into classes or groups with grievances, stir them up to protest and riot with the goal of “tearing down” the existing government.

When social chaos and domestic violence erupted, the public would willingly accept the promise of peace from a “new order.”

Unfortunately, instead of the “new order” being a wonderful utopian society of equality, it simply paved the way for the martial law of socialist and communist dictators.

Lenin is attributed with referring to naive citizens who were organized to protest and riot as being useful idiots.

Once they woke up and realized they had simply been pawns, it was too late.

Franklin Roosevelt addressed Delegates of the American Youth Congress, February 10, 1940:

“Some of you are communists … You have no American right, by act or deed of any kind, to subvert the Government and the Constitution of this Nation.”

Instead of a “workers’ paradise,” the power usurped by dictators turned into totalitarian control over the life and death of over 293 million people across 11 time zones.

The countries controlled by Communist “Red” Russia were described as being behind an “Iron Curtain.”

The countries controlled by Communist “Red” China were described as being behind a “Bamboo Curtain.”

George Orwell wrote in his original preface to Animal Farm (George Orwell: Some Materials for a Bibliography, 1953, by Ian R. Willison):

“It was of the utmost importance to me that people in western Europe should see the Soviet regime for what it really was …

I was struck by clear signs of its transformation into a hierarchical society, in which the rulers have no more reason to give up their power than any other ruling class …

Workers and intelligentsia in a country like England cannot understand … the USSR …

Totalitarianism is completely incomprehensible to them.”

Addressing naive students, who thought socialism and communism would redistribute wealth, President Franklin Roosevelt told the American Youth Congress, February 10, 1940:

“The Soviet Union … is run by a dictatorship as absolute as any other dictatorship in the world.”

Under the Soviet dictatorship:

Vladimir Lenin explained that socialism was a transition phase from capitalism to communism:

“The goal of socialism is communism.”

Roosevelt stated February 10, 1940:

“I disliked the regimentation under Communism.

I abhorred the indiscriminate killings of thousands of innocent victims …

I heartily deprecated the banishment of religion, though I knew that some day Russia would return to religion for the simple reason that four or five thousand years of recorded history have proven that mankind has always believed in God in spite of many abortive attempts to exile God.”

Winston Churchill sent a telegram to President Truman, June 4, 1945, warning of:

“Soviet power into the heart of Western Europe … the descent of an iron curtain between us and everything to the eastward”

President Harry S Truman stated January 20, 1949:

“Communism is based on the belief that man is so weak and inadequate that he is unable to govern himself, and therefore requires the rule of strong masters.

Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and justice …”

Truman continued:

“Communism subjects the individual to arrest without lawful cause, punishment without trial, and forced labor as a chattel of the state.

It decrees what information he shall receive, what art he shall produce, what leaders he shall follow, and what thoughts he shall think.

Democracy maintains that government is established for the benefit of the individual, and is charged with the responsibility of protecting the rights of the individual and his freedom …

… These differences between Communism and Democracy do not concern the United States alone.

People everywhere are coming to realize that what is involved is material well-being, human dignity, and the right to believe in and worship God.”

Truman introduced Winston Churchill at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946, where Churchill gave his “Iron Curtain Speech”:

“The power of the State is exercised without restraint, either by dictators or by compact oligarchies operating through a privileged party and a political police …

We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world

and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence …”

Churchill continued, warning of communist tactics to infiltrate and undermine through a “fifth column”:

“However, in a great number of countries, far from the Russian frontiers and throughout the world, Communist fifth columns are established and work in complete unity and absolute obedience to the directions they receive from the Communist center …

In the British Commonwealth and in the United States … Communism is in its infancy … Communist parties or fifth columns constitute a growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization …”

Churchill concluded:

“From what I have seen of our Russian … allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness.”

In 1961, the Soviet Union erected the Berlin Wall, separating the free West from the Communist East.

President John F. Kennedy gave a speech in Berlin on June 26, 1963 to 450,000 people at the Rathaus Schöneberg:

“Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was civis romanus sum (‘I am a Roman citizen’).

Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’ …

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!'”

On May 22-30, 1972, President Richard Nixon met with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

President Ronald Reagan met on November 19-21, 1985, with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the first of three historic meetings.

They met again October 11-12, 1986 in Reykjavik, Iceland.

On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan began his address at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate:

“Twenty-four years ago, President John F. Kennedy visited Berlin, speaking to the people of this city and the world …

Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe.

From the Baltic, south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash …

There remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same – still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state.”

George Orwell wrote in “Second Thoughts on James Burnham” (Polemic, summer 1946):

“It was only after the Soviet régime became unmistakably totalitarian that English intellectuals … began to show an interest in it …

English … intelligentsia is really voicing their secret wish … to destroy the old … and usher in a hierarchical society where the intellectual can at last get his hands on the whip.”

Reagan continued his address at the Brandenburg Gate:

“Just as truth can flourish only when the journalist is given freedom of speech, so prosperity can come about only when the farmer and businessman enjoy economic freedom …

There stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity …

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization:

Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Reagan added:

“Perhaps this gets to the root of the matter, to the most fundamental distinction of all between East and West.

The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship.

The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront …”

Reagan concluded:

“Years ago … the East Germans … erected a secular structure: the television tower at Alexander Platz.

Virtually ever since, the authorities have been working to correct what they view as the tower’s one major flaw, treating the glass sphere at the top with paints and chemicals of every kind.

… Yet even today when the sun strikes that sphere – that sphere that towers over all Berlin – the light makes the sign of the cross.

There in Berlin, like the city itself, symbols of love, symbols of worship, cannot be suppressed.”

Reagan and Gorbachev met a third time in Washington, D.C., December 8-10. 1987.

Less than two years later, the Berlin Wall began coming down in November of 1989.

George H.W. Bush was the President at the time, having been Vice-President under Reagan.

Bush, who was born June 12, 1924, also helped in the dismantling of the “Bamboo Curtain.”

The Communist “People’s Republic of China” under Mao Zedong, drove the free Chinese out of mainland China onto the Island of Taiwan.

Since 1949, mainland China was separated from the capitalist Western World by what has been called the “Bamboo Curtain.”

This separation grew more hostile after the Korean War and the demarcation of the North Korea Demilitarized Zone in 1953.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon was the first U.S. President to visit the People’s Republic of China, meeting with Chairman Mao

In 1974, George H.W. Bush was appointed by President Gerald Ford as an emissary to China, serving as head of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing.

Bush told Amish and Mennonite leaders in Lancaster, PA, March 22, 1989:

“Barbara and I went to China as your emissary … in 1974, and we had wondered about the family in China – Communist country, totalitarian …

We knew that there had been almost entire banning on practicing and teaching Christianity … This was right after the Cultural Revolution.”

As President, George H.W. Bush imposed economic sanctions on China after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989.

Rather than allow more freedoms, Communists leaders responded by purging liberals from their party.

Bush advocated an impractical internationalist foreign policy that was popular for a season, as revealed in his globalist “dream of a new world order” speech, September 11, 1990, during the first Iraq War against Saddam Hussein.

President George H.W. Bush acknowledged the role of religion in America’s founding, stating in his Inaugural Address, January 20, 1989:

“I have just repeated word for word the oath taken by George Washington 200 years ago, and the Bible on which I place my hand is the Bible on which he placed his …

And my first act as President is a prayer. I ask you to bow your heads …”

On February 22, 1990, President Bush signed Joint Resolution 164 declaring 1990 the International Year of Bible Reading:

“Among the great books produced throughout the history of mankind, the Bible has been prized above all others …

The Bible has had a critical impact upon the development of Western civilization …

It was a biblical view of man – one affirming the dignity and worth of the human person, made in the image of our Creator – that inspired the principles upon which the United States is founded …

The historic speeches of Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., provide compelling evidence of the role Scripture played in shaping the struggle against slavery and discrimination …

We recall the words of the prophet Isaiah, who declared, ‘The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand forever’ …

When you have read the Bible you will know that it is the Word of God …

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the year 1990 as the International Year of Bible Reading.

I invite all Americans to discover the great inspiration and knowledge that can be obtained through thoughtful reading of the Bible.”

On May 3, 1990, President George H.W. Bush declared a National Day of Prayer:

“The great faith that led our Nation’s Founding Fathers to pursue this bold experience in self-government has sustained us in uncertain and perilous times …

Like them, we do very well to recall our ‘firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence’ … and to pray for continued help and guidance from our wise and loving Creator.”

In his 1992 National Day of Prayer Proclamation, President George H.W. Bush stated:

“Whatever our individual religious convictions may be, each of us is invited to join in this National Day of Prayer …

Each of us can echo this timeless prayer of Solomon, the ancient king who prayed for, and received, the gift of wisdom:

‘The Lord our God be with us, as He was with our fathers; may He not leave us or forsake us; so that He may incline our hearts to Him, to walk in all His ways … that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other.'”

President George H.W. Bush stated in his Christmas Message, December 8, 1992:

“As we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, whose life offers us a model of dignity, compassion, and justice, we renew our commitment to peace …

Christ made clear the redemptive value of giving of oneself for others …

The heroic actions of our veterans, the lifesaving work of our scientists and physicians, and generosity of countless individuals who voluntarily give of their time, talents, and energy to help others –

all have enriched humankind and affirmed the importance of our Judeo-Christian heritage in shaping our government and values.”