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I was very young when my sister gave me George Orwell's Animal Farm to read. The book was about animals on a farm who were mistreated by the mean, nasty, and cruel farmer. They revolted. The animals got rid of the farmer and put the pigs in charge. Well, as it turned out, the pigs were worse overlords than the farmer had ever been.
When I read Animal Farm, I had no idea that it was a parody of the Russian Revolution. I knew there was something strange about the book and the theme, but it took my fifth grade teacher to explain to me what I had read and its meaning.
Following my adventure with Animal Farm, there were two experiences in my life that helped to formulate my views about communism and socialism. The first experience was a story my father loved to tell. He was active in the union movement after the Great Depression. He got fired from his job for union activism. Under the "Baby Wagner Act," he got his job back since union organization became protected by federal statute. After my parents passed away, I found the letter firing him. It was signed by one Sylvia Klein. She was my mother. It was like something out of a movie, perhaps Pajama Game or Norma Rae. The Pajama Game was actually about a pajama factory in Williamsport, Pennsylvania!
I have never heard how my mother and father got together, given the course of events, but somehow, they did. When my parents were dating, my grandfather came down to the picket line which my father convinced my mother she should be involved with. There was an ongoing strike at the place where they both worked. Allegedly, my grandfather took my mother by the back of her hair, pulled her off the line and said: "You don't want to hang around with these bums."
As the years went by, my father and grandfather's love for cigars brought them together!
My favorite story was when one of my father's friends convinced him that he should join the Communist Party in order to get help with the strike. Dad said that he was interviewed by two men in a dark room with a bright light shining on him. "It was like something out of a detective movie." The interviewers asked lots of questions and when they were all done, my father, with typical Rieders aggressiveness, piped up "So you have now asked me a lot of questions, but I want to ask you, what are you going to do to help with the strike?" My father explained that he had no interest in communism and actually knew nothing about it but was looking for help on behalf of the union.
The two men conducting the interview told him they would take a break and let him know. They came back 10 minutes later, and they said: "Mr. Rieders you are not going to be accepted for membership in the Communist Party. You need more discipline."
Dad's response, in telling the story to me was, "Thank G-d for that. For certain I would have been up before the McCarthy Committee, had they accepted me for membership."
Thus began my father's journey to the rightwing of politics.
Many years later, when I was perhaps 10 or 12 years old, my parents announced to me that we were going to pick up some relatives at a ship that had just come into New York Harbor. We arrived and it turned out these relatives were members of my mother's family who were born in Poland, suffered through the Holocaust in Europe, fought for the Red Army upon liberation from the Germans, and then wound up in the Soviet Gulag.
I remember the trip in the car to where the relatives were staying. I asked them lots of questions about life in Russia, and I expected them to say terrible things about the communist regime. Actually, they said nothing. They made some comments that were almost complimentary. I was extremely upset with them. Later, my parents explained to me that our cousins were so terrified by the communist regime and the reach of its tentacles, that they were afraid to say anything bad about it, even in America.
They went on to have a great life in this country. They owned a series of pharmacies in Brooklyn and became successful capitalists. They left communism behind just as fast as they could.
There is no surprise to the current leftwing lurch of the Democratic Party towards socialism, and even communism. It probably began with the Vietnam War as well as the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Soldiers came home from those conflicts angry, injured, and dead.
The second major cause of the direction taken by the Democratic Party is the infusion of immigrants from regimes hostile to capitalism and the American way. Other than Israel, none of the Middle Eastern countries from which many of these immigrants come, have any form of democracy recognizable to us. Immigrants from Latin America likewise have little or no experience with democracy, tolerance, or even the most basic form of elections.
Every nation that has attempted socialism, and even a few that have embraced communism, has come back to a capitalist model. This is true throughout Europe, Scandinavia, Israel, and many South America countries. The socialist model nearly bankrupted much of the world, especially those countries that overtaxed the wealthy. Pure capitalism has also gone by the wayside because the lack of regulatory infrastructure will be seized upon by the greedy. A well-regulated capitalist system with a safety net for those who really need it, was the dream of our Founders and has been instituted in most democratic societies around the globe.
What about our education system, helping to create the great melting pot? Clearly, it has failed. Some of those institutions of higher learning have been bought by despotic regimes like Qatar.
Where does all of the antisemitism come from? Most of the people who hate Israel know nothing about it. Try talking to them sometime. They will talk to you about genocide, but what genocide are they talking about? Israel fought for its existence and the right to live after October 7, 2023. Without question, less Gaza citizens would have been killed in that conflict had its government not hid missiles, bombs, and weapons in schools, mosques, and private homes. The terrorists in Gaza made a brilliant move. They sacrificed their own citizens, including children, as a shield in order to make the robust democracy of Israel look bad. They succeeded. But then again, they did not need much help. There are only 8 million Jews in Israel and there are over 500 million hostile Arabs in the Middle East.
Jewish people may have given 5 billion people in the world their notion of the one G-d, thanks to Christianity and Islam, but there is no gratitude for that. Quite to the contrary, Jews continue to suffer for not adopting the religious beliefs of others.
Even the New York Times, no friend of the Jewish people or Israel, has editorialized upon the number of Black Christian and non-Muslim populations in Central Africa upon whom war is being waged by the Muslims of North Africa. Millions upon millions of Africans have died, are subject to starvation, and have been dislocated through no fault of their own. What nation has given the highest per capita aid to those people and sent doctors to the area to help with disease? It is none other than the State of Israel.
However, those running on the extreme left of the Democratic Party today have found a convenient demon in the Jewish people and the State of Israel. That is based upon their twisted education and a lack of any respect for those who do not abide by their world view.
The Muslim world in the Middle East proudly proclaims England, Europe, and the United States on the brink of becoming Sharia societies. They may be right about that.
The American people are totally ticked off by rising prices and the sometimes bizarre, crude behavior of President Trump. If Donald Trump was Ronald Reagan, would the election results in the Democratic Party primaries be different? No one can know the answer to that but, without question, some of the electoral results are as a result of pushback against the current Administration. It is a protest vote without question.
The real test of just how socialist or communist the United States has become will be in November. The Republicans have an opportunity to reclaim the center of the United States or to isolate those who are not comfortable with President Trump's approach to the nation's challenges.
Clifford A. Rieders is a board-certified trial advocate in Williamsport.