what we can do about communism

“The Red flag of Communism will fly over the whole world, including the United States, by the year 1973!”

The words leapt off the page at me. Obviously, as far as predictions go, this one was pretty far off the mark, but with a title like What We Can Do About Communism, I figured there was a pretty good chance that this was the manual that prevented the nightmare future that only people with really powerful insight and imagination could envision — and people who saw the hit ’80s movie Red Dawn with Patrick Swayze and hearthrob C. Thomas Howell. They could probably envision it, too — but I digress.

I paid a quarter for the book at a garage sale.

Noted noted educator and churchman, Dr. Russell V. DeLong

What We Can Do About Communism was written by Dr. Russell V. DeLong, who also wrote Why Be Moral and Clouds And Rainbows. I haven’t seen a copy of Clouds And Rainbows, but I’m betting there’s a picture of a whimsical bear holding an umbrella on the cover. Just a hunch. The good doctor is a PhD not an MD. He claims to be “a noted educator and churchman” on the front cover. The book was published in 1963, at the height of the cold war. The way I see it, this man was all that stood between us and a nightmare America where freedom is crushed and Yakov Smirnoff is still considered funny.

To be perfectly honest, I haven’t read much of the book past the part where he warns that the country will fall before 1973 unless we heed his advice. The way I see it, we must have followed his advice and averted the disaster, or else I wouldn’t be here to laugh at it.I keep my copy on the crapper to flip through when I’m fighting the ‘brown menace,” if you know what I mean…

Still, it strangely comforts me to have it. I can imagine a nuclear “Leave It To Beaver” family clinging to this sort of book as a talisman, using it to ward off the the very real fears of nuclear and philosophical annihilation at the hands of the Soviet empire. Perhaps some day the communist menace will rise again and terrorize God-fearing Americans.

If so, come over to my house.

I know what we can do.

Tags: communism, propoganda