Yeonmi Park traded one oppressive government for another when she fled the clutches of communist North Korea and found herself in the United States.
The land once famous for liberty and freedom looked to Park more like North Korea than the American she expected.
Three years after graduating from the University of Columbia, Park released a book titled “While Time Remains,” discussing the striking similarities she found between her native country and her new woke homeland. She urges readers to save America while time remains.
“I escaped Hell on Earth and walked across the desert in search of freedom, and I found it,” Park said. “I don’t want anything bad ever to happen to my new home. I want us, need us, to keep the darkness at bay.”
Patk isn’t alone in her fears. Most refugees from Communist countries fear that America will no longer be the safe haven it has always been.
Lei Zhang, a Chemistry and Physics professor at Winston-Salem State University, fled to the United States from Communist China during its Cultural Revolution in 1994. Zhang shares Park’s deep sense of foreboding as to what the future for America holds.
Zhang said he finds many similarities between woke America today and the China he left behind in 1994.
“Woke culture and cancel culture are associated with the issue of freedom of speech,” Zhang said. “It’s very similar to China’s cultural revolution. In China’s cultural revolution, the people had no freedom of speech.”
Zhang also explained how China divided people into different classes and provoked them to fight amongst each other, creating hatred between classes, something he sees happening in America.
Interestingly enough, people like Park and Zhang are ignored by the majority of Americans, who feel their experiences and warnings are nothing more than empty ghost stories informed by bribery from political extremists.
However, there are hundreds of stories like Park and Zhang’s. Hundreds of people like Park and Zhang have warned Americans not to fall into the trap of Communism.
Americans' response is usually that America would be the country to do Communism “the right way.”
For Americans to look at hundreds of personal accounts of people reporting the horrors of Communism, to look at the deteriorated state of Communist countries, and say that those countries just didn’t know how to do it “correctly” is ridiculous.
For Americans to think they could be the first group of people in the history of the world to make communism flourish is foolish pride.
However, despite all the warnings, America continues to steep its universities and popular culture in woke ideology. In recent years, indoctrination has even been brought to primary education classrooms.
Students are being taught to view communism as a savior figure, distrust capitalism, and view any sort of economic or social difference as evil at younger and younger ages.
The 1619 Project, for example, includes a new grade school curriculum that “aims to reframe the country’s history” by placing slavery and its consequences “at the very center of our national narrative” and make 1619, rather than 1776, our nation’s founding.
This “reframing” teaches that the Constitution was carefully crafted to protect the institution of slavery.
Additionally, a 2014 revision of the College Board’s Advanced Placement U.S. History framework failed to mention key American figures like Benjamin Franklin and James Madison.
The 19 sample questions disproportionally focused on class struggles and discrimination, reinforcing a negative view of American history.
The results of these changes have been disastrous, causing people like Park to frantically write books like “While Time Remains,” warning Americans that there isn’t much time left until America is destroyed.
Unfortunately, I believe her screams fall on deaf ears because a large number of Americans truly want America to be destroyed. They believe America is corrupt beyond repair and the only way to make America something “good” is to start from square one.
In an article published by the Associated Press, Micheal Coard explains why he hates America.
His article, titled “25 Reasons Why I Hate America,” lists reasons ranging from “the pro-slavery Star Spangled Banner” to “the invasion of Christopher Columbus in 1942.”
Coard isn’t a far-left extremist. His feelings are shared by most college-educated Americans.
In the 2022 Gallup Poll, only 38% of Americans say they are “extremely proud to be an American,” while a mere 27% say they are “very proud to be an American.”
These numbers reflect the popular sentiment of the day that America is an evil place that needs to be destroyed.
However, destroying one social and political structure does not set a country up for success. In fact, the most corrupt and oppressive forms of government have come to countries fresh out of a political revolution.
Ascribing to Marxism, the Bolsheviks seized power from Vladimir Lenin during Russia’s October Revolution in November 1917, becoming the first Communist government. A month later, leftist Socialist-Revolutionaries defeated the Bolsheviks in an election.
While he promised “bread, land, and peace,” Lenin used military force to take power. During this period, the Red Terror (executions of the Czar’s officials), prisoner-of-war camps, and other police state tactics were established.
When Lenin died of a stroke in 1924, Joseph Stalin assumed power. His regime led to famine as a result of his institution of a State-controlled economy. Detractors were deported or imprisoned in labor camps, and, as a result of the Great Purge, one million people were executed under Stalin’s orders.
And still, Americans somehow think they will be the exception to the rule. The chaos resulting from a violently upended political and social structure never leads to a peaceful transition of power or a better way of life for its people.
It leads to corruption and poverty, also known as Communism. I don’t believe Americans will be the exception to this rule. I don’t believe they will be the ones to figure out the magic formula.
Americans are playing with fire, and we will get burned.