Our caucus includes people who have lived under tyranny. Ava escaped from Hungary during the revolution in 1956. She told me that as a school girl, a friend confided that in America, people can say anything they want without fear of being punished by the government. At that point, she knew she had to get out of Hungary.
Throughout history, most people have lived under tyranny. Mao Tse-Tung’s policies and political purges in the first decades of the People’s Republic are widely attributed to the deaths of between 40 to 70 million people. Stalin was responsible for the deaths of between 20 and 60 million people.
Here is an incredible essay written by a woman who recently visited Auschwitz (Oświęcim). Her eloquent words bring to life the unimaginable horror and suffering inflicted upon millions of people: http://tiny.cc/Auschwitz
It’s no wonder our founding fathers were so inspired to carefully create our Constitution. They pored over history to identify how republics morphed into tyranny: The essence of freedom is proper limitation of government.
Being Americans who have always enjoyed liberty, it is hard to imagine having it any other way.