Communism is evil. It destroys the free human spirit and creates misery and unspeakable suffering on an epic scale. I have friends who lived through it in various “People’s Republics” like China, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Belarus, and Russia, and the stories I’ve heard from them are horrifying. The complete repression of free expression, the coercion of speech praising the current “Dear Leader,” repression of religion and conscience, sycophantic, obnoxious propaganda, arbitrary detentions and show trials, cruel punishments and exile… the list is very long. But of course, all of this was done “For the People!”

Communist regimes kept up their pretenses for as long as they could. They built walls and wouldn’t let you leave. If they caught you fleeing, they shot you down. People escaped communism sailing shark-infested waters in makeshift rafts, hitching a ride by climbing into airplane landing gear, flying away in homemade hot air balloons, crawling through tunnels, and so on. All of this just to escape Karl Marx’s beautiful little paradises on Earth free of private property and rich people.

The repression of communism ruined the lives of several generations in the Eastern Bloc. It lasted from 1917 until the implosion that began in the late 1980s. That sort of tyranny wouldn’t have lasted for so long and entrenched itself so deep but for one important reason: the complete denial of the right to keep and bear arms to the ordinary people, the very proletariat whom the communists claimed to deeply care about. Guns in the hands of the people would have enabled them to fight back and destroy communism swiftly and efficiently, and the communists knew that well. They disarmed everyone for a reason.

I remember watching the Berlin Wall being dismantled and the downfall of Nicolae Ceausescu from India. Decades later, I became friends with a Romanian immigrant who, as a protestor, climbed atop a tank during the Romanian revolution. He told me the reason he didn’t get shot and the revolution succeeded was because the Romanian security services and army had switched sides and gone against Ceausescu. The revolution would have failed if events had unfolded similar to Tiananmen Square, where the Chinese communists’ tanks crushed the protests and reinforced the iron will of the Chinese Communist Party (which exists to this day).

Given the history of the last century, you don’t even have to have experienced communism to hate it, and to know how dangerous it is to allow it to creep up even a little. Most importantly, most of us who do hate communism and understand its dangers also understand the importance of gun ownership among the public. This is especially the case with my immigrant friends who own guns and will never, ever give them up. Sometimes, however, we run into exceptions such as tennis legend Martina Navratilova (archived links).

Unless you are a soldier in a war, you do not need a f.cking AR15!!! https://t.co/5vSeaWTNWh

— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) August 27, 2023

Her anti-gun rant didn’t end there. She insulted the owner of an AR-15 as a bad shot, while claiming that she herself is a gun owner (archived links):

Are you expecting 20plus bad guys to attack you in your house? Or are you that bad a shot? I am a gun owner.Nobody needs an AR 15.

— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) August 27, 2023

Her statistics on AR-pattern rifle ownership is significantly off. There are at least 20 million such rifles in the hands of the people, not 3 million (archived links):

You might be the exception to the rule though I am still doubtful…🤷🏼‍♀️We have almost 3 million of these weapons in US- it’s effing nuts!!!

— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) August 27, 2023

Navratilova got communism good and hard, having been born in the now-defunct communist country of Czechoslovakia. It was so bad that at the age of 18, while visiting in 1975 to play in the US Open, Navratilova defected to the United States, becoming a naturalized US citizen in 1981. 

Navratilova is openly anti-Communist. She has been quoted saying:

Whenever people go into politics and they try to say that communism was a good thing, I say, ‘Go ahead and live in a communist country then, if you think it’s so great.’ 

But what preserves the American system of Liberty? Why has Europe fallen into various shades of fascism and communism over the last century, going through wars and democide, oppression and suffering? In contrast, why has the United States has managed to remain mostly true to its founding principles, with a continuous process of improvement for everyone including sexual minorities like Navratilova herself?

There are several reasons behind this. The Founding Fathers were well-read political geniuses who designed a Republic that was fundamentally brilliant (yes, but flawed to you “yeahbuts”). The founding principles and documents of this country are phenomenal, and they’re so good that they’ve been copied into or inspired the founding documents of most countries around the world in one form or another. (Sorry, Ruth Bader Ginsburg; South Africa and Canada’s constitutions pale in comparison to ours).

All of that is fine, but what keeps the entire system up and running and the politicians mostly in line is the knowledge that the people of this country have the ability to stand up and use force if necessary to prevent a random President from turning into a Ceausescu or a Stalin. Navratilova should get it, considering her background and her full knowledge and awareness of communism. It’s disappointing that she doesn’t.