So back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Jasinsky,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST,
make sure to subscribe where ever you download your podcasts, and to the
premium version of our website over at Federalist dot com as well. Today,
I'm very pleased to be joined by Elizabeth Spalding. Elizabeth is the chairman of
the board of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. She's also the founding director
of the Victims of Communism Museum here in Washington, DC and a senior fellow
at the Pepperdine School of Public Policy. Elizabeth, Welcome to the show.
Thank you, Emily. It's a pleasure to be with you. You know,
it's the one year anniversary of the museum opening up downtown in Washington,
DC, and I am so curious to hear how the reception, what the
reception has been like over the course of the past year. And maybe you
know, folks haven't had a chance to get down to DC. Even me
I live here, I haven't been able to get down there yet. Even
though I'm very, very eager to I've heard it's very powerful. You know,
what are some of the big takeaways from the last year as you've observed
the growth of the museum for the last year, it has been fascinating to
watch that growth. We had a big dedication which was marvelous and it was
on the fortieth anniversary of Ronald Reagan's Parliament address to Britain. So those of
your listeners that know any history know that that would be connected to Reagan talking
about communism will end up on the ash heap of history and that means no
more victims. Well, we're still working, you know, to have no
more victims of communism. But it almost felt like a Hollywood movie screening with
the red carpet and everybody showing up for the dedication, and so many people
had been working so long to have a museum dedicated to all the victims of
communism and to be able to teach about this very important subject and raise awareness
about it. So we have had thousands of people come through the doors,
and they've been all different generations, all different types, from all over the
world. So everything from the first group that came through was as for a
group tour was from a charter school in DC seventh and eighth graders, but
we've also had ambassadors and dignitaries from various governments, and then you know everybody
that you can think of in between. So I suppose in terms of moving
me, so many of the times that I've gone through the museum with people
who actually fought communism got away from communism, those are the ones that we
have to capture all those stories. But they talk about it and they say
how important it is that we have the museum, And then I'm edified by
so many people being educated about a topic that we should all know about but
so few do. And then if you want to know a little bit about
the museum in general, I can say that. But I guess the big
takeaway is that we've had thousands come through the door, and we need millions
even more than that, but millions to come through the doors, and so
many people are learning two of the big figures that we want everybody to understand,
which is more than one hundred million people have been killed by communist regimes
and more than one point five billion people still unfortunately have to live under communist
regimes. Yeah, and I want to really dive into that, because I'm
scus how you go about collecting for a museum like this. But a good
transition into that conversation is probably if you could talk about the work that the
foundation itself does, a little bit about its background and how the museum basically
came about. Absolutely the victims of Communism. Memorial Foundation has a very interesting
and in today's times, encouraging beginning because it was authorized by are you ready
for this? A unanimous act of Congress And I'm not joking. I am
lading right now, but I'm not joking. So that was in nineteen ninety
three, and there was a sense that even though the wall had fallen,
the Berlin Wall had fallen, and by that point the Soviet Union had collapsed,
that a lot of Americans and indeed people around the world, we're not
remembering, both those that now we're liberated in Eastern and Central Europe, but
also those who were still under communism. And so there was a this authorization
for an organization that would educate about the history, the ideology, and the
legacy of communism. So that and this was part of the language. I
may be paraphrasing a little bit, but so that you wouldn't have another holocaust
of this type. That people knew more about the Holocaust in World War Two,
but that they needed to understand that there was this communist holocaust as well.
And then President Bill Clinton signed it into law at the end of nineteen
ninety three. And for the first fifteen years of its existence, BOC was
very focused on building a memorial to all of the victims of communism, and
that's on Federal parkland at New Jersey and Massachusetts Avenue over near kind of near
Union Station, across from Georgetown's Law School for those who are local and know
the area. And the part of the legislation said there would also be programming
to educate, and that you know in a museum was always part of it.
So in the next fifteen years of VOC's existence, it was building various
educational programming, doing research, and then trying to figure out how do we
do a museum. And when I came on the board five or six years
ago, there was talk of trying to do at least a smaller museum,
because you have to raise in today's dollars to do something as big as what
the Holocaust Museum, which is, you know, we were taking inspiration from
that would be you'd probably need a half billion or more dollars, and that
just wasn't going to happen at this point. So we decided to scale back
a bit in size, and so our museum is in the McPherson Square in
a beautiful historic boz Art building that some people, again who are local might
remember as the Price Waterhouse Cooper building, one of their buildings around town.
And for VOC, very interestingly, it was a previous location for the Mine
Workers Association, so that was something that they were anti communists, it was
associated, you know, it was appropriate that VOC would end up with its
museum in this location. And so we decided, okay, we'll do this
what we call our jewel Box Museum, and it's great. It tells the
whole story. There are many more details, many more individual stories within it,
but we cover everything, all the victims of communism in three permanent galleries,
and then we have a gulag Art collection, we have a cast of
the memorial, and we have some other small collections. We have artifacts of
course in the main galleries, and then we're very fortunate to have space for
our visiting exhibit gallery and that is a large room where we have rotating temporary
exhibits, and the current one that just opened very recently that we invite people
to come see is on the one and only amazing dissident playwright and then president
of a free Czechoslovakia and then Czech Republic, Voklov Hovel. This is it's
such recent history. I mean, it seems like older history because in some
sense it's like the technology has advanced, so black and white pictures in some
ways feel very old twas one. This is very much real current history to
people who are alive and lived through it and live with the literal scars metaphorical
scars every single day. So that's a very interesting task. Um. I
feel like for curators when you have the living hist try in front of you,
could you speak a little bit to what it's like, um, trying
to memorialize this, this history as the people who live through it are.
In some cases, um, you know, there are generations who are I'm
trying to put this in a in a gentle way, but are aging out
of you know, our abilities to interface with them directly. And in other
cases it's it's probably very fresh and raw for some people who are are still
you know, I'm thinking of people who fled Vietnam or Cambodia. It's probably
still very emotional for many people. Emily, you put your finger on several
things that we've dealt with. So overall at the museum, our project is
telling the story of over one hundred years. We mentioned some salient facts that
people need to understand from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but we really
pick up with the Bullshevik Revolution in nineteen seventeen. When did the victims first
get created? So to speak? And so you're telling history that way,
and a lot of it may seem ancient to young people, but it's it's
really modern history. That's the modern era, and you're wrapped up with World
War one, world War two. You know, Communism benefits from wars,
it takes advantage of wars. And then you've got, as you said,
this living history. And I use that expression with groups when i'm I use
it my teaching too, but I use it to explain to people that it
is very raw. And one story that immediately comes to mind is I was
giving a tour of the museum to some I don't even remember who the dignitary
was right. And a gentleman comes up to me and he says, are
you connected to this museum? And I said yes, and I said I'm
chairman of the board. And he starts crying and he says, I escaped
Romania. And this is a man, you know, he looked like he
was maybe seventy something and he had a grown another man with him, fully
grown, and he says, this is my son. And I've never talked
about any of this with him. And thank you for making this museum so
that you're educating future generations, but also that I can talk with my own
family members about my experience. And it very much struck me like the Gis
who came back from World War Two and then were so stoic and didn't talk
about their experiences, or about people who either people who were persecuted by the
communists in Vietnam and got away a boat people, or again the American vets
who came back and didn't talk about it. And there's all of that wrapped
up in each and every story of somebody who got away from communism too.
So it is very raw, it is very real, and that's part of
the reason we have not only the museum, But VOC also has a Witness
project, and so in that we make many documentaries. You know, each
one is a story about somebody, so it comes alive, and especially for
people who have no direct connection, they might understand more about how this this
has affected such big numbers, but that all of that represents each individual that
was affected by communism adversely, And I can only imagine the encounters you've had
with people like the Settleman from Romania over the years. Are there any that
stand out in your mind? And I'm thinking particularly with the the appreciation or
the angle of you know, not having this history recognized in so many different
spheres of you know, academic studying, of media attention. People must acknowledge
that when they when they share their stories with you, all they do and
that's why a lot of them say thank you first. And I'm always struck
by that that they we are the only museum for all of the victims of
communism. We're the only organization for all of the victims of communism in the
world. Now at some point there's in the Baltics they're working toward a museum
where they'll remember all of the victims of totalitarianism. So they're you know,
raising money to do something that will be very important there in a place where
people have were victimized by both Nazism and communism. But this is you know,
we're still going to be unique for what we do, and so the
first thing that we hear from people is thank you. And then especially when
I'm walking through or talking with people that got away from the Soviet Union or
the People's Republic of China from the you know, the Chinese Communist Party,
they'll talk about how academics get so many things wrong. They get the numbers
wrong, they get the experiences wrong, they just don't understand what it was
like to be on the inside. We get a lot of feedback like that,
so they're very appreciative that VOC is trying to put together all of the
real data but also collecting the stories and adding you know, flesh to the
bone, so to speak, so that so that rising generations especially will understand,
I mean, we have remedial education to do. But that that people
will say, I don't want this right, I don't understand why it existed,
I don't see why it still exists, and I don't want it,
and I'm going to do something to oppose it. So it's it's a combination
of things there. But I have a lot of conversations not only with fellow
academics but with others about why why this one is just never understood quite as
well, and that especially in America, we've done a good job. You
can always do better about educating about the Holocaust and what the Nazis did,
but that there's there's somehow a double standard, that that remains a bit.
It's better than it was, but that remains about teaching about about communism and
what it's done over and over wherever it goes for over a hundred years now.
It's also so fascinating how much we don't know, but also how much
we are continuing to learn. I mean, I can think of nothing harder
than trying to study the evils of regimes that were intentionally, in so many
cases obfuscating there their conduct. And that means um I mean, I can
remember what was it in the nineties when a lot of the Soviet archives um
and and Stan Evans wrote his wonderful book the theme is freedom, based on
a lot of information that had recently come out, and that's not that long
ago. And there's more stuff that we're going to learn. You know,
one hundred years from now we'll learn so much more. UM. But but
what is it like actually even just to try and UM, to try and
uh, let's see to capture the the scope and the with with a sense
of comprehensiveness, the evils that were done, UM in the name of communism
in the last few hundred years or so. It cannot be an easy process.
No, it's not. It's it's not. And I will give you
something concrete here. So when we were doing the museum, UH, I
was told, okay, you can have these very we have space. You
know, we work with design teams. And the design teams we were working
with, UM they had worked on on projects with the the Holocaust Museum,
the World War Two Museum in New Orleans, the Spy Museum for the Redo,
the normand Museum over in France. I mean, you know people who
really did this. And then they said, well, this is a lovely
space. It is small, we'll come up with a fabulous design. You're
working on the content for it. You've got to keep cutting. And so
we had to tell the story in under four thousand words. For the main
narrative going through with the basic history and the main galleries. It was that
challenging. And Stan Evans was a master at editing, but that would have
been challenging even for him. So I had to work very hard to cut,
cut, cut, and I would be writing, writing, writing,
and working with other academics, but it was, you know, I was
the main person, and so it was very challenging, and I had to
keep bringing it back to Okay, enough history about communism overall, so that
people understand why there were victims and who these victims were in our So that
was that part. And then when you talk about cataloging it and making it
accurate. Uh so, so think about the Soviet experience. Those archives opened
and then some of them closed again. Under this is the bad legacy piece.
When you when a country that had been communists doesn't doesn't reckon with it
and doesn't become a full functional, working democracy like what Russia's dealing with.
It's not it's not you know, it's still post communists, but what is
it right? And and a lot of people will say, and I have
argued this, and I think there's plenty of evidence there's there's still too much
of the old Soviet dregs in it, right and so and so there was
an organization called Memorial who's done very important work over the years in Russia,
and Putin and his government shut them down. And they didn't shut them down
just just you know, like ten years ago or something, it was,
it was pretty recent. And so that's an organization that was trying to catalog
all of the Soviet crimes of communism. And it got eliminated, it got
wiped out. And then if people think, oh, okay, well that's
only Putin um, then dealing with it in a in a country that's still
fully communists. So think about about China. In in the PRCU, some
archives opened and then the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, realized, oh,
we shouldn't have opened those. They'd closed them again. Then certain ones
would open um. Some academics have gotten in sideways by looking at you know,
like regional records. They're all different ways that scholars who are excellent detectives
as well do this. And one of the best scholars on China is Frank
Decater and a lot of his work has been on communist China, and I
commend what people call his trilogy on Communist China, and then also his newest
book, which is on China since Mao. All of these are very important
books. He's excellent um and he was in Hong Kong for a long time
as an academic. He's originally Dutch, so's he's not Chinese. He has
had to leave Hong Kong. It's part of the reason I can talk about
his story now because he's out. And he was trying to put together and
often did an accurate record, and he would cross reference and he would find
you know, this this example here, that that document there, that archive
that opened and closed, but some other reference to it over here. This
is how he has to do his scholarship. And so he's put together what
seems to be some of the most accurate information about about the history of communist
China and the victims that have been created. And and he says, he
says, well, the numbers only get revised upward, right, this is
something we have found. He will only give the numbers he can he can
find, but it's not as if they ever go down. So anybody who
tells you, oh, they couldn't have killed that many, or they couldn't
have imprisoned that many, or they can have whatever you can tell them.
Well, here are the numbers that scholars say now and then and then it's
only going to go up when we have more information. And you made reference
to one hundred years from now, when you know, if we could get
in the time machine, go ahead, look at what the archives then that
are open. The numbers will only be higher. That is incredibly dark to
think about, but not surprising at all. Um, how do you deal
with the issue of definitions? I imagine this is something that it may infect
be very easy and be very clear to a group like um. You guys,
you know, because you're you're working on this all the time, but
you know, it's sort of plagues academics and many circles you and the left
loves to say, you know, their favorite line, true communism has never
been tried, True Marxism, true Leninism has never actually been tried. But
from your perspective, how do you deal with definitions? How do you deal
with um, you know, determining what warrants inclusion? Um, you know
when you're when you're seeking to memorialize the victims of communism, right right?
So? Uh, we follow many good academics, including the late Richard Pipes,
historian of all things Soviet and Russian, and he said it wasn't a
good theory, you know, it just was not to start with. And
so I've studied this subject for I mean, I started studying it in graduate
school, so it's many years ago now. And I think that, um,
if you, if you studied long enough on this, you've looked at
it long enough. Even if you grant certain things like like Mark Son a
day that he was in a in a good mood, apparently he was not
a nice guy. You and I would not have wanted to hang out with
him, right, uh. And and he was a bit of a I
mean, you know, he took advantage of his in today's parlance, would
call him his his BFF, his his friend and collaborator angles, who then
worshiped him in return. I mean, all this kind of stuff. But
not a nice guy. But if we were catching him on one of his
good days, and we were acknowledging that he was looking at some things in
the nineteenth century that we're not always fair, right, and we give him
everything we can give him, then we look at what he's actually talking about.
And some of these these people who say Marxism. Communism just hasn't been
tried. The theory, the theory hasn't been implemented, right, you know,
you look at what Marx talked about doing, and at times he was
more vague, especially in things like the Communist Manifesto. He gets more concrete
later in things like dust copy tall but noneless. You look at what he's
talking about doing, abolishing things that are what all of our civilization, you
know, Western civilization, Judeo Christian, any other revealed religion. You know,
everything is based on the understanding of the individual, the understanding of what
government is for the understanding of rights. I mean, all the basics that
people learn in Civics class in school, and all of it is gone.
All of it is gone because the entire premise of communism and what Mark started
and all of them, all of his successors agreed with, was that the
party would would be in charge, the state would be in charge, and
eventually at the you know, the state's supposed to wither away. But but
socialism is the next highest stage before you get to communism, and anything and
everything is permitted in order to get there. So it means, you know,
you see in Marks he writes, you know violence will be necessary,
right, It's all there at the beginning. He is really a revolutionary activist
from the get go. And after his death Angle talks about that. He
says, this is what you know. The first thing you need to understand
about Marx was at um and you have to understand that he's denying everything you
know, the person um and property and family and religion, all what what
you know, he would have called the the Olds essentially wanted to get rid
of everything um that were that were based on So people don't you know,
they'll think, oh, it was merely an economic theory, and they don't
think through what all of that means. So all of it's there. You
know, you end up with the one party dictatorship. Um. You end
up with somebody controlling everything, trying to control everything including thoughts UM. And
and then you have lenin come along and he studies Marks so very deeply.
This is why we often refer to Marxist Leninist and he uh, he becomes
an expert on Marx and he amplifies the part. Yeah, you know,
violence is to be necessary and I'm going to do whatever it takes, and
we're going to do a coup, and we're going to take over, and
we're going to take communism on the road, and we're going to try to
you know, encourage it in these other countries, which is what he does
through the common term. But also we're gonna, we're gonna literally go on
the road and they try to take you know, Poland and other places after
World War One, and they're they're they're thrown back, Thank goodness. I
mean, the interwar period could be completely different in terms of its history.
And so all of that is both ideology and history that people need to understand,
and they don't. And then and then all of the successors nobody,
you know, none of these experiments, so to speak, in communism have
brought what they said they were going to bring. All they brought is misery,
destruction, death, imprisonment, unjust you know, unjust persecution, slavery
essentially, and it's and it's truly the most destructive ideology in human history.
And I'm just struck by how eerily similar some current headlines are two moments in
the history of the West, the United States battle against communist regimes, for
instance, just this week, we know that she didn't ping from obviously from
China has been meeting with Honduras. We know that our intelligence community believes they're
spying from Cuba, and it feels similar to the Soviet Union in so many
respects. So we wanted to ask, basically, are there are there mistakes
that you see the United States making again that that could embolden you know,
the Shedim Pang likes to talk about socialism with Chinese characteristics, which is very
very much inspired by the communist regimes of the past, by Mao and who
is obviously very influenced by Marx. Are there mistakes the West is making now
that will endanger the lives of people in countries that are very much at risk
of falling deep into the throes of communist oppression and violence. You're you're putting
your finger on again why it's so important for Americans to know the history right,
because you can repeat mistakes and you have to understand the principles in the
history, so then you can act in the current circumstances you are in well,
right, you can choose well act well. All of that. We
you know, we teach prudence to our students, right, this is what
it means. So for China, you know, a lot of people will
just go to you can't learn anything from the past because the economies are so
wrapped up with each other and it's different. So there are some things that
are different from the Soviet challenge and therefore from the Cold War with the Soviet
Union. But that said, there are so many things that can be taken
from the experience of the West opposing the Soviet led communism in the Cold War.
And look at what's going on with China. I will tell students,
you know, right now, this is this is your world that you're going
to graduate or you know, go to grad school and then graduate from and
go out into and right now, the Chinese Communist Party is shaping what the
world looks like that you're going to have to live in and work in and
raise your families in, right And we don't want that, I mean,
no Americans should want that. So so what do you look at I think,
and I'm not being hageographic here, I think that Ronald Reagan had a
really good strategy. So he took so many things from from containment, the
strategy of containment and that that originated under President Harry Truman, and in the
circumstances of the nineteen you know, mid nineteen forties to early nineteen fifties,
Truman set up something that worked really well and that presidents in between Truman and
Reagan and sometimes followed, sometimes didn't. And then it went off the rails
with detant. But Reagan looked at it and he said, okay, And
now he looked at the circumstances of the eighties when he was coming in as
president, and he said, what am I going to do? What am
I going to keep from that? What am I going to accelerate? What
am I going to do more of? What am I going to add?
And that's what he did with his approach that truly helped what people were doing
on the inside behind the Iron curtain so that you could have those amazing results
of November nineteen eighty nine through Christmas time nineteen ninety one. So right now
we need the same kind of strategy, and that would mean looking at all
the different you know buckets, so to speak. What do we need to
do politically and diplomatically, What do we need to do economically? What do
we need to do strategically and militarily? What do we need to do culturally?
What do we need to do with our allies, what do you know
all the different things UM? And and then do that with respect to to
the CCP in China, And I don't think and there's so many people inside
China who don't want UM the Communist Party to prevail, who don't want Jijiangping
to achieve his goal right, and how do we help them? UM?
And part of that is to keep educating about about what's going on there,
and VOC does that all the time. UM. And then also to see
that China is taking it on the road and we want to stop that where
we can. So VOC has been very act upon on not only China,
and we have our our Jingjiang UM files. I commend that to people to
go look up on our website, but also on China. Working with Cuba,
we've been doing some work on that UM and we've been exposing on Cuba
because that's in our hemisphere. UM. There's this horrible, you know,
prison system that people don't even know about. They'll they'll think, well,
Castro's dead, is Cuba is still even a problem. That's the kind of
question I get. And people don't realize that there there's a nasty UM partnership
and collaboration going on with like China and Cuba, and then you throw in
the legacy problem from Russia and by the time you turn around it, you
know, it looks pretty twentieth century, doesn't it. I mean, and
that we should still take some of what we learned from that experience and apply
it to now. Absolutely, is there anything that you guys have coming up
or any exhibits, um you particularly think folks will be interested in as you
mark this one year anniversary. Incredible and it's such a such an accessible and
beautiful part of the nation's capital here. Um, anything you guys have coming
up or anything you you want to leave people with as they ponder whether or
not they can they can make this trip right. So, so I mentioned
we have a new visiting exhibit, so for those who are making their summer
plans, this exhibit on Vaklab hobbl It's a unique exhibit. We partnered with
the Vakl Hovel Library over in Prague, so you will understand who Hovel is.
And for a lot of people they don't. You know, he's not
a household named to them. Even if you know for certain people they're like,
oh, I remember Black Lab Hobble, but as we know, there
are a lot of people who don't, so they'll learn who he was,
what he did. There are not only panels in the exhibit explaining things,
having key quotes from him and you know, various pivot points in his life
and how he fought totalitarianism and communism, but also there are artifacts, there
are videos, so it's a very complete exhibit. They'll learn more about some
of the key dates, including the Prague Spring in nineteen sixty eight and the
Velvet Revolution in nineteen eighty nine. And then that one will finish up in
September, so if some people are already thinking ahead to the fall and trips
to Washington or locals who can't, you know, make it. This summer
we will have our next visiting exhibit will be on the Holladmur and this one
we're partnering with a Ukrainian consortium and we are now in the ninetieth anniversaries of
the worst of the Halidmur and this is something we treat the Hollidmur as we
do Hobble in the main galleries, the permanent galleries of the museum, but
for the Holidamor, it's one panel rights all, that's all we have the
space for. So this will be a whole room that is an exhibit on
the Hollidimur. And people didn't know about this, and then Ukraine happened.
Russia invaded Ukraine, and now we've noticed people coming through the museum. They'll
say, oh, my gosh, that's right, the Russians when they were
Soviets, they did something bad to Ukraine before, and we'll say, yes,
come learn about it. So this, this visiting exhibit in the fall,
which will run into I think January will be next year, will be
an opportunity for people to learn more. We have events all the time,
so I encourage people to go to our website to learn about upcoming events.
And we have one just this Friday that Dan Mahoney, who is an amazing
professor and scholar on communism, I mean on many things, but on communism.
He's written and researched at length on Alexander soul Janetsen. But he has
the long introduction for a brand new edition of Cardinal Menzetti's memoirs. It'll be
the first time that they're back in print. This was somebody who was a
hero in Hungary fighting the communist and so it'll be a new story to many
people. And Professor Mahoney will be with us on Friday afternoon talking about this
book and talking about Minzetti. So we have that kind of event. We
have conferences. There's something I forget. I think it might even be next
week on the Cuba torture going on the of the political prisoners, so people
can go on the website and look that up. But that's just an example
we had. We had a recent conference on totalitarianism, and if we were
doing this podcast a couple weeks ago, I would have been telling people they
have to be at that. And we did do earlier in the spring an
amazing conference on the fortieth anniversary of Ronald Reagan's Evil Empire speech and what it
all means, what it meant, and what it means. So do we
do all sorts of different educational events, and they connect to the museum and
then the research, the ongoing research, especially in in China and Latin America,
but a lot of it, of course is Cuba. Sometimes, you
know, we touch on Venezuela. Oh my gosh, I can't believe it.
It sounds like like I'm in a time machine. You know, we
talk about Nicaragua. You know, how can you believe that this stuff is
going on on some level? But but please do go to the website and
look at events because that's they're all educational. It's all connected to what VOC
is an educational nonprofit and what it's trying to do. And then for those
who are either teachers or parents with kids in school, please encourage your schools
to send their you know, when they're doing their DC trip, whether they're
local or not, to put the Victims of Communism Museum on their itinerary.
And we've had many school groups come through. And if the if the visit
is set up an advent, then you can have a lecture or meeting with
somebody on staff who would be able to tell you know, the students age
appropriately more. And then make sure that you ask to meet with a witness
as well, because I think that's one of the most important things to do
for any age, but especially for school groups, that they get to meet
with somebody who can tell them firsthand here's what it was like to live under
communism and share their experiences and say you don't want this, and I didn't
want this, and all the opportunity costs that are involved too. Even if
somebody wasn't actually killed directly by it, you know, they still suffered under
it. And we want people to understand that again so that they remember remember
us as one of our themes at the museum, but also so they say,
you know, not here for example, and I want to make sure
I'm fighting it wherever I go and whatever I do, you know, because
people will end up in different in different careers, and they should know enough
about this so that they can be at least educating others about it, if
not, if not directly opposing it, and whatever they end up finding themselves.
I was doing for jobs m absolutely. Elizabeth Spalding is the chairman of
the board over the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, the founding director of the
museum, and a senior fellow at Pepperdine's School of Public Policy. Elizabeth,
thank you so much. You're welcome. Emily got the museum and I look
forward to you're getting there, right, You're gonna come and visit, and
you're gonna come as you sent your interns. I think you told me right.
Yes, we sent our interns from the National Journalism Center, and they
did some some lovely reports folks can read on the museum. Everyone absolutely loved
the opportunity. Everyone I've talked to has said that it is very powerful.
So you guys are all doing great work. Thank you, Emily. Of
course you've been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily,
just said Ski culture editor here at the Federalist. We'll be back soon.
Until then, he lover's freedom and anxious before the front. I heard
the fame voice a reason, and then it faded away.