Jenny Beth Martin asked six people who grew up under communism why they came to America, what it was about this country that made it worth choosing, and what it sounded like from inside their countries when an American president called their system illegitimate. Dr. Yuri Yarim-Agaev was part of President Reagan's briefings the day before Reykjavik and the day before Moscow, and he explains why Reagan succeeded where his predecessors would not try and his successor would not follow. Sasha Gong remembers the first English speech she ever understood completely. Agnes Gibboney remembers the day she stopped being stateless. Then the question the whole series has been building toward: if America stops holding the line, does the world go dark? And what would each of them say to a 22-year-old who likes what the socialists are selling? This is the fifth and final panel conversation in the Surviving Communism series.
Guests: Sasha Gong, former director of Voice of America's China service, former political prisoner in China, and Harvard PhD; Dr. Yuri Yarim-Agaev, Soviet physicist and Moscow Helsinki Group dissident, exiled in 1980, who briefed President Reagan before his Gorbachev summits; Agnes Gibboney, founder of Angel Families of America, whose family fled Hungary after the Soviet invasion of 1956; Ovidiu Frusina, a mechanical engineer who grew up in Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania; Manuela Callini, who grew up under Romanian communism; and Captain Onofre Gutierrez, a retired airline pilot born in Managua, Nicaragua.
Today's topics:
• Why six survivors of communism chose America, and what each of them says America is for
• Dr. Yuri Yarim-Agaev briefed President Reagan the day before Reykjavik and the day before Moscow. His four reasons Reagan won: he named totalitarianism the enemy, he understood ideology, he called the Soviet regime illegitimate, and he backed the dissidents
• Yarim-Agaev: George H.W. Bush never finished the job. No Nuremberg for communism, no purge of officials, and Russia ended up with a KGB officer as president
• Gong arrived from China in 1987. The first English speech she understood completely was Reagan telling Gorbachev to tear down the wall. She cried like a baby
• Gong's interrogators in a Chinese jail asked if she listened to enemy radio. Yes, Voice of America. Years later she ran Voice of America's China service
• Ovidiu Frusina on Radio Free Europe in Ceausescu's Romania, and the Reagan oil plan he read about: cheap Arab oil against a Soviet budget spending 20 to 25 percent of its output on the military
• Frusina to the democratic socialist who admits the systems are not compatible: then why do it here? Go somewhere else and build your system
• Yarim-Agaev's warning to the right as well as the left: America must not abandon its leadership of the free world, and what separates us from totalitarian states is human rights, political liberty, rule of law, and free markets
• Agnes Gibboney immigrated stateless after Hungary revoked her family's citizenship and was naturalized June 30, 1983. Her plea: if the United States becomes a socialist country, the world is finished
• Captain Onofre Gutierrez: his family lost everything in Nicaragua and started over. He retired as an airline pilot. Only in this country
• Manuela Callini: in America the people make the government, not the government the people. Back home she would have been arrested for saying so
• Messages to a 22-year-old who likes what the socialists are saying: Gong, I want you to think. Frusina, show me where it ever worked. Gutierrez, they promise equality and you will be equally poor. Callini, there is no such thing as free housing, so show up to your city council meetings
• The panel conversations end here; the Surviving Communism series continues. Have your own story? Email Jenny.Beth@TeaPartyPatriots.org
• Share the Surviving Communism series. Vote for liberty and against communism, and help get out the vote at iwillsaveamerica.com
The Jenny Beth Show airs live Monday through Friday at 1:00 PM ET. Hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party movement and Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action. Subscribe for daily analysis of politics, policy, and the fight for constitutionally limited government. teapartypatriots.org
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