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Should America’s new slogan be “Communism or bust?” Surely some would say so — in support and also in protest.

Speaking of, an American public university is displaying a communist bust.

Washburn University’s political science department boasts a showcase of leaders. Among featured figurines: the likenesses of Mitt Romney, Bill Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

But the biggest of them all: what looks to be porcelain props to Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong.

Some might consider the display a bold choice for the Topeka, Kansas school, as Mao was responsible for tens of millions of deaths.

From The Washington Post:

Who was the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world? … [B]oth Hitler and Stalin were outdone by Mao Zedong.

His idea doesn’t sound too dissimilar from notions espoused today:

Mao thought that he could catapult his country past its competitors by herding villagers across the country into giant people’s communes. In pursuit of a utopian paradise, everything was collectivised.

Utopia unattained:

[T]he true dimensions of what happened are only now coming to light thanks to the meticulous reports the [Communist Party] compiled…

What comes out of [a] massive and detailed dossier is a tale of horror in which Mao emerges as one of the greatest mass murderers in history, responsible for the deaths of at least 45 million people between 1958 and 1962. It is not merely the extent of the catastrophe that dwarfs earlier estimates, but also the manner in which many people died: between two and three million victims were tortured to death or summarily killed, often for the slightest infraction. When a boy stole a handful of grain in a Hunan village, local boss Xiong Dechang forced his father to bury him alive. The father died of grief a few days later. The case of Wang Ziyou was reported to the central leadership: one of his ears was chopped off, his legs were tied with iron wire, a ten kilogram stone was dropped on his back and then he was branded with a sizzling tool – punishment for digging up a potato.

Yet, as the saying goes, what once was old is new again. And there’s a lot of renewal going ’round.

As I covered last week, a study room at the University of Florida has been named for another dreamer whose vision manifested itself in mass death: Community-minded students can now gather together in Unit 229 — the Karl Marx Group Study Room.

Meanwhile, many of the younger generation — like some now in Congress — hope for Hitler’s preferred economic system. Though it defies all reason, supporters of socialism appear to often believe it’s a genie which magically makes the company employee the company owner:

Back to Washburn, political science Professor Grant Armstrong doesn’t find the case of the Mao monument to be a one-off.

“It’s bigger than any American political figure. It’s emblematic of academia today.”

“I’m a center-left guy, but I don’t know if there’s room for people like me in academia anymore,” he told Campus Reform. “It’s not just conservatives being targeted, it’s also those who don’t toe the far left line.”

He should know:

Armstrong is the faculty advisor for both Young Americans for Freedom as well as College Democrats at Washburn University.

“Conservative students have it harder than liberal students,” Armstrong stated, adding that there is no “intellectual diversity at the university level and that’s really problematic.”

Problematic, indeed:

Not so long ago, even hippies understood the dangers of treating collectivism like fine China:

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But the lessons hardest-learned by those who aren’t around to tell them…appear to have escaped America’s woke revolutionaries.

Will university study change their minds? I’d say any plan of that happening…is a bust.

-ALEX

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Find all my RedState work here.

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