One of the most highly regarded books of the 20th century was Ernest Becker’s “The Denial of Death.” Winner of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize, the book is regarded as a classic for its analysis of how human beings deny their mortality.

But there is something people deny more than mortality: evil. Someone should write a book on the denial of evil; that would be much more important because while we cannot prevent death, we can prevent evil.

The most glaring example of the denial of evil is communism, an ideology that, within a period of only 60 years, created modern totalitarianism and deprived of human rights, tortured, starved, and killed more people than any other ideology in history. //

Why is it important that everyone know what communism did?

Here are three reasons:

First, we have a moral obligation to the victims not to forget them. Just as Americans have a moral obligation to remember the victims of American slavery, we have the same obligation to the billion victims of communism, especially the 100 million who were murdered.

Second, the best way to prevent an evil from reoccurring is to confront it in all its horror.

The fact that many people today, especially young people, believe communism is a viable—even morally superior—option for modern societies proves they know nothing about communism’s moral record. Therefore, they do not properly fear communism—which means this evil could happen again.

And why could it happen again?

That brings us to reason No. 3. The leaders of communist regimes and the vast number of people who helped those leaders torture, enslave, and murder—plus the many more people who reported on their neighbors for saying something objectionable to the communists—were nearly all normal people. Of course, some were psychopaths, but most were not. Which proves that any society—including free ones—can devolve into communism or some analogous evil. //

If you don’t hate communism, you don’t care about, much less love, people.