I received an invitation from the Gallatin County Democrats to join with local labor unions to renovate a portion of the Gallatin Labor Temple and raise funds for Hurricane Katrina relief. I hope the event was successful.

The invitation came on a picture postcard. The image was in the genre known as Socialist Realism. It flourished under Stalin. The card depicted Soviet-era workers triumphantly marching over the rubble of Western civilization. Is this the best Gallatin County Democrats can do?

Did it not occur to them the sick irony of this symbol? Do they not understand it implicitly endorses a political ideology that, while promising “social justice,” delivered the gulag? Did they really mean to glorify a system that killed 20 million in the Soviet Union, about 50 million in Mao’s China, and 20 percent of Cambodia’s population? (North Korea’s millions remain to be tallied.)

It’s important to understand an ideology that has been so influential. But rigorous study is different from active promotion. For example, it’s still fashionable for much of the American intellectual left to believe Lenin’s experiment to create a new socialist man (Homo sovieticus) was a worthy goal. This is especially prevalent in academia, where it’s possible to find a history professor praising Mao. A history professor! How ironic if he also sports a “Free Tibet” bumper sticker.

What explanations are there for this inconsistency? Here’s one from Robert Kaplan, writing in the Atlantic Monthly: “[L]ife inside the post-industrial cocoon of Western democracy has made people incapable of imagining life inside a totalitarian system. With affluence comes not only the loss of imagination, but also the loss of historical memory.”

The socialist ideal was supposed to remove distinctions of class and race. A planned economy, by and for “the people,” was to produce material prosperity and economic and social justice, without harming the environment. It failed miserably. Tens of millions were killed in the attempt to achieve this, but as Lenin said, “one must break eggs to make an omelet.”

The supporters of Moveon.org (e.g., those who shout, “Regime change begins at home!”) are only the most recent to espouse this PC ideology of moral equivalence. They demonstrate a stunning lack of historical understanding and an inability to make clear moral distinctions. These failings rob them of intellectual credibility.

Take for example the perpetuation of the cult of Che Guevara. His image, bearded and bereted, adorns t-shirts and posters. Walk into almost any American high school (or university) and you’ll find a student wearing one. Next time you see one, ask the wearer this: How would your friends react if you wore a swastika on your shirt?

Che Guevara was a totalitarian. He achieved only disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist Cuba. But Che was an ally of those favoring a state modeled on the Soviet Union’s police state. His faction won.

Che organized and directed the Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's concentration camps -- the system used to lock away political dissidents and later gays and AIDS victims. He was killed in Bolivia in 1967, leading a “popular” movement that failed to enlist a single Bolivian peasant. Though held up as a martyr of freedom and social justice, Che was an enemy of liberty and tolerance.

Here’s an idea for the Gallatin County Democrats. Next Labor Day, hold a fundraiser for the House of Terror Museum. It’s located in Budapest, Hungary, near where Soviet tanks rolled over freedom in 1956, just as their comrades did in Tiananmen Square in 1989. I’ll be happy to contribute.

The museum records the crimes, brutalities, and suffering endured by two generations of citizens in Europe and the Soviet Union -- first at the hands of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi), and later under communism.

Here’s a suggestion for my proposed House of Terror invitation postcard. Let’s celebrate those largely responsible for liberating the world from Nazi and communist evils -- a collage of SEALS, Marines, Rangers, Air Force pilots, and regular grunts. I’ll be more generous when the Gallatin County Democratic leadership celebrates liberators rather than oppressors.