A Real Revolution

Recently, I was able to spend about an hour in a local public high school Bible club.  It was great to be able to express our religious freedom in America by bringing my Bible through the halls of the school, sit down with several students, and share with them something from God’s Word.  The experience was also eye-opening for me in regards to the mindset of many students in the American education system: and what Christians face every day with other students and teachers.

Disgusting

As I was walking towards the room I was scheduled to be at, I noticed a well-painted banner pasted to a classroom door.  As I got closer, I cringed to observe what it really was: Che Guevara’s silhouette on top of Fidel Castro’s Communist Cuban flag.  The sad part is that I was surprised.  I honestly did not think that we as a nation had gone this far.  This high school has a born-again Christian principle, with many faculty members claiming to be so as well.  The school district lies within a generally conservative area.  And to top it all of, this is the United States of America.

For those of you who may not know, Che Guevara is the typical icon/figurehead of revolution in pop culture.  His face is famously seen on many celebrity t-shirts, and his rhetoric is worshiped at the the altar of rebellion.  Che, as a man, became popular with the 1960’s hippy crowd as a symbol of anti-Americanism at its highest.

Che Guevara’s history is long and filled with plenty of drama, so I will shorten it here.  He was born to a well-off family in Argentina, became enamored with communism, especially Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union (one of the greatest mass-murderers of all time).  He later became the military commander of Communist guerrillas in Cuba in the late 1950’s.  He was basically the leader of Fidel Castro’s military arm.  Che was also the chief orchestrator of bringing Soviet nuclear missiles to Cuba in 1962, which led to the famed Cuban Missile Crisis–the time when the USSR and USA were closest to all-out war.  After the Crisis, Guevara famously said that if he were in charge of the missiles, he would have launched all of them at the US.  Later, Che traveled to the Congo, where he tried to mount a Marxist revolution, and then to Bolivia, in South America.  It was while in Bolivia that he went undercover, trying to mount another Communist revolution.  However, our CIA and the Bolivian army, led by the Cuban-American Félix Rodríguez, hunted Che down, captured, and executed him nearly on the spot in 1967.  He is buried in Vallegrande, Bolivia–a token for the downfall of Marxism, Leninism, and tyranny.  One of my roommates in college lived in the small Bolivian city where Che is buried–he said that most people there despised him also.  Here is a good article that goes into more detail about Che.

Unfortunately, Che became an international martyr for the socialist revolutionary crowd, including hippies.  That legacy has continued and expanded even to this day.  While we were in Mexico, Andrea and I saw several places that the famous Che t-shirts were sold.  And now right in our own community.  Now, I have seen many people where t-shirts around, but never posted in a school sponsored by our tax dollars.  The ironic thing is that the Che Guevara mural is posted at a high school that was a fallout shelter during the Cold War era.  If Che had his way, our country would have had to use shelters like that.

My generation doesn’t even know what fallout shelters were.  My parents were raised in a time when our nation was under constant threat from the Soviets.  On top of fire drills at school, they had fallout drills.  Dive under your desk, put your hands on your head, then head for the nearest shelter from radiation.  One of our closest threats at one time were Castro’s and Guevara’s missiles in Communist Cuba.  Just think about it, this man wanted to kill Americans with Nuclear weapons, and now, in a roundabout way, our “education” culture is lifting this mass-murderer high.

Some may say that our current President has nothing to do with Communists/socialists/Marxists.  Directly, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that Barack Obama is not a Marxist revolutionary–although I think he wants America to be more like the impoverished Cuba.  On the other hand, though, he surrounds himself with people who would lift this man up.  Not even Cuban-American’s lift him up!  They know that as a result of this “revolutionary”,  relatives, friends, and neighbors were killed.  Many Cuban-Americans fled from their loved country in row-boats, simply to escape Fidel and Che’s grasp.  Then they enter into American schools and see this evil man plastered on a door–in the very place they sought freedom!  If any of these Che worshipers were to live in Cuba for a year, I can venture to say they might change their mind.  What they do like about him though is his rebellion against the Western Culture-the culture which brought us religious freedom, democratic republicanism, freedom of speech, and a right to pursue happiness.  Freedom of speech allows communists to be brandished on doors, while the same communist would stomp all over and murder anyone who dare say “freedom of speech.”

Here are a few of direct quotes from Che Guevara:

Che lamenting the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis:

“If the missiles had remained, we would have used them against the very heart of America including New York. We must never establish peaceful coexistence. In this struggle to the death between two systems we must gain the ultimate victory. We must walk the path of liberation even if it costs millions of atomic victims.”

Che on his commitment to his cause:

“In fact, if Christ himself stood in my way, I, like Nietzsche, would not hesitate to squish him like a worm.”

…what a depraved person.

I pray that our country can turn around.  As we continue to head down the path towards less of God and the Bible, we will further head down the path of less personal freedom.  Personal freedom and the Bible always will go hand in hand–to separate the two is impossible.  Without one, you cannot have the other.  Do you want to see a change in our government to conservatism?  Embrace God and His Word–a real revolution!