At the end of the 20^th century, the free world defeated Communism in the Soviet Union—but not in the student union or on Wall Street.

In consequence, we are afflicted by a willful and potentially lethal historical ignorance across the political spectrum. Leftists ignore or rationalize Communism’s carnage, downplaying its horrors in their delusional aim to “make socialism work this time.” Corporatists, many of them on the right, ignore or rationalize away Communism’s victims for the sake of making money—lots and lots of money.

What is lost is the wisdom preached, practiced, and proven by champions of freedom like Pope John Paul II and Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa: the most lethal weapons against Communism are the free exercise of religion and free and independent labor unions.

Free and independent labor unions reveal the lie that a handful of hateful thugs ruling a Communist dictatorship are the “vanguard of the proletariat.” The free exercise of religion is as lethal, if not more lethal, to a Communist state, because it means limits exist that protect the person from and preclude the possibility of an omnipotent state—especially one which must coerce and kill to “recreate” humanity in the image desired for submission.

Yet, while we in the victorious West have forgotten how we won, communists have learned the lesson of why they lost.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) long ago quelled and controlled any possible challenge to their rule by free and independent labor unions. Still, religious belief and its free exercise persist as a problem for the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) atheistic totalitarians. As a result, Xi Jinping, in accordance with Rousseau’s “civil religion” and Marxist-Leninism’s atheism, is bent upon subordinating and, ultimately, exterminating personal religious belief in favor of the state’s ideological diktats.

In theCatholic News Agency Tyler Arnold reveals that: “A new report details the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to ‘exert total control’ over the Catholic Church and other religious faiths within its borders and to ‘forcibly eradicate religious elements’ that the party deems contrary to its political and policy agenda.”

It is the process of “Sinicization,” which as Arnold explains, “means to conform something to Chinese culture, but the policy essentially subordinates faiths to ‘the CCP’s political agenda and Marxist vision for religion.’”

“Sinicization of Religion: China’s Coercive Religious Policy” is the report from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). The list of human rights violations by the CCP in this report is stunning. Consider:

Under Xi Jinping’s rule as the paramount leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the government has implemented the coercive “sinicization of religion” policy … the complete subordination of religious groups to the CCP’s political agenda and Marxist vision for religion … Through regulations and state-controlled religious organizations, authorities incorporate CCP ideology into every facet of religious life for Buddhists, Catholic and Protestant Christians, Muslims, and Taoists. They also forcibly eradicate religious elements considered contradictory to the CCP’s political and policy agenda with ultranationalist overtones. Government officials have installed CCP loyalists as leading religious figures, altered houses of worship with CCP-approved architecture, integrated CCP propaganda into religious doctrines, and otherwise criminalized non-CCP-backed religious activities … These government measures have routinely violated the internationally protected right to freedom of religion or belief.

And what happens to those who resist subordinating the spiritual to the temporal? The PRC’s “paramount leader,” Xi, has a ready answer: they will be deemed cultists and, under PRC “law,” subjected to arrest and imprisonment.

The report cuts to the obvious aim of Xi Jinping and his policy of “sinicization” of religious beliefs, namely “to ensure the stability of CCP rule.”

It is a rule Xi Jinping believes is embodied by, with, and through him. Consequently, like the Roman emperors who also insanely believed themselves to be gods, the PRC’s Communist Diocletian, Xi, is allowing his messianic complex to decimate the human rights and dignity of the Chinese people:

Sinicization entrenches the CCP’s control and its vision for the modern Chinese state into every aspect of religious life by forcing groups from the five officially recognized religions to conform their beliefs, activities, expression, attire, leadership, language, houses of worship, and more to CCP ideology. The government creates policies and regulatory measures to sinicize religion and authorizes state-controlled religious organizations to oversee their implementation. Enforcement of such sinicization policies has consistently resulted in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom and related human rights, including genocide, crimes against humanity, mass incarceration, enforced disappearances, and the destruction of cultural and religious heritage.

And what of the cultural and religious heritage of the free world? Will we continue to serve as a rebuke to the atheistic totalitarians of the PRC and elsewhere? Or in our historical obliviousness, moral obtuseness, and heedless hedonism, will we continue to jettison our cultural and religious inheritance for secularism and moral relativism and, consequently, render ourselves defenseless against the resurgent enemies of human liberty and dignity?

Put more simply: Will we take the path of John Paul II or Xi Jinping? Your call, free world.