As a young Army lieutenant, I looked at the East German and Russian soldiers through my binoculars and quickly figured out they were not 10 feet tall as I had learned through the American press as a college kid. Indeed, they were hardly as tall as I was; most were shorter. They appeared to be a bleak lot. As I “glassed” the town they occupied up against the East-West German border, the whole place looked sad, uninviting, and lackluster. The soldiers had guns, so indeed they were the enemy, but they sure didn’t look motivated. I remember very clearly that my first thought was, “This communist and socialist stuff is not all it’s cracked up to be. We can beat these guys.”

Twenty-plus years later as an Army colonel and right after the fall of the “Iron Curtain” — the reunification of Germany and liberation of Eastern Bloc countries — I visited that very village and some larger formerly East German towns and cities nearby. The communists had just departed. The drab of 20 years earlier had given way to disrepair and the citizens seemed numb. Yet in talking with them they displayed hope that the new democratic and free society of Germany into which they had just reunited would somehow give them renewed opportunity and turn around a dispirited communist existence. Every one of them had a glint in their eyes that spoke of a yearning for freedom and future opportunity.

Now retired from the Army after a 39-year career of helping defend my nation from, among other challenges, the false hope and promises of communism and socialism, I am near tears as I watch the proven failed socialist dogma infiltrate America and dominate the thoughts of many of our citizens. Democrats have turned into progressives who are increasingly turning into full-blown state-sponsored Marxist socialists. They believe that the promise of a utopian collective rule will provide America with a quality of life and happiness that is otherwise unachievable in Western democratic and capitalist countries. They’ve been taught this false promise in school.

Well, I’ve seen socialism up close around the globe, and here’s what I know to be true:

Socialism destroys the individual work ethic, dispirits the human dimension, and kills innovation — always. Under socialism, human productivity plummets and the state is faced with distributing fewer and fewer resources until the pie is too small to sustain the population, much less motivate it to achieve.

Socialism terminates and destroys, by design, all belief in any sort of supernatural God-like Heavenly entity in deference to the supremacy of the state. For Christians like myself, that means for Marxist socialism to succeed, Jesus Christ must be stricken from public belief and discourse. In all fully socialist states, Jesus Christ and God our Father are among the first enemies of the state and thus become brutalized victims of the state’s control apparatus.

Finally, socialism requires the destruction of the nuclear family. Indeed, it sees the family as a competitor that must be terminated. After all, the state assumes responsibility for all citizens’ health and welfare and thus any pushback or desired redirection by the family is fair game for the state’s wrath. That yields collective work groups and youth educational camps, etc.

So, if you’re interested in a socialist United States, then be ready for a dismal and marginally productive work environment, a state cap on your ability to achieve, worshiping at the altar of the state instead of God, and having the state tell you explicitly how to raise, educate, and discipline your family and children. Be ready to have your family separated to venture forth to collective state-run work groups. My sense is that we are near a tipping point of no return toward a society buying into the utopian dream and the follow-on guaranteed broken promises of a socialist/Marxist state. Buy into socialism if you will, but you’ll condemn our next generations to a Venezuelan-like existence — guaranteed.

On the other hand, if you, like me, cherish individual freedom, economic opportunity, the guarantees of our Bill of Rights, being the master of your own destiny, having the freedom to worship the God of your choice, and loving the age-old concept of a values-driven nuclear family, then it’s time for you — indeed all of us — to stand up and fight for America!

Don’t surrender to the false promises of a utopian socialist state. Fight right now for the same dream our Founders fought for and won — freedom, democracy, liberty, private-property ownership, and the right to dream amazing yet achievable dreams in an environment where you set your own course with a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. That’s the America I fought for!

(B.B. Bell, General, USA, Ret., is a member of The Patriot Post National Advisory Committee.)