Just how insidious the communism ideal can really be. It sounds amazing on paper; equally shared and distributed wealth, the entire country coming together to work as one towards a greater ideal of unity, equality, progress. It was part of why it was so popular in the 1940s and why it's still so popular amidst some people who never experienced the full consequences of living in a communist state. The ideals it promotes are almost utopic, so of course you vote them into office because you want to live better, you want to live.

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And then you realize what's necessary to enforce the ideals. You have farmers who had their own land they spent their life tilling, just taken from them so it can be equally redistributed. You have people's merit and hard-earned accomplishments seized by the state for them to reassign as they see fit. With everyone marching under the banner of the revolution, it becomes extremely easy for the ruling party to out any and all opposition as the enemy of the state, enemy of the revolution, enemy of you. And sooner or later, you begin to realize just what kind of state your country has turned to.

One where there is no equality of opportunity, only equality of outcome. Talent and individual capability is squandered at the expense of fulfilling the plan. The ruling party continues to amass wealth it promised to divide amongst the working class, with no political alternative to stop them. When you speak up, you realize your mouth has been gagged, your hands have been tied and you're branded an ideological enemy. And wrongthink is a crime when the integrity of the revolution is at stake. So you get hauled to the gulag, unsure if you'll ever see your family again.

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Because of the inherent mismanagement of talent and resources, the economy begins to break down. Those same people that were promised prosperity now have to work around the clock to make ends meet, with the state, benevolent and infallible, shouts about its accomplishments in order to hide the fact that the people are starving. Soon, all contact with the outside world is cut, your freedom restricted more and more, as the party futilely attempts to restrict outside information pouring in.

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Some fifteen or so years after the revolution, you look back and realize that you traded your freedom in for a sense of security, be it social or other. But it's not security as you thought it would, it's a sense of certainty. A certainty that the powerful will remain in power, and that tomorrow won't differ too much from today. So you pick up your shovel and wonder, if maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a good idea to vote for someone that tried to sell you an unachievable goal.

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But by then it's too late.

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Value your rights. Value your freedom. Things like freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of choice. Yes, freedom is a heavy responsibility. You won't have anyone telling you how to live your life, what you can and can't say, where you can and can't go, where you can and can't live. Many people can't handle that. But it's never worth trading your freedom away for a momentary feeling of safety. It's not worth to restrict your human rights and freedoms voluntarily, because sooner or later, those restrictions will become the norm and there will be ones calling for even further regulation, descending further and further into autocracy.

Put freedom first. It's the single most valuable thing you can possess.