Ilya Somin urges us to replace the Left’s May Day celebrations with a new day devoted to remembering the numberless victims of Communism.

Our comparative neglect of communist crimes has serious costs. Victims of Communism Day can serve the dual purpose of appropriately commemorating the millions of victims, and diminishing the likelihood that such atrocities will recur. Just as Holocaust Memorial Day and other similar events help sensitize us to the dangers of racism, anti-Semitism, and radical nationalism, so Victims of Communism Day can increase awareness of the dangers of left-wing forms of totalitarianism, and government control of the economy and civil society.

Sadly, recent political trends show that this year is an especially important time for Americans, in particular, to recall the crimes of communism. The front-runner for the presidential nomination in one major party has praised the authoritarian leadership of of ex-KGB Colonel Vladimir Putin and and the “strength” displayed by the Chinese communists when they massacred thousands of students at Tiananmen Square. A leading candidate in the other party has extolled the supposed virtues of the brutal communist regimes of Cuba and Nicaragua, including even their bread lines, ideological indoctrination, and censorship of the media. The situation in this country is not nearly as bad as the wholesale whitewashing of communism that Vladimir Putin’s regime seeks to accomplish in Russia. But the fact that people who say such things can be serious contenders for the presidency is disturbing nonetheless.

Full editorial.