Dr. Fred Schwarz, one of the leading lights of the anti-Communism movement from the 1950s, passed away on January 24, of this year. He was ninety-six years old. A native of Australia and a medical doctor, Dr. Schwarz left his homeland retired from medicine to travel to the United States to treat the epidemic philosophical disease of the Twentieth Century: Communism. God only knows the death toll, but Marxist regimes in Russia, China, Cambodia and elsewhere were directly responsible for at least 100,000,000 deaths in the Twentieth Century. Marxist ideology, not religion, was the great executioner of the past century of blood. On this, read The Black Book of Communism.
Dr. Schwarz led the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade into the late 1990s (until he was in his mid-80s) and saw the fall of the Berlin Wall. His tireless teaching, debating, and writing was instrumental in West's triumph over the barbarism of Marxist totalitarianism. Ronald Reagan attended one of his seminars and was deeply impressed by his presentation, as was Phyllis Schlafly and other conservative luminaries of the past several decades. I myself began to read his monthly newsletter, books, and booklets a few years after I converted in 1976--still in the heat of the Cold War. His careful, clear, and relentlessly factual exposure of the worldwide evils of communism deeply shaped my views of foreign and domestic policy. But his work was not merely anti-communist; it was pro-Christian. He offered the gospel and a civilization built on Christian principles as the alternative to the acres of killing fields and massive gulags.
I never met Dr. Schwarz, but I did send him a paper I wrote on Lenin's doctrine of revolution for a graduate class in political philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He graciously responded with appreciation for my work. Coming from him, that was quite a compliment--and it was more significant to me than the grade I received from my (probably Marxist) professor --although that was not bad.
If you want to understand why Communism kills and why it will never succeed in any of its forms, please read Why Communism Kills. And remember that Communism is not dead; it is very much alive and killing in China, Cuba, and elsewhere. In fact, many of the core principles of Marxism are being deployed by Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress and Senate.
Dr. Schwarz led the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade into the late 1990s (until he was in his mid-80s) and saw the fall of the Berlin Wall. His tireless teaching, debating, and writing was instrumental in West's triumph over the barbarism of Marxist totalitarianism. Ronald Reagan attended one of his seminars and was deeply impressed by his presentation, as was Phyllis Schlafly and other conservative luminaries of the past several decades. I myself began to read his monthly newsletter, books, and booklets a few years after I converted in 1976--still in the heat of the Cold War. His careful, clear, and relentlessly factual exposure of the worldwide evils of communism deeply shaped my views of foreign and domestic policy. But his work was not merely anti-communist; it was pro-Christian. He offered the gospel and a civilization built on Christian principles as the alternative to the acres of killing fields and massive gulags.
I never met Dr. Schwarz, but I did send him a paper I wrote on Lenin's doctrine of revolution for a graduate class in political philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He graciously responded with appreciation for my work. Coming from him, that was quite a compliment--and it was more significant to me than the grade I received from my (probably Marxist) professor --although that was not bad.
If you want to understand why Communism kills and why it will never succeed in any of its forms, please read Why Communism Kills. And remember that Communism is not dead; it is very much alive and killing in China, Cuba, and elsewhere. In fact, many of the core principles of Marxism are being deployed by Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress and Senate.
For more on Dr. Schwarz, read the March, 2009, issue of The Schwarz Report.
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