Ben Toma, Arizona House Speaker and State Representative, left his home in Romania as a child because of communism. He recently said that many Americans don’t understand communism. Ben Toma has just co-sponsored a new bill that would do something about this lack of knowledge about political ideas.
He recently co-sponsored a bill that would make students learn for 45 minutes about how communism spreads “poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence and suppression of speech.” The bill says that November 7 should be a day to remember those who died under communism.
Toma has talked about how he feels about communism and how living in that setting changed him. Now he’s making it a point to teach young people who might not understand how the political system works what he knows.
Toma talked in detail about a time when the cops came to their house to question his dad. “A long time ago, things were very different.” But I was seven years old and the oldest of the three of us. We were home alone. They just hung out in the house and room until our parents got home. “So my parents knew that if that happened more than once, you would either disappear or be charged with false crimes and sent to prison for a long time, never to be seen again,” he said. Because of this, my parents chose not to take a chance and left the country.
Many people have said that Americans have a skewed view of socialism and communism and that communist ideas are beginning to be taught in schools and textbooks. This bill and statement come after these claims.
A lot of people think that Americans don’t know much about the past and events that have happened because they live in a communist country. There are lots of people who don’t know what communism is.
The bill is set to go to the House, and Toma is sure that it will pass with a majority of Republicans. However, Democrats voted against it last week in the House Judiciary Committee.
