If I stopped the average American on the street and asked them what they thought of Communism, nine times out of ten the reaction towards this institution would be negative.
Most Americans are afraid of Communism for many reasons, the main one being that they have very recently been eyewitnesses to its oppressive and destructive effects on the peoples/economies of China, Russia, and others in the forms of censorship of the press, violent authoritarianism, harsh quenching of liberties such as liberty of speech and thought, savage anti-religion campaigns, etc. McCarthyism in the 1950s was one example of how Americans feel about Communism - so was the largely unsuccessful and embarrassing Vietnam War of the 60's and 70's - and so was the Cold War of the 80's. Fear of 'Commies' pervades this nation.
Yet how many of us really understand the philosophies of Karl Marx in all of their complexity? What element(s) of Communism make it so repressive of mankind's natural rights and liberties? Americans understand from the examples of China and Russia that Communism is wrong, but do they ultimately recognize why? Something vital to understand is that Communist theories are fundamentally unsound, which has in turn led to phenomena like censorship of the press in Russia and 70 million deaths under Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong (1893-1976.) These cases of massacre and oppression are not radical, rogue events perpetrated by insane leaders - they are the results of an economic philosophy, one that blatantly contradicts the guiding premises of the Jewish Torah.
In summary, to understand why "Communism is bad" one must first understand what Communism essentially is. However that is a study for another post. At present, I'm going to take the opposite side and discuss what Communism is not.
Communism's nemesis, as you probably know, is capitalism. There are many definitions of this word, and for the time, I'm going to put those aside and look at capitalism how the Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman understands it in his book Capitalism and Freedom. I'm reading this book for my literature class at the moment, and to better understand it (not exactly Dr.Seuss level stuff, just sayin'!) I'm planning on blogging my notes. You may not be a politician or Barack Obama's economic adviser, yet I think it's still important that everyone understand what a free market should look like and why Communist economic thought is fundamentally wrong. In any case it will be interesting to learn more about what one of the greatest thinkers of the century has to say about Communistic fallacies and how our government could be doing it better.
