A lady named Liu Ping has been continually denied medical parole even though she is suffering from daily diarrhea due to mistreatment (i.e. torture) and the filthy prison conditions where she has been incarcerated. Her crime? She was a member of an opposition group called the New Citizens Movement. For this she was sentenced to six and a half years in prison. A man named Chen Xi is suffering from chronic enteritis, a dangerous infection of the digestive tract. Despite his condition, the Chinese government is denying him medical parole. His crime? Calling for democracy and rule of law. For this he was sentenced to ten years in prison. There is no question that the Chinese government will let these people die since there is no international pressure, and nothing coming from the United States to save these people.

These are just two examples of the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of political and religious prisoners being held by the Chinese government for doing what we in the United States take for granted—protesting and being members of political and social organizations outside the control of the U.S. government. But this is Communism today, and China, which is the most populous nation on earth, is still run by the Communist Party of China. There are no other political parties in China, and any and all attempts at promoting freedom are brutally crushed there. There is no freedom of the press, no freedom of religion, no freedom of speech, no right to peacefully assemble to protest, no right to seek redress for past grievances, and certainly no right to form any other political parties. This is reality for 1.3 billion people in China alone.

China of course is not the only Communist state left. There are also North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba. More to the point, China now threatens our national security. The Chinese government is building artificial islands in the South China Sea to claim “sovereignty” over the whole area in order to choke off important trade routes vital to trade with the United States and it allies. To make things worse, the Chinese Navy has been sailing near American waters in an attempt to demonstrate their new naval power. In 2010, a Chinese Jin-class submarine fired off a missile in international waters not far from the City of Los Angeles. The intention was clear—to show America that China’s submarine fleet can attack and hit American targets. Just a year ago, the Chinese Navy has now deployed a more advanced Jin-class submarine not only capable of patrolling near the waters of Hawaii and Alaska, but also capable of launching nuclear missiles.

And none of this scares the current administration of U.S. President Barack Obama? Does anyone in the U.S. government really think that Communism is dead, and that there is no new Cold War threat against the United States? While Americans argue about the old Confederate flag, we do not seem to notice the advancement of the red flag near our shores. If people in the United States believe that Communism died with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Soviet Union, tell that to all the political and religious dissidents languishing in Chinese, Vietnamese, North Korean, Lao and Cuban prisons. Tell that to all those still living under the red flag. And tell me that there is no military threat from one of these Communist powers to our national security.