Interesting question

Apparently, a West Point (USMA) graduate who espoused Communism has been removed from the Army for "less than honorable" reasons.  Now exactly what this means isn't clear to me--it appears he may have a tattoo or two visible outside his uniform, which at least used to be forbidden, and his attitude towards the site of his service is "less than complimentary"--but the question of what level of political freedom can be accommodated within the armed services, or for that matter among immigrants, comes to mind as well.  If we are talking about someone who would forcibly confiscate the property of prosperous citizens, as the Communist Manifesto seems to indicate, one would simultaneously think that such a person would be incapable of honoring the Constitution's protections of life, liberty, and property.  Such a person ought not be allowed to immigrate or join the armed services, in my opinion.


And along those lines, it's almost a pity that we didn't keep a portion of East Berlin and the Berlin Wall in place, or perhaps one of Stalin's gulags, so that those who would forget the atrocities of Communism might be reminded of them in the same way we might send a Holocaust denier to Auschwitz or Dachau.  Of course, probably even that wouldn't be sufficient, since there appears to be a growing number of Holocaust deniers out there, too.   But it might help.