A three-minute video from a military academy lit the fuse for a bigger question: how did ideas tied to Marxism and collectivism become so normal inside American culture, education, and even the armed services? 

STARRS & Stripes host CDR Al Palmer, USN ret, sits down with a panel of veterans, scholars, and former Soviet bloc survivors to follow the trail from slogans to systems, and from institutions to everyday life. 

• STARRS President Col. Ron Scott, PhD, USAF ret, USAFA '73 who served a long career in the Air Force, is a retired college professor and served as a Principal Scientist with Applied Research Associates
• James Atticus Bowden, a retired Army officer, writer, 1972 West Point graduate and member of the MacArthur Society
• Stan Ridgley, PhD, a college professor and author of "Brutal Minds: The Dark World of Left-Wing Brainwashing in Our Universities" and "DEI Exposed: How the Biggest Con of the Century Almost Toppled Higher Education"
• Mihaela Fletcher, who grew up under brutal communist Romania, but escaped. She is a doctor in nursing practice and is a STARRS ambassador
• Alex Markovsky, an emigre from the Soviet Union who holds degrees in economics and political science from the University of Marxism-Leninism, and is the author of "Anatomy of a Bolshevik: How Marx and Lenin Explain Obama's Grand Plan" and "Liberal Bolshevism: America Did Not Defeat Communism, She Adopted It"

What starts as a conversation about activism quickly becomes a blunt look at power, legitimacy, and how “soft” language can hide hard outcomes.

We wrestle with the definitions that trip people up: socialism vs communism vs Marxism, and why the wording matters if you’re trying to persuade ordinary Americans, not win an academic debate. 

The panel digs into the long march through the institutions, critical theory, and why campuses often treat “social justice” as a moral good while avoiding the economic and historical record. 

We also examine the vacuum created when K-12 stops teaching the American Creed clearly, leaving younger generations to inherit a story about America that is mostly grievance and very little civic literacy.

Then the conversation turns personal and practical. Guests who lived under Romanian and Soviet communism describe ration cards, bread lines, surveillance, propaganda, and the slow tightening of control over food, housing, transportation, and speech. 

We end by asking what actually works: rebuilding culture upstream of politics, reforming education and teacher pipelines, and re-articulating the founding principles of individual rights and limited government in a way that makes sense in today’s economy and media environment. 

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For more information about STARRS, go to our website: https://starrs.us which works to eliminate the divisive Marxist-based CRT/DEI/Woke agenda in the Department of Defense and to promote the return to a warfighter ethos of meritocracy, lethality, readiness, accountability, standards and excellence in the military.

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