Matthew Newgent of the MacArthur Society of West Point Graduates saw up close what happens in a country that lived under communism.

In 1989, before the Soviet Union fell, he walked the streets of Russia as a student ambassador.

Shelves were bare.

A doctor was paid the equivalent of about $80 a month.

A cab driver pulled over in the rain to put on his windshield wipers, because if he left them on the car, someone would steal them.

Name-brand jeans were a black-market deal.

Housing was a small state flat you waited decades to get and had to live in forever.

A KGB man followed the group everywhere — and yet, just before they left, poignantly told them he wanted freedom for his children like America has.

Then the Soviet Union collapsed. Stores opened. The streets got brighter. People who had lived under the lie got a taste of ordinary liberty. They were happier.

Yet Communism did not disappear, it changed form. Newgent argues the same promises — free this, equal that — are being sold again in America, while too many people were never taught what those promises produced: equal poverty for everyone except the people in charge, and compliance enforced by the state.

Freedom, he says, is not inherited; it has to be passed on by teaching every generation, or it will be lost.

Watch:

He invites viewers to attend a STARRS event co-sponsored by the MacArthur Society, “America at a Crossroads: Preserving Faith, Family, and Freedom” this Saturday, October 10, 2026, in Scottsdale, Arizona (or online) from 9:00 am to Noon Pacific Time.

This free event is meant to educate every generation on those threats and how to defend faith, family, and liberty.

Bring a child, a friend, or a younger relative who were never taught about the hard realities of socialism/communism.

Get motivated to fight the battle to defend our Constitution and save our Republic.

More information and register

Watch the livestream of the event on STARRS social media channels:

• STARRS YouTube
• STARRSmission on X
• STARRS Facebook
• STARRS Rumble