I am what’s called today a “baby boomer.” I suppose the younger crowd might call me a dinosaur.

Born shortly after WWII, I grew up in a country vastly different from the one we live in today. After our war-weary nation helped defeat the Nazis and fascists, we embarked on another war, a cold war against communism. Like most baby boomers, I’ve always seen communists and socialists as enemies of our American way of life. We learned that they reject the independence we enjoy and the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution – everything our country stands for.

Elements of those ideologies existed in our country even then, but most Americans saw them as wacky, anti-American malcontents. They still hate our country, but today many Americans are actually listening to their bizarre agenda.

Over the years, socialists managed to worm their way into our educational system, pumping their radical ideologies into the minds of our young people, teaching them to hate America and embrace socialism.

But it wasn’t just our educators. Elected leaders played a role in influencing public opinion.

When Barack Obama came on the scene, he began sowing seeds of discontent. Even before his election, he was promoting the socialist tenets of class envy and redistribution of wealth. That’s essentially what he told a concerned voter: “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” Many Americans were deeply troubled by those words, which contradicted our traditional American creed: Success and wealth come from hard work. Obama proposed taking that wealth and spreading it around for social equity. It seemed inherently wrong.

Polls today show that religion is coming back to our young people. But there’s still a long way to go. Our country was founded on Judeo-Christian doctrine, which takes a dim view of envy. In days past, most Americans were at least aware of something called the Seven Deadly Sins, though they might not have known that “envy” was one of them. But everyone knows about the Ten Commandments, which tell us, among other things, not to covet our neighbors’ goods.

While Obama scoffed at accusations of socialist leanings, some of today’s political candidates are unashamedly calling their supporters “comrades.”

Obama is best remembered for the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare. It brought us one step closer to socialized medicine, and most would call it an abysmal failure, resulting in higher premiums, higher taxes, and fewer choices. It also led to more than two billion dollars in fraud.

Now they’re saying the ACA didn’t go far enough. They’re demanding Medicare for all – including those who are here illegally. They endlessly squawk that healthcare is a human right, a right to which everyone is entitled. It sounds great, and many have come to believe it. But no one ever explains where that “right” comes from, where it’s written, or who authorized it.

It’s easy to attract voters with false promises of free healthcare. Everyone needs it at some point. It seems like something the government should provide.

But these are the hard facts: The government acquires most of its revenue through taxation. It might sound appealing when socialists say they’re going to tax the wealthy, but as Margaret Thacher wisely said, “…eventually you run out of other peoples’ money.”

Ultimately, “free” healthcare is funded by us, the taxpayer.

But don’t forget the moral issue. When did it become OK to take what others have earned, even if it goes to the less successful, the less fortunate?

There are probably very few young people today familiar with the old saying “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Everything comes at a cost. That’s true of all the pie-in-the sky handouts and benefits socialists offer in exchange for our vote.

We all pay in other ways. As we devolve into just another welfare state, we lose those things that made us great as a nation. We lose our independence, our competitive spirit, our bold ambitions, and our once vaunted rugged individualism.

Whether they call themselves communists, socialists, or Democratic Socialists of America, they call for power to the people, but their real goal is power and control over the people. They want to become the spigot for all our needs. They want to be our supplier, to decide who gets what – while always setting aside a more than generous portion for themselves.

People like Talerico, Mamdani and El-Sayed hide those intentions behind fake smiles and false promises. There’s nothing they won’t do to appear personable, more electable.

But baby boomers remember the words of another more famous communist leader. In 1956, he vowed, “We will bury you.”

No one could possibly have imagined that 70 years later, the real threat would come from within.