I knew the time would come. America's public schools and ideologically monolithic universities have spawned a generation woefully uninformed in the most elementary facts about free markets, socialism, and communism. Personally, after teaching this material for years, I'm getting an inordinate number of questions about communism in particular, as that word is bandied about like crazy -- the result of America's decisive lurch leftward since the election of November 2008.

There's so much to say, especially about communism in practice, where the story is unprecedented misery: a death toll of 100 million to 140 million human beings since 1917. That's twice the combined corpses of World War I and World War II.

But what about communism as a theory?