Wisdom Conversations
Why Not Communism? A Wisdom Conversation on Freedom, Faith, and the Future of America
October 1, 2026
A recent generation of Americans has grown more open to communism and socialism than at any point in America’s history. For many, the appeal is common sensical: rising costs, widening inequality, institutional distrust, and a sense that the American promise is beyond grasp. The question deserves a serious answer and not just slogans.
This fall, Cornerstone University invites you to Why Not Communism?, the next installment of our Wisdom Conversations series. Together we’ll examine the moral, economic, and spiritual claims of collectivist ideologies, the historical record of where they have led, and the deeper human longings they attempt to address. More importantly, we’ll ask what a free, faithful, and flourishing America should offer in their place.
This is not a lecture. It is a rigorous, civil conservation unafraid of hard questions. Moderated by Dr. Gerson Moreno-Riaño, president of Cornerstone University, we’ll bring together some of the best minds to help us consider:
- Why communism and socialism continue to attract each new generation, despite a century of evidence.
- What the Christian worldview and related moral tradition has to say about property, work, community, and the dignity of the human person.
- How free societies can address real injustices without surrendering the freedom and liberty that make repair and flourishing possible.
- What parents, pastors, educators, and citizens can do now to prepare the next generation for the ideological contests ahead.
Whether you’re a student wrestling with these ideas for the first time, a leader shaping institutions, or a citizen who senses that something important is at stake, you belong in this conversation. Join us!
Register today to join us and our respected guest panelists.
Xi Van Fleet
Author and Survivor of Mao’s Cultural Revolution
Yeonmi Park
North Korean Defector, Author & Human Rights Advocate
Seth Dillon
CEO of The Babylon Bee and Free Speech Advocate
Dr. Gary Saul Morson
Northwestern University Professor & Leading Scholar of Soviet Communism
Distinguished Guest Bios
Xi Van Fleet brings a rare and urgent perspective to the debate over communism: she lived through it.
Born in China, Xi survived Mao’s Cultural Revolution and was sent to the countryside for hard labor as a teenager. After immigrating to the United States in 1986, she embraced the freedoms she believes millions around the world still long for. Today, she is one of America’s most influential critics of communist ideology and a leading voice warning against the cultural and political conditions that allow authoritarianism to take root.
Xi is the author of Mao’s America: A Survivor’s Warning and Made in America: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Enabled Communist China and Created Our Greatest Threat. She gained national attention in 2021 after a speech before the Loudoun County School Board went viral. Drawing on firsthand experience, Xi speaks across the country about liberty, totalitarianism, and the lessons history ignores at its peril.
Yeonmi Park knows the cost of losing freedom because she escaped one of the world’s most oppressive regimes to find it.
Born in North Korea, Park fled the country at age 13, surviving human trafficking, extreme deprivation, and a harrowing journey through China and the Gobi Desert before reaching freedom in South Korea. Her story has captivated audiences around the world and offered a powerful window into the realities of life under dictatorship.
A bestselling author and internationally recognized human rights advocate, Park has shared her message with hundreds of millions through speeches, interviews, and viral talks. She is the author of In Order to Live and While Time Remains, and was named one of the BBC’s Top 100 Women. Today, she challenges audiences to consider the meaning of freedom, human dignity, and the consequences of political systems that place power above the human person.
Seth Dillon stands at the center of some of America’s most consequential debates over free speech, censorship, and the future of open public discourse.
As CEO of The Babylon Bee, Dillon helped transform a small satire publication into one of the nation’s most influential media platforms, reaching millions of readers and followers. In the process, he found himself on the front lines of high-profile battles over censorship, deplatforming, and the limits of permissible speech in modern America.
Through congressional testimony, legal advocacy, and national media appearances, Dillon has become a leading defender of free expression and a frequent critic of efforts to suppress dissenting viewpoints. He argues that free societies depend on citizens who are willing to speak the truth with courage—and that the erosion of free speech is often the first warning sign of something far more dangerous.
Dr. Gary Saul Morson is one of the world’s foremost scholars of the Russian writers and thinkers who exposed the promises—and the tragedies—of revolutionary ideology.
As the Lawrence B. Dumas Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University, Morson has spent decades studying the intellectual currents that shaped the Russian Revolution and the literary giants who warned against ideological certainty and utopian political dreams. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the author or editor of more than twenty books, including the acclaimed Wonder Confronts Certainty.
Drawing on the insights of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn, and other Russian thinkers, Morson brings historical depth and moral clarity to contemporary questions about freedom, truth, responsibility, and the human consequences of political extremism. His essays have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, First Things, Commentary, and numerous national publications.
Wisdom Conversations
Wisdom Conversations is a national series hosted by Cornerstone University that brings together leading voices from diverse fields to explore the ideas shaping culture, Christian faith, and the future. Rooted in Biblical wisdom and committed to public engagement, each event seeks to foster deep reflection, civil dialogue, and actionable insight on today’s most pressing issues to benefit students and society.