"Freedom is not hereditary"

This interesting short propaganda film was created by the Department of Defense. I found myself silently laughing at this film in its attempts to scare Americans into imagining Communism on United States soil. The film was a warning not to take for granted all of the advantages we have under a democracy such as going to a PTA meeting. It also suggests keeping a stronger hold on your children such as allowing a daughter to marry quite young. Overall the film gave the concept of the necessity to protect personal liberties and not take for granted these liberties.

Essentially the plot is about a man names Jerry Donovan with an average family that is not participating in his freedoms such as the ability to express independent thought at a variety of meetings that his wife wants him to go to. Jerry instead wants to watch television or go bowling. He goes to sleep and wakes up to a communist run community. The red nightmare. He fights a variety of injustices that he experiences and is ultimately taken into custody for destroying a museum of communist inventions that is set up in his church. His punishment is the death sentence. He recites an epic speech talking about the righteousness of democracy and is “killed”. He wakes up and is a changed man and no longer thinks of his freedoms lightly.

Interesting Quotes:

Communist school
“Espionage as a science”
“Propaganda as an art”
“Sabotage as a business”


“Outdated capitalist way of life”

“Competitive coexistence leads to a collapse of the economy”

“Conform without resistance to the leadership of the proletariat”

“Collective character is not developed in the home life”

Bourgeois class is “diseased”

Communists, “can’t fool people all the time”

“That bullet will never reach you”

“Communist attempts at world enslavement”

“Freedom is not hereditary”