Open Question: why do americans hate communism?

From Yahoo Answers

How can one define irrational thought? Seriously. American obsession with Communism & Socialism & Liberalism is weird. However here is a slight effort to enlighten you and others. First up, despite that saying on the Statue of Liberty about 'send us your poor starving huddled masses etc,' America has lways been against the notion of poor folk. In fact the American Revolution, unlike say the French opr the Russian Revolution, the American Rebellion was a top down fight; the wealthiest most well off of Americans rebelled against their money going to fatten the wallets of Britain, America's founding fathers wanted to keep their money at home.Then as America grew up its entire story was one of striving to better one self, often by exploiting others (see the destruction of the natives), often by clawing and scratching to the top. For better or worse the history of America has been one of getting ahead and climbing to the top of the ant hill.What does Communism preach? Equality, everyone on a level playing field, everyone having a decent meal and job, etc. At least in theory, it is true that is not how Communism worked out, but the basic theory & preaching works counter to American tradition.Especially in the late 1940 s into the 50s, the American Goal was to get ahead, to break out of the commune, out of the pack.That is part of the equation. The other factor is a bit more incidious. Nations being comprised of people have this primal need for an enemy, some evil upon which they can focus their bigotry and hate and since the basic tenets of Communisn run counter to the American Dream, it was easy to demonize Communism and use it as a bogey man for all sorts of nasty activity.Simply by agitating for basic Civil Liberties, 'blacks' were labled Communists, and were legally targeted & prosecuted in states that did not have 'Jim Crow' laws throughout the 40s and 50s well into the 60s.As for interfering in other countries - - - well quite often groups from those countries wanted the US of A to intervene and once again Communism was a convenient bogeyman. A bogeyman helped along by the raw fact that the so called Communist Soviet Government was trampling on civil rights in many European countries, while the Communist Chinese did lend support to North Korea, thus intervention needs greater examination. Obviously now the Soviet Union isn't trying to turn the whole world into communist states, but if you ask the average american what exactly communism is, or how it works, they won't have a clue. as a result much of U.S. media captures headlines of Communist states such as for example the Tibetan riots against china, and only includes tibetans' stories, without giving thought to the chinese worldview. media doesn't care about worldview. It focuses on one side of the story to seem dramatic. and yes i know that china has restricted access from reporters in the area, but come on. its china's own business to deal with themselves. they bash china on a humanitarian crisis, even though Tibetans are the ones who raided china in the first place, stirring up trouble during an important olympic event, trying to embarrass china and draw attention to the riots, burning down buildings, destroying property and killing innocent civilians resulting in 20 confirmed deaths and more than 100 suspected deaths, hundreds wounded. And china killed not a total of 17 tibetans, i mean they pretty much had to, tibetans were killing people, using brute force rather than negotiating. and that woman who was tortured, well, no country is perfect. i seriously have no idea what it is with most of North America and communism? Does anybody know?every country makes mistakes. U.S. is also somewhat oppressive, just look at the past 500 years. the U.S. started when England and France forced their way into the Americas, killing native americans, taking them prisoner, using them as slaves. Thousands, even millions were killed in Europe's gradual conquest of the americas. after that, the Thirteen colonies broke off and rebelled against taxes, burning people at the stake and forcing millions from their homes simply because they were loyal to britain. after that they simply forgot about the natives, pushing further west and leaving tiny reserves.in the 1800's they saw blacks as slaves, not human beings, gave them minimal rights and forced them to work without proper pay, selling them like animals to others