Instead of criticizing NBA superstar LeBron James, we should be congratulating him for educating his 50 million Instagram followers on the historical difference between communism and capitalism.  James has accomplished what high-profile, patriotic constitutional experts have failed to do for the last 60 years.  Contrary to thousands of irate Twitter commenters telling James to shut up, the famous basketball player supporting the communist government of China should keep on talking.  How else will his brainwashed followers hear about the horrible abuses communist party leaders inflict on their citizens?  They certainly won't hear it from their left-wing, Antifa-loving, Trump-hating, socialist teachers.

The United States has been losing ground to communist ideologues for generations, and, ironically, it has taken a pro-China multimillionaire basketball player with a desire to protect his financial interests, to inadvertently lift the curtain on a system that oppresses its own people and has killed hundreds of millions.

James has a lifetime endorsement deal with Nike, a company that claims communist China as its fastest growing market.  Couple that with the athlete's malicious attacks on the United States in recent years, and sooner or later, the player worth $300 million with a high school education was bound to be tripped up.  When James maligned the Houston Rockets' manager for freely voicing his support of the Hong Kong protesters, suddenly, the sports icon, who insists all voices must be heard, was being held to his own standard.

Cartoonist Will O'Toole's view of LeBron.

James has a lot of influence with young people through his foundation and Nike products.  After Monday's firestorm, think of all those K–12 public school students wearing their LeBron James hoodies and sneakers trying to figure out why everyone is so mad at their King.  They might not know who President Xi is or where China is on a map or why people in Hong Kong are up in arms, but as followers of James on social media, they are seeing the words "communist," "freedom of speech," and "hypocrite," probably for the first time.  As the Daily Mail reports, human rights groups, politicians, and ordinary fans are pummeling James for his defense of a totalitarian regime while trashing a country that has made him very, very rich.  

On Tuesday, Hong Kong protesters burned a LeBron James jersey and threw basketballs at pictures of the global superstar.  This prompted reporters to ask him if he understood why people in this country and Hong Kong were angry at him over his comments on the negative "ramifications" of freely speaking out against the communist country.  As usual, James deflected from his China association by saying there are problems in this country "that no one talks about."  Kids living in the "hellhole of inner cities" need to have a "brighter future," he said.  How delusional and obscene.  We've only been talking about that since Democrats signed the welfare state into law in 1964.

At the end of Tuesday's conference, James told one of the reporters, "I won't talk about it [China] again."  That's unfortunate.  James has a big following in China and in the U.S., and in one brief interview, he managed to raise awareness of the situation in Hong Kong and to personify the soul-killing consequences of doing business with a communist country.