It's no coincidence that most of these people have either first or second hand knowledge of life under communist dicatorship.
As opposed to the public-school-educated American youth of today, who do not even know what the word "communist" means.
My wife is from a country that was in a civil war that was between the government and communist revolutionaries until 1996. She grew up in that horror and relentlessly tries to warn people here as to the nature of the left.
Your right... people like that do understand reality allot more than the people growing up here brainwashed by the left wing Utopians in our educational systems.