They fought a near-50 year political, military and very dangerous chess match "Cold War" against a polar-opposite socio-political, economic idealogy bent on world domination and U.S.'s destruction that practiced a brutal, authoritian and repressive form of socialism/communism. They believe that word "socialism" is mostly equivalent to what the Soviet Union, Moaist China, and North Korea stands for and anyone who comes close to supporting it as "useful idiots"--a term Lenin coined to describe clueless, naive Western intellectuals who will do the bidding for communist groups like Comintern and shoot them later on once their usefulness is over, like dumb disposable marks. Many Americans over the age of 40 now grew up during the last decade of the Cold War so it still maintains some relevance.