For what it's worth, my 0th-order reaction to "Better dead than Red" is a bias in the opposite direction. I grew up during the Vietnam war, in the U.S., so I got to watch my government repeatedly lie through its teeth, and the US was the opposition to the Reds - so, when I hear, "Better dead than Red", I expect it paired with deceit. (It's a low level bias - the Soviets are gone, and the cold war has been replaced by other conflicts, so this reaction is largely moot at this point)