Posted on 11/14/2025 7:01:37 AM PST by MtnClimber
Even in Bucharest, a Romanian freedom fighter’s warning proved clear: too many Americans have forgotten the price of liberty—and some no longer care to hear it.
I am on vacation. I was planning on taking a timeout and not thinking or writing about politics for a few days, but somehow politics found me anyway. As a result, I feel compelled to write about what I just experienced. I think the things I witnessed are subtle yet quite important and highly worth sharing with anyone who supports liberty.
I am in Bucharest, Romania, as I write this. Today I experienced a confluence of unanticipated moments that I can only describe as a sort of poetic synchronicity. Please bear with me as I tie some seemingly disparate events into what I believe is a parable on the price and perishability of freedom.
I’ll start with the nature of my vacation and my fellow travelers (pun semi-intended; you’ll see why). I am on an Eastern European riverboat cruise on the Danube. The trip started yesterday in Bucharest, Romania’s capital city. It’s a pricey cruise that my wife and I saved up for, and our ship companions are almost all wealthy white Americans in their sixties and seventies. (In other words, I am on a floating “No Kings” protest.) While I’m sure there are more than a few MAGA conservatives along for the ride, what I have overheard in the public spaces of our ship so far suggests that more than half of our group are garden-variety, bitter old Democrats.
Another bit of background is important to this story. Today, Bucharest’s streets were gridlocked thanks to an enormous protest by a mass of labor unions. They were protesting government austerity measures related to the national government’s cutting back on the handing out of free stuff. Our pre-planned group city tour was badly sidetracked by this event, and eventually, we collided with the protest in a deeply ironic way.
So with the stage set, let me tell you the emotional events that motivated me to write this cautionary article.
Our guides promised us a surprise on today’s tour, and what a surprise it was. They took us to Bucharest’s Revolution Square, which was the site where, in December of 1989, the Romanian people began to rise up to overthrow one of history’s most horrific communist dictators, Nicolae Ceaușescu.
On December 21, 1989, while unrest was brewing across the nation thanks to nationwide poverty inflicted by communism, Ceaușescu gave a nationally televised speech before a huge throng in that same square, attempting to motivate and encourage the citizenry during the fall of the Iron Curtain. Surprisingly, the crowd acted in defiance of the dictator and took the unprecedented and quite brave step of literally heckling and booing him en masse. As the shouts and boos echoed around the great canyon of the square, Ceaușescu and his wife Elena suddenly realized that they had lost Romania and sought to flee the country. In a matter of days, the Romanian military largely turned against the dictator and his wife, and on Christmas Day, the two of them were adjudged guilty of democide, executed by firing squad, and unceremoniously dumped into unmarked graves. Romania was free. However, in that uncertain period between December 21 and December 25, revolutionaries, the secret police, and the military (still uncertain where their loyalties lie) engaged in violent street battles, leaving many Romanians dead or wounded (estimates range anywhere from about 1,000 to 7,000 murdered Romanians).
One of those revolutionaries fighting in the streets for his freedom was a man, then only fifteen years old, named Egmont Puscasu. A mere high school student, Puscasu and his classmates knew Romania needed a better life and bravely fought in street battles against tanks and rifles, armed only with rocks and whatever other weapons they could find or make. Puscasu’s best friend and ally was hit in the head with a bullet from an AK-47 and died right next to him. Yet Puscasu fought on. In fact, one of the most famous photos of the Romanian Revolution shows Puscasu dressed all in black at the top of a truck.
Which brings me back to the surprise of my vacation. I met Puscasu. Our tour guides took our group to hear him speak in a small courtyard just off Revolution Square, and he vividly recounted those days of fighting and struggle. As a retired U.S. Army officer who dedicated much of his life to fighting for freedom and liberty, I was moved almost to tears hearing his story of courage and commitment to the best principles of human freedom. I had the great privilege of shaking his hand—one of the very few in my group to do so.
So this is where I bring that poetic synchronicity back into the story.
As we were listening to Puscasu on the earphones our guides used to communicate with us, the labor union protest I mentioned earlier, trumpeting and banging incredibly loud horns and drums, slowly came trudging past us for the entirety of Puscasu’s speech. Think of the irony—a quasi-communist demonstration drowning out the voice of a man who long ago defeated the tyranny they aspired to once again achieve. To Puscasu’s credit, however, he told us he found that demonstration inspiring in that it proved Romania had become a free country where all voices could be heard, and I certainly agree with him.
Now comes the part of the story that caused me to despair.
Remember all those “No Kings” Democrats I mentioned? As Puscasu was speaking, many of them were upset by his words. Some simply refused to applaud. Others showed looks of abject disgust on their faces, whispering amongst themselves and shaking their heads. Many took their earphones out of their ears and simply walked off while Puscasu was still speaking. My wife (also a veteran) and I were appalled. Do these affluent, blessed Americans no longer understand the price of freedom?
Do they really not understand?
I firmly believe that too many Americans have lost the meaning of our Constitution and an understanding of the true nature of our liberties and freedoms, along with the price those things actually cost to achieve and maintain. In a nation where a literal communist can become mayor of New York City, are we on a path to the Romania of old? If so, it will be because of indifference and stupidity, qualities I just saw on display in—of all places—Bucharest, Romania.
There are other lessons to be learned from this story, and I would like to offer three of them:
1. Our Romanian guides were so extraordinarily proud to present Puscasu to us. To them, it was like they were letting us hear from their version of the Minutemen at Lexington and Concord. (In truth, they were!) This too saddened me, however, as those beautiful Romanians still view the USA as the global defender of freedom—a defender who helped them stare down communism and defeat the Soviet Union. Is their vision still correct? Is that still us? I fear against all hope that it may not be, and perhaps the world outside the USA needs to know this. More importantly, perhaps WE need to know this before it is too late.
2. Too many Americans have forgotten (or never realized) the price of freedom. Too many of us have become fat, lazy, and complacent. Too many of us want free stuff, and too many of us are willing to sacrifice our freedom for that same free stuff, tiny bit by tiny bit, until it is all gone, and we have our own Ceaușescus. I sincerely wish there was a way for the incredibly eloquent Puscasu to come to America on a nationwide speaking tour so that he could educate many of our citizens (especially Gen Z) on the perilous path down which they so eagerly seek to tread.
3. I fear—but do not know for sure—that too many of those Americans I am traveling with heard Puscasu’s words and conflated Ceaușescu with Trump. I know Trump Derangement Syndrome is a real thing, but these are educated people. Our president is committed in every way imaginable to reducing the size, scope, and power of our federal government bureaucracy so as to preserve personal liberty. How can any thinking American conflate that with a dictator? Again, I despair at the willful ignorance of so many of my countrymen and women.
Socialism and communism are death.
Those who have lived this know it. The Romanian people know it. Too many Americans have forgotten it (or never knew because our schools stopped teaching this truth).
I pray that some as yet unborn 15-year-old American boy is not one day watching his friends die trying to restore American freedom.
My day in Bucharest was a clarion call to remember how freedom is achieved and how it can evaporate. I felt privileged and humbled to earn this reminder. No American should say, “It can’t happen here,” because it can. Freedom is not the natural state of mankind; tyranny is. We must remain ever vigilant lest we lose the spirit of 1776.
As Ronald Reagan once said:
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States, where men were free.”
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So sad that many on this tour would side with the Ceaușescu side of the argument.
Freedom costs a buck-oh-five.
Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you.
Today, Bucharest’s streets were gridlocked thanks to an enormous protest by a mass of labor unions. They were protesting government austerity measures related to the national government’s cutting back on the handing out of free stuff.
Thanks, I follow him on X but hadn’t seen that.
If you are on X FReepers, follow @CynicalPublius. He’s good stuff, writes well.
It's a good truth to incorporate in one's mind, but very, very few have done so.
This author still seems to be grappling with it, "Do they really not understand?" he asks.
Yes, they DO understand. They are Communists.
Why? Because for the very rich and connected, Communism is better: more exclusive, better perks, more serfs kissing your butt.
More doing stuff that other people will never get to do.
My wife and I were in Romania for about a month in 1991 while the country was still dark, drab and deprived after the communism years. I was an Army Officer stationed in Germany and we were there to adopt a child. They were so proud of getting rid of their dictators (Elana especially) and loved talking about and showing us revolution stories and sites. Ronald Reagan was their hero at the time and the end of the Soviet Union about that same time was like a dream come true for them. Now we see signs of it returning not in Russia but here at home and we have to wonder how Americans can be so stupid. All we can do if remember to make our voices heard and never miss a vote. Stand up and be counted.
I guess everybody has to learn the hard way, eventually.
Yup.
From the article -- "Too many of us have become fat, lazy, and complacent. Too many of us want free stuff, and too many of us are willing to sacrifice our freedom for that same free stuff, tiny bit by tiny bit, until it is all gone, and we have our own Ceaușescus."
The lure of "free" -- which one sees in commercial marketing and advertising, as in socialists' blather, is a lie. Was a lie. Remains a lie.
But then again, one view of the Garden of Eden expulsion can be couched this way -- 'God-like knowledge' is available FOR FREE is just a bite away.
The hook was baited with "free," in so many narratives which are part of civilization's lore. Just bite. And you'll be "hooked." Problem is, the hook is a real hook, baited and always waiting.
Thank you for tihs wonderful admonition story.
Let me add this to it, a speech by Samuel Adams made on August 1st 1776 at the Philadelphia State House:
” If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.
Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. “
I read where two-thirds of a group of people said they would not fight for America. To me, that is the result of the rot in the American education system. They are taught by Leftist that America is bad. If that’s the case, ask those Leftists why there are millions of people risking everything to get into America. If it’s that bad, perhaps those Leftists should leave.
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