Posted on 11/01/2010 8:17:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
At a fundraising event in Illinois, the old Solidarity union leader and former Polish president showed he had lost none of his passion for freedom fighting.
Less than a week before Tuesday’s midterm elections, Illinois conservatives welcomed an unlikely ally. Legendary Polish Solidarity leader, Lech Walesa, appeared in downtown Chicago last Thursday at a fundraising event organized by citizen watchdog group For the Good of Illinois. The former Polish president, trade-union organizer, and Nobel Prize laureate came rhetorically armed with a new Solidarity rallying-cry for Illinoisans yearning for new leadership.
Before 300 conservative leaders and activists on Thursday, Walesa dourly remarked that while the U.S. leads the world militarily and economically, in many ways it no longer leads the world “morally and politically.” “Sometimes when we look up to the only superpower in the world,“ Walesa lamented, “we have some doubt whether the United States really wants to continue being the superpower.” He still referred to the stars and stripes, however, as the “last best hope for the world.” Walesa should know.
He endured years of persecution at the hands of Poland’s communist capo, and was a founder of the trade-union movement Solidarity in the early 1980s. The movement (“Solidarność” in Polish) swelled to become a broad-based anti-Soviet social crusade in Poland, ultimately propelling the Iron Curtain’s collapse and Poland’s first free elections since before World War II (Walesa subsequently became Poland’s president in the newly re-established office).
Given that history, the old freedom fighter didn’t mince words when it came to criticizing America’s current course. Through a translator, Walesa’s remarks were decidedly grim at times, and at other times surprisingly self-deprecating. In a comprehensive, seemingly stream-of-conscious address, Walesa shared his freedom-fighting experience while also providing warnings of the absence of American leadership on the world stage. He also cautioned against China’s political and economic expansion. Responding to the notion that the U.S. was no longer interested in retaining its superpower status, he jokingly offered that Poland was ready to take the baton.
(A short, QuickTime video of the speech by Welesa)
Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady sat next to Welesa during the lunch-in fundraiser (though buffered by a translator), and addressed the naturally friendly audience. Arguing that the current state government is “ruled” by “secrecy,” and marked by wastefulness and corruption, Brady tied Welesa’s struggle in the 80s to that of conservatives today. Without notes, the state senator from Bloomington (Illinois) appeared confident and optimistic days before the election. Brady is currently four points ahead of his Democratic opponent, Governor Pat Quinn, in a recent Chicago Tribune poll.
GOP candidate Bill Brady (L), Polish translator, and Lech Walesa (R)
Governor Quinn, who had accepted an invitation to speak, notified event coordinators hours before that he was unable to appear. Alas, he had surprised organizers when he accepted their invitation in the first place. It would have been an awkward scene had the governor honored his commitment. Due to the event organizers’ conservative bona fides (and because the group exclusively supports GOP candidates this cycle), Quinn’s appearance may have validated the notion that Walesa’s struggles in the 80s were comparable to that of conservatives in Illinois. The event’s strong rhetorical connection between the two was not lost on the audience.
During a question and answer session, Walesa was predictably asked to provide his opinion as to Illinois’s reputation for corruption and government expansion by Democrats. Ever the statesman, Walesa refused to take the political bait, and his answer reflected his unwillingness to verbally jump into the fray.
Walesa is not a regular fixture on the American political circuit. In fact, his vocal endorsement for Adam Andrzejewski in the gubernatorial Republican primary was the first for an American office-seeker (Andrzejewski is now founder and CEO of For the Good of Illinois). During a January 2009 trip to Chicago for Andrzejewski, Walesa surprised onlookers in an interview when he decried that the U.S. was moving in the direction of socialism with its bank bailouts and bulging social welfare programs.
Walesa’s visit underscores the weight that Illinois conservatives are placing on these midterm elections. Analogizing Soviet tyranny to the current onslaught of liberal big-governance was no stretch for the conservative crowd. Walesa — whose name is mentioned alongside Thatcher, Reagan, and Pope John Paul II as delivering the knockout punch to Soviet communism — departed by urging the crowd to “elect well,” a thinly veiled offer of good tidings to an audience hoping for change this election season. Never known for outwardly taking partisan sides in the U.S., Walesa’s very presence at the decidedly conservative fundraiser told the story.
Few people realize what great personal risks Lech Walesa took on when he challenged the evil empire three decades ago. He’s a great man who deserves a place in history alongside some of the other greats of that era who helped bring down the iron curtain— Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II. We are blessed that he is still able to travel and speak!
“Few people realize what great personal risks Lech Walesa took on when he challenged the evil empire three decades ago.”
####
Indeed.
Balls of iron.
It is instructive that the Poles, caught for years between the Leftist totalitarianism of the Nazis and the Communists, and then under the jackboot of the thug Soviets alone, understand best, the unquestionable desirability of reigning American benevolence.
I have always thought of Lech Walesa as a very, very wise and courageous man.
You are so right. I so miss those years, they never gave up.
After we get done with ‘Party like it’s 1775’ tomorrow evening, we MUST turn our focus on the inner corruption (vote fraud, high crimes, etc.) that the political enemies are doing to this country. Tomorrow is only the first voctory in a long battle.
We must focus like it’s 1985! until this evil is gone.
Some one or two of these Republican candidates who win election, or some other person out there needs to emerge who truly understands the ideas of liberty our Declaration of Independence and Constitution were founded upon.
Further, those persons must have the courage and tenacity to stand upon those principles in the face of Progressivism.
That has happened before.
President Reagan's real strength and authenticity lay in his deep and abiding understanding of the principles and ideas of America's Founders. This meant that somewhere along the line he had studied the writings and underlying documents by which liberty was obtained.
His easily-delivered cautions about limited government were not mere "talking points" or platform-based recitations. Those cautions came out of a mind and heart that were in sync with Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and the other geniuses who structured the limited government of the U. S. Constitution to protect liberty, and to bar tyrants from oppressing the people.
Reagan's eloquent speeches about a "shining city" were not mere high-sounding rhetoric, they were about deeply-held beliefs, founded in understanding of and devotion to ideas.
While it is admirable for current Republican leaders to quote Reagan, or to claim his philosophy as their own, second-hand embracing of the positions he took is not enough to qualify any candidate to lead America back to "peace, liberty, and safety" (Jefferson's First Inaugural cautions).
No, that candidate must demonstrate his/her own study and understanding of the principles underlying the United States Constitution, and that only can be acquired by study, reflection, and a deep commitment. The threats are so great, they are presented in such subtle ways, and the enemies of freedom are so intent on imposing their own deeply-held counterfeit ideas that a surface belief in what is referred to as "limited government," "tax cuts," "reductions in spending," and "getting government out of our lives," while they may be attention-getting and handy for speeches, will not be sufficient to hold the line in defense of liberty.
Something more is needed. Reagan had it, and any person who wishes to emulate his leadership cannot do it without submitting himself/herself to the same depth of study as Reagan.
When that person emerges who can demonstrate the discipline and dedication to ideas which Reagan did, then the counterfeit ideas of opponents will not be able to prevail in public debate, and America may once again be able to be that "shining city" or "beacon of liberty" for the world. Other nations will again look to America for leadership, not compromise and appeasement.
Has Reagan's Young Americans for Freeedom produced such a candidate somewhere? Has any conservative think tank exposed the Founders' ideas to someone who can now articulate them and demonstrate leadership?
One evening, as we were watching on TV some of the most intense moments of the Solidarity movement in Poland, my dad came in the house and said “Go get those poles out of the back of my truck.”
We cracked up. He had bought a bunch of railroad ties.
” Loss of American Leadership in the World”
that’s exactly what the current occupant of the Oval Office is trying to accomplish.
Few people realize that he was a hoax and that he has always been an operative for the Kremlin. Go read Golitsyns New Lies For Old.
The true patriot was the former Polish president who interesting enough also claimed that Walesa was an inside KGB agent he is no longer with us he died in a plane crash flying over Russia how convenient...
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/282630
BULL! Those papers alleging Walesa spied on his fellow dissidents for the KGB were forged by the Communists in an effort to discredit him. Stop spreading lies!
ping
You have been duped look who is still alive and who is dead.
If he was really anti communist he wouldn’t be able to walk the streets in person and in the open.
Look at the facts go read New Lies For Old Golitsyn who was not afforded the security to make public appearances in America and England for decades after defecting along with several others.
If the communist wanted to stop him they would have by now like they did Litvinenko and Kaczsky sorry facts dont lie people that post articles do...
IBTZ?
The fact is, the Soviets at that time had other fish to fry, with Afghanistan. Also once Reagan came to power, the Soviets were not going to risk war over Poland.
The real hoax is the one that proclaimed that Jaruzelski saved Poland from Soviet invasion.
The fact is, months before Martial Law, Jaruzelski literally begged the Kremlin to invade Poland, and they told him ‘no’.
Then he lied when he said he had to impose martial law to save Poland from a Soviet invasion.
The Polish president dying in a plane crash is convenient for your claim. Why are you here?
That was all a massive deception watch these videos they are of the publisher of Golistsyn book Perestrioka Deception the answr lies here..
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39268000
Die.
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