[gitmo]

Yet during that century-and-a-quarter in which you could not find “Poland” on any map of Europe—a time in which the Russians and Prussians, in particular, made strenuous efforts to eradicate the idea of “Poland”—the Polish nation survived. Indeed, the Polish nation survived with such vigor that it could give birth to a new Polish state in 1918. And despite the fact that the Polish state was beset for fifty years by the plagues of Nazism and communism, the Polish nation proved strong enough to give a new birth to freedom in east-central Europe in the Revolution of 1989.

How did this happen? Poland survived—better, Poland prevailed—because of culture: a culture formed by a distinctive language (Slavic, yet written in a Latin alphabet and thus oriented to the West as well as the East); by a unique literature, which helped keep alive the memory and idea of “Poland”; and by the intensity of its Catholic faith. Poles know in their bones that culture is what drives history over the long haul.

America: take heed.

[RedWhiteBlue]

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