The importance of being Balint (author of "America's Thirty Years War" dies - my title)

The Washington Times ^ | January 20, 2003 | Paul Craig Roberts

[Gritty]

Two hundred years after the American Founding came a defender of our Constitution's principles, Balint Vazsonyi, who toiled in the tents of revival and rededication until he passed away last Friday.

With nothing but hope and determination, Balint, a budding concert pianist, walked out of Soviet-occupied Hungary with his mother and brother in 1956, crossing on foot through the mountains to Austria.

[dennisw]

RIP

[Sam Cree]

Very sad news. Mr. Vazsonyi was a warrior for truth and freedom. His book was an eye opener for me. I think I will put it in a more prominent place in my home.

[Lobbyist]

I was Balint's communications director for the Re-Elect America national tour. Can anyone get me more info on when he died and when the funeral will be. I don't want to call Barbara for this info. Thanks.

[Sam Cree]

I am just learning about his death from the post this morning. I feel like we have lost a valuable soldier. Nice that you were able to work with him.

[nightdriver]

"We require politicians, Balint said, who will Re-Elect America and actively oppose the practices and principles that are in direct contradiction to the American Founding."

Absolutely correct! But, ah! The siren song of socialism where the have-nots are promised a free ride. That's what turns the heads of voters so these renegade politicians get elected.

We have noone to blame but ourselves.

Balint Vazsonyi fought the good fight.

[Piquaboy]

His book should be required reading for all members of congress and students.

[thucydides]

I had the honor to participate with Vasonyi on a panel during his nationwide tour to promote understanding of American values and principles. What a shame it is to find a foreigner who comes to America and has more understanding of and love for the great principles of our country than most of our fellow citizens, educated in the democrats' system of public dumbing down, operated with the intention of turning young people into passive consumers of propaganda, unable to think and driven only by emotional manipulation. All honor then to this great man, and may he rest in peace.

[Sam Cree]

"The siren song of socialism where the have-nots are promised a free ride"

That's for sure...the Left and the Democrats' entire philosophy and agenda is built on envy and greed.

[KC_Conspirator]

Balint was struck by the hostility to American principles on the part of politicians, media, academics and intellectuals. He recognized it as the same hostility to freedom that he experienced under the Nazis and communists.

Balint had experience with these people and that is why he saw leftists for what there are.

[free me]

I liked Balint, this is sad news. He had no reason to spend his time and money trying to educate people other than his love for his country. I will miss him.

[Gritty]

If you haven't seen it, here is his website which features his writings:

Center for the American Founding

[frnewsjunkie]

America’s 30 Years War By Dr. Balint Vazsonyi


Is America on a slow-motion trip toward socialism even as much of the rest of the world moves away from it? Hungarian-born historian and world-renowned concert pianist Balint Vazsonyi knows first-hand what it means to live under an authoritarian regime and makes a powerful case that it is.

Drawing on his personal experiences living under different versions of socialism, Vazsonyi describes how our hard-won freedoms are being gradually eroded.

Vazsonyi traces the essence of what makes America unique back to the founders and exposes the dangerous trends that are undermining the founders’ original intent.

Vazsonyi documents how America’s founding principles—rule of law, individual rights, the guarantee of property, and a common American identity—are being gradually replaced by government-mandated group rights, redistribution, and multiculturalism.

The thirty years war is being fought between promoters of liberty, individual rights, moral guidance on one side; and believers in human reason as the supreme power, with government as its central authority on the other. While the picture is not rosy, America has every chance of winning, if the intentions of the two sides are exposed, and the consequences weighed. This witty, simple-to-follow, and engagingly personal book will aid in the process.

With unmistakable clarity, Vazsonyi shows how every time America moves away from its founding principles it moves in the direction of a system in which “social justice” is pursued through ever-greater government control. America’s 30 Years War is inspiration to those who have lost touch with our founding principles and ammunition for those who believe that our freedoms must be defended every day.


CHAPTER ONE

“THE WAY WE WERE...”


My first haircut in America would have taken place on a Wednesday in February of 1959. It didn’t. There were two men talking inside the little barber shop in Tallahassee, Florida, and one of them swung around as I entered. “It’s Wednesday. We’re closed, sonny boy,” he grunted. I left, deeply hurt. You see, although not yet twenty-three, I had already been appearing in public for ten years as a concert pianist. I was not anyone’s “sonny boy.”

Some months later, I needed a travel document. An immigrant’s green card did not correspond to the Europeans’ idea of a passport, so the good folks in Tallahassee arranged a meeting with the district’s congressman, and to Washington I went. The office door, once I found it, proclaimed the Honorable Bob Sykes. “Bob?” I said to myself —“A mere youth in the hallowed halls of Congress?”

Once inside, a venerable man in his sixties rose from behind the desk. “Hi, I’m Bob,” he said, stretching out a hand. That’s how I learned that it was all right for me to be “sonny boy” in America.

I was a good many years away from becoming a citizen who could vote, but it didn’t matter. I hardly spoke enough English to explain my quandary, a highly unusual one at that. It didn’t matter. In a few minutes, “Bob” was on the phone to the Immigration and Naturalization Service and, together, these two American public servants figured out how this Hungarian refugee could have a piece of paper upon which a pedantic Swiss consular official could imprint a visa.

The year 1959 seems a century away. Having escaped from Hungary after the revolt against Soviet occupation had failed, I arrived in the United States on the 8th of January at the end of a two-day journey, the last twenty-two hours of which were spent aboard a Pan American DC-6 chartered for Hungarian refugees. We landed in New York where, after a sparse lunch, I was pushed onto a train. It took another twenty-four hours to get to Tallahassee.

Dinner time on the train. The conductor hands me a card. The only words on the card I could understand were “check one.” I had heard that America was so rich, people didn’t pay with currency, they just wrote checks. I didn’t have a checkbook; consequently, I assumed that I could not have dinner on the train. In any case, the $23 which represented my total earthly holdings were for an emergency.

The next day I began to “learn” America.

For sure it was strange. The people, the clothes, the houses all looked strange. As for food, I figured the quality of meat might make up for the absence of flavor; salad was obviously a religion. What? Only one kind of mustard? And why does everyone insist on making each bite difficult by putting down the knife and changing the fork over to the right hand? No one spoke any language other than English. Boys I didn’t know told me to “take it easy”; girls practiced throwing batons in the air while carrying on a conversation. It was all very, very strange.

Slowly I learned to eat the food, to speak and understand the language, to live with the strange customs. Soon, I resumed my concert career which required trips to Europe. Every time I returned, I found America a little less strange. Then, one day, the immigration officer at New York’s Idlewild airport—as it was then called —admitted me with the words, “Good afternoon, sir. Welcome home.”

He didn’t have to say it. Remember, I wasn’t even a citizen.

It was as if someone had turned on huge spotlights in my brain. For the first time, I began to contemplate the practical implications of what is called equality in the affairs of man. This much-abused phrase suddenly rang true. I knew it was the law in America, but this officer demonstrated something beyond the law. As a public servant, he was, of course, carrying out the law in examining my documents. But as a human being, he was offering me a partnership in being American. He did so without any high-minded or high-handed platitudes. He simply indicated, if I wanted to share the land he called home, that would be just fine. How much more equal can you be?

I began to look around me with different, clearer eyes. At first, I recalled, I thought it ridiculous that “real” Americans could not identify themselves. Identity papers are staples on the Continent of Europe, ranging from the “looser” Western version to the obsession that Russians—Russians, not necessarily Soviets—have with documents. Now, I realized how much that had to do with personal freedom. In Europe, West and East, you have to register your address with the police. Americans have a hard time believing this. In 1959, no American had even heard of a driver’s license with a photo. And this was the only country where no one checked your papers upon departure.

Hand-in-hand with these liberties went the custom of not building fences around one’s property, of not locking cars and homes, of making deals—large and small—on a handshake. Trust was in the air. People, for the most part, behaved toward one another in a civilized manner—the same way they groomed and clothed themselves. It was an entirely American phenomenon to travel on a crowded bus in summer heat, yet experiencing no discomfort when inhaling air through one’s nostrils, unavoidable in most other countries. Appropriate conduct was expected and offered; it was also reciprocated without fail.

But the most telling difference was in attitudes. While people elsewhere operated on the premise, “If I haven’t got it, he shouldn’t have it either,” Americans seemed to say, “If he’s got it, I ought to be able to have it too, if I just work hard enough.” The ability of generation after generation actually to fulfill such desires helped maintain what appeared to be a union not merely of fifty states but, more importantly, of some two hundred and fifty million individuals.

By the time I got my citizenship in 1964, I was grateful and immensely proud to be told by the judge in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that I would not be a Hungarian-American, nor any other hyphenated American. While no one suggested then, or had since, that I disown or forget my upbringing, I was now, simply and officially, American.

More than three decades have passed. Are the people who come here still grateful for the opportunity? Are we still a union of some 250 million individuals? Am I still “American,” plain and simple? Above all, do we still live by the principle of looking upon things others possess not with envy, but as an incentive for us to work that much harder?

Some changes are obvious. Pan American Airways is no more, on the other hand there is a profusion of mustards in every supermarket—indeed, new flavors come our way from an endless parade of chefs on television. But in the early 1960s most Americans did not build walled-in communities with guard houses. Americans knew how to live and work together, and new efforts were underway to make sure that this greatest of benefits would extend to all men, women and children in the land.

That is not what happened. As we approach the end of the millennium, Americans seem to be less and less able to live and work together. We have left the path that rendered this nation unique, and uniquely successful.

[SierraWasp]

I have 5 books that occupy a prominent spot right over my office desk.

1. The US & CA Constitutions
2. The Making of America, by Skousen
3. America's 30 Years War, by Vazsonyi
4. Natural Process, by Freeper Carry_Okie
5. Trashing the Economy, by Ron Arnold & Alan Gottlieb

I'll never forget the rush I got from reading this man's book articulating the resentment I've long felt for those in authority that continually try to Europeanize the great and free nation I grew up in.

I keep telling these people... If the old country was so great, why did we bother to start this nation? (especially the advocates of socialistic mass transit - gag me!)

So many people in this nation have been made oblivious to what is so stunningly obvious. Balint made it even more obvious!!! God rest his soul.

[Carry_Okie]

That's humbling company.

I have yet to read Skousen, but he's on my list.

[SierraWasp]

"That's humbling company."

Shouldn't be! Outside of the constitutions and "The Making of America," the others are comparative "grumblers!" Yours is a productive, positive patended solution to one of the biggest, most enduring problems of mankind and his co-dependent relationship with his/her environment.

The big plus in your work is how to get AND KEEP the government out of the equation and thus keep it the limited tool of the people it was designed to be. It also solves the negative NIMBY syndrome along with countless other social/economic problems.

It so vastly supercedes stuff like Algores "reinventing government," or other equally shallow concepts and equates with the inspiration the founders manifested in their declarations and documents. In fact, it's a shame you weren't one of them and had included your framework with theirs to have headed off the totalitarian concepts being considered "main stream," today!!!

[visitor]

"Balint Vazsonyi's memorial service will be Wednesday January 22, 11 AM at Western Presbyterian Church, 2401 Virginia Avenue, (parking at Columbia Plaza or on the street or at Watergate hotel). Reception to follow at Watergate Hotel, Chesapeake Room, from 12:00-1:00pm. If you wish to send flowers, please do so to the church. Barbara Vazsonyi" ...rto

[Gritty]

Thanks for the info.

[Leisler]

The love of power knows no borders.

[Gritty]

Good post.