Lech Walesa Warns Against Loss of American Leadership in the World
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.
Nobody appreciates democracy more than people who lived under Communism. And for a man like the legendary Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa to be worried about the fate of our republic, that really spells trouble for this administration.
People around the world are not stupid. They see America sliding into a European form of socialism and are disturbed by it. We ARE the last best hope for humanity and, as Ronald Reagan said, “If we lose freedom here there will be no place else on earth for people to go to.” And if America stops being that last beacon of hope for people around the world, if Obama succeeds in killing American exceptionalism, then the world really will be finished because there is no other republic on this planet that can replace us. The thugs and dictators will have their way with nobody to stop them, let alone impede their progress.
But you can stop this. Vote tomorrow and throw the socialist bums who brought us to this point in history out of office. We can do it. Just get out there and prove that American exceptionalism, and democracy, is alive and well.
Lech Walesa spoke at a Tea Party rally in downtown Chicago — not out in the suburbs; not in a theater; not at a private fundraiser in a banquet hall, but in the middle of downtown Chicago during a business day! — this past January, but somehow, the national media missed it.
Walesa’s anti-socialist speech should have been a big story, but reportage of was nonexistent. Hell, even the local Chicago media more or less ignored it.
Maybe having our historic President, with his unprecedented Nobel peace prize and Time Magazine person of the year award, and his party called to the carpet for moving this country toward socialism by another former Nobel peace prize winner and Time Magazine man of the year (who made his bones by standing up to the Soviets) didn’t help push the narrative that the Tea Party is made 100% of stupid, toothless, inbred, ignorant, low-information, intolerant, hate-filled, hate-mongering, fear-mongering, war-mongering, racist, Christianist, violent, terrorist, homophobic, Islamophobic, magic flying unicorn-phobic, undersexed, evil corporate-controlled, white male “astroturfing” Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen with small penises who don’t know anything about politics, but who sure can’t stand having a black man in the WHITE (man’s) House.
Yeah, well if ‘read me between the lines’ support is all they got, then the Country Club Repubs of Illinois wasted the airfare and hotel expenses to bring the old warhorse to the States.
No disrespect to the younger Lech, the well-fed old codger in the picture ain’t no struggling patriot.
when someone starts with No Disrespect, what comes next is disrespect. The disclaimer is out of fear.
Welsa staged a CIA coup in Poland in order to enslave the People of Poland to American corporate plutocracy. What he fears is the possibility of a wavering American commitment to imperialistic repression in light fo the deabcles in Afghanistan and Iraq. This “union leader” was always nothing but a servant of global corporatism. He sold the Polish working class into the thralldom of American corporate imperialism. He fears that if the oppressed peasants now rise in revolt against their corporate masters, the American military might not intervene. In such a situation, he has much to fear from his countries’ increasingly angry, impoversihed workers.
Gee, Yobbin, you don’t write for Pravda on the side, do you?
Ahem,
Yobbin commentary is hopelessly corrupted by the socialist Marxist left.
RickGreenvilleSC be assured that in today’s world Pravda would not publish Yobbin’s tripe.
What Pravda would and did publish for all the world to read is clear: See the front page article April 27, 2009 American Capitalism Gone with a Whimper: “It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple…”
Later in the article: “First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their ‘right’ to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our ‘democracy’. Pride blind the foolish.”
Vladimir Putin warned the U.S. people at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence”. “In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute…In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.” Putin also said, “Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors, and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.”
Throbbin, you are a hoot! You pull out retoric not much heard since Duranty praised the Soviet Union and denied that anyone was starving to death in the USSR. (all the while tens of millions died of starvation for the greater good of the State)
By the way Throbbin, liberty is a good thing. Really. Try doing without for a few years.
Richard Head.
why do we have to be the policeman of the world? when we need to get over the failed policies of the bush year and get our economy back on track and lower the deficit we have now too. i think the reason is they don’t want to waste there money protecting the world they want us too
I pay homage to Lech Walesa, the great Freedom-Fighter !
Tomorrow we must win one for you too !
Who would have ever imagined that the great hero of the fight against totalitarianism should have seen the day in which HE had to come here to help us against the totalitarians !!!!!
I see from the picture above that, as he used to do thirty years ago, he still wears the icon of the Mother of God on his lapel: She helped them then, She will help us now, if we pray to Her.
Sherab,
We don’t pray to Mary. She is not God. She was a mere mortal as are the rest of us. Praying to Mary is idolatry.
We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Our Creator and Savior. The power of salvation and the ability to answer prayer lies solely with Him.
Not intending to start a holy war. My apologies in advance.
Having both Russian and Chinese leaders lecture us on the virtues of capitalism, warning that our unprecedented course of action is dangerous, is unprecedented and not a little humiliating. What is more distressing is that they are right.
Lech Walesa, like Vaclav Havel, and others, had best be developing a plan “B”. Why? Because of the two faced hordes which have their grubby paws on the levers of power inside the Beltway.
Toxic assets reduce the amount of money. That is plain to see for those who want to see. A reduction in the amount of money globally is seen to be a bad thing, yet it has been known to happen. So, given the Democrats are not in the least bit interested in pointing at themselves regarding blame, how in heaven’s high name can they come up with a solution to the problem they refuse to recognize?
So, my suggestion is this: Lech, Vaclav, and Kostunica from Serbia get together (as well as others who have the best interests of Central and Eastern
Europe at heart), and cobble together a free trade area (at the very least) that goes from the Baltics to Greece (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Cyprus for good measure). For if they want to go beyond that, then so be it.
Why? Because Tomas Masaryk, the first President of Czechoslovakia after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, wanted the Slavs to work together.
For, I figure that if they come up with a resources backed currency, they would be in better shape than if each tried, on its own, to get out the financial mess due to the global financial crisis. Plus, they would be in a stronger position to trade for whatever they need, rather than on a piecemeal basis.
Our enemies have us figured out. Let the libs and the eco-facists serve as useful idiots to destroy America from the inside while the marxist/islamist forces gain in strength and resolve to finish the job from the outside. The toughest guy on the block can still get his rear end handed to him if the weaker kids on the block gang up on him.
This is exactly what we’re seeing. We’re slowly being surrounded and marginalized.
NATO is a joke, so no worry there. When the countries of Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, the multitude of ‘stans, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Mexico, China and Russia decide it’s time to pull the pin on the great satan, we’re toast.
Cowardly beta-males like Obama have greatly accelerated the process, and through his weakness our enemies have become emboldened.
Sorry to rain on your parade, but America’s best days are behind her.
Never,never,never give up.
God of Izrael loves the United States of America and will provide security for his Judeo-Christian heritage.