The following essay is written by Edmund Pierzchala. It provides a level of personal and historical perspective that you might find helpful. The essay was published in the November Special Edition of The Northwest Connection.
Thank you to Edmund for allowing me to share this story here and elsewhere. If you find this story helpful, please share the link to this story.
The Summer of 1989 was busy for me. In mid-September, I came to the US to start graduate school at Portland State U. Poland, where I was born and raised, had just shed the shackles of communism and led a democratic transformation that would quickly sweep the entire Eastern Bloc and bring down the Soviet Union and its vestiges of power, including the Berlin Wall.
Generally, the air was filled with freedom and a genuine expectation of a better world, and a better life ahead. It was one of those defining moments in history, everyone knew it. Prior to the events of 1989, I had not believed that the collapse of communism would be so peaceful. With the exception of Yugoslavia, the old regime has turned its power over to the people, or so it seemed.
My new life in America was not easy, but I did not come expecting an easy life. America opened for me opportunities which did not and could not exist in my old country, which I still love and visit every few years.
Why can't the world be like America? No, I don't mean a Starbucks and a McDonald's on every corner, but why can't the world be free and fair and offer opportunities to everyone? Because where there is opportunity, there is hope, and where there is hope and the will, there is prosperity, and fulfillment of dreams. Maybe that's simplistic, but that's how I perceived America. Surely with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the world was headed for a better future.
A wake-up call came in November of 2008. I could not believe that a little known nobody, essentially, won the office of the President of the United States. Many Americans may have experienced a similar shock on September 11th, 2001, when watching two airliners fly into the Twin Towers, and to be sure I was shocked and saddened on that day, but in some ways I was not surprised. September 11th has a special significance in Polish history: on that and the following day in 1683 Polish King John Sobieski III led victorious armies near Vienna against the last recorded Islamic onslaught on the West. Until 9/11 that is. The return of militant Islam did not surprise me, but the return of the radical left did.
Obama's campaign and his election were too reminiscent of what I knew about the coming of communism to Poland, to take lightly his connections with the rabidly radical left. No, it wasn't talk-show radio that made me think of Obama as a far-left hack. It was his demeanor, his rhetoric and his political connections. It was his unprecedented ascent to the Oval Office despite his lack of a notable accomplishment in politics or business. Yet here it was, a land-slide victory. Frankly, this was my first day of disappointment in America. It took me a while to realize that the American ideal was alive, but sadly it was not shared by a majority of Americans as I had thought.
What I had thought about the fall of communism two decades before and its peaceful giving up of power suddenly appeared in a new light. All became clear to me. The old political elites did not go away, they transformed and regained power under new banners. Political events in Poland unveiled new details of how the old communist elites reinvented themselves under a new economic system--and those who were on top before came to the top again. The radical left in America, whom I once regarded as nearly extinct and irrelevant, came to the political scene and became major players.
What does all of this mean? To me it means I am disappointed in this sector of American society who supported Obama. If you are one of them, you may have come to regret it, or you will, if Obama is re-elected, and I can pretty much guarantee you that, because disappointment is the end of all progressive political transformations. All across the world, from Vladivostok and Beijing in Far East to Havana and Caracas in the West, disappointment and misery are the fruit of leftist ideas and programs. Those who think otherwise are either "useful idiots" as Lenin called them, or opportunists who think they'll manage to get to the top on the backs of ordinary people and become one of the narrow elite who thrive by hoarding power and wealth.
The November elections may change all this and I hope we will have a President who will stand for this country and principles on which it was founded. If the rich are to grow richer, I want them to do so by the means of ingenuity and hard work in a free market, not by spinning government regulations that benefit them, their lobbyists and politicians in crony-capitalist circles. And when they do get rich, I want them to fund jobs and charities, like Mr. Romney did.
“Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God." (Mt 4:4) Roughly ten years after the founding of the communist state in Poland, "by the workers and for the workers," the workers in railway and other factories in the city of Poznan took to the streets demanding "bread" for all (1956). Suppressed by the government, "of the workers and for the workers," they learned a lesson that bread alone isn’t going to do it.
Twelve years later (1968) students and intellectuals in Warsaw took to the streets demanding "true socialism" to guide the country; in accord with these events two years later (1970) shipyards in Gdansk swelled with workers demanding changes in the political system. And they were defeated too. Blood flowed down the streets of Gdansk.
Ten more years (1980) brought the crucial transformation of demands: the workers were now demanding not just bread, not even true ideology and social justice, but God and freedom. They now experienced the full meaning of Mt 4:4 which inspired a path to a decisive victory over evil. The events put in motion Solidarity, the political movement which nine years later brought down the Eastern Bloc.
President Obama promised to transform America, and he has done it already, to a degree. If your concern is not just for bread and health care, then please join me this November with Mt 4:4 in mind to make sure that we don't live on bread alone. Because, as one nation in the heart of Europe already learned, bread alone isn’t enough, and soon there is not enough of it if bread is the sole focus.
Please help me to make sure that history does not repeat itself, this time. Join me in voting for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. There will be bread for everyone if they win, and not bread alone.
