Some
time after Stalin's death, the "Inconspicuous Man" came to my apartment in
Prague and offered me the position of commercial attache at the Czechoslovak
Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
I
was astonished. Our family had experienced the sufferings that accompany Communism.
Our property had been confiscated, our human and civil rights had been abolished
and we had all been jailed at one time or another. And now this man was offering
me a new life as he said:
"You
have suffered a great deal under Stalin's rule, but now Stalin is dead and
your education, life experience, and family name will be recognized. Your
studies in the field of economics, business, law, and Serbo-Croatian can be
useful in Yugoslavia and you have relatives there, do you not? We will give
you all the necessary training and opportunities to succeed.
Wouldn't
you prefer to live up to your potentials as a decent human being?"
Of
course I did. I was thirty years old and had grown tired of the poverty, misery,
and despair in the socialist trap. From Yugoslavia I could easily escape to
the West, I thought. "
During
the meetings that followed we discussed the preliminaries of my upcoming training.
I realized then that the career he was offering me would entail subversion
and spying in Yugoslavia. I thought I would take the offer and after arriving
in Belgrade, I would defect immediately thereafter. However, I requested one
formality, that a contract be written enumerating my duties. The "Inconspicuous
Man" agreed. The document, carefully worded in Marxist-Leninist double talk,
was a pledge of my allegiance to the struggle for "peace" and "justice" in
the world. My Christian thinking prompted me to request that one clause be
included in the document - never to be ordered to kill another human being.
This
was the last time I saw the "Inconspicuous Man." The Communist foreign service
had no use for me."
As
I worked on this lecture, the words of three individuals went through my mind.
First were those of the Marxist-Leninist ideologist at Prague's Charles University
who said to me some thirty years ago: "In the capitalist world, the so-called
free people fear the eruption of World War III. They believe it will be an
atomic war. They do not know that the Third World War has been in process
in every continent, every country, in every street of every town and village.
And who do you think is winning this war? Who is adopting whose image? Are
we, Communists, adopting the Western multi-party political system, or are
the so-called free people around the world adopting the one-party political
system? Are we, Communists, embrac-ing the free-enterprise economic system,
or are the so-called free people in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere
adopting the state-run economic system? Are we, Communists, acquiring faith
in God and belief in an eternal life, or are the so-called free people becoming
more cynical about the human soul? Tell me, who is adopting whose image? Who
is winning the Third World War?"
The
second and perhaps more surprising words were those of a top short-story writer
in the USSR, a Marxist-Leninist, who was touring the United States recently
and addressed the classes of Russian literature at our university. At a private
gathering afterward, our Russian Club members were captivated by his life
experience and literary work which spanned forty years. It covered the despotic
Stalin era, the more liberal Khrushchev period, and the present repressive
Brezhnev regime. The evening had almost come to an end and only several in
our group remained, when the soft-spoken Soviet man said:
"We
have spoken only about literature. May I ask you a personal question in another
field?"
"Of
course," we responded.
"Americans,
when will you begin to defend your-selves? We have taken Eastern Europe, the
masses of Asia, and are in Africa. Will you defend yourselves when we land
in New York?"
Our
Communist guest waited for an answer from his shocked audience. We had no
answer. Do you have one?
The
third individual, a prominent American TV personality and political commentator,
had addressed an executive club audience. He had concentrated on pointing
out the reasons for the impending doom con-verging on the United States. He
believed, he said, that America had reached her acme and now was sliding slowly
toward oblivion. The audience seemed to under-stand his thesis, and in the
question-answer period that followed they remained silent. Their acceptance
of America's forthcoming doom seemed widespread.
This
banquet speaker and TV personality, therefore, was not controversial. People
do not usually object to Oswald Spengler's ideas in The Decline of the West,
to the premise that historical cycles like "bondage - -spiritual faith - courage
- liberty - abundance - selfishness -complacency - apathy - dependency - bondage"
repeat themselves. Therefore, when I recounted the Soviet writer's question
to the banquet speaker and asked for his answer, he surprised everyone by
his sud-den anger and reply:
"I
do not believe the man ever asked this question," he said.
Is
the angry cry "I do not believe it" also your answer to the Marxist-Leninist
scheme to conquer the world?
Marxist
Fundamentals
The
fact is that we live in a time of fateful chal-lenges. As a people and a nation
we are under test. This challenge is, of course, Marxism-Leninism. There is
no mystery in its strategies and tactics. It has always been concrete and
spelled out in black and white. It has also been openly and actively tested
in the economic, political, and ideological struggle for control around the
globe.
Lenin,
the founder of the first Communist state, put it simply: "First we will take
Eastern Europe, then the masses of Asia. We will encircle the last bastion
of capitalism, the United States of America. We will not need to fight. It
will fall as a ripe fruit into our hands." And, "We must practice coexistence
with other nations, until we are strong enough to take over by means of world
revolution.... We are not pacifists. Conflict is inevitable. Great political
questions can be solved only through violence.... It is inconceivable that
Communism and capitalism can exist side by side. Inevitably one must perish."
Rykov,
Lenin's successor in the Council of Soviet Commissars, corroborated: "It is
our duty to inculcate in the minds of nations the theories of international
friendship, pacifism, and disarmament, encouraging their resistance to military
appropriations and training, without ever relaxing our own efforts in building
our military equipment."
Manuilsky,
a prominent Soviet professor at the School of Political Warfare, said: "The
bourgeoisie will have to be put to sleep. We shall begin by launch-ing the
most spectacular peace movement on record. There will be electrifying overtures
and unheard-of concessions. The capitalist countries, stupid and decadent,
will rejoice to cooperate in their own destruction. They will leap at another
chance to be friends."
And
Khrushchev, a more contemporary Soviet prime minister, said: "We cannot expect
Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected
leaders in giving Americans doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to
find out they have communism."
Today,
Marxism-Leninism represents a most complex and powerful doctrine developed
by Communist theoreticians and practitioners in every corner of the world.
Its universal library offers dynamic political weapons and comprehensive theories,
diversified approaches and seductive slogans. On one side of the globe, there
is the Yugoslav moderate theory of reformed Communism and participative economy
which lures masses into socialism. On the other side of the earth there are
Chinese slogans which are more productive in inflaming a Communist revolution.
Marxism-Leninism
is particularly effective on the semantic level where it exhibits a devastating
duality. It lulls its adversaries to sleep, while at the same time it mobilizes
its followers to revolutionary action. The Communist International's Seventh
Congress con-cluded that open use of revolutionary terminology does not promote
the Marxist-Leninist drive for world domi-nation. Therefore, "revolution"
has been changed into "liberation," "world conquest by the proletariat" has
been changed into "peace and socialism ... .. armed seizure of power and liquidation
of the bourgeoisie" has been rephrased to read "peaceful and gradual transition
to socialism."
Even
the word "Communism," which every revo-lutionary is so proud of, has been
changed into "progressive ... .. anti-Fascist" or "liberal." Further, to confuse
their adversaries, the Marxist-Leninists have devised a new language which
uses old words in the basic vocabulary. When they say "imperialism arouses
the wrath of the people and digs its own grave," they mean "through our manipulation
of the local Communist parties, and with a vast auxiliary corps of dupes and
sympathizers, we so arrange matters that the free enterprise system and democracy
are destroyed from within. All we need to do is push it into the grave."
Thus,
the free, complacent, conscience-stricken, guilt-ridden, sex-sodden, drug-driven,
decadent, and often antagonistic societies have been manipulated by goal-oriented,
dedicated, and shrewd Marxist-Leninist dialectics into a notorious period
of so-called peaceful coexistence and plain overt hostilities. "Detente" has
become not the hope of free people everywhere, but rather their doom. "Detente
does not necessarily spell out the end of the struggle between the two social
systems," says Pravda. "The struggle will continue between the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie."
In
other words, the so-called detente is nothing more than a form of Marxist-Leninist
art skillfully geared toward pacifying the American public by encouraging
them to act ridiculously nice while the Communists kick the daylights out
of them. The result is that the free world continues to shrink. Democracies
cannot handle periods of low-tension confrontation. They have an almost universal
desire to believe that peace is the natural condition of man, that armies
are temporary nuisances, that conflicts of interest can be dissolved simply
by a policy of good will. Unfortunately, nothing is further from the truth;
but for some reason free people prefer to believe it.
Three
Lives
Three
distinctive periods have marked my life. The first period encompassed my youth
before German socialism, or Nazism. The second period covered my young adult
life before Soviet socialism, or Com-munism. The third period of my life began
in America.
During
the first period of my life gigantic demon-strations were prevalent in Europe.
Mobs shouted "Peace! Peace! Peace!" The Nazis themselves called for "peace"
as they took Europe piece by piece. Democracies began to give in little by
little until ultimately they gave up completely. They participated in the
Munich peace conference that was to conclude "peace in our time." Munich did
relieve, temporarily, many weary minds, and although a people (my people,
the Czechs) had been sacrificed, many felt that they had finally arrived at
some sort of peace. Churchill protested: "If you do not fight for what is
right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you do not fight when
the victory will be easy and not too costly, the moment may come when you
will have to fight with all the odds against you and with only a precarious
chance of survival.... You may even have to fight when there is no hope of
victory, for it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
This
call for a fight brought cries of "plutocrat, " "warmonger ... .. imperialist,"
"mass murderer," and "enemy of the people" from many Europeans. Two years
later when the German socialists and the Soviet socialists had invaded the
independent Republic of Poland and the Western powers had found it necessary
to defend themselves, Churchill was called to lead the flight for ultimate
survival."
During
the second part of my life, before Com-munism, Europe experienced mass movements
and demonstrations once more, all in the name of peace and justice. Czechoslovakia,
my country, believed in her historical mission. Her people proudly proclaimed
themselves to be the bridge linking the Western democracies with Eastern totalitarianism,
capitalism with Communism. Czechoslovaks did their best to prove their good
intentions to the Marxist-Leninists. But in their approach to the Marxist-Leninist
aggressor, the Czechoslovaks made a crucial mistake. They forgave and forgot
what the Marxist-Leninists had done to millions of their own people in the
Soviet Union and to the other peoples of the world. We must be reminded that
to forgive is divine, but to forget is idiotic.
The
steps leading to the downfall of a once prosperous Czechoslovakia have been
identified by scholars as the blueprint for a Marxist-Leninist takeover through
peaceful means. The same steps have been at work in all parts of the free
world. The symptoms of this vanishing democracy are:
'.
Internationally: The agonizing atmosphere of "Munich," which rejects the responsibilities
of collective security and maintains the conception that democracies can save
their existence by appeasing the power appetite of totalitarian aggressors.
2.
Nationally: The delusive thinking of conscience-stricken democratic leaders
who believe that constant concessions to aggressive minority groups manipulating
nationality against nationality, class against class, race against race, and
threatening with violence and revolution will bring about, in the long run,
the desired equilibrium of order and justice in the country.
3.
Legislatively: Hasty laws of broad social and economic reforms by old-fashioned
politicians that imitate the so-called successful socialist countries, undermine
the upper and middle-class backbone of the country, and gradually replace
the initiative of a free enterprise system with the bitter impotence of a
mushrooming bureaucracy.
4.
Administratively: The creation of a deceptive coalition (national front) virtually
functioning as an instrument of international Communism to brainwash the population,
infiltrate public offices, and channel all organs of federal and state power
toward a Communist takeover.
5.
Judicially: Institutionalized permissiveness with an unchallenged growth of
criminality leading to out-right plundering of entire regions and conditioning
the public to a feeling of general insecurity and fear.
6.
Morally: Common rejection of absolute values such as truth, honesty, decency,
patriotism, as outlived and impractical, especially among the youth brought
up under the impact of an unprincipled progressive edu-cation.
7.
Spiritually: General abandonment of the Judeo--Christian belief in a life
under God and man's responsibilities as a free moral agent, alternated by
seductive demagoguery of materialist humanism and secular collectivism.
Many
countries in our present world find themselves in the wrecking process that
Czechoslovakia went through before February '948. They are headed down the
bankrupt road of a one-party political system, to bureaucratic socialism,
materialist humanism, and collective cynicism.
Since
my arrival in the free world, the third period of my life, I have witnessed
the same demonstrations for peace and the same impotence-free people challenged
by the expanding Marxist-Leninist ideology of arbitrary invasions, expropriations,
and deportations. I have witnessed the same fragmentation of originally proud
nations into selfish minorities, of helpless minorities into antagonistic
classes, of decimated classes into manipulated masses, and of terrorized masses
into obedient robots toiling under the yoke of the same totalitarian despots.
The largest emigration in history goes on. People continue to flee the existing
tyranny, poverty, despair, and fraud in a frantic attempt to save their lives
and their human dignity.
The
fatal intellectual environment is also present. The theological alienation
of man from God is com-pounded by the ethical alienation of man from man,
by the psychological alienation of man from himself and by the ecological
alienation of man from nature. Its features are unchanged:
'.
Secular materialism - the operating assumption that the temporal horizon is
all that there is or all that man ever needs to consider - continues to represent
a tragic fundamental bias and to permeate every aspect of life.
2.
Irrationalism - the concept that the universe does not necessarily make sense
- continues to deny man the hope to deal with basic issues.
3.
Relativism - the peculiar notion that nothing is good or bad in itself and
that everything is either better or worse when compared with some alternative
- con-tinues to give reason an excuse to merely discriminate rather than finally
decide.
4.
Syncretism in philosophy - the decay of specula-tive thinking which eliminates
the search for ultimate truth - continues to synthesize everything, including
irreconcilable polarities.
As
a result of this intellectual environment, individu-als are tormented by a
confusion of twisted tensions and find themselves overcome by the meaninglessness
of life.
Commitment
or Holocaust
We
ask ourselves who has caused the protracted holocaust in the world. Could
it be that for evil to win only one thing is necessary - good people who do
nothing? Or that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, at
the time of moral crisis, retain their neutrality?
True,
there are people in our world who have lost their moral perspective. Human
knowledge has become vast and unmanageable. Astronomy has revealed a world
beyond the imagination of man, physics a universe in the atom, biology a microcosm
in every cell, physiology mysteries in every organ, and psychol-ogy dark secrets
in every dream. Theology has crumb-led, technology has exploded, economics
has shattered, and politics has inflamed the world. The scientific specialist
knows more and more about less and less, the philosophic generalist knows
less and less about more and more, and both have put their blinders on to
shut out any moral decision. The door is opened wide for a lasting holocaust.
Knowledge
has to be man's prime instrument for action and survival.
Introductions
that enumerate the institutions of learn-ing where I have earned my degrees
amuse me. They miss the most important school and the most influential teachers
I have ever had - my home and my parents. They were simple, hard-working people
who had little time and very few luxuries to give. They did give me, however,
their personal example and a firm spring-board from which to jump into the
world of confusion, terror, and war which followed. They professed one simple
basic belief: Something is either good or bad, it is either decent or indecent,
it serves either God or the devil, and most important they believed that it
was my duty to find out what is right and what is wrong. This was what their
education was all about.
Yes,
education is a stratified totality. First, educa-tion is facts. Second, it
is concepts based upon these facts. Third, it is a decision based upon facts
and concepts - a personal decision as to what is right or wrong. Without this
moral decision education is worthless.
When
we fail to make decisions, someone else will make them for us. In times of
intimidation, revolution, and war this "someone" is more apt to be the mobs
in the streets who care little for facts or concepts. The result is tyranny.
If
freedom and democracy are to survive, it will take a miracle - a miracle that
only dedication and commitment can bring about. After the technological and
intellectual revolutions, a moral revolution is necessary.
When
trapped in a world of indolence, incompetence and impotence, when challenged
by ambivalence, arrogance and aggression, when you feel insignificant, you
can and must do your duty!
You
know the needs of your family, your neighbor, your town, your state and your
community. You have here a duty to perform.
It
is not important that others are bad, lazy, and dishonest. It is important
that you are good, diligent, and honest. It is not important that others lie,
scheme, and destroy. It is important that you are hard at work to maintain
our democracy, justice, and peace.
There
is no time to waste. The revolutionary forces shaking the earth have converged
upon us, presenting us with difficult choices - with a need for action, for
ideas, for concerted and sustained commitment as a nation and as individuals.
We
must meet the challenge with the conviction of our beliefs. We must remember
that as Americans - by birth or by choice - we are heirs to a permanent, continuing,
liberating revolution. Our great ancestors left us an unparalleled moral and
political weapon that we must share with the suffering peoples of the world.
In
April '945, the Second World War was coming to an end. In Central Europe great
numbers of people were still dying. In our village fifty hostages had been
taken by Nazi soldiers. I was among them. Orders had been given for ten of
us to be executed each time one of their retreating soldiers was killed by
our guerrillas. Being first in the alphabet, I found myself in a courtyard
facing two soldiers armed with machine guns, not knowing if I had one minute,
ten seconds, five seconds to live.
Almost
unknowingly, I began to pray, a prayer of thanksgiving to God, that if I had
not lived for a noble cause He was now giving me the opportunity at least
to die for a noble cause - to die in resistance to the tyranny and misery
represented in those two Nazi soldiers. Happiness momentarily filled my being
- finally my life made some sense.
Without
any advance warning, the guards were ordered to take me back to jail. Eventually
we were released. From that moment on I have believed in miracles.
Only
those who are willing to die for a noble cause are fit to live.
I
believe there is a great difference between Americans and the people of other
countries. Whenever I travel I recognize this difference. These people have
a dream, a sense that there exists a powerful force capable of leading the
world to justice and peace. They are aware that there is a unique society
in the world where God has put together all nationalities, races, and interests
of the globe for one purpose - to show the rest of the world how to live.
The dream around the world, in spite of all contrary propaganda, is America.
I
ask you, where is your America?
Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, the monthly journal of Hillsdale
College. August '982, Vol. '', No. 8.