Szittyakürt, 1981 (20. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1981-12-01 / 12. szám
DECEMBER 1981 TIGHTER Page 3 capacity as a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and on the Intelligence Committee, papers which reflected a position of the American government, but not the American people in 1956 which told the Soviet Union that it was not in our best interests to have a nation hostile to the Soviet Union on their borders! And if there is one thing that we here in America must over throw, its any idea that this is the official policy of this government! It is exactly the opposite of our policy! It is in the interest of the American people, it is in the interest of freedom, it is in the interest of the future of all humanity that every nation on the borders of the Soviet Union be hostile to Communism, not as many have said, be friendly to or Sympathie with or able to compromise and live with. You know, this is not only a time for resolve and rededication, it maybe a time for truth. This is one of the problems we have in my country. I have been one of those who have traveled widely in this country and I was on 400 college campuses in the sixties as an anti- Communist. Imagine a John Ashbrock, a conservative member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, going to Berkley in California in 1965 trying to tell those people then what I’am saying today. But my message has never changed! Why? Because the truth doesn’t change! Maybe that’s one of the things that we Americans have to learn. That is that you can only run away from the truth for so long. Sooner or later the truth catches up with you. And I think that it is in the eighties, both from a stand point of International Communism and even domestic economics that the truth is catching up with many of us. There’s one thing about it, maybe when it’s out there we can deal with it better. The American people have systematically been misled for many decades as to the true nature of Communism! Now, I am what they call a hard-core, unrecalcitrant anti-Communist. I have always been and always will be, going to my grave believing what I believe. And I know that when I would go on campuses in the sixties when all the upheavals, social, economic, international were coming, one of the ways that so many changes were brought was just simply selling to our young people that everything is negotiable, every thing can be changed. I used to get their attention by saying: “You’re looking at one person who believes that there are certain things that never change.” The things we believe in cannot be changed by presidents, they cannot be changed by public opinion. They cannot be changed by what’s fashionable, what maybe in vogue, by what maybe chic. Certain things never change! I happen to believe that one of the things that never change is the true nature of Communism. Communism after all is built on lies. Communism represents the absolute revulsion, the absolute throwing out of all of the good traditions of civilization built up throughout the last five thousand years. It is totally repugnant to everyone of the truths, religious, economic, political, social, that were built up over the five thousands years that eventually brought the freedom that many of us in this country can observe and other people cannot. Right now is Sunday and I’m in a church and so I can’t say what I really think about Communism. But it is sufficient to say, that Communism has never hesitated to use murder, and genocide! It has never hesitated to use terrorism, subversion, or any other deceitful tactic to achieve its end. The one success of Communism has been in hoodwinking, deceiving, and fooling the West and, particularly the United States of America. This has been their only success! If you look at their economic system, their agricultural system, their political system, they are all failures. Everyone of them are historic failures. But the West came in and helped Communism. It should not have been helped! People like myself were often saying: “Don’t do it.” That’s been the only way Communism has survived. The only success that Communism has is the capability to fool the West and particularly my own country. I say that with a sense of shame! That’s why the twenty-fifth anniversary is not just a time for reflection and rededication. Its a time for shame, for those of us who are Americans and for those of you who are Hungarian-Americans because this country has failed! You know, I have been a “hardliner.” Based on their lies, based on their history, based on their true motives, based on what they stand for, I’ve always been an advocate of no trust, no assistance, no trade and no treaties. They don’t deserve any of those things from the West. To have any arrangement, whether its a marriage, whether its an employeremployee arrangement, whether its a contract; any arrangement requires trust. You cannot have an arrangement with a party that you do not trust! You can never marry a partner that you don’t believe in. You can never have a contract with someone that you don’t think will pay. Nations should not have contracts with other nations they know cannot be trusted, and lie and deceive, and their history shows they cannot be counted on to be a responsible partner. Yes, I think that the 1980’s are a time when many of us are going to throw away that gloss that was put over Communism during the fifties, sixties, and the seventies. And for many of us, we say, “Thank God! Its none too soon.” I come from a farming community, as many of you probably came from farming communities or your forebearers came from farming communities in Hungary. I always explain Communism in farm terms. Communism is one thing: Its animal husbandry applied to human beings! That’s one thing you can get across to young people. They can understand that. Everybody can understand how the farmer deals on his farm. He’s tops. He’s the one who says what farm product will be produced, what will be planted, when cattle will be fattened, when they’ll be taken to market. He has complete domain over his “kingdom.” All communism is, stripped of all of its veneer, all of its Marxist philosophy, all of its “do-goodism,” its still only one thing: its animal husbandry applied to human beings. Communism should be rejected by all freedom-loving people and particularly those in our country who have an understanding of tryanny, an understanding of getting freedom. So I think that our twenty-fifth anniversary is a time for optimism as well as a time of saddness. As I say its a time of shame, not shame on the part of those who stood up. Not shame on the part of those young people who for a few brief moments stood up and said: “We are going to be free.” Certainly not shame for Hungarians; only shame for those who did not respond. We are also learning and I say this to many of my other friends; the Lithuanians, the Poles, the Ruthenians, the Serbians and the Rumanians, etc. that this is a time of shame for all of these Eastern European countries, who, when they saw what was happening in Hungary, did not think that it applied to them! I’m very optimistic that this country is changing. I think that there’s more of an awarness and understanding of world Communism. I think that its been stripped of its veneer. I don’t believe that there is anyone who can honestly say that Communism is just like us. I once made a speech and I copied down some of the statements that I heard on campuses over the years in dealing with Communism. We don’t hear them so much anymore. You would hear statements like, “Communism is no longer expansionistic. They have become a status-quo nation just like us.” You remember when our liberal professors would say that? “Within the U.S.S.R. the advocates of consumer goods are winning out over the military hawks.” “U.S.-Soviet desagreements are the product of natural friction between great powers and are not based on any underlying source of differences.” We would hear that “both sides have an interest in avoiding war.” Both sides may not have an interest in avoiding war. This country has always been a freedom-loving country. Show me any proof that the Soviet Union wants that same thing. That’s what our young people were taught during the fifties, sixties, and the seventies. They were told that both sides had enough missies to destroy the world several times over, so we really don’t need to develop any new weapons in this country.” How many times did we hear that? Aren’t we seeing the product of that as the Soviet Union forges ahead for military domination? My adversaries of the sixties just could not grasp the idea that the Soviet Union wanted anything other than to catch up with us. It never dawned in their heads that the Soviet Union might want to go ahead of us. It’s obvious now that the Soviet Union did not just have a goal of catching up with us in military power, but they always had the idea of forging full speed ahead and becoming the military dominant power in the world. We are coming to realize that now, aren’t we? I point these things out simply as an American, a proud American, none the less who hung his head in shame many times at the thought that so great and so providential a nation, a nation given so much and so many God-given freedoms, would allow itself to engage in that type of thinking for the past twenty-five years. Maybe that is coming to an end. Maybe we re starting to see in this country the true nature of Communism, the identity and the close bonds that we have with all freedom-loving peoples throughout the world, particularly the Hungarians, and the Poles, those who have had the tenacity to stand up against oppression. Maybe that’s the hope of our twenty-fifth anniversary celebration. In our great song America the Beautiful there is a 2nd stanza that says, “Oh beautiful for patriot's dreams that sees beyond the years.” You know, we in this country are the beneficiaries of patriot’s dreams throughout the last five thousand years. Everybody had that dream that there would be freedom. They wanted to be free in their own country, but at least they wanted freedom somewhere. Five thousand years of history shows an awful lot of tyranny. For the most part, liberty of action, liberty of thought, liberty of speech were cut down by tyrants. But one thing that history has shown is that where ever there were execution blocks raised, where ever there were crucifictions on the cross, executions, where ever liberty was at stake, others arose to take the place of those patriots who gave their lives in the very shadow of tyranny. That was the great fate of this country because in the United States of America the men and women of the villages, the little people, rose up for freedom and they struck a blow for freedom twohundred years ago. It is a mistake to think that that is the only place it happened. Those of us who have studied history know that there is an on-going rush for freedom throughout all of history in every country. And simply the fact that we in America have been a little bit luckier than most, receipients of a bit more freedom than most should not cloud our vision to see more clearly what is happening in the rest of the world. “Oh beautiful for patriot’s dream that sees beyond the years.” I think that when they wrote that song they were talking about the Hungarian freedomfighters in 1956. I think that they were talking about the Polish patriots today. “Beautiful for patriot’s dreams that sees beyond the years.” It may not be our fate to see the banner of freedom returned and to see your flag fly in freedom But lets make our resolve that if it s not for our generation it will be for the next because freedom is on the march. Communism is on the decline even though they seem to be marching throughout the world, they are losing the hearts and minds of men. Hearts and minds cannot be kept by slave camps, by barbed wire, by iron curtains, by iron curtains and iron walls and those wonderful freedomfighters of 1956 gave us the inspiration to go forward in the last twenty years of this century to make sure that all of us stand fast and return to freedom loving people the freedom they deserve. Its in this spirit that I’m very glad to be with you and salute those patriots who saw beyond the years: the patriots of October 23, 1956. Thank You
