Lech Walesa has belatedly declined an invitation to speak to the Occupiers.
Walesa, of course, was the leader of Poland’s Solidarity movement, which eventually broke the back of communist rule in Poland and laid the groundwork for the end of the Cold War. Walesa, an electrician in the Gdansk shipyard, stood courageously against tyranny at great personal risk. He became the first post-communist president of his nation. He remains a champion of liberty and the dignity of the individual.
So it was strange to hear that Walesa was invited and initially agreed to speak to Occupy Wall Street. Its demands for wealth redistribution are the opposite of liberty, and in Zuccotti Park, individual dignity is measured in how far you sleep from where you last defecated.
Well, it turns out Walesa didn’t quite understand the nature of the OWSers and the hard leftists backing them. And he’s not interested in lending legitimacy to a group that is, as Big Government put it, “organized by anarchists, Code Pink, the American Communist movement, jihadists, anti-Israel, socialist, and anti- free enterprise interests.” Thank goodness.
On the other hand, perhaps Walesa would give a speech that would shame the protesters — or at least their flacks in the media. Maybe he could have shown from experience which way enslavement lies. Maybe he could tell them what real oppression looks like — oppression in service to an egalitarian utopia like the one they demand. Maybe a few of the fine arts majors and trust-fund anarchists would pack up their euro-scarves and go home. Maybe a few of the “journalists” covering them would feel a pang of conscience before filing another glowing report on drum circles as the spiritual glue binding these young idealists. Alas, we’ll never know.
Not that the OWS gang struck out entirely on the Walesa front. Bizarrely, in 1982, Pete Seeger performed a benefit concert for Walesa’s Solidarity movement. Ever grateful, the Poles named a square in Krakow after Seeger.
Oh, wait, sorry — that’s Ronald Reagan Square.
