One Man Who Understood What Liberty Meant
By Gary Aldrich (01/31/03)
In the summer of 1996 I traveled to San Diego, California, to speak to a group of Conservatives who were attending the Republican National Convention. There I met people who were considered to be true-blue, totally committed Conservatives. Among the group were Balint and Barbara Vazsonyi. Balint and Barbara were very polite, classy people, but if you engaged Balint in a conversation about Communism, his eyes would come alive with fire. He spoke with a passion that betrayed his first-hand experience of living in a land where liberty was just a word–a word that if used the wrong way could land you in jail.
Balint was born in 1936 in Budapest, Hungary, and was seven years old when Hitler’s troops occupied Hungary and invoked their murderous, oppressive government. After Hitler’s fall, the Soviets took over Hungary and drew the “iron curtain” of Communism over the people. Balint observed first-hand the horrifying change from liberty to imprisonment when men caved in to an extraordinarily evil ambition.
When Balint publicly complained about Communism, saying that a true artist could never be a Communist, he was reported to the “authorities,” and the school he attended brought him up on charges. They put him on trial, and his “sentence” declared him to be suspicious (a person of interest?), and he was forbidden from ever leaving Hungary. They were either afraid that he would travel out of the country, never to return, or that he would report the real conditions of oppression in his native country to the free world.
Balint Vazsonyi was a concert pianist of international renown, and since his death on January 17, there have been numerous articles praising his keyboard skills. His fierce conservative activism is mentioned little, but that is how I knew him best.
To me, Balint had a special kind of credibility earned from having experienced something that enabled him to speak with authority about how things really are today. He hated Communism and Socialism, and he had good reason: he had seen how a twisted government treated people like pawns in some corrupt chess game. He had first-hand knowledge of how a strong central government could remove all freedom from a society and make living there more like a slow death.
In fact, he could talk with authority about how Nazis and Communists participated in the mass slaughter of more than 100 million of their own citizens in the last century, all in the name of “government.” He knew the dangers of giving the government too much power. He knew how human beings could become nameless, faceless, anonymous monsters without conscience and accountability. Balint Vazsonyi knew how easy populations would be fooled into believing that the taking of their liberty was in their best interests. He knew when those liberties were taken, they were rarely given back.
He also insisted that words were important. One of his biggest gripes was that Socialists operating openly in this country were generously given the label “Democrat.” He knew the names described very different ideologies, and he implored other Conservatives to notice the differences and to call them what they are: Socialists!
Balint detested the media’s double-standard that allowed such Lefties off the hook while Conservatives were routinely labeled “Vast Right Wingers.”
I’ve heard Balint play the piano, and I agree that his talent was truly a gift to be envied and enjoyed. But Balint must also be remembered as the Conservative activist who knew of what he spoke. He feared for his new country, America. He saw alarming parallels between how Europe became weak and how political correctness is now sweeping this country. He saw how truth could become a lie and a lie become the truth.
He remembered how citizens behaved just prior to the rise of power of the Nazis and Communists, and he noticed with sadness that in Europe, many years before, the people had let down their guard in the name of safety or financial security. Then they lost their liberties, and many were promptly marched off to the waiting cattle cars.
Could such a terrible thing ever happen here? Are we headed to a murderous kind of Socialism? Are we becoming a nation of people who will easily give up their liberties, turn their heads and look the other way in the name of national security?
Balint didn’t claim that this was what he thought would happen. He loved America and relished the goodness of his countrymen. But he did know that the erosion of liberty, for any reason, could never be a good thing. It could lead to conditions the people never expected and surely did not want.
A serious interpretation of our Constitution can protect us against this, but even some Conservatives, applauding strong institutions and strong central government, claim that our Constitution is a mere “parchment barrier.”
I think Balint would disagree, and he was in a good position to judge. Armchair patriots can only imagine what it would be like to live in a communist dictatorship. Because they can only imagine the horrors, they can never posses the understanding required to decide how hard they must fight for our liberty.
In other words, never having lost liberty, can they possibly imagine what such a life could be like? Balint had a growing concern about what was happening in America. Since he had credibility others could not possibly have, I and other serious Conservatives choose to protect liberty with a passion that might alarm armchair patriots who believe in the goodness of government.
Let them build their strong institutions. I choose to believe in the Bible, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. These may be “parchment barriers” to some, but I prefer to follow Balint’s leadership because he knew first-hand that of which spoke.
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