I could write at length about what Zbigniew Brzezinski has meant
to me. It’s a long story, but his work was instrumental in my
switch from being a pre-med major at the University of Pittsburgh
in the late 1980s to a career studying and writing and teaching
about the Cold War and foreign policy. His 1989 book, The Grand
Failure, which brilliantly described the crisis level of
various communist nations and the order in which they would
implode, changed my life.
When I got to Washington as a grad student at American
University, I began working at the Center for Strategic &
International Studies. Brzezinski was there — and still is. I
wrote him a note explaining what his work had meant to me; it was
why I was there. The next day, his assistant responded, telling me
how much he was moved by my letter. He sent me not only a signed
copy of The Grand Failure but inscribed copies of all his
books. They remain on my shelf today as treasured
possessions.
In my classes today at Grove City College, as any student
will attest, I quote Brzezinski all the time. I defend him as a
rare positive in a horrendous Jimmy Carter presidency. When we put
Jimmy Carter on the cover of my
latest book — smooching Leonid Brezhnev above the giant
letters, DUPES — I made sure that I retained my respect for
Brzezinski inside.
Zbigniew Brzezinski was superb on the Soviets and
communism generally. He belonged in the Reagan administration, not
the Carter administration. In fact, in the 1980s, behind the
scenes, he was helping the Reagan folks and John Paul II to take
down the Soviets in Poland.
Later, in the 2000s, Brzezinski’s statements on President
George W. Bush were not nearly as persuasive. To the contrary, they
were way over the top, vitriolic, and lacking the persuasive logic
that had pervaded his Cold War writings. Still, we could reasonably
disagree on whether the Bush push to spread the
“March of Freedom” to the Middle East was
viable and realistic. In my classes, I continued to share
Brzezinski’s Cold War material — including, notably, his superb
seven common characteristics of totalitarian regimes.
All of that is background to my strong appraisal of what
Brzezinski said in the last few days. I heard it while serving
dinner to the kids. It turned my stomach. It made me think that
Brzezinski has either lost it or is being influenced (way too
easily) by the poisonous class-warfare of Barack Obama and his
mindless followers, who apparently dominate Brzezinski’s circles in
Washington.
Brzezinski stated:
You know, I’ve been looking at these worldwide riots that
are developing. They’re all a reflection of deep passion, deep
resentment and fear. Now the question is “Where will this go? How
can this be sort of concretized?” And one thought that has occurred
to me — and let me sort of mention it here casually without having
really thought it through systematically — I think it would be
increasingly helpful if there was a movement to publish, worldwide,
lists of who make, largely through speculation, enormous amounts of
money almost instantly, and basically hide the fact from their
social context. You know, how many Americans are really fully aware
of how many other good people, let’s say like Warren Buffett and
others, who really donate a lot of their earnings to charities, to
philanthropy? But how many more are there in the hedge funds, in
the banks, in a variety of other places, who, on the basis of
speculation, literally make millions of dollars that would take a
century or two for the average person ever to make? I’d like to see
those lists. And they shouldn’t be that difficult to
produce.
I find these comments from Brzezinski more disturbing, more
upsetting, than even the unhinged remarks from
Roseanne Barr calling for wealthy bankers to be forcibly
re-educated and literally guillotined. After all, Roseanne is
clearly a crackpot, unable to separate her comedy from commentary
— in this case, dark comedy; Brzezinski, on the other hand, has
been one of America’s foremost foreign-policy minds for parts of
five decades.
What’s so shocking about Brzezinski’s statements is their
classist and even Marxist-Leninist nature. They are, to put it
bluntly, communist in their thinking.
Does Zbigniew Brzezinski not realize that? His suggestion
— especially its global application — is precisely what
communists did in places like his native Poland and elsewhere in
the Soviet bloc and around the world. This is what Lenin’s and
Stalin’s Comintern wanted in order to facilitate the process of the
worldwide class revolution.
Literal “lists” of greedy “speculators” is exactly what
Lenin did. A “worldwide” “movement” to assemble and publish such
lists? “Bankers” specifically identified? This is Leninism 101,
pure and simple.
If anyone on the planet should know this, it’s Zbigniew
Brzezinski.
I understand that such poisonous class rhetoric flows
naturally from the lips of Barack Obama, but it should be
inherently incapable of emanating from the lips of Zbigniew
Brzezinski. That a thoughtful, unwavering, lifetime anti-communist
like Brzezinski could fall prey to such Marxist claptrap shows the
incredible, pervasive power of anyone — and I mean anyone
— to be manipulated by Obama’s class-warfare agitprop. And it’s
clearly an Obama influence, right down to upholding Warren Buffet
as American Angel.
Sure, I expect the Wall Street “Occupiers” to be suckered
by such language. The majority of them are the liberal/progressive
dupes that hard-line communist ringleaders have always easily
manipulated. Nothing new there — as Brzezinski would understand.
But to see Zbigniew Brzezinski succumb to class-based demagoguery
leaves one in despair for this country.
Such is the noxious, toxic result of a White House and
entire political party that adopts Deadly
Sin — i.e., envy (class
envy) — as a political philosophy and strategy. What a
shame.
I will hold out hope for one thing: Brzezinski did say
that he was offering his international policy prescription
“casually,” that is, “without having really thought it
through systematically.”
Let’s hope he thinks it through a bit more systematically;
that he clarifies and retracts. A worldwide list of greedy bankers
and speculators and hoarders — what Lenin called capitalist
“reptiles” and “harmful insects” — is not a casual thought. It’s a
scary thought.
Say it ain’t so, Zbig. Say it ain’t so.
