R.I.P., MR. VAZSONYI:

The importance of being Balint (Paul Craig Roberts, January 20, 2003, townhall.com)

Two hundred years after the American Founding came a defender of our Constitution's principles, Balint Vazsonyi, who toiled in the tents of revival and rededication until he passed away on Jan. 17.

With nothing but hope and determination, Balint, a budding concert pianist, walked out of Soviet occupied Hungary with his mother and brother in 1956, crossing on foot through the mountains to Austria. [...]

Balint had a career as a concert pianist and recording artist, and as professor and dean of music. But as years rolled by, Balint grew increasingly concerned that American education was ceasing to pass on the principles and cultural wealth in which our success is based. Disturbed at the deracination of America, he resolved to do something about it.

Balint wrote an important book, "America's Thirty Years War," showing the source of the alien ideas that are subverting our culture and society.

He became a newspaper columnist, and he and Barbara organized a cross-country bus tour of state capitals to renew enthusiasm for the Constitution.

Balint's view was that America is his country, and he was not going to lose it because citizens neglected its principles.

In his writings and lectures, Balint stressed "the Four Points of the Compass." These are: the rule of law, equality before the law, which means individual -- not group -- rights, the security of property and a common American identity.

Balint realized that multiculturalism, hyphenated-Americanisms, racial quotas, redistribution, and rule by unaccountable regulators are erasing
American principles and turning our country into something the Founding Fathers designed the Constitution to prevent.

On Saturday, in Miami, the Wife and I met a shuttle bus driver. She spoke English with an odd Spanish/Eastern European accent and it turned out she'd come to Florida from Hungary thirteen years ago, then learned Spanish and English. She had American flags all over her van and a license plate holder that said "United We Stand" and she avowed to all us passengers on the bus that she loved this country. We'd just come from our hotel room, where all you saw on television was protesters denouncing America. I immediately thought of her fellow Hungarian emigre, Balint Vazsonyi, who I'd seen some years ago on Booknotes---BOOKNOTES: America's 30 Years War: Who Is Winning by Balint Vazsonyi (C-SPAN, September 27, 1998)--and who shared (or, as I thought then, shares) her fierce love of America:

BRIAN LAMB: Balint Vazsonyi, author of America's 30 Years War, what's your book about?

Mr. BALINT VAZSONYI : It is about America's 30-years war, which began roughly 30 years ago and produced what I perhaps should call a national divide underneath a thin layer of countless issues--a national divide over dimension, over magnitude that this country perhaps has not experienced since the time of the Civil War.

LAMB: Why do you think this is so?

Mr. VAZSONYI: Because when I first arrived here about 40 years ago, it seemed to me that most Americans agreed on most basic things--I would almost go as far as to say on all basic things. There were all sorts of differences, healthy differences, about the ways America's principles should be applied to the issues of the day, but there was no question about America's basic principles.

And roughly 30 years ago I began to notice a split and a growing number of Americans who no longer believed in those principles. Andtoday we have arrived at a time when I think it's fair to say that certain of our fellow Americans think of this country, this society, as the most successful in the history of mankind and believe that the reason for that success is to be found in America's founding principles. Others believe that it's really the shortcomings of America that make up our relevant history, and therefore those principles need to be replaced. And what the book explains in a much broader and deeper context is how the second group looks to the only known alternative, which is the European Socialist model.

LAMB: What's your favorite thing about the United States that you've found?

Mr. VAZSONYI: The people, I think without any question. I don't know what magic and what incredible inspiration led the founders to the point where they laid the foundations of this society the way they did. But the result is that people have come here from all over the world, from countries where, as we know, people are not particularly nice to one another and pretty bad things happen.

Now those biologically same people, identical people, come here, sign on to these, well, if I may say, articles of incorporation, if I may so refer to the Constitution and the Declaration. And somehow they become different people, people who know how to live and work with one another. And that really was what hit me when I first arrived. Also, of course--and this is an important part of it--the relationship between government and the governed, which is something that, of course, many people have written about and is basic. But, you see, growing up in Europe, you get used to government as--acting as the possessor of power. And here, I found out what it is when the government is public servant, but that's a matter of the past.

There, in a nutshell, is the promise and the peril of immigration. For so long as we share a set of values as Americans and are willing to inculcate them in all who come here, we can make them different peoples than they were in the countries they came from. And, so long as that is true, we should welcome them. But to the extent that we lose our commitment to those values ourselves and buy into the nonsensical proposition that we need to preserve the values they bring with them from benighted lands, such immigrants are a danger. But, note, they are a danger to us to exactly the degree that we are a danger to ourselves. The real threat lies not with them but with us. Mr. Vazsonyi understood that well and articulated it beautifully: our loss is great.

More:
-Center for the Anmerican Founding
-ARCHIVES: INDEX OF VAZSONYI COLUMNS AND FEATURES
-OBIT: Cancer claims columnist/pianist Vazsonyi (Robert Stacy McCain, 1/18/03, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 20, 2003 12:22 PM