Imagine Hitler's children...

I was recently able to sneak in and out of the Czech Republic and here is my report: It is worse than anybody could have ever predicted.

Imagine Hitler's children running post-war Germany. Sure, Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and all other big-name Nazis would be dead and gone, but low-level Nazis would be promoted to top positions in government and society and running every aspect thereof. No escape. That is roughly the equivalent of today's Czech Republic. The old commie honchos are gone, having never been punished for their crimes, and are enjoying their retirements. Younger ex-communists, now pretending to be freedom-loving democrats are behind the wheel and firmly in control.

Rabid anti-Americanism oozes from every pore of that country. The Czech media, with their expected Judas-like bias are doing their fifth column job with the same fervent devotion as CNN (the Communist News Network) or PMSNBC here in America and spews hatred against America and anything which can be viewed as pro-American. Anti-American leftists like Michael Moore, Oliver Stone and similar nutcases are celebrated as big American heroes in the same way as Hugo Chavez. The older generation is trying to justify their idiotic positions by comparing the U.S. to the Russians: "First we were under forced Soviet dominance, now we are being forced everything American." Americans are generally considered fat, lazy, uneducated, burger-eating idiots with Bush, who is "like Hitler" holding a special place in their hatred. Prague is a favorite place of many American expatriates, especially those of left-of-Karl-Marx persuasion. Let's hope that Babs Streisand, Jane Fonda and Alec Baldwin will move there soon. The ex-pats recently had a big event there, something called "Americans against Bush". No kidding.

Communism sank such a deep roots in the Czech Republic that it is now firmly embedded in the fabric of society and is virtually not removable. Over 75% of current teachers were at some point in their careers members of Communist party - the rest, the younger ones who were too young to join the party, are still the products of communist schools and their communist teachers. A telling example of the state of Czech society is the Czech version of the "free Internet" encyclopedia Wikipedia. True to its form, it is officially headed by a former StaSi and StB (Czech secret police) informer, but the majority of its "contributors" are very young kids, sometimes as young as 15 years old. I intentionally wrote "contributors" because the Czech Wikipedia is not about contributing, it is about governing - who is in charge and who is to decide what is allowed to be written in this web-accessible encyclopedia. What you get is eerily similar to what happened to the children in William Golding's book "The Lord of the Flies" when they attempt to govern themselves and fail with disastrous results. These "children of the Czech Wikipedia", which are additionally heavily infected with the "Czech vision of the world" (almost identical with Marxism), are not contributing to Wikipedia, but are endlessly terrorizing each other and fighting for imaginary "power." When unsuspecting new contributors wanders in, their texts are immediately scanned and edited by overzealous, pre-pubescent cretins so they do not contain anything even remotely critical of past and current communist regimes in the Czech Republic, with no regard to historic facts whatsoever.

Czechs as a nation have an inferiority complex of humungous proportions. It is easily noticeable in situations where they apply the achievements of anybody even remotely of Czech origin as the achievement of the whole "Czech nation." Czechs were always sporting this weird trait, but in the last 17 years it has reached simply unbearable proportions. When Czech sport teams (i.e. hockey - a sport that Czechs are traditionally good at) win any competition, hundreds of thousands of people gather in town squares and while frenetically screaming "We are the champions!" (Jsme mistri!) drink themselves into oblivion with their low-quality Czech beer. Every civilized western nation has their achieving sport teams and their sport fans (The Bears!), but none of those happy fans ever tried to apply the achievement of their teams on themselves or their nation! The drunken Czech mob then usually unanimously nominates the leading sport figure to be President and leader of the whole country ("Hasek na Hrad!"). I am living near a golf course, but I do not recall, even after his many very famous victories, hearing an ear-piercing roar of "Tiger Woods for President!" I guess we are too far to the West and the Czechs are to far to the East.

According to recent newspaper reports the Czech military, which employs over fifty thousand "officers", most of them sitting in Prague's Department of Defense can currently offer ONLY THREE THOUSAND BATTLE-READY SOLDIERS. That is top heavy management brought to the extreme. And the "battle-readiness" of Czech soldiers is still a matter of opinion and rightfully questioned by many. When a very small contingent of Czech soldiers (numbering less than 100) was with great brouhaha of Czech Bush-hating press sent to Kuwait (Czech chest-beating patriots claimed that it was Iraq) they distinguished themselves by stealing sweaters in U.S. Army supply stores and stealing personal laptop computers from U.S. servicemen. They were sent packing back to the Czech Republic without coming anywhere close to military action. At home they were feted and toasted, received promotions and a chest-full of medals. The most incompetent of them were given posts at Brussels' NATO Headquarters - since the Czech Republic is a member of NATO (yep, Clinton did it) too. After all, they were "Iraq war veterans."

Last weekend, while we were watching sunset over the Gulf of Mexico, I vented my aforementioned observations to a friend, who used to "work for the U.S. government", as they like to say and was stationed for years in West Berlin and elsewhere in western Europe. "You got it right on, bro," said the man with a mild sneer. "With allies like the Czechs - who needs enemies?"

Ich bin ein American...

Construction of the Berlin Wall began on August 13, 1961. On June 26, 1963 , when President Kennedy famously proclaimed that he was a doughnut (yes, folks, a Berliner is a doughnut), I was not too far from there. Unfortunately, I was on the other side - the wrong side - of the Berlin wall and Iron Curtain. In my defence I would say that it was not my choice - I was born there.

I remember nazism, fascism, anti-semitism, Marxism, Stalinism, communism and even "socialism with a human face". Despite being old enough to remember Unter den Linden still in ruins, before it was rebuilt, I was born after World War Two ended and as such I did not experience nazism and fascism myself, but the first hand experiences of my parents and family left an impression on me. All the other -isms I experienced on my own and I have scars to prove it. In that sad part of the world you could not travel a hundred miles without seeing some depressing memento of those times. Auschwitz was less then a hundred miles from where I was born and the place where Oscar Schindler (Schindler's list) had his factory was less then fifty miles away.

So I was born in a far away place, but in my soul I was always an American. I always knew that when I grew up I had to go where I was sure I belonged - to America. I came to America completely legally, I did not sneak across any borders, did not break any laws, did not protest and act like America owed me something simply because I was here. I took care of the legalities and I became an American citizen.

I have seen another -ism: anti-Americanism. Anti-Americanism is based on the same principles as nazism, fascism, anti-semitism and communism. It is based on envy and hate. Nazis and anti-semites started with hating Jews (because they were more industrious and wealthy than Nazis), communists hated just about everybody else (especially "capitalists" because - again - they had more money and brains than the commies could ever hope for). The violence of Kristallnacht and the holocaust (complete with the stealing of property and ripping out of gold teeth) was soon to follow. Not to be outdone by the Nazis, the Communists created one huge concentration camp called the "Eastern Bloc." They stole absolutely everything, killed millions and created a police states that made the Nazi effort look like amateur hour.

Today's "anti-Americanism" is nothing less than the same old hateful ideology: the ideology of under-achievers against over-achievers. It always starts with simple envy, develops into dislike and hate and culminates in violence, regardless if it is propagated by local leftists and liberal no-goodniks or some middle-eastern hateful ideology, pretending to be a religion. Yes, folks, political correctness is just another name for communist censorship. Sticks and stones can break my bones - but words leave permanent damage. The ideology of anti-Americanism has already progressed from envy to hate and has now entered the stage of violence. Have you already forgotten 9/11?

President Kennedy said on that day that "All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words 'Ich bin ein Berliner.'" and all applauded and nobody cared that he said "ein" (that "ein" is the difference between somebody being from Berlin and a doughnut) because everybody knew what he meant and that he meant well.

My own paraphrase is that all free men, wherever they may live, are Americans. And, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein American!"