Public or Private Opinion? Please Support WEJB/NSU!

Back in the late 1980s, socialist British historian Timothy Garton-Ash traveled in the Communist East Bloc and wrote a series of dispatches for the New York Review of Books, which were collected and published as The Uses of Adversity.

I read Garton-Ash’s collection circa 1990, just after the Berlin Wall was toppled, and talked about it in the first issue of my magazine, A Different Drummer.

Garton-Ash wrote of how in the Communist East Bloc, “public opinion” consisted of the official lies that the government press spouted, while “private opinion” referred to the truths that could only be discussed in hushed tones with one’s intimates, behind closed doors. At the time, with the advent of the new phenomenon of political correctness in America, I noted that things were getting more and more like the old East Bloc here at home.

Well, erstwhile Communist dictatorships like Hungary and Poland now have more political freedom than America does. We must now whisper private opinions to intimates behind closed doors.

Help me tear down America’s rainbow curtain!

Please hit the “Donate” button at the top of the page, and make a generous donation to WEJB/NSU.

I thank you, and your posterity will, too.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Stix