Open Societies Under Siege

Open Societies Under Siege
Biglari pointed out that while the unemployment rate in the United States — the percentage of the population over 16 not employed
but looking for work — is down to 4 percent, the employment rate — the percentage of the population actually working — tells a different story.
Looking back, it’s now easy enough to see that the high point of democracy — the victory of open systems over the Soviet imperium
that brought down the Berlin Wall in 1989 and set free more than 100 million Central Europeans — was quickly followed by the unleashing of economic forces that would undermine democracies.
But, as The Wall Street Journal recently reported, Poland’s nationalist leaders now want Walesa “scrubbed from official memory.” He is seen as the traitorous agent of Poland’s dissolution within the European Union
and NATO — what Kaczynski has called “self-annihilation.”
No matter that Poland is an economic success story.
There, Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement overturned Communist rule
and set in motion the changes that would produce a united and democratic Europe.
It stood at around 67 percent in the 1990s, and has since declined to about 63 percent of the adult population.
No matter that most Poles live unimaginably better, freer and more secure lives than they would have without Walesa’s courage.