Paul Craig Roberts pays tribute

Paul Craig Roberts pays tribute in the Washington Times to Balint Vazsonyi who died last week. Vazsonyi was a concert pianist turned conservative commentator. He escaped from Hungary in 1956 and fell in love with this country, only to find that the ideas that, in his opinion, had destroyed Europe were gaining ground here too. I strongly recommend his book America’s Thirty Years War, if you can find it.
Vazsonyi’s book contains one of my favorite stories about communism. He tells of a great Hungarian musician who, as leader of the Budapest artistic communitiy in the early 1950s, would meet periodically with the state’s Commissar of Culture. On his first meeting with the new Commissar, the musician asked what had happened to the old Commissar. “He has returned to his trade. He is a hat maker.” “Oh,” said the artist, “and what is your trade?” “I have no trade,” the Commissar replied, “I have always been with the Party.” The musician thought for a moment and then asked “So what will you return to?”