People who do not protest and fight back for their beliefs are cast as victims. Even a badly-organized revolt that fizzles can offer more hope than doing nothing at all.

My father used to say: "Do something, even if it's wrong."

A U.S. Supreme Court justice has taken the adage one step further. "Be
not afraid to do something," advised Clarence Thomas.

But is it always necessary for something to be done about everything?

"If we think something is dreadfully wrong, then someone has to do something," Thomas told the American Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C., last February.

Pick your battles, then put up or shut up. "One might shut up when it doesn't matter," he said. "But when it really counts, we are required to put up."

The most effective weapon of brutes is to intimidate an opponent into the silence of self-censorship, he emphasized.

It is better to risk criticism for speaking up against politically-correct mainstream opinions than to accept the alternative. Remaining silent and doing nothing leads to the loss of liberty and freedom.

"Too many show timidity today precisely when courage is required," Thomas continued. Having courage of your convictions can be the hardest part, for it is bravery that is required to secure freedom.

Complaining about the obvious state of affairs does not elevate one's moral standing. And it is hardly a substitute for the courage that we badly need, he urged.

"Arguments should not sneak around in disguise, as if dissent were somehow sinister. One should not be cowed by criticism."

Thomas punctuated his powerful lecture with Dimitar Pesev's story, which deserves repetition. The vice-president of the Bulgarian Parliament demonstrated the utmost courage when the "rule of law" was being surrendered to the "rule of fear" during the rise of Nazism.

Pesev was among the many Bulgarian officials who began to hear rumors of the New Policy. He questioned his ministers. At first, he believed their lies, which the ministers may have begun to believe themselves.

In the last, frantic hours, a handful of citizens from Pesev's hometown raced to the Bulgarian capital of Sofia to tell Pesev the Jews were being rounded up and the trains were waiting to load the human cargo.

According to the law, such actions were illegal. He forced his way into the office to have audience with the interior minister. Pesev wanted the truth and didn't believe the minister who repeated the official party line.

Pesev implored the minister to telephone the local authorities and remind them of their legal obligations. "This brave act saved the lives of the Bulgarian Jews," explained Thomas.

"Pesev then circulated a letter to members of Parliament, condemning the violation of the law, and demanding that the government ensure no such thing take place."

Pesev's words moved to action all those who until that moment had not imagined what could happen but who could not even accept what they had learned.

"He had broken through the wall of self-deception and forced his colleagues to face the truth," declared Thomas.

It came with a price. Pesev was removed from his official position and publicly chastised for breaking ranks.

But he had won. He had stood up for his convictions. He had defended the country's Jewish population and prevented the Bulgarian government from advocating any active operation with the Third Reich.

If others had been brave enough to come on-side, maybe the Communists wouldn't have managed to occupy Bulgaria after the war and rewrite its history. They gave credit to the Communist Party for saving the Jews. Pesev was whisked off to the Gulag.

The courageous role he had played in saving the Bulgarian Jews was rediscovered after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A biography was written about the deeds of this courageous man.

Thomas' narrative brought another admirable and wise man to my mind. I had difficulty reading the horrible Gulag accounts written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who spent 11 years in Soviet prisons and concentration camps. It was even more difficult to comprehend how any human being could survive the actual cruelty, tortures and hard labour.

Yet the Communists couldn't break his spirit. He still had the fortitude to deliberately confront the black-hearted Soviet authorities by writing his Nobel Price-winner "Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956".

By 1974, when the Russian government was perplexed over what to do about the book and its author, Solzhenitsyn was already an enemy of the Soviets. He had written "Cancer Ward", "The First Circle" and "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (1962).

"Gulag Archipelago" promised his arrest, for sure. But he also was courting a death sentence for publishing the book abroad. The Russian text was printed by a French publisher and the English version by Harper and Row in the United States.

Meanwhile, the New York Times began to syndicate a 10,000-word excerpt of the blistering works and Radio Free Europe was broadcasting it. The ugly Communist police state was brought into a glaring light that repulsed the world.

Solzhenitsyn calmly waited for the crushing hand of Kremlin "justice" to fall. He anticipated the heavy footsteps on the stairs, the banging on the door in the middle of the night.

He was without fear nor concern whether he would life a hero or die a martyr. He had defied Soviet policies with the knowledge his truths would live forever.

"The lie has no way of maintaining itself except by violence," he said. "Woe betide the nation whose literature is interrupted by force. It is the amputation of a nation's memory."

"Gulag" is based on his personal experiences and a sweeping expose of the system and its leaders. While writing, Solzhenitsyn had the collaboration from about 230 former inmates of the Soviet prisons.

Repression by a police system was still alive and well when the book was published. Millions of Russians were accessing the book through the underground. They would be arrested if caught with a copy in their possession.

The Kremlin was incensed about the embarrassing episode; Pravda press tried to discredit the author with malicious slurs. The Soviet copyright agency threatened to sue the foreign publishers for issuing works without the agency's approval.

But what were the Kremlin's secret plans for the author? The Russian government was trying to reach detente with the Western World. Any action would stir up a hornet's nest of political criticism.

Solzhenitsyn, an impressive and respected figure, was a hero in the eyes of his countrymen and around the world.

The delay in a response to his fate illustrated the delicate sensitivity of the dilemma in Moscow. Solzhenitsyn had cornered the enemy with his pen which proved mightier than the sword he couldn't own.

He was revered as Russia's most defiant critic and had brought a superpower nation to is knees. He had risked personal abuse for the truth, just as justice Clarence Thomas said must be done to preserve freedom.

A Western journalist once described Solzehnitsyn as "a bone choking the Kremlin's throat" and suggested the Soviet Union should learn its lesson and permit greater freedom for Soviet dissidents.

Solzhenitsyn was finally exiled to the United States, where he continued writing. "The Oak and Calf" was released in 1980.

Regardless of "perestroika" that followed the collapse of a bankrupted Soviet state in the late 1980s, all forms of Communism have not been eradicated. It is alive and well, filtering into European countries and the Western World.

"No country is immune from the many pressures and tendencies that give rise to totalitarianism," warned Andrew Irvine, past-president of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.

"It is by remaining indifferent to apparently small and incremental increases of state power that citizens eventually lose their most cherished freedoms.

"Even countries like Canada cannot afford to become complacent about their most fundamental rights and liberties."

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Copyright 2004 diArmani.com