I was born and raised in Romania, during Ceausescu’s socialist tyranny. I would like to share with you some thoughts about that. Sharing about Romania during Ceausescu’s time is a really difficult task, because however dark your mind can get and however wild your imagination is, you cannot imagine the vilest things that humans can do to each other. My youngest brother was born in Romania, two years after the revolution, and even his generation has issues understanding how different the world looked like before they were born.

One of the most common misconceptions about Socialism in America today is that, of course socialism would be a bad idea in a third world country, because those people are poor to begin with. But Romania was NOT a third world country; Romania BECAME a third world country after it became socialist, and it became a third world country exclusively because socialism was implemented.

Do you know anyone who is a diabetic? Insulin was invented by a Romanian called Paulescu.

A Romanian called Poenariu invented the fountain pen. The name of the “pen” comes from his name, “Poen”ariu.

A Romanian woman called Ana Aslan isolated the vitamin H3 and developed geriatrics. (A geriatric physician is a primary care doctors who is specially trained in the aging process.) Romania had the first geriatric institute in the world, and we beautified John Kennedy for you. Your welcome.

Psychocibernetics and generalized cybernetics were defined for the first time, along with the law of reversibility, by a Romanian called Odobeja.

The ejectable chair was invented by a Romanian called Dragomir.

The jet plane was invented by a Romanian named Coanda. Oh, and he also designed and managed the building of the first underwater oil cistern, made out of concrete (in the Persian Gulf).

The first speleological institute in the world and the discovery of the beaked whale belong to a Romanian called Racovita.

The Cholera vaccine was developed by a Romanian called Cantacuzino.

Timisoara, my hometown, was the first city in Europe to have an electric system to light the streets and public places.

Yet, after 48 years of communism, you could buy a woman for a pair of high-thighs, or a pack of coffee. That is how rare and expensive these basic items became. The Muslim Arabs (brought in as students by the socialist regime) came to Romania with suitcases of jeans, high-thighs, coffee, cigars and chocolate, and traded them for sex.

All the abundance and the spirit of innovation and creativity have been emotionally and physically beaten out of people. Whoever was found reading, researching, writing was considered an enemy of the state and tortured physically and mentally. Things have gotten really bad, really fast. And they definitely can get really bad really fast here in the States as well. Bear in mind, in 1948 in Romania we lacked the technology and speed of information that we have now in America.  

Hunger, pain, devastation, and trash. Garbage. The under-the-bridge pictures of Seattle are not an uncommon sight for the little girl in me. That is how we lived; we lived in high density urban areas, with streets as filthy as you can imagine – exactly like rats. The public spaces were so disgustingly filthy because they belonged to “everyone”, hence no one actually cared. People don’t take care of what is not theirs, they trash it. Because they don’t care, they didn’t sweat for it. If this Socialist propaganda doesn’t stop in America, our states will end up like any third world county.

In Romania, we ended up having no lights in the houses (no power), no water, and no sanitation; all these utility networks were owned by the government and they decided we didn’t need them in the amount we were using – so they gave us two hours / day of access to utilities. We were scheduling our weekends and our holidays around the times when we would have water and power. In our family of four (back then), I was always the first one taking a bath, as the youngest. My elder brother would then bathe in the water I bathed in, then my mom would bathe in our water, and my dad would be the one who bathed for years in the water his family bathed in first. To this day, when I shower, I wash my body first and my hair last, because our flat was so cold if we would wash our hair first and didn’t get to dry it within minutes we would catch pneumonia. You always washed your body first, and then quickly, wash your head and put a towel on it as soon as possible.

Our first Christmas tree light string was made out of a bunch of light bulbs that my dad connected to an electric wire. There were no string lights for Christmas trees on the market because a socialist country will not produce anything that is not vital for living. There is SO MUCH we can live without! I hope America never learns how much it can live without; most people would have a mental break-down in the process of learning how much can be taken away from them and how much they don’t need in order to survive. I could bet that no one in the States has ever done a light string for their kids. You children are raised in a country where Christmas tree light strings start at $4.99. I grew up in a country where Christmas tree light strings were a luxury the country did not afford. My dad bought light bulbs for two years and saved them in order to have enough to make a string light for a 5 foot Christmas tree. It took him two years to save them because our family had a ratio of two light bulks / month. We were simply not allowed to buy more than that, regardless how much money we had and if there were or not light bulbs available in the store. It then took him about three hours to make it. I helped my dad make that light string. I proudly wear the scar I got from being a clumsy 4 year old trying to manipulate a soldering iron (there’s so much my mom doesn’t know about…).

And then, on one of those cold, dark Christmases that had no lit trees, my parents and their peers turned into “deaf frogs”. And the deaf frogs won the war against socialism.

If you don’t know the story of the deaf frog, here it is: There was a group of frogs that got stuck in the pit of a dry well. They decided they needed to get out, but only the stronger ones thought they had chances to climb the vertical walls and get out. So the brave bucks started competing to get out. But one by one, they abandoned the race, especially since the crippled ones at the bottom of the well kept telling them that the walls are steep, that they are slipping and there’s no way anyone can make it out. They all abandoned the race. All, except one. That last frog kept climbing and made its way to the top. It eventually got out. That frog was a deaf frog. It couldn’t hear the discouraging comments.

So let me make this clear: as long as you listen to socialist propaganda telling you that unless the government sends you a check you can’t survive the economy that they closed down for you, this battle is lost. No matter how much control someone has you’re your live, you will still have more control over your live than they do. Socialist propaganda can TRY to make you feel like there is no way out and that it finally is time to surrender your autonomy to someone else, but just because that’s what propaganda does, it doesn’t mean that you need to believe it. Your actions are still your responsibility. You control what you do. If you KNOW that you have a responsibility to take care of your family, you will not relinquish that responsibility to the state. The state is not your dad.

Last, but not least, we need to get writ of the post-modern way of thinking. One of the greatest accomplishments of the American Marxists is that they have destroyed the generational thinking. Generational thinking is what makes you think about the consequences of your actions. Post-modern thinking is what makes you see your actions as being independent of each other, rather than being a consequence of yesterday and a foundation for tomorrow.

How can you personally fight socialist propaganda? Take personal responsibility for what happens to your family. Let me give you an example. My mother taught us, at the risk of her life, to speak English. In a country in which if you spoke any other language but Romanian, you were to be beaten and tortured and imprisoned as an enemy of the state, my mother taught us how to be fluent in reading, speaking and writing, in Romanian, Hungarian and English. By the time I was 5, I was fully capable to read, write and speak in 3 languages, in a world where speaking any other language than Romanian meant jail or even death. My mother used to tell us: “If you ever get the chance to leave this country and make it to a country that offers political asylum, like America, you need to be able to respect those people enough to ask for their help in their own language. Don’t expect them to speak your language. You’re the one going to them, you are the guest and you need speak their language. That’s just common sense.” She literally risked her life to teach me how to speak English.

My mother had a generational thinking and she KNEW that teaching a child a language with international recognition, might one day change the world. And here’s the irony: I get to talk to Americans about the dangers of socialism in their own language. My mother’s generational thinking plays a massive part in this message making it out to you. If that is what a woman can do by teaching her kid a foreign language in a socialist country (- hidden under a desk or under a duvet -), what can YOU do with what you have here in the States? What can YOU do today to change the direction of America? You can either believe that your actions are meaningless, or you can come back to the ancient path and re-learn that all your actions HAVE an impact. We used to know this, we used to live according to this law of generational thinking! – But we somehow forgot it…

(This is an adapted version of the transcript of Ligia Brubaker’s speech on the 15th August 2019 at the Patriot Barn in Prosser)