https://amgreatness.com/2025/11/14/romania-freedom-isnt-free-and-oblivious-americans/Romania, Freedom Isn’t Free, and Oblivious AmericansCynical Publius
11/14/2025
Even in Bucharest, a Romanian freedom fighter’s warning proved clear: too many Americans have forgotten the price of liberty—and some no longer care to hear it.
I am on vacation. I was planning on taking a timeout and not thinking or writing about politics for a few days, but somehow politics found me anyway. As a result, I feel compelled to write about what I just experienced. I think the things I witnessed are subtle yet quite important and highly worth sharing with anyone who supports liberty.
I am in Bucharest, Romania, as I write this. Today I experienced a confluence of unanticipated moments that I can only describe as a sort of poetic synchronicity. Please bear with me as I tie some seemingly disparate events into what I believe is a parable on the price and perishability of freedom.
I’ll start with the nature of my vacation and my fellow travelers (pun semi-intended; you’ll see why). I am on an Eastern European riverboat cruise on the Danube. The trip started yesterday in Bucharest, Romania’s capital city. It’s a pricey cruise that my wife and I saved up for, and our ship companions are almost all wealthy white Americans in their sixties and seventies. (In other words, I am on a floating “No Kings” protest.) While I’m sure there are more than a few MAGA conservatives along for the ride, what I have overheard in the public spaces of our ship so far suggests that more than half of our group are garden-variety, bitter old Democrats.
Another bit of background is important to this story. Today, Bucharest’s streets were gridlocked thanks to an enormous protest by a mass of labor unions. They were protesting government austerity measures related to the national government’s cutting back on the handing out of free stuff. Our pre-planned group city tour was badly sidetracked by this event, and eventually, we collided with the protest in a deeply ironic way.
So with the stage set, let me tell you the emotional events that motivated me to write this cautionary article.
Our guides promised us a surprise on today’s tour, and what a surprise it was. They took us to Bucharest’s Revolution Square, which was the site where, in December of 1989, the Romanian people began to rise up to overthrow one of history’s most horrific communist dictators, Nicolae Ceaușescu.
On December 21, 1989, while unrest was brewing across the nation thanks to nationwide poverty inflicted by communism, Ceaușescu gave a nationally televised speech before a huge throng in that same square, attempting to motivate and encourage the citizenry during the fall of the Iron Curtain. Surprisingly, the crowd acted in defiance of the dictator and took the unprecedented and quite brave step of literally heckling and booing him en masse. As the shouts and boos echoed around the great canyon of the square, Ceaușescu and his wife Elena suddenly realized that they had lost Romania and sought to flee the country. In a matter of days, the Romanian military largely turned against the dictator and his wife, and on Christmas Day, the two of them were adjudged guilty of democide, executed by firing squad, and unceremoniously dumped into unmarked graves. Romania was free. However, in that uncertain period between December 21 and December 25, revolutionaries, the secret police, and the military (still uncertain where their loyalties lie) engaged in violent street battles, leaving many Romanians dead or wounded (estimates range anywhere from about 1,000 to 7,000 murdered Romanians).
One of those revolutionaries fighting in the streets for his freedom was a man, then only fifteen years old, named Egmont Puscasu. A mere high school student, Puscasu and his classmates knew Romania needed a better life and bravely fought in street battles against tanks and rifles, armed only with rocks and whatever other weapons they could find or make. Puscasu’s best friend and ally was hit in the head with a bullet from an AK-47 and died right next to him. Yet Puscasu fought on. In fact, one of the most famous photos of the Romanian Revolution shows Puscasu dressed all in black at the top of a truck.
Which brings me back to the surprise of my vacation.
I met Puscasu. Our tour guides took our group to hear him speak in a small courtyard just off Revolution Square, and he vividly recounted those days of fighting and struggle. As a retired U.S. Army officer who dedicated much of his life to fighting for freedom and liberty, I was moved almost to tears hearing his story of courage and commitment to the best principles of human freedom. I had the great privilege of shaking his hand—one of the very few in my group to do so.
So this is where I bring that poetic synchronicity back into the story.
More at URL above...(excellent piece, worth reading)
