Power Shifts and Counter-Shifts: What History Teaches Us About Freedom

Political counter-shifts – a return to greater freedom after a loss of it - are often preceded by a trigger. Movement in one way is overwhelmed by movement in the other. The question is: Which is this, a shift or counter-shift? The recent election saw rising socialism and anti-Trump sentiment. What comes next?

Poland in the 1980s offers useful perspective. From 1945 to 1989, Poland was under Soviet domination. Still, Poles never forgot core principles – freedom from government, free speech, freedom to worship, freedom from unfair arrest, much of what we think of as our Bill of Rights.

Despite Communism’s coercive power and domination, people craved freedom, wanted to be released from the oppressive reach of government. In time, encouraged by the elections of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher abroad, they began pushing for it.

The first wave – oppression that lasted decades – gave way to a stronger movement, which began in 1980. Between 1980 and 1981, Poles demanded their rights back, often suffering brutality. Between 1981 and 1983, martial law was declared, justifying incursions into lives, home raids, mass and targeted arrests, imprisonment, beatings, and, in some cases, dissident deaths.

In 1982, the people formed “Underground Solidarity” to fight back, gather ideas, thoughts, educate, and coordinate opposition to this growing – increasingly violent – response to their earlier request for rights Americans and other Western nations had, championed by Reagan and Thatcher.

In 1983, my young life intersected with this movement, and I spent several months inside oppressed Poland, a venture I repeated in 1984, staying with one of the Underground Solidarity families, and watching as they organized a resistance movement that grew, gaining on the regime.

The main point here is that – timelines and geography notwithstanding – people will put up with just so much, then they organize to restore rights taken by government from them. That, of course, characterized our nation’s founding, and has surfaced many times since.

The key is that people have to have “had enough,” have to believe government has overstepped and that taking action to resist, or to restore their rights, is worth the fight. That happened in Poland after years of abuse. It happened then across Eastern Europe, and by 1989, the Soviet Union was done.

The start of that process, however, was a few people who said – we have had enough. They were encouraged by President Reagan, UK Prime Minister Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II.

The history of restoring rights taken, whether they are taken at the state or federal level, by a foreign or ostensibly domestic power, whether the justification for taking – concentrating power and abusing it – is democracy (a false understanding), socialism, fascism, or the like, is resistance.

So, shifts and counter-shifts, actions by a political group and reactions to it, generally represent a contest between government taking power and people retaking it. Across the US, a shift has just occurred. Some will fashion it as a retaking of power, but the indicator of most importance is how free people feel after this from government intrusion.  Looking ahead, a counter-shift may be coming.