Is there no limit to the insults that foreign dictators can get by with hurling at Americans?
Within hours after the U.S. Senate ratified the Panama Treaty giving our Canal to dictator Torrijos, he arrogantly boasted that, if the vote had gone the other way, “We would have started a struggle for liberation, and by tomorrow the Canal would not have been in operation.” That’s the gratitude we get for giving him our $7 billion Canal plus promising to pay him nearly $3 billion to take it.
The White House had argued that the treaty should be approved so that we would win the good will of Latin Americans. Now we find that the only people who really like the treaty are Torrijos and the Communist Party of Panama, and they respond with insults instead of thanks.
The preceding weekend, another foreign dictator administered a different kind of insult. President Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania was traveling across the United States on a state visit seeking American trade and credits.
On April 15 he was the guest of honor at a dinner given at the Plimsoll Club by the leading businessmen of New Orleans. When the president of the International Trade Mart opened the dinner by calling on a clergyman to give the invocation, Ceausescu and his retinue of 35 Romanians marched together out of the dining room. After the prayer was finished, they all came back to eat their dinner.
Ceausescu thus chose to flaunt his atheism by insulting his hosts, their hospitality, and their custom of saying grace before meals. He gave a dramatic reminder of the fact that Communism is the arch-enemy of all religion.
Ceausescu proved anew that Communists will not modify their militant atheism even for the sake of the economic deals they hope to sign with American businessmen or for the social courtesy that is the obligation of every guest.
When the Bolshoi Ballet toured the United States in 1975, one of the conditions the Russians imposed was that the Star Spangled Banner could not be played at any performances. This Moscow-imposed policy was adhered to in Washington, New York, New Orleans, Houston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
When the Bolshoi reached St. Louis, the dancers performed at the open-air Municipal Opera in Forest Park where, for half a century, every performance has started with the Star Spangled Banner. On the Bolshoi’s opening night, the National Anthem was omitted because the Russians demanded it.
Fortunately there was such a flap among St. Louisans and in the press that a compromise was worked out. Both the U. S. and the Soviet National Anthems were played at all subsequent performances.
The American Bar Association Committee on Communist Tactics, Strategy and Objectives issued a report in 1958 correctly identifying “humiliation” as a major Communist tactic. The Communists try to humiliate us personally, ideologically, militarily, and politically in order to badger us into accommodating ourselves to their objectives.
Communists do not negotiate in order to arrive at a workable compromise midway between opposing views. They negotiate with the tactics of humiliation and harassment in order to expedite their escalating demands.
Any Communists who cannot be courteous when Americans pray or sing their National Anthem should be invited to leave our country and never come back. The U.S. House of Representatives should take care of Panama’s insults by declining to pass the implementing legislation which is necessary to complete the surrender of our Canal to the drug-peddling, war-threatening Torrijos.
