Imagine living in a country that is invaded and turned into a police state by two successive conquerors and then escaping to a free country, only to find the same kind of tyranny slowly taking hold there. Balint Vazsonyi does not have to imagine it because he lived it. In Hungary, Vazsonyi lived under two kinds of socialist dictatorships, first the Nazis and then the Soviets, until escaping to America in 1956. He was shocked to see emerging in mid-1960s America the very things he fled. Vazsonyi writes that the present situation "must count among the most amazing spectacles of history to be inundated with the rhetoric, theory, and practice of communism, and see not one communist around. We read and hear daily about class warfare, universal health care, speech codes, sensitivity training...the list goes on and on. The agenda is with us, the Party is not."

    Foremost a concert pianist, Vazsonyi is also a columnist and director of the Center for the American Founding. His argument in America's Thirty Years War is that communism is very gradually enveloping an unsuspecting America. Our "Thirty Years War" began in the 1960s. Vazsonyi argues that the boomer generation's "rebels without a cause" proved to be "easy prey for rebels with a cause." This book is not to be taken lightly; it is a deadly serious warning.

    For the person who wants to know what exactly is wrong with America's morals, culture, politics, and underlying philosophy, Vazsonyi's book is an excellent starting point because he exposes the historic and philosophic roots of America's present situation. Communism is not "dead." Accepting that assertion results in us letting down our guard. Rather, communism is quite viable in a new form. The old communists lost because of mass slaughter (killing the people who make a country work), the failure of Marxist economic theory (no one had a vested interest in its success), and state idolatry, all of which are practices and ideas that are historically alien to Americans.

    The neo-communists learned their lessons from the old communist failures and are waging an extensive, incremental, and well-organized philosophical war against individual freedom that targets virtually all facets of American life. Their objective is collectivist utopia. America is being changed at its most fundamental levels -- stealthily, from within, and with scant resistance. (Merely read what contemporary Marxian-influenced intellectuals write, especially the ones advocating "environmental justice," feminism, eco-feminism and multiculturalism, as they eagerly proclaim their goal of a fundamental transformation of America.) We are on the path that has communism as the end result, minus the gulags and pogroms.

    "Political correctness," for instance, is communist thought control. Vazsonyi says that the term's usage goes at least as far back as the writings of Lenin's education expert, Anton S. Makarenko. (Hitler used the term "socially correct.") "Political correctness" is now used in an "Americanized" guise. It has proved to be a highly successful weapon in subduing unsuspecting Americans, because when the vocabulary is under totalitarian control it is unnecessary to outlaw free speech. Vazsonyi explains that under communism in Hungary, "those who misspoke had to engage in self-criticism and go to sensitivity training." Vazsonyi tells of a personal encounter with communist p.c.:

The year following the assumption of total control by the Communist Party, I made a comment to a fellow student, also a serious pianist. 'A real artist,' I said, 'cannot be a communist.' I was thirteen years old, and so was he. He reported my comment to the authorities. I was tried by a panel of politically correct students and given a warning. From that moment on, I was watched by the head of the students' organization who made it clear that I would remain constantly under suspicion.

    Vazsonyi continues, "[w] hen necessary, people were publicly shamed into submission through having their positions twisted until they appeared to be opposing social justice. The practice of self-criticism was enforced so as to increase the subject's 'sensitivity' and awareness of their shortcomings resulting in 'improved attitudes.' Once humiliated and 'cleansed,' they'd be accepted in the 'good' group." And such is the "tolerance" of America's politically correct liberals.

    In Hungary, Vazsonyi writes, "if your father owned a small store, you could do no good. If your father worked in a factory, you could do no evil." In other words, group characteristics do not change -- once an exploiter or oppressor, always an exploiter or oppressor, which is how Jews and property owners in Germany and Russia were branded. Branding was used in those countries with terms like "Jew-friendly" and "class-alien." The modern "politically correct" "social justice" crusaders see heterosexual white men as "exploiters" and "oppressors." There is the term "working Americans," which implies that there are non-working Americans, namely, the rich. We have "hate crimes" that promote societal divisions, but so-called victim groups are exempt from committing them. Vazsonyi writes that "few indicators of our society are as alarming as our acquiescence that certain crimes, by definition, can be committed by persons of a certain type." Ultimately, this prepares society for the notion of the political crime. That is quite a leap ahead, but the neo-communists are getting us there.

    Vazsonyi sums up the overall ideological situation in America as a conflict "hidden behind an intricate web of 'issues.'" Americans fail to see the hidden conflict because most do not know the origins of ideas and "not knowing the origin of an idea, and the rationale behind it, allows advocates of its idea to hide its history, and to dress it in the attire of their choice."

    Vazsonyi views the ideological divide in America as one between "Anglo-American thought," which includes the likes of Locke and the Founders, and the "Franco-Germanic thought" of Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, the "Frankfurt School" Marxists intellectuals, and others. The former is a philosophy of observation and experience as the basis of social organization. The latter is the opposite because it starts with a wide-ranging theory that people must then comply with, usually at government gunpoint.

    In order for the Franco-Germanic neo-communists to win in America, Vazsonyi argues, they must frequently remind Americans of their failures and the various "wrongs" they have inflicted on an ever-growing multitude of "victims," real or imagined, for the purpose of keeping Americans' consciences troubled. Then Americans must be persuaded to believe that socialistic ideas are actually old American ideas. Vazsonyi sees that this ideologically disarms Americans and the result is that "any suggestion that harm to America could be intended was made to sound preposterous." For instance, in the Declaration of Independence, he notes that Jefferson's use of the term "equal" means "standing; 'same' would imply that we are all clones." Our ubiquitous advocates of "social justice" are, of course, egalitarians who want to force people to be the "same."

    We often hear calls for "social justice." On the surface they may sound good and fair to many people, but what does "social justice" really mean? "Social justice" is the power to determine what the individual can or cannot have. Our "social justice" crusaders have called for the "elimination" of poverty without defining it by any standard, and once that goal is accepted, an authority must be perpetually "redistributing" things by force. "Social justice" means there cannot be any change; society must remain static. And that is communism.

    The very concept of rights is a casualty in this war because "social justice" advocates have twisted it to mean non-rights. Vazsonyi, upholding a Lockean view of rights, accurately explains what are and what are not rights. The individual may assert his objective, natural rights at will, and "governments must guarantee them at all times." "Group rights," however, restrict real rights. "Individual rights and group rights are mutually exclusive; we cannot have it both ways." America's Founders did not intend our current governance by subordinating the individual's rights to "collective rights" and the inevitable group warfare.

    "Social justice" requires political force for its implementation. Vazsonyi connects Nazi and Soviet "social justice" to contemporary America, as Nazism and communism are the inevitable results of Franco-Germanic philosophy (Vazsonyi debunks the Stalinist propaganda that Nazis are "right-wingers;" they are just a different kind of communist) and versions of their methods of governing are being enacted in the U.S. For instance, when appointing and hiring in their governments Hitler and Stalin used, respectively, ancestry and preferential treatment as criteria. The American government has taken those practices, combined them, and called it "affirmative action." In Nazi Germany the executive branch passed laws. Now in America the executive branch passes laws. The Soviet and Nazi governments had commissars, as does the U.S. government, who "extend or withdraw privilege, and thereby control and alter the behavior of the people." A major target of the commissars is the free market. (The term "capitalism" was invented by the Franco-Germanic enemies of laissez-faire economics.)

    Once property rights are conditional, so is all else. "Invariably, those societies that indulged in the large-scale, 'legal' taking of lives, started by taking property through government action." The "concentration camp approach" left communist states without people who knew how to produce. Neo-communists have simply changed tactics; they regulate, restrict, impose mandates, and politically threaten businesses in order to gain access to the fruits of production. Also, the availability of property and freedom of entering contracts -- in the market and personal affairs -- is being curtailed by government. Businesses have to pay protection money to the government and some are made into examples. The anti-smoking movement has dual purposes that dovetail because it "demonstrates to the citizen how individual behavior can and will be controlled, and it persuades corporations of the wisdom to pay up before their image is dragged through the gutter." That is only one example of how the neo-communists are using the market economy to build communism.

    Communism is no longer monolithic. It has broken into interest groups that have become interconnected. This is effective in advancing the agenda. Because an individual's rights are numerous and are exercised in many spheres, like property, free association, self-defense, speech, etc., the splintering of neo-communism effectively divides and conquers one's rights. The individual is virtually defenseless under the assault of a confusing and relentless barrage of infringements, controls, and restrictions on rights in the name of "social justice," the "public good," "saving the children," etc. For example, we have environmentalism, "the most developed, the most insidious, and the broadest-based of all tools destructive to property -- and thus to freedom." Environmentalism sees a conflict between "bad" mankind and "good" nature. It targets industry, land ownership, and freedom of choice.

    America's Thirty Years War is very readable for both the layman and the intellectual. This book offers effective "deprogramming" for anyone's mind that is influenced by the "conventional wisdom" on current issues. Vazsonyi has a solid and sound grasp of the matter at hand and he is frighteningly convincing in arguing that the neo-communists have successfully implemented a philosophy that is destroying life, liberty, and property. Vazsonyi identifies the enemy, their method, motive and goal, and digs out the truths buried under their lies and propaganda. He analyzes philosophy, history and contemporary issues -- quite a wide scope -- and he does it clearly. This book is a superb exposure of America's hidden Destroyers.

    Vazsonyi lived through the horrors of communism, and that gives him a clear perspective, a perspective Americans lack. We are like the frog not realizing it is being slowly boiled. Americans must learn to take ideas seriously -- now, while there is still at least some time to save one's liberty and the Republic.