WUI (Writing under the influence)

I read with interest this profile of Nina Camic, the owner of the Other Side of the Ocean blog.

In this unfortunately titled post, I said that I found most of what Mrs. Camic wrote in her blog to be a knee-jerk reaction to what I like about US. One thing I didn't say at the time is that I suspected that Mrs. Camic wasn't just another liberal Democrat but that her disdain for what's best about this country is rooted in some other ideology. Her profile on the normblog reveals what that ideology is.

"I had great faith in communist governance [...]"

Her "faith" was probably fostered by her father, Bohdan Lewandowski, who worked for UN between 1960 and 1966 in rather important capacity (see the last table here.) There was only one way to be "appointed" to UN or to an ambassadorship at the time. One had to be deeply involved in the communist party. I'm not talking about a simple membership; I'm talking about total commitment to party's ideals and total loyalty to party's leadership. Party's leaders had to have unconditional trust in anybody representing Poland outside the country.

[I'm trying to find out more about Mr. Lewandowski so for now I will withhold further comments on what I suspect his level of involvement in the communist party must have been.]

The rest of her profile is also worth reading because it exposes her allegiance to very liberal causes, her "faith" in government and complete lack of respect for an individual.

"So long as we do not fully support care-giving functions (through parental leave, day care, etc), women will remain marginalized and gender relations in this country will remain stalled."

I know many of these marginalized women, my wife is one of them, and I'm pretty sure that they would not agree that they need government intervention to increase their worth.

"Having grown up as a non-Catholic in a country that appeared to be 99% Catholic, I remain suspicious of strong, unquestioning devoutness to any religious precepts, or to the totalitarian authority of any church."

I would hate the Catholic church too for destroying communism, for being unconditionally pro-life and for opposing gay marriage (example of stalled gender relations?)

As I said in the first post, "[Mrs. Camic] is a somewhat influential Pole teaching in my graduate school. And she is wrong on all important issues. Just in case there is any doubt, she does not represent all Polish immigrants." And speaking against her ideas is not denying her any freedoms.