In Memoriam: Lane Kirkland, 1922-1999
Karatnycky, Adrian
MEMORI by Adrian Karatnycky Lane Kirkland, 1922-1999 L ane Kirkland, the American labor leader who died in August at the age of 77, was a great American, whose contributions to freedom...
...When in 1990 we visited the Warsaw grave of Father Jerzy Popieluszko, thelegendary anti-Communist priest murdered by Communist authorities in 1984, Kirkland was told by a clergyman that the martyred Polish priest had "prayed at morning mass for Pope John Paul II, for Lech Walesa, for Solidarity, and for Lane Kirkland and the American labor movement...
...Kirkland recognized the central role that the free flow of information could play in undermining closed societies and played a crucial role in building Congressional and administration support for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty...
...Kirkland was not a one-dimensional anti-Communist...
...He recognized that the promotion of democratic values and democratic movements around the world was in the best interests of the U.S...
...foreign policy, a position that, in time, was reflected in both the Republican and Democratic platforms...
...was in a twilightstruggle against totalitarian Communism and that to win this struggle we must preserve a bipartisan majority in favor of a vigorous and assertive internationalism...
...He was among those who played a key role in raising the alarm over deteriorating U.S...
...Toward that end, he supported democratic movements in Chile, South Africa, South Korea, and the Philippines...
...Because Kirkland was an avowed liberal, this paradox requires explanation...
...The American Spectator • October 1999 61...
...It also reflected a style of politics that regrettably is in steep decline...
...But even these factors cannot explain the contempt in which Kirkland was held by left-liberals, in particular by the left-wing intellectuals who teach in our universities and opine about labor in the journals of opinion and on our nation's most important op-ed pages...
...This meant exerting his considerable influence within the precincts of the Democratic Party and urging that party to reject accommodation to Communism or isolationism...
...Kirkland's wide array of friends across the political spectrum was a tribute to his charismatic personality and sharp intellect...
...Fashion never moved Kirkland...
...Kirkland believed in the virtue of a permanent competition between unions and the business community, and asserted that it was the emergence of organized labor that was responsible for the rise of an American middle class...
...On issue after issue, his faith in ordinary people and his commitment to the dignity and courage of the "little guy" influenced his view of foreign affairs...
...The passing of this great man should serve as a wake-up call to succeeding generations about the need to preserve bipartisanship on issues that stand at the core of our well-being and security...
...Kirkland never wavered from his anti-Communist principles throughout the difficult 1970's, a period in which the nihilism unleashed by extreme voices in the anti-Vietnam war movement made mandatory among many liberals the bashing of U.S...
...What reinforced the intellectual left's animosity toward Kirkland was the fact that under his leadership, the AFL-CIO was unremitting in its opposition to the scourge of Communism and made it a matter of principle to shun and challenge Communism's fellow travelers at home and abroad...
...Coming to pay homage along with labor leaders and representatives of the diplomatic corps were Alan Greenspan, George Will, Lally Weymouth, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Madeleine Albright, Paul Wolfowitz, and Brent Scowcroft...
...Today's conservatives and liberals debate one another, but they rarely speak to each other...
...defense capabilities in the post-Vietnam years, and worked alongside Paul Naze, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Max Kampelman on the Committee on the Present Danger, the bipartisan lobbying group for a strong defense and an assertive U.S...
...He knew that the world was in the midst of a major transition to democracy and so became a vocal advocate for the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy asan instrument to assist in this process...
...And once Solidarity had resurfaced and was due to challenge the Communists in elections, Kirkland provided crucial financial assistance to help launch the union's election effort, which culminated in time with the election of Kirkland's friend Lech Walesa as Poland's president...
...He urged a level playing field for rich and poor...
...foreign policy...
...As president of the AFL-CIO, the 13million-member labor movement, Kirkland was an important voice in the domestic policy debate and a spirited opponent of Republicans and conservatives...
...Working in tandem with Steve Forbes, he helped ensure bipartisan support for foreign broadcasting at a time during the Gorbachev years when many argued that the Radios were "Cold War relics...
...T hese positions earned him the scorn of many on the left, who encouraged and celebrated an insurgency that in 1995 forced him and his successor Thomas Donahue from the leadership of the American labor movement...
...Kirkland was a learned and deeply thoughtful man who rejected cant...
...A child of the New Deal, Kirkland was a liberal antiADRIAN KARATNYCKY is president of Freedom House...
...Kirkland resisted the Nixon Administration's politics of détente, which he (like the neoconservatives) thought provided the USSR with economic support and political legitimacy...
...But he also knew the difference between equality of opportunity and equality of results and so rejected the politics of federally imposed racial or ethnic quotas...
...He understood that independent U.S.-supported broadcasting was needed to promote democratic values in the wake of the fall of Communism, and pressed to reenergize this crucial arm of U.S...
...This assistance took the form of printing presses, mimeograph machines, computers, and funds to support strikes and activists in the network of underground publishing and organized resistance that ended in 1989 with the union's triumphant reemergence...
...With equal vigor, he nudged his longtime friend from the State Department, Lawrence Eagleburger, to dramatically expand assistance to the emerging market economies and democratic systems in the region...
...The range of leaders who attended his funeral at Arlington National Cemetery (he served in the Merchant Marine delivering war materiel to zones of combat during the Second World War) is testimony to his impact...
...Together with his mentor George Meany, Kirkland denied McGovern support in his bid for the presidency in 1972, and over the years opposed the various forms of identity politics and political correctness...
...Later, he offered the AFL-CIO's technical and material assistance to coal miners and other workers in the former USSR, whose protests in the late 1980's accelerated the disintegration of the USSR...
...foreign policy...
...60 October 199 9 • The American Spectator 0 0 8 in the developing world, and was a strong advocate of the democratic center in such countries as El Salvador, where he backed the government of Jose Napoleon Duarte, and Nicaragua, where he supported the democratic forces of Violetta Chamorro and the anti-Sandinista democratic labor movement...
...This, in the end, was the type of accolade that Lane Kirkland valued most...
...He made his way to Capitol Hill, where he pressed Lee Hamilton, David Obey, and other congressional leaders to develop a major aid program to Poland, Hungary, and other Central European states...
...Even in the 1970's, when pessimism set in through much of the democratic West as Communist regimes and Soviet client states spread their influence, for Kirkland it was axiomatic that Communism and other forms of tyranny would fall in time...
...MEMORI by Adrian Karatnycky Lane Kirkland, 1922-1999 L ane Kirkland, the American labor leader who died in August at the age of 77, was a great American, whose contributions to freedom transcended partisan politics...
...His attitude embodied a patriotic centrism which recognized that deep differences on domestic policy issues must not stand in the way of bipartisan agreement when it comes to peace, security, and the promotion of democracy...
...He will be remembered for his central role in supporting movements that toppled Communist regimes and other tyrannies in the 1980's, and above all, for his support of the Polish trade union Solidarity, whose triumph precipitated the collapse of the Soviet bloc...
...In thero8o's he worked in the AFL-CIO's international affairs department and from 1991 until 1993 served as an assistant to Lane Kirkland...
...And he became an important voice in making the promotion of democracy a central tenet of U.S...
...and of global peace and stability...
...Indeed, over three decades in leadership positions at the AFL-CIO, Kirkland devoted himself to ensuring that there were adequate resources to the task of assisting democratic forces and voices in closed societies...
...Yet in his death, Kirkland has been lionized by conservatives and centrists but has been criticized or ignored by much of the left...
...It rests in Kirkland's unique role in the American political firmament...
...Communist who rejected the excesses of the George McGovern wing of the Democratic Party and the New Left movement that emerged in the 1960's...
...He understood that the U.S...
...Kirkland knew the importance of searching for consensus in our foreign and defense policies...
...He keenly understood that a struggle against Communism was being waged A venerable labor leader who fought for freedom...
...Whoever examines the seminal causes and institutions of the Cold War era will find Lane Kirkland's imprint...
...Today U.S.-backed radio is broadcasting into Cuba, China, Serbia, Iraq, and other regions in which hatred and oppression temporarily hold the upper hand...
...foreign policy and led to the left's romantic embrace of various Marxist and quasi-Marxist Third World movements...
...After Communist regimes fell in Central and Eastern Europe, Kirkland was disappointed in the feeble response of the Bush Administration and the then-Democratic Congress...
...Under Kirkland, throughout the 1980's the AFL-CIO was involved in providing the lion's share of clandestine assistance to the Solidarity trade union while it operated underground...
...E arly on, in the 197o's, Kirkland threw his weight behind the dissident movement in Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic states, and reached out to such eminent human rights advocates as Andrei Sakharov, Vladimir Bukovsky, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, all of whom were honored at the AFL-CIO...
Vol. 32 • October 1999 • No. 10
