In Poland, a race of giants, begat a nation of dwarves.
Our great ancestors from XV-XVII centuries were great politicians and men of state -- interested as they were in
- both fairness and effectiveness of the laws of the state
- guaranteeing personal liberties and finding the balance between them and the general need for the existence of some sort of a state
- the checks and balances between the king and the parliament
- the proper way to raise, pay for and control the army (which was always under civilian control in the Commonwealth of Both Nations)
- the proper balance in the relations between nobility and cities, and between different nations within the state (the state was pretty corporatist, a feudal inheritance)
- proper procedures for the judiciary in order to guarantee its independence
- proper methods of making and vetting laws (a law must not only be made, but it must also fit in with the preexisting law, which may be customary, or Roman, or canonic)
- public education necessary to lift the desolate from extreme poverty
- promoting trade
- curbing the power of the Catholic church without actually persecuting it (Sigismund III, who had the right of censorship, refused to censor an Anabaptist tract stating in his rescript on the matter: "I shall not allow it that in this Republic, like in some Spain, free men may not be able to read freely what they freely choose", etc.)
- etc.
In other words, these men were interested in the sort of stuff that normal nations do and should care about. Reading documents from 1620's strikes one: how modern, enlightened, why, how Anglo-Saxon these men were with their well-balanced combination of interest in propriety, effectiveness, and -- personal interest. (They never forgot for a moment, that politics is also a debate about who gets what and did not attempt to brand it as immoral).
But all modern Polish politicians do now is squabble over "moral issues", such as whether X cooperated with the secret police in 1972 and whether Y is not putting his business interests ahead of national security and whether Z (opposed to American rockets) is not in fact a Russian agent and a traitor, and whom to honor and whom to damn (by naming streets after them), etc. while the simplest problems -- such as paying us for property seized by the state after 1945 and still remaining in the hands of this very same state -- go unaddressed because "the state is poor" (and of course remains so precisely because it does not move to solve these problems).
You see, occupied nations struggling for independence, do not have politicians, they have activists; and they do not have laws, they have "moral damnation" ("public opinion" whatever you call it) for all who don't toe the nationalist line.
And they of course turn to extreme positions (since these are easiest to manifest).
And -- to religious fundamentalism.
Poland was not particularly Catholic (or anti-semitic or anti-anything, actually; in fact the Parliament had at one point Protestant Majority in the 1500's); it was not, I say, particularly Catholic until 1760's when the Bar Confederacy -- in fact, out first national insurrection against Russia -- was raised (as an act of desperation) in the name of The Virgin.
It is always so, hopeless cases, like that of Chechnia, require divine help and go about it by selling their souls to the devil.
We have been sold to the devil and we are still in his hell. Polish politicians still prefer to play activists, talk about morals rather than laws, and they especially love to pose prettily with the flag. Must a generation pass before things become normal here? Will they ever become normal?
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Marshall Pilsudski once explaining his youthful fling with socialism (he had been a ranking member of the PPS) said: "I got off the tram named 'Socialism' at the stop named 'Independence'". Is it perhaps time for Poles to get off the tram named "Independence" at a stop called "Personal Liberty".
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