Free to choose

As we go to press (12/13/81), martial law has been declared in Poland. Western reaction was swift. Helmut Schmidt assured the assaulted Poles of his strict policy of non-intervention; Austrian PLO buddy Kreisky granted exile to all Poles as soon as he learned that not a single Pole could make it across the borders; and one of Washington's more articulate spokesmen announced "The big danger is you might get into a wildcat situation," which is Potomacese for "God forbid that the Poles should defend themselves!"

Even at this early point we can feel Washington holding its breath, to be exhaled in a long sigh of relief if the viceroys manage to cow nine million Solidarity members with their own colonial troops, not using the Soviet divisions massed on the border for anything beyond naked extortion.

No, we are not asking the US to go to war over Poland. All we ask is that the US stop being a party to this oppression: that it deny history's most vicious tyranny the treatment accorded to legitimate governments, the food that its Marxist economy is unable to produce, and the technology without which it would eventually collapse.

This closely parallels our point of view in energy. We are not asking for abolition of the Bill of Rights to silence the opponents of abundant energy; to the contrary, what we object to is censorship, persecution, denial of equality under the law (radon emission standards!), intimidation, and witch hunts. Nor are we asking for a moratorium on supplementary energy sources (though we do object to their fraudulent characterization as "alternative" sources).

But until we stand corrected by such a free choice, we believe that a free market would no more choose to get its gigawatts from sunbeams and chicken manure than free Poles would choose oppression by surrogates of a foreign tyranny.