During his tour of the United States last November, Lech Walesa underscored this point vividly.
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Lech Walesa was the chairman of the Solidarity movement that undermined Communist rule in Poland.
We cherish the tradition of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Jelena Bonner, Lech Walesa and Ronald Reagan.
Lech Walesa, a shipyard worker, walked into her flower shop one day, and the rest is history.
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The Poles wanted Lech Walesa to receive the medal on Karski's behalf, but the White House nixed the choice.
Is there a North Korean Andrei Sakharov, Lech Walesa or Nelson Mandela?
As Lech Walesa, Poland's first freely elected post-war president, noted, it is easy to turn an aquarium into fish soup.
Lech Walesa and his fledgling reform movement, Solidarity, were making their bid for individual freedoms and economic liberty in Poland.
Pope John Paul's engagement with Poland created space not just for the Catholic Church, but for labor leaders like Lech Walesa.
Likewise with Lech Walesa and his Solidarity trade union in Eastern Europe.
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In 1995, Polish President Lech Walesa, a former shipyard rebel, suffered bitter defeat in a re-election bid at the hands of ex-Communist Aleksander Kwasniewski.
Broadcasting behind the Iron Curtain, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were praised by Poland's Lech Walesa as being critical to the struggle against communism.
But market reforms haven't been kind to the historic shipyards of Gdansk, where the Solidarity Union movement began with union leader and future Polish president, Lech Walesa.
Within a year Germany was reunited, the dissident playwright Vaclav Havel was president of Czechoslovakia and a union activist named Lech Walesa was Poland's head of state.
In 1980 the rise of Solidarity--a mass movement led by a shipyard electrician, Lech Walesa (later, free Poland's first president)--posed a mortal threat to the Evil Empire.
She was sent because the fear was that if Lech Walesa, who was no longer imprisoned, had left the country, he would not be allowed back in.
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Poland was then under martial law, and Lech Walesa was being held in an internment camp, so the story would be that the Nobel winner was in jail.
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As the Commission report notes, Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel have made it clear that RFE still has an important role to play in the political life and information needs of their countries.
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The Oslo Freedom Forum was co-chaired by Poland's ex-president, Lech Walesa, and anti-Soviet gadflys like Vladimir Bukovsky and Garry Kasparov featured prominently to the confusion of Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, who was staying in the same hotel.
Above all, the world would know that a President Santorum would be determined to revive the hope that Poland's Lech Walesa declares lost the hope that America would be the last line of defense for freedom and virtue.
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Warsaw, Poland (CNN) -- Lech Walesa, the man who led Poland to freedom in its Cold War struggle with the Soviet Bloc, is refusing to apologize for suggesting gay Polish politicians should "sit behind a wall" in the country's parliament.
If 30-odd years ago, the Polish electrician Lech Walesa had called his new union the All-Gdansk Shipbuilders and Shunters instead of the simple and iconic Solidarity, my guess is that East German border guards would still be goose-stepping round Checkpoint Charlie.
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Eventually the government was forced to negotiate and on August 31, 1980, workers at the massive Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, led by an electrician named Lech Walesa, signed a deal giving workers the right to strike and form trade unions.
The former Secretary of Defense urges that the West today adopt an approach similar to the one taken by President Reagan in 1981 and 1982 as Polish reformers under the leadership of Lech Walesa challenged the central authorities in Warsaw and Moscow.
Three other Nobel peace laureates were also unable to attend their ceremonies due to political reasons -- human rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi, Polish trade union leader Lech Walesa, and Russian Cold War dissident Andrei Sakharov -- but spouses or other relatives were able to accept the awards on their behalf.
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