Odysseus
12-21-2011, 06:13 PM
Elected president following the nonviolent “Velvet Revolution,” Havel oversaw his country’s bumpy transition to democracy.
By J.Y. Smith, Published: December 18
Vaclav Havel, a Czech writer who was imprisoned by his country’s communist rulers, only to become a symbol of freedom and his nation’s first president in the post-communist era, died Dec. 18 at his weekend home in the northern Czech Republic. He was 75.
The death was announced by his assistant, Sabina Tancevova, the Associated Press reported. Mr. Havel underwent surgery for lung cancer in 1996 and had suffered from lung ailments in recent months.
Mr. Havel was a playwright by profession and a political activist by avocation. The two activities were complementary, and each served to gain him a leading place among the dissidents of Eastern Europe who helped bring down the communist empire. His words and deeds resonated far beyond the borders of the former Czechoslovakia, and he was widely recognized for his struggles in behalf of democracy and human dignity.
After being unanimously elected president of Czechoslovakia by the newly free country’s Parliament in December 1989, Mr. Havel set the tone of the new era in a speech Jan. 1, 1990, his first day in office. Communism, he said, was “a monstrous, ramshackle, stinking machine” whose worst legacy was not economic failure but a “spoiled moral environment.”
“We have become morally ill because we are used to saying one thing and thinking another,” he said. “We have learned not to believe in anything, not to care about each other. . . . Love, friendship, mercy, humility, or forgiveness have lost their depths and dimension. . . . They represent some sort of psychological curiosity, or they appear as long-lost wanderers from faraway times.”
In July 1992, he resigned the presidency when it became clear that the country would be dismembered, with the Czech Republic and Slovakia, its eastern neighbor, going their separate ways. The split became formal on Jan. 1, 1993. About three weeks later, the new Czech Parliament called on the country’s most famous citizen to return to the presidency. He remained in office for 10 more years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/vaclav-havel-dissident-playwright-and-former-czech-president-dies/2010/09/21/gIQATAeD2O_story.html
And, a great discussion of the contrasts between Havel and Kim Jong-il:
December 19, 2011
'A Monstrous, Ramshackle, Stinking Machine'
Shoshana Bryen
In an odd cosmic juxtaposition, Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong Il died at nearly the same time. They bounded the opposite ends of 20th Century moral and political thought: a soaring belief in the power of morality and intellect on one end vs. the degradation of the human spirit that comes with the degradation of economic and social norms on the other. The possibility of social, economic and political progress for all people vs. the reality of the slow, grinding poverty and starvation of one's own people accompanied by the threat of nuclear annihilation for others. An international conscience and an international pariah.
The life of one reproached the life of the other.
On his first day in office, Havel called communism "a monstrous, ramshackle, stinking machine" whose worst legacy was a "spoiled moral environment." He said, "We have become morally ill because we are used to saying one thing and thinking another," he said. "We have learned not to believe in anything, not to care about each other... Love, friendship, mercy, humility, or forgiveness have lost their depths and dimension... They represent some sort of psychological curiosity, or they appear as long-lost wanderers from faraway times."
Americans generally regard the collapse of communism, if they regard it at all in the 21st Century, in military and security terms, the demise of the Soviet Union as our existential enemy and the end of the Warsaw Pact. A "peace dividend" for Americans in the form of less defense spending. It meant the opening of Russia, the Baltics and Central Europe for tourism and business; the countries of Central Asia for energy exploration. For Jews, it opened records and sites of centuries of pre-Holocaust Jewish life and culture -- there was the strangely wonderful story of a man who visited the small Polish village from which his grandfather fled, expecting nothing but finding records of his lineage back to the fifteenth century. He felt, he said, complete.
But for those who lived through the gulags, the purges and the daily "spoiled moral environment" and survived to see their liberation from Russia and communism, being complete meant finding and reattaching themselves to the rest of the moral and intellectual world. The "captive nations" of Central Europe and Western Russia have spent the last two decades reassimilating the norms of the capitalist, democratic West. Not always perfectly, not always in a straight line. Havel's passing is a reminder of where they came from and how far they have come.
The passing of Kim Jong Il will likely be a government-orchestrated activity, devoid of intellectual and moral introspection by the people of North Korea. It is hard to ponder the larger order when you're hungry and under the jackboot, whether it is communism in North Korea (or China and Vietnam), traditional Arab dictators, or the stultifying blanket of Islamic radicalism.
It is the obligation of free people to understand on their behalf that the longing to escape the "monstrous, ramshackle, stinking machine" is not confined to any people on any continent in any decade. And to shape our policies accordingly.
Shoshana Bryen has more than 30 years' experience as a defense policy analyst and has been taking American military officers and defense professionals to Israel since 1982 and Jordan since 2004. She was previously senior director for security policy at JINSA.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/12/a_monstrous_ramshackle_stinking_machine.html at December 21, 2011 - 04:07:39 PM CST
By J.Y. Smith, Published: December 18
Vaclav Havel, a Czech writer who was imprisoned by his country’s communist rulers, only to become a symbol of freedom and his nation’s first president in the post-communist era, died Dec. 18 at his weekend home in the northern Czech Republic. He was 75.
The death was announced by his assistant, Sabina Tancevova, the Associated Press reported. Mr. Havel underwent surgery for lung cancer in 1996 and had suffered from lung ailments in recent months.
Mr. Havel was a playwright by profession and a political activist by avocation. The two activities were complementary, and each served to gain him a leading place among the dissidents of Eastern Europe who helped bring down the communist empire. His words and deeds resonated far beyond the borders of the former Czechoslovakia, and he was widely recognized for his struggles in behalf of democracy and human dignity.
After being unanimously elected president of Czechoslovakia by the newly free country’s Parliament in December 1989, Mr. Havel set the tone of the new era in a speech Jan. 1, 1990, his first day in office. Communism, he said, was “a monstrous, ramshackle, stinking machine” whose worst legacy was not economic failure but a “spoiled moral environment.”
“We have become morally ill because we are used to saying one thing and thinking another,” he said. “We have learned not to believe in anything, not to care about each other. . . . Love, friendship, mercy, humility, or forgiveness have lost their depths and dimension. . . . They represent some sort of psychological curiosity, or they appear as long-lost wanderers from faraway times.”
In July 1992, he resigned the presidency when it became clear that the country would be dismembered, with the Czech Republic and Slovakia, its eastern neighbor, going their separate ways. The split became formal on Jan. 1, 1993. About three weeks later, the new Czech Parliament called on the country’s most famous citizen to return to the presidency. He remained in office for 10 more years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/vaclav-havel-dissident-playwright-and-former-czech-president-dies/2010/09/21/gIQATAeD2O_story.html
And, a great discussion of the contrasts between Havel and Kim Jong-il:
December 19, 2011
'A Monstrous, Ramshackle, Stinking Machine'
Shoshana Bryen
In an odd cosmic juxtaposition, Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong Il died at nearly the same time. They bounded the opposite ends of 20th Century moral and political thought: a soaring belief in the power of morality and intellect on one end vs. the degradation of the human spirit that comes with the degradation of economic and social norms on the other. The possibility of social, economic and political progress for all people vs. the reality of the slow, grinding poverty and starvation of one's own people accompanied by the threat of nuclear annihilation for others. An international conscience and an international pariah.
The life of one reproached the life of the other.
On his first day in office, Havel called communism "a monstrous, ramshackle, stinking machine" whose worst legacy was a "spoiled moral environment." He said, "We have become morally ill because we are used to saying one thing and thinking another," he said. "We have learned not to believe in anything, not to care about each other... Love, friendship, mercy, humility, or forgiveness have lost their depths and dimension... They represent some sort of psychological curiosity, or they appear as long-lost wanderers from faraway times."
Americans generally regard the collapse of communism, if they regard it at all in the 21st Century, in military and security terms, the demise of the Soviet Union as our existential enemy and the end of the Warsaw Pact. A "peace dividend" for Americans in the form of less defense spending. It meant the opening of Russia, the Baltics and Central Europe for tourism and business; the countries of Central Asia for energy exploration. For Jews, it opened records and sites of centuries of pre-Holocaust Jewish life and culture -- there was the strangely wonderful story of a man who visited the small Polish village from which his grandfather fled, expecting nothing but finding records of his lineage back to the fifteenth century. He felt, he said, complete.
But for those who lived through the gulags, the purges and the daily "spoiled moral environment" and survived to see their liberation from Russia and communism, being complete meant finding and reattaching themselves to the rest of the moral and intellectual world. The "captive nations" of Central Europe and Western Russia have spent the last two decades reassimilating the norms of the capitalist, democratic West. Not always perfectly, not always in a straight line. Havel's passing is a reminder of where they came from and how far they have come.
The passing of Kim Jong Il will likely be a government-orchestrated activity, devoid of intellectual and moral introspection by the people of North Korea. It is hard to ponder the larger order when you're hungry and under the jackboot, whether it is communism in North Korea (or China and Vietnam), traditional Arab dictators, or the stultifying blanket of Islamic radicalism.
It is the obligation of free people to understand on their behalf that the longing to escape the "monstrous, ramshackle, stinking machine" is not confined to any people on any continent in any decade. And to shape our policies accordingly.
Shoshana Bryen has more than 30 years' experience as a defense policy analyst and has been taking American military officers and defense professionals to Israel since 1982 and Jordan since 2004. She was previously senior director for security policy at JINSA.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/12/a_monstrous_ramshackle_stinking_machine.html at December 21, 2011 - 04:07:39 PM CST