I am fourth-gerneration American. My father's family is Czech, so much so that my father, third generation in this country, spoke no English until he went to school. He apparently resented this because by the time of my childhood, he recalled no Czech. It was my grandmother who tried to teach me the language (a difficult, almost impossible task) and instilled in me an almost Pavlovian respect for Thomas Masaryk, who fought for freedom from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (My father used to complain when I said I was Czech. "Her father's American and she's Czech. Amazing.")
My grandmother's respect for Masaryk resulted in my respect for Havel after her death, although I only followed the situation in the Czech Republic, then Czechoslavakia, in passing. When we were at Madame Tussaud's in London last year, I, usually camera-shy, agreed to have my picture taken with the Havel figure. Who knows, in a few generations, they may not realize it was a wax figure and think that their ancestor was more important than she was.
Which brings me to my rant. the New Yorker has a piece on Havel, the point of which is that Havel is a liberal and not ashamed to say so and the Democrats in the US should be as proud as he is, instead of cowering before Bush. Bah! I say, bah! The liberalism of Havel bears little resemblance to the liberalism that I hide from today. Here is the Havel liberalism:
Havel is a liberal—and, unlike many American liberals, he is proud to proclaim it. As he begins to make his exit, it is worth adding up what his liberalism has wrought. He helped bring freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and freedom of commerce to his country.
The liberals in the US, with their attacks on religion in the public sphere which has morphed into an attack on Christianity, which should not be allowed to poke its head out of the shadows, and their taxation which threatens to quash all commerce, have forgotten these ideals. (I won't get into the freedom of the press because I am tired of the liberal bias-conservative bias argument.) That Havel differs from US liberals is acknowledged by the New Yorker almost as an afterthought:
But Havel has also, unlike some other European leaders, refused to renounce, or even flinch from, the potential of power, even armed power, in the name of security and justice. His government pushed (in vain) for the West to intervene more quickly and completely in Rwanda. He pressed for armed intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo. And now, in the age of stateless terrorism, he is unabashedly in favor, as he said in New York, of the principle that "evil must be confronted in its womb and, if there is no other way to do it, then it has to be dealt with by the use of force."
What? He doesn't blame the American way of life for the attacks? Now there's a liberal I can live with. No wonder Havel is proud to call himself a liberal.
Posted by Justene Adamec at December 31, 2002 10:13 AM