We’ve lost one of the great heroes of the 20th century.
Vaclav Havel, a man who was (in chronological order) an important playwright, a hero of the struggle against communism, and founding President of the Czech Republic, is dead at 75.
Of the three, Havel’s role in the struggle against communism was far and away the most important. In a country in which the state’s (and in turn Moscow’s) imprimatur was necessary for a playwright to make a living, Havel refused to buckle under or avoid criticizing the great evil that was communism. In the wake of Prague Spring, his works were banned and he was repeatedly imprisoned, but he kept speaking out, finally helping lead the Velvet Revolution and, after the fall of Communism, setting the stage for the “Velvet Divorce,” in which the Czech Republic and Slovakia split peacefully into two separate nations, even though he opposed it.
Havel, unlike Yasser Arafat, Le Duc Tho and Barack Obama, never won a Nobel Peace Prize, despite doing more for peace, justice and freedom than the vast majority of winners.
Understand that there are people as noble, brave and truthful as Havel sitting in jail in Cuba and China this very moment, many of whom who have been beaten and tortured for speaking truth to power. And Havel, in and out of power, never stopped fighting for the victims of communism, as shown by this video:
