Vaclav Havel - Dead At 77

I grew up during the Cold War and it's collapse. My father was a soldier who trained and taught for 32 years in a war that had no battles. There were times that I thought the world was going to end because I couldn't believe the Soviet Union would ever break apart.

Then Vaclav Havel came around and he said NO to his Russian masters. He exposed the cracks in the system. From that crack the whole Iron Curtain came crashing down. It was a beautiful thing to see.

The last troops pull out of Iraq on the same day that Havel dies? You can't tell me the Universe doesn't have a sense of the ironic. This is a turning point for America. How they react to this homecoming (which the President failed to capitalize on), at Christmas of all things, will either doom or save the American Empire.

I hope both these events embolden the right kind of individuals to fight for change. Last time we got the Tea Party and we know what creature that movement morphed into. I hope the kids out making trouble this Spring learn some lessons from the life of this great man.


RIP: Václav Havel, Czech playwright, politician, and iconic pro-democracy dissident, passed away today in his home village of Hrádeček. He was 75.

“Vaclav Havel left us today,” read a short statement from Havel’s assistant, Sabina Tancevova, on his website.

A staunch anti-communist activist and co-author of the Charter 77 manifesto (inspired by the arrest of an underground rock band), Havel’s unwavering opposition to the oppressive regime that ruled Czechoslovakia for forty years eventually led to the non-violent Velvet Revolution that overthrew the regime he referred to as “Absurdistan.”

Soon after he became his country’s first democratically elected president, as well as its last: Havel oversaw the 1993 breakup of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

He was elected again, this time as his own nation’s first President. He served two terms over 10 years, remaining popular both at home and abroad throughout his presidency.

Asked in an interview a few years back if he would prefer to be remembered for his contributions as a playwright or politician, Havel responded: “I would like it to say that I was a playwright who acted as a citizen, and thanks to that he later spent a part of his life in a political position.”


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