[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 197 (Tuesday, December 20, 2011)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2335]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         HONORING VACLAV HAVEL

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, December 20, 2011

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to recognize and pay tribute to 
former Czech president and play-wright Vaclav Havel. He began as one of 
Czechoslovakia's best-known dissidents as he pushed for democratic 
change during the dark days of the Soviet Union. He went on to become 
the first president of the Czech Republic.
  I submit for the Record an article from Monday's Washington Post 
where post columnist Michael Gerson, recalled Havel's message to a 
joint session of Congress in which he urged Americans to put ``morality 
ahead of politics'' and to foster ``responsibility--responsibility to 
something higher than my family, my country, my company, my success.'' 
This same message could not come at a more timely moment. I commend it 
to my colleagues.

               [From the Washington Post, Dec. 19, 2011]

                      Havel's Revolution of Truth

                          (By Michael Gerson)

       As the heroes of the Cold War walk off into the mist--
     Ronald Reagan, then John Paul II, now Vaclav Havel--each 
     departure makes that world more distant and foreign. But it 
     is too early for forgetfulness, which would also be 
     ingratitude.
       Once in a nightmare, European dissidents lived in prison, 
     in whole nations that were prisons. They were confirmed to 
     mental hospitals by governments sustained through the 
     promotion of mass delusion. They were forced to make 
     confessions of imagined crimes by regimes that were criminal 
     enterprises.
       And then the government of Czechoslovakia went a step too 
     far. In 1976, it arrested a band called The Plastic People of 
     the Universe for offenses against cultural conformity. This 
     was a perfect symbol of communism: a system that could not 
     tolerate the unauthorized singing of songs. The regime's 
     stupidity undermined its capacity to intimidate. Havel--a 
     countercultural intellectual and rock fan--co-founded the 
     Charter 77 human rights movement. Never has bad popular music 
     been put to better use.
       In history's great refutation of historical pessimism, 
     Europe's nightmare turned out to be a ``fairy tale''--a 
     phrase Havel used to describe his experience. On Oct. 27, 
     1989, Havel was sent to prison for the fourth time. That 
     December, 300,000 Czechs turned out in Wenceslas Square to 
     chant, ``Havel to the Castle!'' By New Year's Day, Havel 
     could declare, ``People, your government has returned to 
     you!'' In February, he addressed a joint session of Congress 
     as the leader of a free Czechoslovakia. It was four months 
     from prisoner to visiting president.
       Havel helped overthrow communism by discrediting its 
     central tenet. Scientific socialism taught that history is 
     the outworking of massive economic and social forces that the 
     individual could not hope to budge. Ideals, Marx sniffed, 
     were ``phantoms formed in the human brain.'' As Winston 
     Churchill might have said of Havel: Some phantom. Some brain. 
     Havel relentlessly exposed communist ideology as a confidence 
     game, a Ponzi scheme, dependent on broad deference to obvious 
     lies. One ideal--a commitment to truth--proved to be a lever 
     long enough to move the world.
       Reading back over Havel's landmark 1978 essay, ``The Power 
     of the Powerless,'' is like wading through molasses scattered 
     with diamonds. The intellectual jargon is thick--and then 
     comes a crystalline phrase, a perfectly polished insight. 
     Communist regimes require people to ``live within a lie,'' 
     demanding dehumanizing rituals of loyalty. He describes his 
     country as plastered with slogans but lacking in genuine 
     belief. ``Each person,'' he says, ``somehow succumbs to a 
     profane trivialization of his inherent humanity.'' They drift 
     together ``down the river of pseudolife.''
       Yet in a society ruled by lies, truth gains a ``singular, 
     explosive, incalculable political power.'' The desire to live 
     authentically is the equivalent of a fifth column--a 
     revolution hidden in a whole society. Truth advances in a 
     political speech, in a hunger strike, in a play, in a song. 
     ``It is a bacteriological weapon, so to speak,'' says Havel, 
     ``utilized when conditions are ripe by a single civilian to 
     disarm an entire division.'' Havel was a historical prophet 
     of the first order--and the fulfillment of his own prophesy.
       ``Living within the truth,'' according to Havel, is an 
     inherently moral enterprise. It requires sacrifice, which 
     presupposes a ``sense of responsibility'' for others--a 
     belief in love, friendship and compassion. In the company of 
     John Paul II and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Havel believed that 
     political renewal starts in moral and personal renewal. In 
     one letter from prison he wrote, ``But who should begin? Who 
     should break this vicious circle? The only possible place to 
     begin is with myself . . . . Whether all is really lost or 
     not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost.''
       Uncomfortably, Havel also applied this moral vision to the 
     prosperous nations of the West. He criticized ``a selfish 
     cult of material success'' and ``the absence of faith in a 
     higher order of things.'' Consumerism and relativism, he 
     warned, could also strip people of humanity and 
     responsibility. Even the wealthy and powerful can live within 
     the lie. In his speech to Congress, Havel urged Americans to 
     put ``morality ahead of politics'' and to foster 
     ``responsibility--responsibility to something higher than my 
     family, my country, my company, my success.''
       American intellectual Noam Chomsky called Havel's speech an 
     ``embarrassingly silly and morally repugnant Sunday School 
     sermon''--itself a statement both silly and repugnant.
       The Czech Republic had this rare advantage: Its leading 
     intellectual believed in the ideals of Western civilization. 
     And by his faith in civilization, he helped to save it.