When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.
—Vaclav Havel
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Tag Archives: Vaclav Havel
Quote of the Day
The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.
—Václav Havel
Quote of the Day
The Declaration of Independence states that the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him with it.
—Václav Havel
Quote of the Day
Those that say that individuals are not capable of changing anything are only looking for excuses.
—Vaclav Havel
Quote of the Day
Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.
—Václav Havel
Quote of the Day
The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.
—Vaclav Havel
Quote of the Day
The only lost cause is one we give up on before we enter the struggle.
—Václav Havel
Quote of the Day
The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world.
—Václav Havel
Quote of the Day
Truth and love must prevail over lies and hate.
—Václav Havel
Taking History Back
There’s a new blog out there called Velvet Revolution. It’s not one of Brett Kimberlin’s Lord Voldemort’s scams. It’s about the Velvet Revolution. The real one. The one led by Vaclav Havel.
Brett Kimberlin, and his associate Brad Friedman, do not own the name “Velvet Revolution”. They do not, and cannot, claim trademark or copyright protection in the term, because in the realm of politics, where Kimberlin and Friedman seek to meddle, the term “Velvet Revolution” is more generic than “Jell-O”.
Likewise, we do not own the name “Velvet Revolution”. No one owns the term. The Czechs and Slovaks who put their lives on the line in 1989 have a pretty strong moral claim, but they’re all in MittelEuropa. The Czechs and Slovaks have bigger problems than one terrorist moonbat making a mockery of a First Amendment that they don’t have anyway.
So we’re taking the name back, for them.
Brilliant.
UPDATE–Other folks are picking up on this new site. Bob Belvedere. Michelle Malkin.
Get ’em skeered and keep the skeer on ’em!
UPDATE 2–The real Velvet Revolution is asking bloggers to link and blog roll the site (and put it on Twitter and Facebook) in order to move it up above Lord Voldemort’s site on Google, Bing, and the like. It is now in the Hogewash! blog roll. As The Right Sphere notes:
It’s easy, effective, and will work if enough people with blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts do it. Part of Kimberlin’s strategy has to be SEO based. This is why he’s so afraid of people writing about him. The more people write about him, the higher those stories – instead of his preferred links – get listed on search results. And the more people see who Kimberlin is the more people will know that he is trying to shut down free speech.
This really isn’t a partisan thing. Every blogger should be condemning this attack on our right to speak.
Enough is enough. We will not be silenced.
I’m Not Making This Up, You Know
Neil Clark as a piece in The Guardian on the late Vaclav Havel in which he tries to assert that Vaclav Havel wasn’t really so great as we think.
No one questions that Havel, who went to prison twice, was a brave man who had the courage to stand up for his views. Yet the question which needs to be asked is whether his political campaigning made his country, and the world, a better place.
Havel’s anti-communist critique contained little if any acknowledgement of the positive achievements of the regimes of eastern Europe in the fields of employment, welfare provision, education and women’s rights. Or the fact that communism, for all its faults, was still a system which put the economic needs of the majority first.
OK, I realize that we’re dealing with The Guardian, but isn’t it a bit late to be talking about “the positive achievements of the the regimes of eastern Europe”? Does anyone with IQ greater than room temperature (Celsius) believe that the Czechs and the Slovaks would prefer to return to their pre-1989 governance or economy?
Mr. Clark could reduce his carbon footprint if he stopped smoking that stuff.
Quote of the Day
Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.
—Vaclav Havel
Vaclav Havel, R. I. P.
Vaclav Havel has died at his country home near Prague. He was 75.
He was a man who not only ended the communist oppression in his country but also did it without bloodshed.
The BBC has an obituary here.
UPDATE—Ed Morrissey notes that:
[T]he Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Barack Obama, Al Gore, and Yasser Arafat — but not to Vaclav Havel, who brought down a tyranny without ever firing a bullet. This should shower everlasting shame on the Norwegian Nobel Committee.