Bruce Bawer has a fascinating essay on the life and achievements of Vaclav Havel. For those who may not know, Havel was a playwright who gave up a potential life of privilege as a government-sponsored writer to become a leader of the dissident movement in Communist Czechoslovakia in the 1970s. As a result, he spent years in horrible communist prisons. During that period, he also wrote The Power of the Powerless, in my view the best of all books on life in a totalitarian state.
After the fall of communism in his country in 1989 (thanks in part to the efforts of the dissident movement he helped lead), Havel became the first president of the new democratic Czechoslovakia.
As a general rule, I'm not a big believer in heroes. Many of the people held up as such actually do more harm than good. However, if any currently living person deserves to be admired as a genuine hero who really did make the world better through his courageous acts, Havel does.
"... in comparison to the conditions imposed by US tyranny and violence, East Europe under Russian rule was practically a paradise..."
I mean, what would a mere dissident who'd spent years in Czech prisons know about real repression? Pussy! Chompsky has to put up with the US media Manufacturing Consent each day! He survived Bush v Gore and the PATRIOT Act!
Way too many to list here. But Che Guevara - a brutal oppressor and mass murderer worshipped as a hero by college students around the world - is a particularly blatant example.
See here.
Nice try, Chomsky's inanity was written in 1990, shortly after Havel's Feb 21, 1990 address to Congress, which was before even the first Gulf War.
What is it about the Czechs? The current President Vavlav Klaus seems to be head and shoulders above any other head of state in Europe or the rest of world for that matter.
I'm sure Chomsky was comparing our third world client states with Eastern Europe, but that isn't a valid comparison. Let him compare our 1990 era third world client states with the Soviet third world client states I don't think you'll find much of a difference. Or third world countries in general now and then, Zimbabwe, Burma, and the Sudan are hardly US client states, but somehow injustice continues. There has always been lot of injustice in the world, justifying what was done to the Czechs and Havel because of worse horrors elsewhere is justifying injustice.
The Czechs were particularly sympathetic victims because they were a thriving democracy until the French and British sold them down the river in '39, and then no sooner than the war was over a Soviet putsch kept them in chains for another 40 years. Sympathetic except to the likes of Chomsky, Cockburn, and other fellow travelers; Havel and the Czechs made the unforgivable error of casting their lot with capitalism and America.
If I had never heard of Havel before, I'd be immediately sold on him based on the comment above alone.
Anyone who actually cares what Chomsky says is a real dope. If America is so bad, tell Chomsky to teach at one of the many prestiguous technical schools they have in our enemies' countries, like....hmmm, er, gee whiz, uh...