From Havel's book, Summer Meditations, published 1992.
The former president of the Czech Republic, at the end of his introduction to the book,
This book is not a collection of essays, or even less a work of political science. It is merely a series of spontaneously written comments on how I see this country [Czech Republic] and its problems today [31 years ago now], how I see its future, and what I wish to put my efforts behind.
An excerpt from Politics, Morality, and Civility
As ridiculous or Quixotic as it may sound these days, one thing seems certain to me: that it is my responsibility to emphasize, again and again, the moral origin of all genuine politics, to stress the significance of moral values and standards in all spheres of social life, including economics, and to explain that if we don't try, within ourselves, to discover or rediscover or cultivate what I call "higher responsibility," things will turn out very badly indeed for our country.
As ridiculous or Quixotic as it may sound these days, one thing seems certain to me: that it is my responsibility to emphasize, again and again, the moral origin of all genuine politics, to stress the significance of moral values and standards in all spheres of social life, including economics, and to explain that if we don’t try, within ourselves, to discover or rediscover or cultivate what I call “higher responsibility,” things will turn out very badly indeed for our country. The return of freedom to a society that was morally unhinged has produced something it clearly had to produce, and something we therefore might have expected, but which has turned out to be far more serious than anyone could have predicted: an enormous and dazzling explosion of every imaginable human vice. A wide range of questionable or at least morally ambiguous human tendencies, subtly encouraged over the years and, at the same time, subtly pressed to serve the daily operation of the totalitarian system, have suddenly been liberated, as it were, from their straitjacket and given freedom at last. The authoritarian regime imposed a certain order — if that is the right expression for it — on these vices (and in doing so “legitimized” them, in a sense). This order has now been shattered, but a new order that would limit rather than exploit these vices, an order based on freely accepted responsibility to and for the whole of society, has not yet been built — nor could it have been, for such an order takes years to develop and cultivate.
Thus we are witnesses to a bizarre state of affairs: society has freed itself, true, but in some ways it behaves worse than when it was in chains. Criminality has grown rapidly, and the familiar sewage that in times of historical reversal always wells up from the nether regions of the collective psyche has overcrowded into the mass media, especially the gutter press. But there are other, more serious and dangerous symptoms: hatred among nationalities, suspicion, racism, even signs of Fascism; politicking, an unrestrained, unheeding struggle for purely particular interests, unadulterated ambition, fanaticism of every conceivable kind, new and unprecedented varieties of robbery, the rise of different mafias; and a prevailing lack of tolerance, understanding, taste, moderation, and reason. Here is a new attraction to ideologies, too — as if Marxism had left behind it a great, disturbing void that had to be filled at any cost.
It is enough to look around our political scene (whose lack of civility is merely a reflection of the more general crisis of civility). In the months leading up to the June 1992 election, almost every political activity, including debates over extremely important legislation in Parliament, has taken place in the shadow of a pre-election campaign, of an extravagant hunger for power and a willingness to gain the favor of a confused electorate by offering a colorful range of attractive nonsense. Mutual accusations, denunciations, and slander among political opponents know no bounds. One politician will undermine another’s work only because they belong to different political parties. Partisan considerations still visibly take precedence over pragmatic attempts to arrive at reasonable and useful solutions to problems. Analysis is pushed out of the press by scandalmongering. Supporting the government in a good cause is practically shameful; kicking it in the shins, on the other hand, is praiseworthy. Sniping at politicians who declare their support for another political group is a matter of course. Anyone can accuse anyone else of intrigue or incompetence, or of having a shady past and shady intentions.
Demagogy is rife, and even something as important as the natural longing of a people for autonomy is exploited in power plays, as rivals compete in lying to the public.
****
Havel was looking back on the country in which he grew up under a totalitarian Soviet regime. But he was also prescient. What he described in Politics, Morality, and Civility is now rife in our country. A criminal former president continues to try very hard to overthrow the constitutional democratic republic which has thus far survived centuries. The United States has not known extended periods of time without facing immense challenge. What we face now might be the most horrific challenge yet. I hold firm a belief in We the People. We shall deepen our resolve once more to prevent the Fascist takeover at our door at this moment.
