Havel Strikes Chords With Washingtonian Overtones

In music there is a particular phenomenon called the “overtone” which occurs when, for example, as particular note or chord is played on a piano, a sympathetic vibration is heard in corresponding strings, generated by resonant frequency from the playing of the initial note or chord. At some point during my reading of Václav Havel’s political speeches I began to experience a similar sympathetic vibration mentally, but I couldn’t place where the vibration was coming from inside my head. The more of Havel’s speeches I read, the more distinct the overtone became, until one evening while reading Havel’s “The Role of the Czech President” I finally realized exactly what my brain had been buzzing about - George Washington’s “Farewell Address,” written and circulated in the nascent American media almost six months before Washington actually left office in 1797.

At that point I came to understand, at least partially, Havel as a sort of modern-day George Washington, the “Father of the Czech Republic” (a title which I’m sure Havel would decline). I am aware that this perspective tends to betray my thoughts about both men, as well as the particular American-bred bias I have when looking out on the international scene.

Intrigued by this new context, I decided to read Washington’s address again and attempt to place it, a document of continual reference in American democracy, in dialog with Havel’s own statements. Primarily a result of different historical vantage points, Havel and Washington differ in conviction on some matters, particularly those in relation to a nation’s participatory role in the international community. And yet, I find merit in this Havel-Washington comparison, as it appears that Havel may have been an attentive reader of Washington’s valedictory, or that he has somehow arrived at the same conclusions as Washington via his own means. In either case, the views of the two men on four particularly key topics are interestingly often quite congruent.

A dissection of the Farewell Address’ main principles seems to be the most efficient manner of teasing out the various connections of opinion between the two men, utilizing quotes from Washington’s address and Havel’s various presidential speeches to make evident the overtones which for me resonated so forcefully. Regrettably, Washington’s rather verbose style of writing makes succinct quoting essentially impossible, but I’ve attempted to whittle each one down into as concise a form as possible.

In writing his address, Washington, with “a solicitude for your welfare which cannot end but with my life, and the apprehension of danger, natural to that solicitude” took a view of the absolute horizon and enumerated for his fellow citizens the various challenges and concerns which confront elective governments, particularly as they would concern the fledgling United States. While Washington was retiring from the front lines of the American cause “after forty-five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal,” Havel’s observations, no less astute but perhaps more immediate in concern, came from his “short presence in the sphere of ‘high politics’” combined with a lifetime contemplating the problems of Czechoslovakia as a citizen, playwright, and essayist.

United We Stand, Divided We Fail

Washington and Havel both foresaw the need to maintain the unity of their respective nations at a crucial time in history. America was still an incredibly young and vulnerable nation, notwithstanding Washington’s declaration that the country was well-situated for a transfer of power.

The strength of my inclination to do this [retire], previous to the last election, had even led to the preparation of an address to declare it to you; but mature reflection on the then perplexed and critical posture of our affairs with foreign nations, and the unanimous advice of persons entitled to my confidence impelled me to abandon the idea.

I rejoice, that the state of your concerns, external as well as internal, no longer renders the pursuit of inclination incompatible with the sentiment of duty, or propriety; and am persuaded, whatever partiality may be retained for my services, that, in the present circumstances of our country, you will not disapprove my determination to retire.

Likewise, Havel was at the helm of a nation in transition, as the Velvet Revolution swept away the totalitarian government of Gustáv Husák and made the first tentative steps toward democracy, a precarious period for any nation.

Writing in 1796, near the close of his second term in office, Washington implored the American public:

The unity of Government, which constitutes you one people, is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very Liberty, which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee, that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment, that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the Palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion, that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

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While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in Union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations … In this sense it is, that your Union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.

Havel’s appeal to the citizens of Czechoslovakia was similar to Washington’s gentle reminder to Americans of their hard-won struggle for an ideal of freedom and self-determination against the British as both implore society to act collectively for the sake of the mutual good of the whole.

His main concern as the incoming President of Czechoslovakia, a federal republic comprised of two distinct nations, was quite similar in nature, but amplified by tensions not only between ethnic Czechs and Slovaks, but the propensity for the factionalization of the public based on old societal and political roles within the formerly totalitarian nation. In an attempt to remind the country of its mutual responsibility in the abuses of previous government, Havel stated in his first public speech, the New Year’s Address of 1990:

When I talk about the contaminated moral atmosphere, I am not talking just about the gentlemen who eat organic vegetables and do not look out of the plane windows. I am talking about all of us. We had all become used to the totalitarian system and accepted it as an unchangeable fact and thus helped to perpetuate it. In other words, we are all - though naturally to differing extents - responsible for the operation of the totalitarian machinery. None of us is just its victim. We are all also its co-creators.

Havel tied this statement of shared culpability to the equality and mutual interests of the Czech and Slovak peoples later the speech:

My second task [as President] is to guarantee that we approach these elections as two self-governing nations who respect each other’s interests, national identity, religious traditions, and symbols. As a Czech who has given his presidential oath to an important Slovak who is personally close to him, I feel a special obligation — after the bitter experiences that Slovaks had in the past — to see that all the interests of the Slovak nation are respected and that no state office, including the highest one, will ever be barred to it in the future.

His essential implication of the whole of society as accomplices in the ideological enslavement of the nation, coupled with reminding citizens of their shared interests and concerns, was a bold and necessary move, one intended to level any resentment or vindictiveness toward perceived agents of torment under the old regime. This concern about the vetting of an entire society was clearly well-placed, and the losing battle against lustration caused Havel quite a bit of trouble during his tenure as leader of the joint republic.

All Tomorrow’s Parties

In concert with reminding the citizens of the young United States of their shared interest in preserving the liberty which they had fought so hard to obtain, George Washington understood that the liberty of the public was endangered by the coalescing of political opponents into cliques. This development disturbed the elder statesman, particularly as the memory of the suffocating tyranny of the British crown was still fresh in his mind.

To appraise the American public of his concern, Washington wrote:

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

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I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.

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The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.

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It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

Given the subjective reality of his experiences fighting against British absolutism, Washington’s identification of the danger posed by an unscrupulous individual bent on usurping power via the manipulation of a partisan political system was certainly valid at the time, and from a retrospective view, quite prescient.

Operating under a slightly different form of elected government, and probably recognizing the inevitable polarization of the political atmosphere, Havel found a unique way to address the problem of partisan politics by conceiving the role of the Czech President as

an inconspicuous mediator of political negotiations, an occasional consensus-seeker, a hidden stimulator, a creator of understanding, a certain integrating element, something like a guardian of political culture. Instead of concentrating on the “technical” substance of various political disputes, he should concentrate on the way, or style, in which they are resolved. To put it simply: instead of being a “player” himself, he should watch over the rules of the game.

Writing in 1993, Havel seemed not to see political parties as inherently dangerous to elective democracies, as he states in his own valedictory speech as the former President of Czechoslovakia “political parties … are a basic instrument of democracy, but not its purpose and goal.” Washington, looking forward from 1796, disagrees about the usefulness of parties, writing

in Governments purely elective, it [partisan enthusiasm] is a spirit not to be encouraged.

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And, there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

Separating, or rather, elevating, the President above the factional fray is a rather interesting solution to the problem, though one perhaps better suited to the particulars of the Czech government than to the American system. However, as George Washington was willing to concede that

This [partisan] spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

perhaps he would acquiesce to viewing the role of the President as mediator-in-chief, watching over the partisan fires for sign of all-consuming political inferno, as the best possible arrangement. Havel appears to have anticipated this concession when he details the terms for use of presidential prerogative.

The president’s authority should therefore be more that of a statesman and “universally social” than strictly political. It should come into effect at its full strength only in extreme situations, where the president can act as a sort of arbitrator, appeaser, or solution seeker. The authority of his word should mostly rise from the reputation that he wins for his office, not from affiliation with political powers or coalitions who support him.

Such a presidency in America would be quite novel, particularly in the context of the ongoing consolidation of power in the Executive branch and the partisan struggles it has set off with an opposing Congress. And yet, considering what little has been accomplished in the year since the 2006 election, one is forced to wonder how many more national concerns might have been satisfactorily addressed by a mediator-in-chief instead of a decider-in-chief.

One is the Loneliest Number

When Washington’s Farewell Address is cited in historical or political discourse, it seems the most frequently referenced portion of the document is his warning against permanent foreign alliances. This warning is often taken as an anti-Wilsonian mandate, or advocation for isolationism, a policy which a thorough reading of the address does not explicitly support. What Washington advocates is not a flat refusal to participate in the international community. Instead, his desire is that the United States, to the best of its ability, remain neutral in political and commercial entanglements with the rest of the world, noting that to preserve a diplomatic equilibrium with all nations is the best antidote to war, or the best insurance policy for peace and liberty.

In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential, than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

Such a statement is not a demand that the United States remain aloof to the concerns of the rest of the globe, as some have suggested, but the acknowledgment by the leader of a young nation that his country would be vulnerable to foreign entanglements spilling over into domestic trouble, perhaps even a self-destructive civil war.

Washington continued, addressing in particular American relations with Europe, the global center of power and stage of constant political rivalry:

Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

In reviewing this statement it is likely best to give Washington the benefit of the doubt. Little could he have known that, in 120 years’ time, the United States would be poised to become the pre-eminent military and political power on the globe for the next century, nor could he have anticipated that, as Havel petitions in his speech to a joint session of Congress, the United States might one day be in the position to help a former sworn enemy on the path to democracy.

In this respect, were he alive, Washington might well see the limitations of a dogmatically neutral foreign policy, particularly given his country’s much-improved capabilities of self-defense. Instead, what Washington might be inclined to advocate is Havel’s proposed foreign policy of responsibility:

We are still a long way from that “family of man;” in fact, we seem to be receding from the ideal rather than drawing closer to it. Interests of all kinds: personal, selfish, state, national, group and, if you like, company interests still considerably outweigh genuinely common and global interests. We are still under the sway of the destructive and thoroughly vain belief that man is the pinnacle of creation, and not just a part of it, and that therefore everything is permitted. There are still many who say they are concerned not for themselves but for the cause, while they are demonstrably out for themselves and not for the cause at all. We are still destroying the planet that was entrusted to us, and its environment. We still close our eyes to the growing social, ethnic and cultural conflicts in the world. From time to time we say that the anonymous megamachinery we have created for ourselves no longer serves us but rather has enslaved us, yet we still fail to do anything about it.

In other words, we still don’t know how to put morality ahead of politics, science and economics. We are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of all our actions if they are to be moral is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success. Responsibility to the order of Being, where all our actions are indelibly recorded and where, and only where, they will be properly judged.

The interpreter or mediator between us and this higher authority is what is traditionally referred to as human conscience.

If I subordinate my political behaviour to this imperative, I can’t go far wrong. If on the contrary I were not guided by this voice, not even ten presidential schools with 2,000 of the best political scientists in the world could help me.

This is why I ultimately decided after resisting for a long time to accept the burden of political responsibility.

I’m not the first nor will I be the last intellectual to do this. On the contrary, my feeling is that there will be more and more of them all the time. If the hope of the world lies in human consciousness, then it is obvious that intellectuals cannot go on forever avoiding their share of responsibility for the world and hiding their distastes for politics under an alleged need to be independent.

It is easy to have independence in your programme and then leave others to carry out that programme. If everyone thought that way, soon no one would be independent.

Clearly, to accept national responsibility for the “family of man” would be a massive undertaking for the United States, and yet, as Havel points out, striving to address the common interests and issues of this family, far more imperative than any particular national concerns, does not prohibit the realization of all these needs. Havel compellingly illustrates this suggestion when he asks Congress to extend aid to the Soviet Union:

I often hear the question: How can the United States of America help us today? My reply is as paradoxical as the whole of my life has been: You can help us most of all if you help the Soviet Union on its irreversible, but immensely complicated, road to democracy. It is far more complicated than the road open to its former European satellites. You yourselves probably know best how to support, as rapidly as possible, the non-violent evolution of this enormous, multi-national body politic toward democracy and autonomy for all of its peoples. Therefore, it is not fitting for me to offer you any advice. I can only say that the sooner, the more quickly, and the more peacefully the Soviet Union begins to move along the road toward genuine political pluralism, respect for the rights of nations to their own integrity and to a working that is a market economy, the better it will be, not just for Czechs and Slovaks, but for the whole world. And the sooner you yourselves will be able to reduce the burden of the military budget born by the American people. To put it metaphorically, the millions you give to the East today soon will return to you in the form of billions in savings.

That the United States, as the dominant power in the world, would enjoy billions in savings in the long term, not by a foreign policy of interventionism, but by a Havelian policy of responsibility to and consideration for other nations and the general improvement of humanity, seems to mesh well with the Washingtonian idea of eliminating national vulnerability incurred from disputes with foreign nations.

Responsibility to the Order of Being

“Responsibility to the order of Being” is not Havelian code for the institution of organized religion in government, but a reminder that belief in something greater than the self is necessary to give unimpeachable meaning to certain convictions of our society, such as universal human rights. Certainly, to advocate for the government chartering of a particular religion over others in the United States would be a unlawful and egregious violation of the Establishment Clause, but what Havel is encouraging in his Philadelphia Liberty Medal speech is not the favoring of a particular religion over any other, but of the essential need for commonality in belief in something greater than mere humanity, something broader and deeper which safeguards universal truths from the denigrated view of human existence as unremarkable, nonsingular, and incapable of self-transcendence.

Though, as a signer of the Constitution, he was undoubtedly well aware of the Establishment Clause, George Washington understood, as Havel does, the necessity removing the benefactor which bestowed inalienable rights upon humanity from exile in the private sphere and publicly acknowledging the presence of an order higher than humanity.

Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. … Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who, that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?

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Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and Morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great Nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt, that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages, which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its Virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature.

I believe Washington’s use of “Religion” instead of Havel’s more generalized acknowledgment of humanity’s place in a religiously-neutral higher order is merely a function of semantics, particularly if “Religion” is taken to signify “any system or institution which one engages with in order to foster a sense of meaning or relevance in relation to something greater than oneself.”

Havel seems to state, at considerably greater length throughout the course of his speech in Philadelphia, essentially the same conviction as Washington:

After all, the very principle of inalienable human rights, conferred on man by the Creator, grew out of the typically modern notion that man as a being capable of knowing nature and the world was the pinnacle of creation and lord of the world. This modern anthropocentrism inevitably meant that He who allegedly endowed man with his inalienable rights began to disappear from the world. He was so far beyond the grasp of modern science that he was gradually pushed into a sphere of privacy of sorts, if not directly into a sphere of private fancy that is, to a place where public obligations no longer apply. The existence of a higher authority than man himself simply began to get in the way of human aspirations.

The idea of human rights and freedoms must be an integral part of any meaningful world order. Yet I think it must be anchored in a different place, and in a different way, than has been the case so far. If it is to be more than just a slogan mocked by half the world, it cannot be expressed in the language of a departing era, and it must not be mere froth floating on the subsiding waters of faith in a purely scientific relationship to the world.

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A modern philosopher once said: “Only a God can save us now.”

Yes, the only real hope of people today is probably a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in the Earth and, at the same time, the cosmos. This awareness endows us with the capacity for self-transcendence. Politicians at international forums may reiterate a thousand times that the basis of the new world order must be universal respect for human rights, but it will mean nothing as long as this imperative does not derive from the respect of the miracle of Being, the miracle of the universe, the miracle of nature, the miracle of our own existence. Only someone who submits to the authority of the universal order and of creation, who values the right to be a part of it and a participant in it, can genuinely value himself and his neighbours, and thus honour their rights as well.

It logically follows that, in today’s multicultural world, the truly reliable path to coexistence, to peaceful coexistence and creative cooperation, must start from what is at the root of all cultures and what lies infinitely deeper in human hearts and minds than political opinion, convictions, antipathies or sympathies. It must be rooted in self-transcendence. Transcendence as a hand reached out to those close to us, to foreigners, to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe; transcendence as a deeply and joyously experienced need to be in harmony even with what we ourselves are not, what we do not understand, what seems distant from us in time and space, but with which we are nevertheless mysteriously linked because, together with us, all this constitutes a single world; transcendence as the only real alternative to extinction.

The Declaration of Independence, adopted 218 years ago in this building, 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.

Dénouement is only the Beginning

To what degree Havel has read George Washington’s Farewell Address, and whether his ideas spring from this work or from others, I cannot say for certain, particularly as I have not yet read To the Castle and Back. What I already recognize is the necessity to achieve a Havelian understanding of what a modern democracy can and should be about, particularly in a nation that appears to be increasingly losing its adherence to a democratic ideal.

What ends with these few musings on similarities between Washington and Havel only sets a new cycle of learning and understanding in motion. Perhaps what is written here will need to be substantially redressed in later contemplation, but as a departure point, it seems to provide secure footing for the launching of a new endeavor.

finit et commence