First circulated underground in communist Czechoslovakia in October 1978, Václav Havel's brilliant dissection of totalitarianism, "The Power of the Powerless," retains its salience four decades later. It should be required reading for politicians given to describing the Knights of Columbus as an “extremist” organization because of the Knights' pro-life convictions and activism.
Havel began his essay with a homely but devastating vignette. A Czechoslovak greengrocer is arranging vegetables in his shop window. There, amid the carrots and onions, he puts a small sign, "Workers of the World, Unite!" Why? Havel asks. What does that dreary Marxist slogan have to do with vegetables? Does the sign manifest the greengrocer's fervent political convictions? Does the greengrocer feel an irrepressible desire to share the communist gospel with all who pass by?
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