QUOTE: Jay Nordinger:
"One of the great clichés is, “Freedom is indivisible,� and it’s true. Solzhenitsyn, a Russian former schoolteacher, inspired strugglers all over the world, and he still does. When Armando Valladares publishes Against All Hope, about Cuba, it lifts dissidents in some dungeon in China.
So I was moved to read about Vaclav Havel’s recent meeting with Cuban exiles in Miami. Here is an excerpt from Carol Rosenberg’s report in the Miami Herald:
“Among the Cuban dissidents who greeted Havel at the Freedom Tower was Ramon Colas — just eight months in Miami. A founder of the independent library of Las Tunas, he said he discovered the Czech thinker in 1998, when a copy of ‘The Power of the Powerless’ arrived among donated books.
“‘It was extremely emotional to meet him,’ said Colas, 40. . . . The former child psychologist said he lost his job at a Cuban hospital because he worked with opposition groups inspired by Havel’s books. ‘Havel showed me the power of living in the world of truth. He told me that, even in the middle of the Castro dictatorship, I was a free man.’�...
While we’re on Eastern European heroes, I noted that Lech Walesa has just started a TV show on fishing. And isn’t he entitled? That is a fruit of freedom: Rather than risk your neck for liberation, you can talk about fishing — or do it."
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