When I think of Sen. John McCain, I think of Vaclav Havel.

Havel, a writer, was a political prisoner under the Czech Communists who ran his country as part of the Soviet empire. McCain was a war prisoner in Communist Vietnam and wants to be our next president.

The Czech Communists despised and persecuted intellectuals such as Havel, who defended the weak against the tyranny of the state. To McCain and running mate Sarah Palin, these would be "cultural elites."

Havel wrote and organized in defense of human rights. The totalitarian regime was intolerant of academics and "uppity" types. Havel was imprisoned more than once for subversion (aka terrorism). After his release in 1983, he kept at it and was jailed again, in 1989.

You could say that the people who appealed for Havel's release, who read his work, and who demanded justice and liberty "palled around" with a terrorist. Havel was among those responsible for the Velvet Revolution, the bloodless rebellion that led to the overthrow of Communism in what then was known as Czechoslovakia.

Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia in 1989. Seven words defined his inaugural address: "We live in a contaminated moral environment."

"We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought," Havel said. "We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore one another, to care only about ourselves. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their peculiarities."

Said Havel: "The previous regime — armed with its arrogant and intolerant ideology — reduced man to a force of production and nature to a tool of production. … It reduced gifted and autonomous people, skillfully working in their own country, to nuts and bolts of some monstrously huge, noisy and stinking machine, whose real meaning is not clear to anyone. … 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 also its co-creators. ... Freedom and democracy include participation and therefore responsibility from us all."

John McCain and Sarah Palin have contaminated our moral environment with their arrogant and intolerant ideology that preys on ignorance, fear and despair.

When I think of John McCain, I think of Nelson Mandela.

Mandela, a revolutionary (aka terrorist), became the first president to win a multiracial election in South Africa. Some might suggest that George W. Bush palled with a terrorist when, in 2002, he presented Mandela the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation's highest civilian honor. That tops being named Citizen of the Year in Chicago.

At his trial, in 1964, Mandela said, "I am the first accused." He also said: "During my lifetime, I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

After Mandela's release, in 1990, critics said to expect violence. Yet he and President F.W. de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. Throughout his life, Mandela remained a peacekeeper and hopemonger.

"The calm and tolerant atmosphere that prevailed during the elections depicts the type of South Africa we can build," Mandela said after he was elected president. "It set the tone for the future. We might have our differences, but we are one people with a common destiny in our rich variety of culture, race and tradition. … Now is the time for celebration. … Let our celebrations be in keeping with the mood set in the elections — peaceful, respectful, disciplined — showing we are a people ready to assume the responsibilities of government."

When I think of John McCain, I think of Barack Obama, who reminds me of what Elie Wiesel — Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate — told Congress in 1999: "Together we walk towards the new millennium, carried by profound fear and extraordinary hope."

Rhonda Chriss Lokeman (RCLCreators@kc.rr.com) is a contributing editor to The Kansas City Star. To find out more about Rhonda Chriss Lokeman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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