Havel's description of the sense of community that arose in connection with the trial of the Plastic People of the Universe (who can explain rock band names?) put in mind of another author I haven't picked up for quite some time - M. Scott Peck (specifically A Different Drum, his book on the phenomenon of community). Haven't yet had time to pursue it in any depth, but I DID run onto a quote the resonated with Capek's staking out the radical center-
"When people ask me to define myself politically, I tell them that I am a radical conservative. Unless it is Thursday, when I say I am a radical moderate. The word "radical" comes from the latin radix, meaning root--the same word from which we get "radish." The proper radical is one who tries to get to the root of things, not to be distracted by superficials, to see the woods for the trees. It is good to be a radical. Anyone who thinks deeply will be one. In the dictionary the closest synonym to "radical" is "fundamentalist." Which only makes sense. Someone who gets down to the root of things is someone who gets down to fundamentals. Yet in our North American culture these words have come to have opposite meanings, as if a radical were necessarily some left-wing, bomb-throwing anarchist and fundamentalist automatically some right-wing primitive thinker."
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