Yes, the difference IS America's business!

Two notable world figures died over the weekend.

One was Vaclav Havel, Czech playwright, freedom fighter, and president; founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on Human Rights and Communism; and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Order of Canada, the Four Freedoms Award, the Ambassador of Conscience Award, and many similar honors; and, by any measure, one of the Twentieth Century's greatest heroes of human freedom and dignity. At the time of his death, he was president of the Human Rights Foundation.

"Vaclav to the (Prague) Castle!" was the battle cry of the "Velvet Revolution" of November and December, 1989, in which the long-suffering Czechs and Slovaks at last threw off the Russian and Communist yoke. A shy and self-effacing man,  Havel developed the habit of not looking those with whom he spoke in the eye- because avoiding looking his Communist jailers in the eye that was a way in which he had been able to maintain a certain amount of personal power and control under interrogation and torture.

Bill Clinton has compared Havel to Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.  An inveterate chain smoker, this great man died of lung cancer last Saturday.

Kim Jong Il, on the other hand, was one of modern history's greatest monsters. A ruthless dictator who enjoyed the lavish life of a playboy while his people literally starved, the self-styled "Dear Leader" of North Korea was an erratic, unpredictable man who subordinated the vital needs of his suffering people to the maintenance of the fifth-largest standing army in the world, an ambitious ballistic missile program, and the development of nuclear weapons, he demanded absolute obedience and agreement from his subordinates and ruled his languishing land with an iron hand. Mismanagement combined with floods and other natural disasters under Kim  to make the lot of North Korea one of the least enviable of any nation on Earth. He promoted a bizarre cult of personality which caused many North Koreans to attribute supernatural powers to him, including the ability to control the weather! We will probably never know how many deaths Kim was responsible for.

Contrary to Ron Paul, it is indeed America's business- and that of every other nation and of decent people all over the world- to do everything possible to see that the world's leaders include more Vaclav Havels, and fewer Kim Jong Ils. To quote Havel himself, "America cannot avoid its responsibility to stand as an obstacle to evil when it appears in the world.

Nor should we- or any truly decent people- even try.