- In late 1989, as the protests grew in Prague and the Communist Party tried to crush them, young people looked for a way to awaken the hearts and the courage of their elders, who might then join them in the streets.#
- They sought a common ground between themselves and their elders. They sought to awaken values and hopes that they knew were slumbering in them, driven into darkness a generation earlier by the shocking influx of Soviet tanks, ending the brief flowering of the Prague Spring.#
- The young organizers found a slogan, a rhetorical appeal explicitly linking their young hopes with the crushed hopes of those earlier years, surely keenly remembered by their elders. They said, "We the people of 1989 need you, the people of 1968, to join us."#
- In other words, they were saying, "Surely you see it, the shared spirit of your young hopes and our young hopes. You know the urgency, surely you remember it . . ."#
- This is part of the task of political rhetoric at its best -- to link the hopes and values of people across many ages and walks of life. As the story goes, the Prague protests continued to grow, and the Communist government was paralyzed and soon collapsed.#
- There was hardly any loss of life during this three-week process, and it became known as the Velvet Revolution.#
- In late 1989, as the protests grew in Prague and the Communist Party tried to crush them, young people looked for a way to awaken the hearts and the courage of their elders, who might then join them in the streets.#
- They sought a common ground between themselves and their elders. They sought to awaken values and hopes that they knew were slumbering in them, driven into darkness a generation earlier by the shocking influx of Soviet tanks, ending the brief flowering of the Prague Spring.#
- The young organizers found a slogan, a rhetorical appeal explicitly linking their young hopes with the crushed hopes of those earlier years, surely keenly remembered by their elders. They said, "We the people of 1989 need you, the people of 1968, to join us."#
- In other words, they were saying, "Surely you see it, the shared spirit of your young hopes and our young hopes. You know the urgency, surely you remember it . . ."#
- This is part of the task of political rhetoric at its best -- to link the hopes and values of people across many ages and walks of life. As the story goes, the Prague protests continued to grow, and the Communist government was paralyzed and soon collapsed.#
- There was hardly any loss of life during this three-week process, and it became known as the Velvet Revolution.#