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Why do political theories so often fail the test of common sense?

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: America’s prayer
Can America find its universal soul in being complexly human rather than eternally innocent? And can Europe's former dissidents find a fresh language of truth in which to challenge unjust United States power?
When I first heard the Czech singer Marta Kubis?ová’s song Modlitba pro Martu (“Marta’s Prayer” or “Prayer Made for Marta”), it was just after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. I was almost 12 years old. I awoke from my childish dreams into the world of politics and its conscience. During the next ten years, my conscience was formed by this courageous song, which was banned and yet remained a national rallying cry. I was further impressed by two essays of Václav Havel, Politics and Conscience and The Power of the Powerless, as well as by his Open Letter to Gustav Husák (Husák was the president of “normalised” Czechoslovakia, installed after the Soviet occupation in 1968).
Today, after spending half of my life in the United States, I am reminded of Marta’s prayer:
May peace remain with this land; may anger, envy and hatred, fear and strife, pass; may they soon pass, now that the lost governance of your affairs returns to you, oh people...

· May my prayer speak to the hearts that were not burned by the time of hatred. . .
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