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The Spectacle Blog
As Sally McNamara wrote yesterday, only one man stands in the way of the Eurocrats consolidating their power in Brussels against the wishes of many Europeans. The Guardian profiles Klaus, a stalwart for liberty and limited government:
For a man standing alone between Europe and its future, Vaclav Klaus is playing hard to get. Last week a trip to Albania, this week Russia; the Czech president has performed a vanishing act just when he has the rest of Europe dancing to his tune.
He relishes being at the centre of a showdown. But it appears he is currently more interested in selling copies of his tract on global warming denial.
Last week, as a panicky campaign was launched in Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Stockholm, and Prague to try to force Europe's biggest renegade into line, Klaus was dining by the Adriatic.
For five days he refused to return phone calls from Fredrik Reinfeldt, the Swedish prime minister and current EU president saddled with the Klaus emergency. Jan Fischer, the Czech Republic's caretaker prime minister, has an even less enviable task, as mediator between Klaus and the rest of Europe's leaders. But Klaus won't give him the time of day. Fischer admitted he had managed to get him briefly on the phone, but not to arrange a meeting.
If that wasn't enough to drive the usual suspects into near hysteria, Klaus also has campaigned against the global warming alarmists who are prepared to wreck the global economy in order to stop warming that so far is proving to be decidedly modest--even nonexistent over the past decade. In short, Klaus is not just un-PC. He is un-PC squared.
Perhaps we can draft Klaus to run here when he finishes his term as president of the Czech Republic. (Never mind that inconvenient constitutional language about the U.S. president being born in America!)
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More Blog Posts by Doug Bandow
http://spectator.org/blog/2009/10/17/the-incomparable-vaclav-klaus
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sptvk| 10.17.09 @ 8:02AM
Support Vaclav Klaus! Stop the Lisbon Treaty!
http://supportvaclavklaus.wordpress.com/
http://www.petitiononline.com/.....ition.html
Martin| 10.17.09 @ 10:36AM
Surely we can arrange a Hawaii birth certificate for him!
Mary Louise| 10.17.09 @ 2:37PM
In the intro to Open Society I, Popper writes that we’ll become the masters of our fate when we stop posing as its prophets.
Krauthammer’s piece about choosing decline was well put, but decline doesn’t happen overnight and the idea that Obama is its shepherd (as Rush said) is a good example of the ‘misplaced concrete.’
Now is the time to tell the truth. Now. The full truth, the full picture, not this nickel-dime variety that we’re inundated by. Because maybe, just maybe, that 53% of the population engaged in the financial support of this Country are ready to receive it over and against the musing of philosopher king(s).
“It has been said, only too truly, that Plato was the inventor of both our secondary schools and our universities. I do not know a better argument for an optimistic view of mankind, no better proof of their indestructible love for truth and decency, of their originality and stubbornness and health, than the fact that this devastating system of education has not utterly ruined them. In spite of the treachery of so many of their leaders, there are quite a number , old as well as young, who are decent, and intelligent, and devoted to their task. " I sometimes wonder how it was that the mischief done was not more clearly perceptible," says Samuel Butler, " and that the young men and women grew up as sensible and goodly as they did, in spite of the attempts almost deliberately made to warp and stunt their growth. Some doubtless received damage, from which they suffered to their life's end; but many seemed little or none of the worse, and some almost the better. The reason would seem to be that the natural instinct of the lads in most cases so absolutely rebelled against their training, that do what the teachers might they could never get them to pay serious heed to it" ---The Open Society and its Enemies, Vol. 1, Pg. 136
P.S. and O/T: It's 62/22 on who do you trust more, McChrystal or Obama? That’s the danger that Etiquette Man was pointing to. That's why his post got commentary of the day.
In most situations, and against most presidents, that enormous split will be there ready to usher in you know what during a time of chaos or calamity. Would have been the same for GW, even though he was trusted more, if Patraeus had spoken as McChrystal did.
John E Horn| 10.18.09 @ 1:06AM
Let's invite the Czech Republic to become a state so we can elect Mr. Havel president.
John E. Horn| 10.18.09 @ 1:08AM
Oops! That's Klaus
Ned| 10.18.09 @ 9:46AM
Just as President Obama was given the Nobel Peace prize in anticipation of what he might do, can't we award President Vaclav Klaus a birth certificate from, lets say Utah, issued before he was born?
SC Mike| 10.18.09 @ 9:07PM
The Czech Republic’s presidents Vaclav Klaus, the economist, and Vaclav Havel, the playwright, dissidents both, are often confused, perhaps because both are so politically incorrect. They seem to have adopted the rebellious nature of their fictional forbear Schwejk while abandoning his pretense of innocence or stupidity, depending on one’s point of view.
Like Schwejk, the Czechs find themselves participating in a conflict they do not understand on behalf of a ruling elite -- the EU today instead of Schwejk’s Austro-Hungarian empire -- to which they have no loyalty.
I raise my glass of Pilsner Urquell to them in solidarity!
mike in tn| 10.18.09 @ 10:27PM
there is always the Senate.
maybe a NY seat, not much of a residency requirement
mike in tn| 10.18.09 @ 10:27PM
there is always the Senate.
maybe a NY seat, not much of a residency requirement
mike in tn| 10.18.09 @ 10:29PM
sorry about the repeat posts
mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa
cali bar store| 1.8.10 @ 5:34AM
cali bar supplies