A Europe We Can Respect

President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic is poised to be the new face of Europe.

Criticized by Communists in the 80’s and socialists everywhere today for extolling free market virtues, this brave, lone crusader, a defender of liberty, is the only European leader in the mold of Margaret Thatcher. (Aides say Mr. Klaus has a photo of the former British prime minister in his office near his desk.) Now Klaus is poised, as leader of the Czech Republic, to grasp the mantle of leadership in the rotating European Presidency.

While most leaders would shy from attacks for political heresy for using science to point out the lies and falsehoods of “global warming” (Or is it climate change now? Can’t they make up their minds?) Klaus rightly brands Al Gore an “apostle of arrogance” for profiteering from the global warming scaremongering and says the advanced nations are threatening economic growth by spending resources on the false distraction.

Klaus recently blasted the European bailout of banks as irresponsible protectionism (where was a voice of the people for us?) and he is a vocal critic of the Lisbon Treaty which will strip most of what little sovereignty the European Union members have left away.

Imagine a politician who risks being lambasted by elites while praising the will of the people. Klaus did just that in Ireland when he praised the political leaders who helped lead a majority of Irish voters to reject the treaty. The European Governments and Press were incensed. So who cares?

Now, he isnt perfect. In the face of a more beligerent Russia, with a leader espousing Cold War rhetoric, Klaus has tried to forge closer ties with Vladimir Putin. But no one has a better notion of what Russia is capable of than someone who grew up in the Soviet Bloc, so perhaps he can be forgiven his bit of pragmatism.

Mr. Klaus’s son and namesake, Vaclav, recalled in an interview that when he was 13, his father told him to read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to better understand Communism’s oppressiveness. “If you lived under communism, then you are very sensitive to forces that try to control or limit human liberty,” he said in an interview.

Since founding a new center-right party and becoming Prime Minister in 1992, Vaclav Klaus has overseen: the Czech Republic peacefully ceded from Slovakia; the development of the most stable  and prosperous post-Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe; elimination of 95% of price controls, the first investment-grade rating of these countries by international credit institutions, and made Czechs one of the highest per capita share owners in the world.

This writer praised the first President of the Czech Republic, the ebullient and poetic Vaclav Havel. But the passage of time has shown that a leader who simply brings goodness, without prosperity, really has little to show.

I think America has embarked on a path with a leader who promises goodness but will also fail to deliver prosperity, unless he truly diverges from some of his stump speech rhetoric. Europe ahead of the times. Hm. Might have to watch my international news a bit more carefully.

Sources: International Herald Tribune, Wikipedia, Czech News Agency