The Never-Ending

Struggle for

Free Society

Speeches, Essays, Articles

Václav Klaus

Publication No. 14/2014

© Václav Klaus, 2014

Published by the Václav Klaus Institute

Šárecká 29, 160 00 Prague 6, Czech Republic

www.vkinstitute.cz

e-mail: office@vkinstitute.cz

Edited by Martin Slaný and Filip Šebesta

Typeset by: Vladimír Vyskočil – KORŠACH

ISBN 978-80-87806-13-5 (ebook)

A Few Words from the Publisher

The Václav Klaus Institute (VKI) started its activity in the spring of 2013, after its founder completed his second term as President of the Czech Republic. The aim of the Institute is to promote the ideas of individual freedom and free market, and to defend traditional Western civilization values. Václav Klaus is the most important representative and promoter of these ideas in our country and – we dare say – one of the main in Europe and in the world as well. The texts collected in this book (the first publication of the Institute in English) were published in various important international journals, magazines and newspapers, or presented as lectures at conferences and seminars all over the world.

Václav Klaus was the main author of the Czech transformation of centrally planned economy to market economy. He has become probably the world-wide best known fighter against the irrational ideology of the global warming doctrine and aggressive environmentalism. He is a well-known opponent of the attempts of European elites to build a post-democratic European superstate with all its negative consequences for freedom and prosperity in Europe. He is a strong critic of all kinds of global governance that circumvents standard democratic processes. These main topics give names to the chapters of this book.

We hope that the reader will find this collections of speeches, essays and articles (originally written in English) interesting and stimulating. Putting them together into a single book demonstrates their breadth and depth. In today’s world it is more than necessary. We are pleased to be able to publish it in the Václav Klaus Institute.

Martin Slaný and Filip Šebesta

The Václav Klaus Institute

Introduction

This collection of 40 recent essays, articles, and speeches puts together the texts from a very special period of my life – they were written, published and delivered as lectures and speeches at the end of my tenure as President of the Czech Republic and in the first moments of my post-political life.

I hope there is no sharp divide between them, between my being in office and being out of office. I strongly believe that my views have not changed and that my readiness to make them public has not changed either. Some people expected that I would speak and write differently but they were proved wrong. I have never hidden my views and I don’t need to be more outspoken now. I would be angry at myself to find anything like that happening.

All the texts in the book can be found on my website (www.klaus.cz) and some of them on our institute’s website (www.vkinstitute.cz) but to select them, to put them together, to structure them into chapters, to demonstrate the evolution of views (or the lack of it) is – at least I hope – added value.

There are already two similar collections of my English texts. The first one from the second half of the nineties was published by CATO Institute under the title “Renaissance: The Rebirth of Liberty in the Heart of Europe” (Cato Institute, Washington, 1997). It covered the fall of communism, the first dramatic years of democracy and the enormous tasks we had to solve in that era.

The second one was published in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century by National Center for Policy Analysis under the title “On the Road to Democracy: The Czech Republic from Communism To Free Society” (NCPA, Dallas, 2005). It covered the more “normal” years of our development when I was also more able to look around (than in the first “revolutionary” era).

There is a gap between 2005 and 2011 because this new collection doesn’t cover these years. There will be, perhaps, another opportunity to fill this gap sometimes in the future.

This is a collection of essays, articles and speeches written in English, there are no translations from Czech (or any other language) in this book. There have been similar collections in other languages published in various countries – e.g. Germany, France, Poland, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece. With the exception of Germany, they were translations.

The book is divided into five chapters which cover different, but in many respects interconnected topics:

Chapter I is devoted to Liberty, Democracy, Nation-State vs. Global Governance. As one of the texts suggests, my feeling is that “We Are not on the Winning Side”.

Chapter II is about Europe and especially about the European Union. The titles make my position very clear: “No Illusions about the EU”, “Europe at the Crossroad”, “Democrats of Europe, Wake Up!”.

Chapter III returns to the topic of transition because this issue becomes – with the passing of time – more and more misunderstood and forgotten. This unique experience of ours should be kept and remembered.

Chapter IV discusses one of my special topics – the Global Warming Doctrine. I wrote more about it in 2007 and later years but the topic is still with us. The consequences of irrational policies introduced by accepting the tenets of this doctrine are starting to be felt more and more now.

Chapter V puts together a mixture of current topics and issues and cannot omit the last one, which threatens to change the whole world and our lives – the Ukraine crisis.

I would like to thank my colleagues for helping me with this book: Martin Slaný and Filip Šebesta for preparing this selection, Karolina Králová for typing many of the manuscripts, Michaela Dvořáková for making corrections of my English. Last but not least, I would like to thank the Václav Klaus Institute and its director Jiří Weigl for making its release possible.

Václav Klaus, August 26, 2014

Chapter I: Quest for Liberty and Democracy

How Regimes Collapse and How to Go Back to Liberty?[1]

Mr. Rector, members of the Mont Pelerin Society, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,I would like to thank you for the invitation. Being here is very inspiring and motivating for me. I have never been to Morocco and to this part of the world before and already my first hours here indicate that it will be an unforgettable visit. And a learning process.

The first MPS regional meeting in Africa is a great, almost revolutionary event. Let me use this opportunity to say how honoured we, the Czechs, are to host the MPS 2012 General Meeting in Prague in September this year. I hope to see at least some of you there. The Mont Pelerin Society needs new faces and a new generation to react to new dangers and new challenges which the current era brings. We can’t expect to repeat the great MPS era half a century ago, we do not have the same big names among us now, but we have to be visible and useful again.

When I started preparing the notes for my today’s presentation, I wondered who suggested the title of this opening address of mine, because as it stands it sounds very immodest and ambitious. I probably made a mistake by accepting such a difficult topic. There is not and I am sure there will never be any science of transition, or transitology. That’s why there isn’t any generally accepted way to rationally structure the topic.

One thing is the difficulty of the topic, the other is the second half of the title which says “How to Go Back to Liberty”. Is it appropriate to talk about “going back” in this part of the world? Isn’t it rather “going ahead”? In the case of my country in the moment of the fall of communism, it was different. We did live in a highly developed democracy, at least in the 1920s and 1930s, in one of the most developed democracies in Europe at that time. Should Egypt, Tunisia, or perhaps Syria go back to liberty? Have these countries ever experienced a politically free and democratic era that they could reinstate? I am not sure and I doubt it. I will come back to this point later.

1 Opening speech at the Mont Pelerin Society Regional Conference, The Big Hall of Batha Prefecture, Fès Medina, Morocco, April 12, 2012.