Václav Klaus: "După căderea comunismului, am presupus în mod eronat că a venit definitiv libertatea"

Discursul lui Václav Klaus la ceremonia European Freedom Awards, unde a fost premiat cu Premiul Libertăţii Europene (European Freedom Award) şi unde a ţinut şi Nigel Farage un discurs. Ştirea este inexistentă în limba română, "agenţiile n-au aflat despre aşa ceva". Mass-media străină a prezentat în mod negativ evenimentul (link1, link2).

[...] The fall of communism opened the door for freedom and democracy in our countries. We enjoyed it tremendously and erroneously supposed that freedom is here, and is here to stay. We were wrong. During the 27 years after the fall of communism, we have slowly begun discovering that we live in a world which is different than the one we dreamt of. It became evident that the lack of freedom is not inevitably connected with only one – however evil – form of totalitarian and authoritarian regime, with communism. There are other non-democratic isms and institutional arrangements which lead to similar results and consequences.

Due to them we live in a far more socialist and etatist, controled and regulated society now than we could have imagined 27 years ago.We feel that we are in number of respects returning back to the arrangements we used to live in the past and which we had considered gone once and for all. I do not have in mind specifically my country but Europe and the Western world as a whole.

After the fall of communism, my optimism was based on a strong belief in the power of principles of free society, of free markets, of the ideas of freedom, as well as on a belief in our ability to promote and safegard these ideas. Today, coming slowly to the end of the second decade of the 21st century, my feeling is different. Did we have wrong expectations? Were we naive? I don´t think so.

1. We knew that socialism, or socialdemocratism, or “soziale Marktwirtschaft“ is here, is here to stay and – due to its internal dynamics – would expand;

2. we were always afraid of the green ideology, in which we saw a  dangerous alternative to the traditional socialist doctrine;

3. we were aware of the built-in leftism of intellectuals. We followed with great concern the “excessive production of under-educated intellectuals” that emerged in the West as a result of the expansion of university education for all;

4. communism had been based on an apotheosis of science and on a firmly rooted hope that science would solve all existing human and social problems. To our great regret, the West believed in the same fallacy.

I can assure you that we were aware of all that in the moment of the fall of communism. We – perhaps – underestimated some other crucial issues:

- we probably did not fully appreciate the far-reaching implications of the 1960s, the fact that this “romantic” era was a period of the radical and destructive denial of the authority, of traditional values and social institutions;           

- we underestimated that the growing apothesis of human rights was in fact a revolutionary denial of civic rights and of many liberties and behavioral patterns connected with them. Human rights do not need any citizenship. That is why human-rightism calls for the destruction of the sovereignty of individual countries, particularly in today’s Europe;

- we didn´t see all the side-effects of the European integration process and didn´t fully recognize the very special role played by a construct called the European Union.  Nevertheless, our learning process was very fast. I am frustrated that even now not many people in Western Europe see it. Most of them see only what the EU propaganda wants them to see. They seemingly believe that the EU is

- a peace-guaranteeing community of nations;

- a democratically run grouping of countries, where the demos feels like a demos;

- a coherent entity monoculturally based on European values and behavioural patterns;

- an entity which centralizes only a small part of decision-making (only the issues that cannot be – because of existing externalities – solved efficiently at the level of individual countries);

- a conglomerate of countries where all are equal (in the Orwellian sense);

- a family-like institution where the weaker members are significantly helped by the stronger ones;

- an institution where the opposition to official views is welcome, allowed and made possible;

- an institution where there is a genuine, democratically formed and implemented policy, etc., etc.

Nothing can be farther from the truth than this propagandistic scheme. The current European Union is something else:

- it is an entity without demos, which means without democracy;

- it is an entity with only a weak common identity. For many of us, being a European basically means a geographical delimitation. As regards our identity, we are primarily Czechs, Italians, or Swedes. And we are proud of it. There are some “European” commonalities, but Europe has never been a melting pot;

- it is an entity which misuses the term subsidiarity for disguising the actual state of affairs and the predominant tendency – the ever-growing centralization of the EU decision-making;

- it is – especially after the Lisbon Treaty – an entity with one dominant country, Germany, which – as was recently stated by the its “Staatsminister für Europa” Michael Roth – must fulfil its leading role in Europe whether it likes it or not;

- it is an entity without authentic, genuine solidarity;

- it is an entity constrained and weakened by a non-functioning monetary union and by the irresponsible Schengen arrangements, etc. [...]

http://www.klaus.cz/clanky/4014