Vaclav Klaus the distinguished, former President of the Czech Republic and a forerunner in the battle against communism and for freedom in Eastern Europe was just awarded the Petöfi Prize in Budapest.
Vaclav Klaus is an anti-communist European leader and is a critic of global warming.
Here are the highlights of his insightful and timely address.
“It is a great honour for me to receive the 2018 Petöfi Prize which is awarded by the Public Foundation for the Research of Central and East European History and Society and by the MOL Group. I really feel honoured, especially as I do believe that it is in the spirit of the great Hungarian poet and revolutionary Sándor Petöfi to appreciate efforts and accomplishments aimed at promoting the freedom of the peoples of Central Europe. It was important in his era, in 1848, it is no less important now. “
He went on to say, “As someone who spent four decades of non-freedom in a communist Czechoslovakia and witnessed the total failure of the communist irrational and oppressive political and economic system I have always considered freedom and liberty the main issues worth fighting for. I agree with Ronald Reagan, “Freedom is one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit.”
On the question of nationhood he said,” We should not be ashamed of giving the nation a fundamental position in our thinking and behaviour, of course, on condition we know that before the notion of the nation (and the state) we should always insert two essential individualistic entities of the Western (and European) civilisation and culture – the man (and, of course, the woman) and the family.
This “holy trinity” defines us as Europeans.”
In the current situation, in many respects frustrating state of affairs, he concluded, “our efforts should be focused on the following primary issues:
** We – who refused to accept the ideology of communism in the past – shouldn´t be reconciled with the current attempts to establish the religion of multiculturalism as the official ideology of Western (and European) society;
** We – who are aware of the fragility of the West on the one hand and of its aggressive and ruthless enemies (many of them from inside) on the other – should oppose the multiculturalists’ crusade against Western Civilisation;
** We, the true believers in the nation state, should fight the destructive European ideology (I call europeism) which is hidden in the text of the Lisbon Treaty and which aims at overcoming the nation-state;
** We – who were dreaming for decades during the communist era about the rule of law and civic rights – should resist the ideology of “humanrightism”, which means the attempts to replace freedom with “rights” (especially the relatively new endeavour to include the right to migrate among the human rights);
** We should prefer freedom to fairness (and equality), which asks for getting rid of the stifling political correctness (coming close to George Orwell´s double-think and newspeak). “
Europe needs more leaders like Vaclav Klaus today. They are in short supply.
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