Friday, June 15, 2007

Lucky Bastards

OK, so not only do they have some of the most beautiful women in the world, but the Czech's also have, as far as I can tell, the most libertarian president in the world.

The more that I read about and by Vaclav Klaus, the more I envy the Czechs. I have spent a considerable amount of time in Europe and while I consider Salzburg, Austria to be the most beautiful city I have ever visited, I could never imagine living in Europe under their current systems. The specter of Socialism is well advanced here in the US, but Europe makes us look like stumbling neophytes in that respect. Klaus sure makes it tempting though.

Could you imagine a US president saying something like this and actually meaning it:

“Fifteen years after the collapse of communism. I am afraid more than at the beginning of its softer (or weaker) version, of social-democratism, which has become – under different names, e.g. the welfare state or the soziale Marktwirtschaft – the dominant model of the economic and social system of current Western civilization. It is based on big and patronizing government, on extensive regulating of human behavior, and on large-scale income redistribution.”
Or this:

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

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