William F. Jasper - 30 December 2008

Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, can drive communists, leftists, Greens, and one-world globalists to near apoplectic fury. However, the popular Czech statesman (finance minister, 1989-1992; prime minister, 1992-1997; president since 2003, reelected 2008) has become a hero to a growing tide of Europeans from Prague to London who are resisting the increasingly oppressive rule by the European Union’s bureaucrats in Brussels and the socialist-dominated European Parliament in Strasbourg.

Klaus, a free-market economist who grew up under the tyranny of communism, is an outspoken critic of the “new European Soviet” — as former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has approvingly referred to the sprawling EU bureaucracy.

In January, the Czech Republic assumes the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union. Which means that Vaclav Klaus, an adamant “eurosceptic,” will serve as the ceremonial head of the EU, a supranational behemoth which he has described as a threat to freedom and national sovereignty. This will mark a sea change in attitude from that of France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, who is (reluctantly) stepping down from the current EU presidency. Sarkozy has basked in the glory of his EU spotlight and has campaigned for expanded EU powers, most especially for ratification of the stalled Lisbon Treaty. President Klaus has campaigned just as energetically in opposition to the Lisbon Treaty, a slightly disguised version of the EU Constitution that was rejected by French and Dutch voters.

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Tags: Communists, Communitarianism, Etzioni, EU, Václav Klaus, William F. Jasper

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