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Notes for the Launch of the Book “In Defence of Normalcy”

English Pages, 16. 4. 2025

Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for joining us for the launch of my new book, a collection of recent speeches and articles, I delivered abroad over the last three years. It follows a similar collection which was published at the beginning of 2023 under the title “Brave New West: Is It Avoidable?”.

Let me use this opportunity to thank all those who helped me to prepare both the original texts of the book and the book as such. These are my colleagues, my assistants and – last but not least – I would like to thank Milan Knížák, the renowned Czech artist and a good friend of us, for drawing the original cover of the book.

As I state in the preface of the book, the title, “In Defence of Normalcy”, reflects my overall scepticism about the possibility of an easy or quick return of Europe and the West to freedom, free markets, democracy, and traditional conservative values. The texts cover the era from the end of the Covid hysteria to the entry of Donald Trump into office. This era is in many respects characterized by the Ukraine war on the one hand and the Green Deal on the other.

I consider the current situation in Europe and the West as a whole to be untenable and undefendable. As is well-known, I am critical of the political system called liberal democracy. I am equally critical of the contemporary economic system in the West, which is still – wrongly – called a market economy, I am frustrated by the growing disbelief in traditional Western values and institutions, and last but not least, I am in total disagreement with the current propaganda of war and with its logical consequence ridiculing of peace. All of that is discussed in this small book.

I consider Trump’s victory in American presidential elections as a window of opportunity, not just for his own country, but for all of us as well. He has returned national interests into the substance of politics and is challenging globalism and its main institutions. He can’t, however, succeed alone. It is up to us to initiate similar changes in our own countries.

I hope that reading this book will inspire some readers to look at the world in the same way as I do, or at least motivate others to look at it from a slightly different perspective than before.

Václav Klaus, April 16, 2025