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New book: Václav Klaus - The Never-Ending Struggle for Free Society

English Pages, 10. 10. 2014

The Václav Klaus Institute (VKI) is publishing new book of the President Václav Klaus “The Never-Ending Struggle for Free Society” which is the first English publication outlining the topics and ideas which stand behind the aims and activities of the VKI. This collection of speeches, essays and articles (originally written in English) is a summary of the texts created by Václav Klaus in the last year and half in his capacity as the President of the Czech Republic and the first year and half his post-Presidential life.

Already at the time when Václav Klaus was active in politics, he became probably the most famous fighter against the irrational ideology of global warming doctrine and aggressive environmentalism. He is a well-known opponent of the attempts of European elites to build a post-democratic European superstate with all their negative consequences for freedom and prosperity in Europe. He is a strong critic of all kinds of global governance that circumvents standard democratic processes. These are the main themes discussed in this book which consist of five chapters: Chapter I: Quest for Liberty and Democracy, Chapter II: EU without Illusions, Chapter III: Transition in Retrospect, Chapter IV: Global Warming Doctrine’s Attack Continues, Chapter V: Reflections on the Current World.

Here you can find an Introduction to the book by Václav Klaus:

This collection of 40 recent essays, articles, and speeches puts together the texts from a very special period of my life – they were written, published and delivered as lectures and speeches at the end of my tenure as President of the Czech Republic and in the first moments of my post-political life.

I hope there is no sharp divide between them, between my being in office and being out of office. I strongly believe that my views have not changed and that my readiness to make them public has not changed either. Some people expected that I would speak and write differently but they were proved wrong. I have never hidden my views and I don´t need to be more outspoken now. I would be angry at myself to find anything like that happening.

All the texts in the book can be found on my website (www.klaus.cz) and some of them on our institute´s website (www.institutvk.cz) but to select them, to put them together, to structure them into chapters, to demonstrate the evolution of views (or the lack of it) is – at least I hope – added value.

There are already two similar collections of my English texts. The first one from the second half of the nineties was published by CATO Institute under the title “Renaissance: The Rebirth of Liberty in the Heart of Europe” (Cato Institute, Washington, 1997). It covered the fall of communism, the first dramatic years of democracy and the enormous tasks we had to solve in that era.

The second one was published in the middle of the first decade of the 21^st century by National Center for Policy Analysis under the title “On the Road to Democracy: The Czech Republic from Communism To Free Society” (NCPA, Dallas, 2005). It covered the more “normal” years of our development when I was also more able to look around (than in the first “revolutionary” era).

There is a gap between 2005 and 2011 because this new collection doesn´t cover these years. There will be, perhaps, another opportunity to fill this gap sometimes in the future.

This is a collection of essays, articles and speeches written in English, there are no translations from Czech (or any other language) in this book. There have been similar collections in other languages published in various countries – e.g. Germany, France, Poland, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece. With the exception of Germany, they were translations.

The book is divided into five chapters which cover different, but in many respects interconnected topics:

Chapter I is devoted to Liberty, Democracy, Nation-State vs. Global Governance. As one of the texts suggests, my feeling is that “We Are not on the Winning Side”.

Chapter II is about Europe and especially about the European Union. The titles make my position very clear: “No Illusions about the EU”, “Europe at the Crossroad”, “Democrats of Europe, Wake Up!”.

Chapter III returns to the topic of transition because this issue becomes – with the passing of time – more and more misunderstood and forgotten. This unique experience of ours should be kept and remembered.

Chapter IV discusses one of my special topics – the Global Warming Doctrine. I wrote more about it in 2007 and later years but the topic is still with us. The consequences of irrational policies introduced by accepting the tenets of this doctrine are starting to be felt more and more now.

Chapter V puts together a mixture of current topics and issues and cannot omit the last one, which threatens to change the whole world and our lives – the Ukraine crisis.

I would like to thank my colleagues for helping me with this book: Martin Slaný and Filip Šebesta for preparing this selection, Karolina Králová for typing many of the manuscripts, Michaela Dvořáková for making corrections of my English. Last but not least, I would like to thank the Václav Klaus Institute and its director Jiří Weigl for making its release possible.

Václav Klaus, August 26, 2014.