Klaus vs Dallara on European citizenship

For days ago, the Center for Economics and Politics (CEP), a Czech libertarian think tank, organized a seminar called The Eurozone Sovereign Debt Crisis: A Way Forward.

The host was no one else than CEP's founder, Czech President Václav Klaus (who recently corrected some soccer newsmen – very aptly – and who was just critical about the initial movie of the International Film Festival in Carlsbad that just began), and the main other star was Charles Dallara, a banker who has held very important positions in the administrations of Reagan and Bush Sr.



A 46-minute video from the event.

I have previously attended such CEP seminars, both as a regular guy in the audience and a panelist.

You may view the friendly but sharp disagreements between Dallara and Klaus as a rather apt characterization of the politically correct wing of the U.S. Republican Party.




Dallara's comments in the first 10 minutes are somewhat boring. I couldn't listen to all of it. But it was clearly all about the messianic complex at the European level – the need to send the money to every government in Europe that may need them. Europe is one organism, a Gaia, and it must overcome all of its non-uniformities and act as a whole. Blah blah blah.

So you will surely prefer to jump to 10:00-17:00 and especially 37:45-43:40 where you can get a glimpse of Klaus the debater. He chastised Dallara and pointed out that Dallara could easily serve as a member of the European Commission – and believe me, that's a rather tough insult – because he is proposing all the things that are unacceptable for us – including a pancontinental collectivism and a European citizenship that doesn't really exist. We're talking about the taxpayer money and the taxpayers really, but really don't want to send the money to Spain! Not even one oyro (Klaus emphasizes it's a German-run currency). ;-)

Klaus mentioned that he felt no solidarity with Spain or Finland or any other country in Europe – they're analogous to Malaysia in this respect. In fact, Klaus feels more compassion with Malaysia, especially because it was hurt by some International Monetary Fund policies a few years ago. ;-) Of course, I disagree with Klaus' suggestion that all the Greek troubles may be blamed upon the EU – Greece is actually a self-sufficient European cradle of the culture of entitlement and many related things that are so wrong about the contemporary Europe – but that's where my disagreements stop.

There are many people in the GOP and analogous parties in other Western countries who genuinely want to do good things. And a part of this disagreement boils down to the Americans' opinions that Europe is analogous to (equally unified as) America. However, at some point, the American Republicans should also think twice whether they haven't abandoned all the basic values that used to define conservative parties such as the GOP. You know, I am primarily talking about the personal freedom, about the protection of the citizens against the robbery and despotic acts by the government (an ever bigger one).

Via Czech Parliamentary Letters.