Friday, February 20, 2009

Vaclav Klaus hits the right notes before the European Parliament

What a follow up Vaclav Klaus is to Sarkozy! Read his speech before the EU parliament. He basically says (my liberal paraphrasing), wait a minute, I thought we in Eastern Europe already escaped from that lovely blend of socialism, one-party rule, and economic basket-case-ism. Now we're all marching right back to it under the banner of an EU central planning board!?

His argument that the positive meaning of the EU rests precisely in the taking down of artificial state borders to trade and migration and the facilitation of broader and more integrated free markets across borders is trenchant. The value does not lie in centralized regulation and state control of all economic activity. That is the path back to the exact antithesis of the value of the integration enterprise itself!

Of course, the media will promptly ignore most of what he says, at least relative to its fanboy coverage of Sarkozy and his beloved rock-star pop superstatism.

As it was, superstatist parliamentarians actually walked out during the speech at the moment Klaus was calling for tolerance of dissent and open discussion!

(HT to Tom DiLorenzo at LRC).