“Mr Klaus seems a bit “uncertain” who he really is ; wasn’t he elected by the Czecks commies ? I read that Putin is still his friend…”

Václav Klaus is a very brave man, and it doesn’t matter if some Czech Communists voted for him; he is in fact an anti-Communist. How do you think the tyrant murderer Vladimir Putin would like to read Mr. Klaus’ opinion on the relationship between Communism and intellectuals?

“The communist politicians needed their intellectual fellow-travelers. They needed their “dealings in ideas”, their “shaping of public opinion”, their apology of the inhuman, irrational and inefficient regime. They needed their ability to supply them with general, abstract and utopian ideas. They especially needed their willingness to deal with the hypothetical future instead of criticising the very much less rosy reality…. Because the intellectuals value themselves very highly, they disdain the marketplace. Markets value them differently than their own eyes and, in addition to it, markets function nicely without their supervision. As a result, the intellectuals are suspicious of free markets and prefer being publicly funded. That is another reason, why they are in favour of socialism. Fifteen years after the collapse of communism I am afraid, more than at the beginning of its softer (or weaker) version, of social-democratism, which has become – under different names, e.g. the welfare state or the soziale Marktwirtschaft – the dominant model of the economic and social system of current Western civilization. It is based on big and patronizing government, on extensive regulating of human behavior, and on large-scale income redistribution. As we see both in Europe and in America, the intellectuals love such a system. It gives them money and an easy life.” Václav Klaus

http://www.klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=wFYl3mgsTzI6