The world with Václav Klaus
Taped on November 06, 2009
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In retelling his experience of living through the Velvet Revolution, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the lifting of the Iron Curtain, Czech Republic president Václav Klaus offers his views on what students today need to understand about life under communism.
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He also defends his opposition to the idea of a European superstate—“I do not consider the Lisbon Treaty to be a good thing for Europe, for the freedom of Europe, or for the Czech Republic”—and compares the ideology of environmentalism and global warming alarmism with the ideology of communism. Finally, he ponders the question of what lessons from history his grandchildren are learning.
(28:58) Video transcript
To go to segments within a video, click the links below:
- start video from beginning Czech Republic president Václav Klaus discusses the events of 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down.
- start segment 2 at 6:48 Are there parallels between a united Europe and the late, unlamented Warsaw Pact? Czech Republic president Václav Klaus makes the case.
- start segment 3 at 14:17 Czech Republic president Václav Klaus says that Al Gore is wrong about global warming.
- start segment 4 at 18:29 Czech Republic president Václav Klaus describes how he became an advocate of free market principles.
- start segment 5 at 25:36 Have we drifted from the decisive victories for freedom achieved in 1989? Czech Republic president Václav Klaus responds on Uncommon Knowledge.
Guests:
Václav Klaus Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1941 during WW II, Václav Klaus grew up during the Cold War. After earning a doctorate in economics, he pursued a career in academia and at the Czechoslovak State Bank. Immediately after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Klaus entered politics. A founder of the Civic Democratic Party, he served from 1992 to 1997 as prime minister of the Czech Republic. In 2003 he was elected president, a position to which he was reelected in 2008.
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Czech Republic president Václav Klaus
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