The other day I “tweeted” (wow, that sounds even stupider when I say it) about how I was becoming more enamored with the Czechs, especially dead-man-walking Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, who described the U.S. recovery plan put forth by the Obama administration as a “way to hell“.
The Gray Lady’s commentary is rather unsatisfactorily short on substance, and long on nonsense including a boilerplate description of what the EU presidency is, how its constituted, etc. I’m reasonably certain that Topolanek has good reasons, perhaps even sound economic arguments, behind his criticism of the White House’s economic stimulus, but you wouldn’t know it from the article. (And the newspapers wonder why their volumes are declining?)
Buried all the way at the bottom of the article was one scorn-worthy comment from a member of the E.U. Parliament:
Martin Schulz, leader of the socialist group in the European Parliament, said that the description of the Obama recovery plans as “the road to hell” was “not the level on which the E.U. ought to be operating with the United States.”
“You have not understood what the task of the E.U. presidency is,” Mr. Schulz told Mr. Topolanek.
Maybe, just maybe men like Topolanek see the current crisis from a unique vantage point. Maybe, we ought to give a little bit more credence to arguments put forth by individuals who lived under state-socialism for the bulk of their adult lives — and who have experienced first-hand what even modest amounts of liberalization can do for an economy. (I was in Prague in July of 2003, and with few exceptions, it was impossible to tell that the country had previously been behind the Iron Curtain.)
Treating every politically unorthodox idea or argument as prima facie wrong, is the worst sort of politicking, because it paves the path for totalitarianism.
Criticizing tried-and-failed ideas like the current “stimulus” plan is not to be tolerated. Collusion among the State elites is necessary to keep the charade alive; dissent will be punished, censured, or ridiculed at every opportunity.
