A journal of political, social, and other important, possibly even somewhat related affairs, including but not limited to: Central European Society, The European Union, HC Kometa Brno, American Politics, Film, and Beer.

23 October 2010

Catching Up.....

Your correspondent has recently been busy with visitors and other obligations, but finally has a chance to resume the blog. So first I guess a couple links.... the first from the "nice" Václav and the second from the "naughty" Václav -- Presidents Havel and Klaus, respectively. First, this piece (co-written by Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu) exhorts the Chinese regime to free Liu Xiaobo, pointing out that the ugly and backwards dictatorship of Burma Myanmar Burma (I'm an optimist!) is the only nation in the world which has locked up a Nobel Prize recipient.* The second piece comes from President Klaus, discussing the global warmists' agenda in the Financial Post. Klaus points out that various interests benefit from the idea of a global warming "crisis," and many more have invested their reputations and careers in "proving" the crisis. Moreover, Klaus attacks both the self-interest of the messengers and the message itself -- indeed, he largely attacks the ideology in ethical, rather than strictly economic, terms. In other words, he deploys they same ethical arguments about humanity that the more impassioned and (dare I say) emotional warmists use. He finds that the manufactured crisis is not only an economic problem, but a human-freedom problem.

The contrasts between these two men is one that I continue to find fascinating here on this side of the Atlantic. If history repeats itself, then surely we still see the split between the Jeffersonians and the followers of Adams. Both represent aspects of modern (post-18th Century) liberal society, with fundamentally different ideas about the role of the state in society, and indeed, the compatibility of the needs of society and the needs of the individual. Many Czech friends seem to know too much about the two as human beings, and so the advantage of being a foreigner-philosopher is the ability to separate their individual personalities (Klaus' legendary arrogance, Havel's tactical shortcomings as President) from their greater Weltanschauung. It is hardly surprising that they cannot stand each other, yet one can find in both great abilities to contribute to the debate about the role of the individual in society.

Moving right along, this article is amazing. Turns out there's not just water on the moon, but maybe even silver, and a whole bunch of interesting gases. Colonize it and On To Mars!

More to come soon, I promise!


* By the way, this is, of course, not entirely true: Jay Nordlinger explains here. But Myanmar's is the only current regime. The others were National Socialist Germany (1935's Carl von Ossietzky), the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Sakharov in 1975), and the socialist regime of Poland (Wałęsa in 1983) were the others. Additionally, 1927 Laureate Ludwig Quidde was imprisoned by Kaiser Wilhelm in 1896. Thankfully, these other regimes are all consigned to the ash heap of history.

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