Final Word from Monday, May 7, 2012
Václav Klaus's latest theme for foreign audiences is that Europe
needs a Velvet Revolution. He used the term explicitly in Fez, and
in London last week he spoke of the need for the kind of deep
systemic changes that the Czechs tried to accomplish more than
two decades ago. On CNN last week, he gained a large
international audience for the same kind of argument. Klaus is
largely right in identifying Europe's main problems (debt,
centralization, post-democracy), but how can a Velvet Revolution
be the answer? That revolution freed the CR of Communism, but
it also gave it Europe, and Europe's problems are now fully the
CR's problems. At most, a new Velvet Revolution would merely
take Europe back 20 years. The main thing the CR has going for
it today is that it lags behind the EU in terms of its weaknesses.
But it is catching up fast. So fast that, by Klaus's logic, it will
soon need another Velvet Revolution itself.[Czech Republic Morocco England European Union]
Glossary of difficult words
to have something going for one - to have an advantage;
to lag - to fall behind in movement, progress or development; not to keep pace with another or others.