Despite warnings from our founders to avoid a paternalistic big government, vocal American groups demand that government take care of them. Having rejected the advantages of limited government, these groups may now be informed by Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, who explains why their once peaceful and productive people cannot remedy their current social and economic crisis.

President Klaus explains that their problems began when their countrymen embraced “the context of the “brave new world” of our permissive, anti-market, redistributive society, a society that has forgotten the ideas on which the greatness of Europe was built. (Our people) also very often accepted the conventional wisdom that the weakening of nation-states, and the strengthening of supranational institutions, is a movement in the right direction.”

The basic idea behind the European integration was to liberalize by removing barriers at the borders of individual countries to enable the free movement of goods, services, people and ideas across Europe.

Consequently, President Klaus says, “Europeans today prefer leisure to performance, security to risk-taking, paternalism to free markets, collectivism and group entitlement to individualism. Economic freedom is a low priority here.”

President Klaus explained that Europeans do not seem to understand that their current behavior undermines the very institutions that made their past success possible. They defend their non-economic freedoms-the laxity and permissiveness of modern European society-but when it comes to their economic freedoms that would restore prosperity, they are indifferent.

Will this be America’s future, too?

Karen Schroeder, Rice Lake