IN the late 1980s, the fight against global communism entered acrucial phrase. President Ronald Reagan publicly pressed Sovietpremier Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. Pope JohnPaul II and Lech Walesa gave Polish workers the courage to rise upagainst their communist masters.
The Velvet Revolution sprang up in Czechoslovakia.
That last event may be less famous, but it's no less important.
It began on Nov. 17, 1989, when Czech police suppressed apeaceful student demonstration in Prague. Within days, the number ofprotestors swelled, until it reached half a million.
In the face of this uprising, and with the governments of otherSoviet satellite states collapsing, the Czech communists saw thehandwriting on the wall. They yielded power and dissolved the single-party state.
Credit for this victory goes to many brave souls inCzechoslovakia - including Vaclav Klaus, the man who now serves asits president.
Klaus, who just turned 70, has proved himself a leader in thefight for the free society and the rule of law.
He recognizes that evil is not something confined to the past,that forces seeking to quash freedom exist even today.
These enemies, he points out, spread the "virus of demagogy" tosuppress a civil society.
They cannot be ignored. They must be challenged.
Freedom needs defenders - public and private, in the academy andin politics.
Vaclav Klaus is a giant in each category. His leadership haspreserved and extended the boundaries of the free society in hisnation and has inspired other leaders worldwide.
Without such a leader, the political and bureaucratic elite cansuppress the aspirations of those who seek opportunity andprosperity in a free and ordered society. Sadly, such a fate plaguesmany countries.
But not the Czech Republic. Under the leadership of PresidentKlaus, the Czech Republic has become a country that recognizesnatural rights, promotes free markets, and limits the power of thestate.
A contrarian, Klaus was the first international political leaderto predict the threat to freedom from those who advocate"environmentalism first."
A decade before the excesses of global-warming hysteria becameclear, Klaus warned the world at a Heritage Foundation event that"environmentalism with its 'Earth First' arguments represents'Leviathan Two' [and is a] menace which may become even moredangerous than old socialism."
Advocates of such environmentalism "do not accept that it is notpossible to get something for nothing ... the idea of trade-offs."
Instead, they support "an old doctrine which is based on thewrong conclusion that the more complex the world is, the moregovernment intervention, regulation and control [is required]."
Indeed, "green" has become the new red.
Klaus, an avid reader of Friedrich A. Hayek, understands that themore advanced a society or an economy becomes, the less likely it isthat any individual or group of individuals can plan that society'sway to prosperity.
He worried that these entities would seek to impose onerousregulations in every way possible, even circumventing thelegislative process to obtain their goals of bureaucratic control.
Having survived in a centrally planned society, Klaus knewfirsthand that there still would be "ecological disaster incountries without private property and prices."
Opponents of freedom view the social order as an opportunity toexpand government control by the elites.
But, Klaus notes: "The more complex a society becomes, the more afree market is required."
As an economy expands, the ability of bureaucrats to regulate theorganic nature of multiple decision-makers in the market diminishes.
It is the free market that seeks to preserve liberty.
So let us toast the birthday of a man who has worked so hard toensure that his own country experienced a rebirth of freedom: VaclavKlaus.
Feulner is president of The Heritage Foundation. Its webside iswww.heritage.org.
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