Final Word from Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Václav Klaus's vice chancellor, Petr Hájek, is quite perspicacious, and critics who are less intelligently endowed often have trouble countering his sophisticated arguments. So they react by attacking him personally or by seeking to dismiss his "crazy nonsense." By doing so, they tend to prove the very points that he makes in his new book, "Death in the Middle." Namely, that the media manipulate us and take an active role in depriving us of freedom and democracy. Hajek's assumption that the U.S. government lied about 9/11 is what has attracted the most media attention, but there's a deeper message, which he stated most succinctly on Czech TV: The media created an image of 9/11 that is considered irrefutable, yet it isn't irrefutable. It's nevertheless the image that is important, not the reality. The question he leaves hanging is what happens if, one day, the media image converges with the reality?[Czech Republic Television Sept. 11, 2001 Smrt ve středu Friedrich Hayek]
Glossary of difficult words
Road to Serfdom - a book by Friedrich Hayek (Petr Hájek's namesake);
serfdom - bondage or servitude;
perspicacious - having a ready insight into and understanding of things;
endowed - provided with a quality, ability or asset;
Death in the Middle - in Czech, "Smrt ve středu";
irrefutable - impossible to deny or disprove;
to leave something hanging - to leave something waiting to be finished or addressed;
correction: "Kdo nic nedělá, nic nezkazí".