The purpose of a democracy is the rule of the will of a majority of those entitled to vote. A democracy can function only if the minority is willing to submit to the will of the majority. In return for this submission, the majority in a democratic system freely guarantees the observance of constitutional protection rights vis-à-vis the minorities. This is how at least some of the so-called Western democracies developed in the wake of the American and French revolutions. But the cultural revolution of the 1968s has led to a thorough perverting of this fundamental understanding of democracy.
Even in the ancient democracy of Athens, from about the fifth century B.C. onward, the greatest concern of the popular sovereign, represented by the urban people's assembly as the legislature, was that democracy might be perverted by a possible abuse of power on the part of the executive. This concern also existed in ancient, still republican Rome. Here, as there, attempts were made to prevent a possible abuse of power through extremely short executive terms of no more than one year. Nevertheless, power-hungry tyrants succeeded again and again in seizing power, especially in times of crisis threats, and dictating their conditions to the people. Admittedly, without the direct or at least indirect participation of the people's representatives, things never went well for too long, even during a tyranny or dictatorship. However, neither the ancient nor the modern thinkers and constitution-makers ever dreamed that the perversion of democracy would one day be brought about by the legislature itself. And yet this is what has happened today.
In Germany, but also elsewhere, it began with a phenomenon that is now generally known as the "cultural revolution of 1968". This is the generation of the self-proclaimed "blessed late-born", as the later German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, for example, claimed for himself in a somewhat modified form. This refers to the children of German parents born from about 1946 or somewhat earlier and up to about 1953. Those parents were active or passive participants in the Second World War. Their children themselves, however, consider themselves innocent of the horrors of World War II because of their late birth date. Around the year 1968, this generation was then pushing its way into the universities or was already romping around there. An extremist minority of these young people were very dissatisfied with the existing social conditions of their time, not only in Germany, but in many democracies of the Western world, for example in the USA, but also especially in France and Italy.
At that time, post-war societies were in a desolate state. At that time, the Cold War was raging between the superpowers USA and Soviet Union, hotly fought as the Vietnam War with its countless dead. The Christian churches and sects exercised, unatoned to this day, their power over the faithful and in society abusively above all as standard bearers of a degenerate sexual morality, especially with their inappropriately high political influence above all in Germany and Italy. An outdated bourgeois convention prevailed in the societies, which has never abated in its fascist dreams, even to this day. There existed a restrictive judiciary, which until then, especially in West Germany, was in parts still permeated by former Nazis and their followers. In Germany in particular, the persistent silence of a mendacious parental generation echoed the truths of their actions and suffering during Nazi rule. The young people found all this simply to "suck".
Even at that time, the capitalist economic order of the Western world was considered by the students to be exploitative, wasteful of resources and destructive of the environment. They regarded the neo-Marxism of the Frankfurt School as the better economic model compared with the liberalism of an August von Hayek. Democratically, freedom of speech was especially important to the young people. But the generation of the "blessed of late birth" acted quite as if they had not already enjoyed freedom of speech. In addition, there was a diffuse call for freedom in the personal conduct of life. What was meant by this was above all a kind of sexual freedom of action. Mostly young male " wannabe-Revoluzzer" however took the liberty with as many women as possible unrestrainedly around to fuck. The question of contraception, thanks to the pill, has become much easier. The gentlemen generously left to the responsible care of women, including possible offspring care. Finally one fought from the outset against the apparently omnipresent at any time threatening atomic death! This was accompanied by a mystical fear of all kinds of harmful or even deadly radiation from various newly emerging devices, especially the later cell phones.
The places where the revolts broke out and unfolded the worst turned out to be the universities. In Germany, West Berlin and Frankfurt were at the forefront. People protested against the old-established professors, the keyword being "the mustiness of 1000 years under the gowns". They occupied lecture halls, endlessly discussed the alleged problems of society, roared, rioted and mobbed through the streets, occupied old buildings and left graffiti everywhere, which this generation quickly redefined as a new kind of art. The milieu was accompanied by increasingly confused, disharmonious music that lacked any melody or harmony, but which, like nothing else, revealed the true state of mind of its listeners, rock n' roll in all its forms.
The protesting students were above all loud, and loudness became the main instrument of their power. Reasoning with them was pointless. Opponents of opinion were publicly beaten down by shouting down on the part of the protesters. This early practiced method of permanent disgusting, pejorative and denigrating denunciation and insult of their opponents, should only with the advent of the "social media" on the Internet platforms in our time so really broadly in momentum and leads today to sharply increasing disinformation. However, the diabolical seed of total disrespect towards simply everyone and everything was already planted by the 68 generation. It never occurred to these violence-prone, bawling, insulting and denigrating minorities that their behavior itself deeply corresponds to the action patterns of the fascists they supposedly fight so vehemently, down to the last detail, and that in truth they differ in nothing from those who are supposedly their worst enemies.
The protesters refer to socialist-communist fantasists such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Ernst Bloch, are guided by the critical theory of a Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, finally they glorify mass murderers such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Ho Chi Min. Meanwhile, it is no wonder that for some of them their affairs slide into the violent.
The situation escalated. Some of the student critics first became criminals, but then still drifted into the terrorist underground. For example, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Red Army Faction in Germany or the Sendero Luminoso in Peru. These and similar underground organizations in various countries directed their violence directly at representatives of the system they so hated. Many people were murdered. For example, the Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro or many Germans such as Jürgen Ponto and Alfred Herrhausen from the banking world, Hans-Martin Schleyer from the employers' association, high state officials such as Siegfried Buback and Detlev Karsten Rohwedder. In addition, particularly despicable, completely uninvolved citizens such as the drivers of the celebrities or even department store customers. The terrorists spared nothing and nobody in order to achieve their declared goals. The terror became ruthless, shameless and boundless. They allied with other terrorist groups in various countries and carried out terrorist attacks together, thus laying the seeds for a curse to which peoples are still subjected today: the constant terrorist attacks by allegedly politically oppressed minorities.
However, all these do-gooders are and remain a minority as a political force up to now. Barely five percent of a potential electorate belong to the core clientele of environmental parties, for example, or of the left-wing or extreme right-wing groups on the political spectrum - no more and no less. But that is not enough about such minorities. In addition to these explicitly politically organizing groups, more and more citizens' initiatives are constantly forming with the purpose of being against anything, preferably always and everywhere. Mostly very locally limited, but always outside of any democratic order acting interest groups, often tiny minorities within the total population, which nevertheless want to impose their will on the majority of citizens by all means.
What all these minorities have in common is that they make demands that relate only to the assertion of their own interests. They claim special rights for themselves. But not primarily the enforcement of such rights as the state constitution, the legislation and the jurisdiction of a country already grant them anyway. No, they also want to obtain special rights for their specific interests, the permanent "lex exceptio...". In doing so, they are completely indifferent to two things: on the one hand, the will of a majority opinion, on the other hand, any thought of possible duties of each citizen towards the general public in a constituted society.
It is precisely this attitude of increasing dutylessness of an individual towards society as a whole that is one of the most corrosive elements of modern democratic societies. One immediately has to think of the assassinated U.S. President John. F. Kennedy, who once said at his inauguration, "Ask not what the state can do for you, ask what you can do for the state!" Such an appeal would go completely without effect in today's "free" societies, and would probably provoke screaming criticism from various minorities. One of the duties within a social order, by the way, is also to have to tolerate or support something that may not suit one personally.
The extent to which the anti-democratic behavior of minorities has meanwhile crept into the canon of values of daily politics, at least in Germany, is exemplified by a speech made by the former President of the German Bundestag (head of the parliament), Norbert Lammert, in Gelsenkirchen in 2006. There it says, among other things:
"The essence of democracy is undoubtedly that majorities decide. Yes. But the quality of a liberal society is not so much recognized by the fact that majorities decide, but by how a society deals with its minorities. That not only the decision of the majority applies, but that minorities have rights and that they may not be touched by anyone, even by majorities."
Lammert, after all a representative of a political people's party that calls itself that, argues here quite as if there were not already minority protection in the constitutions and legislation of Western democracies. He declares this protection of minorities to be a quality feature of a democratic society. However, he forgets to mention that a democracy can only function at all if the minorities bow to the decisions of the majority and also take upon themselves the duties that go along with them. Lammert, born in 1948 and himself a typical representative of the '68 generation, was after all president of the Bundestag for three legislative periods and thus, in terms of protocol, the second-highest man in the German state. With this statement, he testifies to how little he actually understood about the principles of democratic society. Lammert is also a typical example of how, over the years, the 1968 generation has wormed its way into the highest offices of the state through institutions that are in themselves hated by them, and from there it has carried out its democracy-destroying work.
The fundamental democratic primacy of the majority over the minority is less and less the case today in political reality. Particular interests are on the rise in all social classes. There is a veritable boom in splinter parties and extreme groupings. Worse still, the dwindling general canon of values clearly shows a lack of respect for the achievements of democracy and is destroying it from within, just as the generation of '68 set an example to all their descendants over fifty years ago.
Thus, it is not a power-hungry executive that is perverting the existence of democracies, as has been feared for more than two and a half thousand years, but they are being slowly but surely destroyed from within the legislative branch, by various minorities among the representatives of the popular sovereign.
However, the loudly rabble-rousing, democracy-destroying minority elements are still opposed by an overwhelming majority of dutiful, hard-working, unruly citizens, generally known as the "silent majority". These people don't babble and lament about basic rights and conditions; instead, they pitch in and do something when needed, and help in all emergency situations without being asked. Even though most of them are politically disinterested, many of them are also very socially engaged. They are available, for example, as voluntary helpers for all kinds of tasks; they support entire areas of society, such as sports; they provide selfless support in all kinds of disasters; they are the basis of many cultural events and they literally clean up the mess when the roaring minorities leave behind a filthy public space after their demonstrations.
If the Western democracies want to survive in the future in the spirit of their constitutions, they need more than ever the political commitment of the so-called "silent majority," which not only endures all the tribulations of those corrosive minorities, but also pays for them. But how can this be done? How can the foundations of democracy be strengthened again? What can politicians do if they want to restore the will of the majority to an appropriate level?
First of all, the people of the "silent majority" must be given recognition and respect for their so often invisible achievements, instead of constantly bullying, harassing and squeezing them with new laws and regulations. A contemporary overarching set of values must be developed and communicated. This should be broad enough so that as many citizens as possible can identify with it. Voters must have the feeling that they are on the right side with the political canon of values. Moreover, such values should emphasize both the freedom and the duty of citizens within and toward the community. However, programs to which every individual can orientate himself or herself and find his or her way back are only one thing.
Politics is made by people for people, and voters have a very good sense for pretenders and bloodsuckers. So what is needed above all are authentic and passionate personalities who will stand up to an election by the citizens. Whenever a candidate for political office is merely just an administrator, the electorate's interest in politics diminishes very quickly. This has been the core problem of parties and their political candidates for years, not to say decades. In the vast majority of cases, politicians are faceless administrative types whose lack of political passion, on the one hand, and their greed for administrative offices, on the other, can be seen from afar. In other words, people who primarily sleekly pursue their personal supply interests in a political career and otherwise do not want to assume any kind of responsibility for any of their decisions. That's why they like to set up committees for decision-making, or leave the formulation of laws to external consultants. If nothing else helps, they sometimes invoke the inevitability of supranational decisions, such as those of the European Union. The former mayor of Frankfurt, Peter Feldmann, who was voted out of office, is just the latest and most extreme example of this. But especially in politics, you also have to accept that people can fail, disappoint, you can fall for them. But this is exactly what democracy is made and intended for.
If voters are given the feeling that they are the actual sovereign after all, then they will also be interested in politics again. It is not the parties that should shape a politician, but a politician should shape his party. Parties are nothing more than electoral vehicles. The organization of a political party should not be in the foreground, but the individual candidate for public office must justify himself to the individual citizen as sovereign.
Charismatic leaders can always be found, and when they turn out to be lousy, the democratic order has instruments to get rid of them. Much more difficult than that, however, is the establishment of a generally valid set of values. There have always been revolutions that have wiped away traditional values. The revolts of history were even characterized by the fact that they had already developed a new valid canon of values before they entered into the revolution itself to implement it.
However, the revolution of the generation of 68 was completely different. They bothered about society and destroyed all the old certainties of that society, but unlike all the other revolutions, they did not impose any new values. All that remained was a social and spiritual void. Accordingly, the children of the 68 revolters grew up empty of meaning, especially in the 1980s. Left completely unprepared for life by their revolutionary parents, without any content or meaning, these children turned to the only socially distinguishing values they encountered, the consumption of goods. Thus was born what in Germany was called the "Generation Golf." Teens, twens, and later adults for whom brand-oriented consumption became the only presentable distinction of existence. Only their children, the grandchildren of the 68ers, disgusted by their society-hating grandparents and their brainlessly consuming parents, began to discover new values for themselves and to fight for them: a clean environment, healthy nutrition, anti-discrimination, and much more. Of course, they in turn developed into new politically aggressive minorities.
In order to defend oneself against the screaming and screeching minorities, one does not need the same aggressive instruments and procedures of such people. It is enough to simply make it known in the real and media public that one does not agree with their demands and contents. But rare individual statements alone have little effect. It needs thousands even hundreds of thousands or even millions of voices with a simple statement: We are the supporting majority and do not go along with it! Because any minority, no matter how aggressive, will fail when it realizes that its ideas simply do not appeal to the majority. In this way, the rule of the majority over the minority can be re-established.
Picture: Protesting students in Frankfurt am Main 1968
Source: Google, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
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