In the German democracy, a third of the electorate is regarded as air, in the American one, for a little criticism, you find yourself on the terrorist list. Written by Mátyás Kohán.
We are living in times in which, in terms of foreign policy, one part of the world blinks at the fact that it is a democracy, while others are not - and expects other democracies to enforce this fact in their decisions on crude oil imports, chip exports and investments. That's why I'm so adamant about democracy.
If it costs us that much,
if it's overpriced, at least make it work, for God's sake -
let us be free to speak and have a say in managing the country's affairs, at least.
And this is the aspect in which the West, which is so proud of its democracy on the outside, constantly underperforms on the inside. German democracy, for example, has not managed to meet the challenge of disentangling two things until today. On the one hand, the fact that a very significant part of the population requests, wants and demands a radical change in the European migration policy, as well as in the European war policy. And on the other hand, that the approximately five politicians of these two parties representing the correct position sometimes can't stand their blood, and once every two years they say something that someone else in an SS-rune uniform said ninety years ago. The latter is undoubtedly a very ugly thing, but at the same time it could be remedied relatively simply - the CDU should set personal conditions for coalitions with the AfD, and then the AfD party base will decide whether the irregular periodic well-being is more important, or the country tidying up. That would be the democratic attitude.
Looking at twenty percent of the electorate at the national level, and now thirty percent at the provincial level, instead of the Christian Democratic-old-communist-new-communist coalitions unwanted by no human being, I don't know what, but it's certainly not the democratic ideal that will make Putin shudder and China will change its mind.
Just as the United States does not go too far with preaching democracy, neither does the United States when a politician finds himself on the list of those who present a special terrorist threat one day after criticizing the reigning vice president and Democratic presidential candidate. This is Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic representative and presidential candidate, who on July 22 found herself telling Kamala Harris that she will not be able to resist the war lobby of the unelected military-industrial complex, which is important to the foreign policy of the United States. has an effect. So he uttered a banal truth known even to babies. Then, with effect from July 23, he was put on the list of the American traffic safety agency, the TSA codenamed Quiet Skies, created for the surveillance and out-of-line screening of potential domestic terrorists, as a result of which all future flights of his life will be a torture tour for him.
That's all that matters if an ex-Democrat speaks out of the choir, even if he supports Donald Trump in the election.
I don't know what it is, but it's probably not the kind of freedom of speech that Ambassador Pressman regularly worries about in Hungary.
Democracy is no joke. Democracy is a very serious thing, and it is more than a set of institutions, checks, balances, legal norms and pointed moral fingers. Democracy is more than being a mere crutch in the grand process of strategically tapping the top of China's head. The essence of democracy is the sovereignty of the people, that the will of the free, sovereign people binds the ruling elite, and not the other way around. If the people require difficult coalitions, then they must be formed. If the people say for the thousandth time that the admission of migrants who do not have a valid refugee claim, as a European legal norm, is self-defeating philanthropy that they do not wish to finance in the future, then the law must change, not the people.
Anyone who carries democracy around the world on a flagpole without actually believing in its foundations is like Father Gergő Bese.
And there is nothing worse than walking like this, and this is how it looks from here in Hungary in the fall of 2024.
Featured image: Flags of Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD) party before the party's press conference in Berlin on the evening of the German federal parliamentary election on September 26, 2021. MTI/EPA pool/Martin Divisek
