Critics of the current democratic system are often portrayed as enemies of democracy, opponents of democracy or anti-democrats. People forget that factual, well-founded criticism points out grievances that should or must be remedied and can lead to an improved, more defensible democracy. In many possible forms of democracy, the system of rule does not have to be changed in order to achieve an improvement.
Criticizing the currently prevailing democracy does not mean being against democracy, but against its current form and implementation. The reflexive condemnation of the current policy towards its critics sheds light on the underlying mindset. A dangerous mindset.
Since the establishment of post-war democracy, no improvement, evolution or reform has been considered in politics, but rather the preservation of the status quo, however inadequate it may be. It is a means of this policy to glorify one’s own actions as the opposite of the actual ones. Which succeeds brilliantly in many parts. However, the longer entangled power structures are maintained, the more likely a Deep State, which is undemocratic per se, becomes.
The current Berlin democracy has no built-in protection mechanisms to prevent a deep state, a state within a state. No one checks measures implemented by the government in the gray area of executive and interpreted legislation, which are never reviewed and judged by the judiciary, indeed shy away from the light of publicity on the grounds of reasons of state.
Democracy does not mean making a cross only once in 4 years on a ballot paper that contains no alternative. Here, for once, the word “without alternatives” makes sense. It is frightening to see the accumulation of incompetence in our state, federal and European parliaments.
The assumption that it is not incompetence but malicious intent is no less disturbing. It is time to fulfill the promise of the founding fathers of the Bonn Republic: Reunification in free self-determination of the entire German people. This historic opportunity was deliberately squandered in 1990 and can only be rectified today with enormous effort.
The German people as a whole had neither determined the conditions for reunification, nor had they done so in free self-determination. It was a handful of Western representatives who set the conditions for the entire nation without a referendum or democratic legitimacy. Reunification was therefore neither free, nor self-determined, nor by the people. It was the most blatant failure of democracy in modern times.
However, it is not up to our parties in the corrupt party democracy, which is more interested in maintaining power than in the common good, to correct this. It is time to make German democracy more grassroots democratic. Important issues must be decided directly by the people and not just by their representatives.
The Swiss model of democracy provides a good example. It can also be more democratic.
