Merkel's pyrrhic victory, the demise of the FDP and the next German Grand Coalition: "Well Red" shows parallels and differences between the German and the British situation ahead of the next UK elections

PB is happy to link to "Well Red", the blog of Dave Levy on UK politics. He quotes the PB article on Merkel's Pyrrhic victory in the following piece, where he draws parallels between Germany after the recent elections and the situation of David Cameron's government and the Tory coaltion with the Lib Dems. Thus, he concisely analyses the state of the parties in Britain with regard to the next election, to be held no later than May 7, 2015.

"Germany turns Left" (by Dave Levy)

While I was meeting up with fellow conference delegates from Lewisham on Sunday night, the results from the German general election were being forecast and announced.

CDU/CSU (Conservatives; black/blue) 311, SPD (Social Democrats; light red) 192, Die Linke (Left Party; dark red) 64, Grüne (Greens; green) 63 seats in the 18th legislature of the Bundestag (Federal Diet) of Germany 

As expected the German conservatives increased their share of the vote and the number of seats in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German Federal Parliament, but their parliamentary allies and the source of their parliamentary majority, the Free Democrats (FDP) failed to reach the threshold required to get seats. The FDP have been voted out of the parliament and consequently the right wing are five seats short of a majority.

Since the other three parties in the parliament are the Social Democrats (SDP), the Greens (Die Grüne) and the Left Party (Die Linke), as Gregor Gysi, the leader of Die Linke points out in his article in the Guardian,How serious is Germany about its democratic principles?, there is a nominal left majority since the Greens have only ever allied themselves with the SDP in government.

The likely government will be a coalition between the CDU/CSU and the SDP. Gysi argues that the SDP’s historic refusal to ally with Die Linke is under challenge with the SDP and by historical necessity and that despite Merkel’s ‘victory’ there is a historic opportunity for the German left.

Further analysis of the impact in Germany’s domestic politics is carried in an article by Robert Scheele, called “Merkel’s Pyrrhic victory: the end of the „conservative-bourgeois“ neoliberal model? Will the loss of the FDP tear Germany’s conservative union of pragmatism and populism asunder?”, published in webzine called LeftEast. He argues that Merkel and the right will get their majority in the Bundestag, probably by forming a coalition with the SDP  but the loss of the FDP and their replacement by the SDP will drag the weight of the new coalition leftwards. The SDP will not want to repeat their experimentation with the policy corollaries of triangulation and Merkel, although not all her party, nor her allies, is happy to try and outbid the SDP on their own turf. In fact, it’s partly Merkel’s economic populism that has led to the SDP’s failure to make inroads into her majority, together with the memories of the Schroeder SDP government’s labour law reforms. This compromise with the SDP will be made easier because she no longer has the weight of the Free Democrats who were the main exponents of market supremacy, and particularly labour market efficiencies.

Scheele argues this competition to ‘win’ the mind share as the champions of the ordinary people, workers and families will drive the dynamic of the new coalition. Scheele also points out that there is a bigger left majority in the Bundesrat, the German federal upper house which will increase the pressure on Merkel, who has a massive personal mandate, to move to the left (or centre).  But while there are pressures to move to the centre, there will be opposition from the countervailing forces in parliament, their Bavarian allies, the CSU, and outside Parliament, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) who failed to enter parliament.

The result also places pressure on the Greens. They also are split between left and right, and this is  based on having two seperate voting constituencies. Scheele argues that their right, are the genuine conservatives; but capable and supportive of social solidarity. They  oppose development, oppose higher taxes, on wealth and property and are hawks on the issue of southern European debt restructure. He argues that many of them voted CDU this time, and that Merkel is co-opting the right Greens. The Green’s have also lost some of their left as they turn their back on pacifism and support the government’s domestic and international austerity programmes.

So Merkel has a problem, she can trim left and jeopardise her relationship with CSU and empower the AfD, such an approach might encourage the Greens to support the government or she can try and co-opt the SDP into a right-wing government appeasing the CSU and giving the AfD nowhere to grow. The former strategy jeopardises the right-wing hegemony, the latter strategy will be hard with a left majority in both houses of parliament.

Scheele is obviously making a polemic, and often the left is hopelessly optimistic but he may have a  correct insight, after all unlike me, he does live there, and so Merkel’s position is not as powerful as the exit polls and headlines suggest.

What’s this mean for Britain?

"A monolithic and ruthless conspiracy": the speech of John F. Kennedy before the American Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961 as a mirror of today's antagonism between liberty and the surveillance state

Fifty years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, it is close to certain that the murder was the result of a "ruthless conspiracy" of powerful interests that opposed a "free and open society".

Servicemen carrying the casket of President John F. Kennedy up the steps of the Capitol, followed by the late President's widow and children, during state funeral services for Pres. Kennedy in Washington, November 24, 1963.

Whatever you think of him and his policies otherwise, in a speech before the American Newspaper Publishers Association, April 27, 1961, President John F. Kennedy clearly pointed to a system of infiltration, secrecy, and subversion as being characteristic of the difference between an undemocratic, closed society, that is manipulated and monitored by covert, secretive means, and a truly democratic and open system, with a free public sphere; this was in the days of the Cold War. But as is increasingly turning out recently, the former, a system of (even more sophisticated) infiltration, secrecy and subversion, is (still) in place even today, more than twenty years after end of the Cold War, in the United States and elsewhere, and is undermining and working against the concept of a free democratic society. 

This secretive system is in contrast to the paradigm change after the Cold War, when societies, after the end of that global confrontation, were at leat theoretically ready to move towards Sir Karl Popper's "open society" and a growing demand of transparency and clarity emerged. The "war on terror" after September 11, 2001, created a new (pseudo-) enemy that, according to the main stream of political discourse, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, could only be fought with more security and less liberty. This delicate balance between civil rights and liberty on the one hand and security and (the purported need for more) surveillance on the other is one of the major political points of contention today between groups such as the liberal parties (e.g. the "Pirate Parties" in Europe), civil rights activists and other opposition groups on the "left" and proponents of a surveillance state, such as the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries and their respective security agencies, the NSA being the most prominent one in the limelight recently, on the "right".

The concise snippets from that JFK speech describing this secretive system and the need to fight it by "informing and alerting" not only the "American people", but society globally, are condensed in the following two minute video. The text is quoted below:



"Ladies and Gentlemen,

the very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. (...) For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day.

It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.

Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no secret is revealed.

That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy.

I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people. (...) Confident, that with your help man will be what he was born to be, free and independent." 

Europa: Kiew zwischen Brüssel und Moskau. Zum vorerst gescheiterten Assoziierungsabkommen mit der Ukraine

An dieser Stelle ein Verweis auf "Pan-Europa-Express", eine interessante Online-Kolumne von Matthias Schinwald auf "The European", und auf seinen heutigen
Artikel zum Thema der EU-"Außenpolitik" in Bezug auf die Ukraine und Russland.

Themenverfehlung: Ein Annäherungsabkommen mit Kiew wäre eine historische Chance gewesen. Doch die Ukraine wollte nicht – und die Europäische Union offenkundig auch nicht (von Matthias Schinwald)

Es hätte ein großer Gipfel werden können, das Zusammentreffen der Östlichen Partnerschaft an diesem Wochenende in Litauen. Die Europäische Union und die Ukraine sollten ein Annäherungsabkommen unterzeichnen. Etwas Historisches. Daraus wurde aber nichts, weil die Ukraine im letzten Moment absagte. Was also bleibt, sind ein paar europäische Außenminister, die sich auf ein Wochenende in Vilnius treffen und vielleicht darüber spekulieren, wie schön es denn gewesen wäre, wenn das Abkommen zustande gekommen wäre. Bei der Gelegenheit sollten sie sich vielleicht eher mit der Frage beschäftigen, welchen Anteil sie am Scheitern des Abkommens haben.

Die Ukraine strebt seit 2004 einen Beitritt zur EU an. Seit 2008 wurde ein Assoziierungs-abkommen ausgehandelt. Dieses sollte in Vilnius unterzeichnet werden, wurde aber nun von Kiew "eingefroren". 

Meilenweit am Thema vorbei

Worum wäre es gegangen? Es wäre darum gegangen, in einem Land, das über zwanzig Jahre nach seiner Unabhängigkeit noch immer zwischen Westen und Osten gespalten ist, ein neues Kapitel aufzuschlagen. Es wäre um eine Annäherung der Ukraine an die Europäische Union gegangen. Es wäre um eine Antwort auf die Frage der ukrainischen Abhängigkeit von Russland gegangen. Es wäre darüber hinaus auch um das langfristige Verhältnis zwischen Russland und der Europäischen Union gegangen.

Wenn es um etwas nicht oder nur sehr nebenbei gegangen ist, dann wohl um Julia Timoschenko. Denn die Oppositionspolitikerin in allen Ehren: Aber eine Entscheidung von derartiger geopolitischer und wirtschaftlicher Relevanz auf das Schicksal dieser Frau zu reduzieren, verkennt die Problematik. Dennoch zog es die europäische Außenpolitik, allen voran die Niederlande, Schweden und Deutschland, vor, die Enthaftierung zur zwingenden Voraussetzung für ein Abkommen zu machen und damit eine Nebendebatte zu eröffnen, die der Sachlage schlicht nicht gerecht wird. Ebenso ist es in derartigen Fällen nur wenig hilfreich, eine diplomatische Entscheidung auf die ultimative Frage zwischen Gut (Europa) und Böse (Russland) hochzustilisieren.

Diese beiden Fehler sind ein weiterer Ausdruck dessen, was man in Europa heute für sinnvolle (oder in Deutschland für „wertorientierte”) Außenpolitik hält. Außenpolitik ist mittlerweile nur mehr das, wo erleuchtete europäische Politiker die Welt in Gut und Böse einteilen und weniger erleuchteten Politikern in anderen Teilen der Welt erklären, wie sie ihr Volk zu führen haben. Diese Politik ist falsch, heuchlerisch und kontraproduktiv. Und da rede ich noch gar nicht davon, was Europa eigentlich zu tun hätte, um den Ansprüchen, die sie anderen stellt, überhaupt selbst gerecht zu werden – seien es die unumstößlichen Werte, die Wahrung der Menschenrechte, der Schutz von Minderheiten, die Demokratie und der soziale Frieden.

Nein, ich rede von einer heuchlerischen Symbolpolitik, die unter moralischen Vorwänden eine langfristige weltpolitische Verantwortung der kurzfristigen innenpolitischen Verkäuflichkeit unterordnet. Anstatt sich um konstruktiven Interessensaustausch und um funktionierende Zusammenarbeit zwischen Ländern und ganzen Weltregionen zu bemühen, werden Scheindebatten geführt, die an den eigentlichen Themen aber so was von meilenweit vorbeiführen.

On this day in 1963: “A shot heard round the world” - the assassination of John F. Kennedy fifty years ago. Civil Rights, the cold war and the “imperial” Janus face of the United States

“I should have left it there. Let them see what they've done” - these were the thoughts of Jacqueline Kennedy, shortly after she had wiped off the blood that had been spilled on her as her husband, the President of the United States of America, John F. Kennedy, had been shot dead just after midday local time on Friday, November 22,1963, in Dallas, as his motorcade passed a cheering crowd at Dealey Plaza in the Texan city.

President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy arrive at Love Field, Dallas, Texas at 11.40 a.m. local time. About an hour later, the President was shot  and died the same day, November 22, 1963

It was a “shot heard around the world”. The tragic event of that sunny November afternoon in Texas historically most likely left the strongest mark in the memory of the Baby Boomer (i.e. the immediate post-war) generation not only in the United States, but also in Europe and elsewhere. In terms of the “collective memory” of that generation, it is probably at least on the same scale as the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 for them and their childrens' generation, that ushered in the end of the “Cold War”, and as, more recently, the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, that so relentlessly has been used by the Bush administration and others as a pretext to violate civil and human rights and basic free-doms, both domestically and internationally (torture, illegal detainment), and to wage a couple of major wars.


 
“Let them see what they've done” - Jackie's thoughts reflect that it was a highly polarized political climate in the United States, at least as polarized as the current one that Barack Obama is facing. “They” were (and today are) the enemies of a liberal, open society, that the Kennedys embodied and that JFK had strived for in his policies such as the Civil Rights Act, that he initiated but didn't live to see enacted (in 1964). That Act was a major step towards (at least legal) equality for minorities, especially Blacks, in the United States, "giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public—hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments”, as Kennedy had announced in his “Civil Rights Address” just five months before his death, on June 11^th. At the time of his presidency, racism, opposition to equality and tolerance for all groups of society (blacks, but also other groups such as artists, gays, “hippies”/”freaks”, intellectuals, Jews/Muslims, “liberals” or atheists) were still shown openly and not taboo, and in the southern United States even part of the political main stream; today those tendencies have been more or less pushed towards the right fringes - although you still have shocking cases of people getting away with crimes motivated by racism, as the Zimmermann-Trayvon Martin case in Florida has shown.


Himself not being a true “WASP”, as he was an Irish-American Catholic, the first and so far only one of that background in the Oval Office, John F. Kennedy was one of the major figures contributing to the process of gradual racial emancipation that to this day still, of course, isn't successfully completed by far. The latest and most apparent sign of this gradual process, though, was the election of an at least partially African-American, Barack Obama, into the highest political office, in 2008, and his re-election in 2012. In the 1960s, the election of a non-white president wouldn't have been possible. Racial segregation was still in place then (it was only officially entirely outlawed in 1968 by the Supreme Court); economic discrimination, educational and income inequality are often still running along ethnic lines today.


These election results reflect the increasingly non-white ethnic make-up of the United States and the end of the WASP hegemony; the Tea Party, a radical paleo-conservative group within the Republican Party, formed as a reaction to these trends. It desperately fights against the end of that hegemony, i.e. the end of the rule of gun-slinging, racist, redneck, Social Darwinist white men; they are dreaming of the days of the “frontier” of the 19^th century, promoting an extremist conservatism (anti-Abortion), libertarianism (for small government) and “fiscal darwinism” (further tax reductions for the rich), i.e. of regressing to the 1920s economically, to the 1950s socially and the 1980s (and Bush's 2000s) fiscally.


The circumstances of how JFK, the second-youngest president (after Teddy Roosevelt), born in 1917, i.e. 43 years of age at the time of the election, came into office in 1960 are of course doubtful, to say the least (and today's younger generation knows, from the “selection” of G.W. Bush in 2000, how prone U.S. Presidential elections are to fraud and irregularities). His ties to the mafia, his womanizing and his health problems, that he coped with by taking drugs on a daily basis, are usually a not part of the broader discourse on his legacy. Generally, he was definitely a new type of politician in the White House, stressing publicity and bringing in academics as secretaries rather than party hacks; his and Jacky's lifestyle was dubbed as a new “Camelot”, with JFK as a king surrounded by bright knights of the roundtable.

A people divided: violent conflict emerging in Bulgaria

By guest author Mariya Ivancheva (LeftEast)

Over the last few days Bulgaria has witnessed opposing waves of mobilization that divide the country across ethnic and class lines. Since the 23rd of October, a student strike and sustained occupation has spread across six universities in the capital and other cities.

Protests in Sofia, July 8, 2013

The strike is the latest in a series of protests in the capital city in response to the saga of media mogul Delyan Peevski, whose unconstitutional reappointment as MP struck a painful cord with protesters, now out in the streets for months. Starting with expressions of moral indignation and demands for the resignation of the “Left-wing” government, the student protest was initially patronized by parties and intellectuals on the Right. Yet, despite the counter-mobilization of students and media apologists of the Bulgarian “Socialist” Party (BSP) in power, students resisted pressure from both “Left” and Right and initiated discussion forums to develop their own analyses and solutions. These discussions are still on-going. At the same time, members of professional groups – doctors, policemen, and stockbreeders – have also been out in the streets to protest the cutbacks in budgets, jobs, and subsidies.

While these groups were consolidating their separate claims, rarely in dialogue with each other, and ignored by the ‘Socialist’ government, the country has awakened to a sudden rise of ethnic violence. A twenty year old female student in Political Science from the University of Sofia was attacked with a knife during a robbery at the shop that she keeps. Having stabbed her over ten times, the criminal ran away and left her fighting for her life. The man was immediately reported to be of Arab descent. Similar to the event that happened on the same night in Greece, when two members of the fascist Golden Dawn were shot in cold blood, it soon transpired that the girl is a supporter of the extreme right party VMRO. The party gained notoriety by calling on its supporters earlier this autumn to march on and block the border with Turkey to prevent the entry of refugees.

Not surprisingly, VMRO used the opportunity to act. Vice-chair Angel Dzambazki, a young lawyer and elected member of Sofia’s Municipal Council, made an ultimatum to the authorities. He insisted that they cleared Sofia and the country of “criminals… economic migrants” and threatened that if they didn’t “people would take the matter into their own hands”. The words of Dzambazki effectively meant an immediate and total war on refugees, migrants and Bulgarians from ethnic minorities. Since Sunday a Bulgarian Roma father has been beaten to a pulp by skinheads in the center of Sofia in front of his infant child and other pedestrians. A woman from Cameroon was hit violently by a gang of men. A Syrian man was stabbed with a knife on Monday night. An employee of Bulgarian National TV was beaten and stabbed next to a bank-machine – the criminals were also alleged to “have spoken a foreign language”. A woman from Cameroon and her baby were beaten violently by a gang of men. Thus, the message of arbitrary violence has been taken literally by VMRO’s supporters.

Bulgarian institutions have only responded sluggishly. The BSP and its government kept silent. A number of liberal NGOs, intellectuals and professionals have slowly tried to mobilize. Yet, their response against the violent interethnic hatred, smoldering in the country against ethnic minorities for a long time before it hit the refugees, has been compromised. Not only have they gained renown as supporting ethnic minorities and migrants, but not “ethnic Bulgarians” in their plight in the face of labor and human rights abuses home and abroad. Over the last months many of them had come out to the street and unconditionally sided with the protests, framed by liberal media as the fight of the “moral and well-off middle classes” against the “illiterate” and “backward rest of the country” who can not make ends meet. They have promoted a moralizing and anti-popular critique of the political system. Hailing austerity, privatization and further liberalization of the market as the only viable alternatives, they have effectively blocked as “communist” and “totalitarian” any claims against the core of the problem: the pro-EU neo-liberal technocratic administration merged with big capital in the hands of the former nomenklatura. Thus, despite their moral indignation, liberals have opened the way for a “popular”, “national”, i.e. racist movement, which now defends “ethnic Bulgarians” against “the foreign threat” diverting the attention away from the powers that be.

1923, 1938, 1989 und heute – Das Gedenken an Hitlerputsch, Reichspogromnacht und Mauerfall und seine Aktualität als Aufruf zu Solidarität und Toleranz

Dieses Wochenende gedachten viele in Deutschland, Europa und weltweit der historischen Ereignisse des 9./10. November, dieses Jahr vor allem der „Reichskristallnacht“ des Jahres 1938. Über das Gedenken hinaus sollten jedoch auch für die Aktualität Lehren gezogen werden.

Zerstörtes jüdisches Geschäft in Mageburg

Vor 90 Jahren versuchte Adolf Hitler von München aus mit einem Putsch die Macht im Deutschen Reich an sich zu reißen; dies gelang ihm gut neun Jahre später auf politisch-institutionellem Wege. Der von den Nazis entfachte Terror gegen Andersdenkende und Minderheiten erreichte seinen ersten traurigen Höhepunkt vor 75 Jahren, am 9./10. November 1938, als durch von ihrem Regime inszenierten und orchestrierten angeblichen „Volkszorn“ (wegen der Ermordung des deutschen Botschafters in Paris) Synagogen und andere jüdische Einrichtungen in Deutschland und dem kurz zuvor „angeschlossenen“ Österreich in Brand gesteckt und zahlreiche Juden ermordet wurden; dies wurde als die „Reichskristallnacht“ bezeichnet.

Erinnert werden soll hier auch an den im Gegensatz zu den Männern des 20. Juli 1944 um Stauffenberg oft vergessenen Schreiner Georg Elser, der auch um das heutige Datum herum ein Jahr später, nämlich am 8. November 1939, ein Attentat auf Hitler verüben und damit dem moralischen Gebot des „Tyrannenmordes“ folgen wollte. Die von ihm im Münchner Bürgerbräukeller installierte Bombe explodierte allerdings 13 Minuten zu spät, da Hitler an diesem Abend – der NS-Gedenkveranstaltung an den 16 Jahre zuvor gescheiterten Putsch – kürzer als gewöhnlich sprach und das Lokal bereits verlassen hatte. Der mutige Einzelkämpfer Elser wurde an der Grenze zur Schweiz verhaftet und kurz vor Kriegsende, am 9. April 1945, in Dachau ermordet.

Durch ihre aggressive Expansionspolitik hatte die faschistische deutsche Regierung kurz vor diesem missglückten Attentat, am 1. September 1939, durch den Angriff auf Polen den größten Weltenbrand der Geschichte entfacht, der letztlich Dutzende Millionen von Menschen das Leben kostete, die meisten davon nicht in Uniform. Die Nachwirkungen dieses Krieges - Spaltung des Kontinents und Kalter Krieg zwischen Ost und West - sind in Europa bis heute zu spüren.

Vor etwa 25 Jahren gab es in Ostmitteleuropa erste Bürgerproteste gegen die dortigen Diktaturen, östlich des „Eisernen Vorhangs“; Ungarn öffnete als erstes seine Grenzen und gewährte Reisefreiheit; vor genau 24 Jahren, am 9. November 1989, tat dies (mehr oder minderunbeabsichtigt) auch die Ost-Berliner Regierung. Abermals vollzog sich daher in der Novembernacht vom 9. auf den 10. Historisches. Umstürze in allen ehemaligen Satellitenstaaten der Sowjetunion bedeuteten zwischen 1988 und 1991 das Ende des „Kalten Krieges“ und der Teilung des europäischen Kontinents; als wichtigstes Ereignis erfolgte die „Wiedervereinigung“ Deutschlands (eigentlich ein Beitritt der ehemaligen DDR zur Bundesrepublik). Dadurch bekam Europa die Chance, zusammen zu wachsen, und das zu vollenden, was im Westteil des Kontinents bereits wenige Jahre nach dem Weltkrieg von sechs Staaten begonnen worden war.

Vor 19 Jahren, am 10. November 1994, also fünf Jahre nach der „Wende“ in Deutschland, hielt Stefan Heym als Alterspräsident die Rede zur Eröffnung des 14. Deutschen Bundestages. Sie ist inhaltlich auch heute noch aktuell, nicht nur an der Stelle, an der er der „Industriegesellschaft“ attestiert, dass sie in eine tiefe Krise geraten ist und an der er Deutschland als neue Hegemonialmacht in Europa (heute noch mehr als damals) zu einer größeren gesamtgesellschaftlichen Verantwortung aufruft:

„Wir werden keine leichte Zeit haben in den nächsten vier Jahren. Es werden Entwicklungen auf uns zukommen, auf welche die wenigsten von uns, schätze ich, sich bisher eingestellt haben und um die wir uns nicht werden herumschwindeln können. Wie sagte doch Abraham Lincoln, der große amerikanische Präsident: 'Einen Teil der Menschen können sie die ganze Zeit zum Narren halten und alle Menschen einen Teil der Zeit, aber nicht alle Menschen die ganze Zeit.' Die Krise, in welche hinein dieser Bundestag gewählt wurde, ist ja nicht nur eine zyklische, die kommt und geht, sondern eine strukturelle, bleibende und dieses weltweit. Zwar hat die Mehrheit der davon betroffenen Völker sich von der hemmenden Last des Stalinismus und Poststalinismus befreit. Aber die Krise, von der ich sprach, eine Krise nunmehr der gesamten Industriegesellschaft, tritt dadurch nur um so deutlicher in Erscheinung. Wie lange wird der Globus noch, der einzige, den wir haben, sich die Art gefallen lassen, wie diese Menschheit ihre tausenderlei Güter produziert und konsumiert? Und wie lange wird die Menschheit sich die Art gefallen lassen, wie diese Güter verteilt werden? (…) Deutschland, und gerade das vereinigte, hat eine Bedeutung in der Welt gewonnen, der voll zu entsprechen wir erst noch lernen müssen. Den es geht nicht darum, unser Gewicht vornehmlich zum unmittelbaren eigenen Vorteil in die Waagschale zu werfen, sondern das Überleben künftiger Generationen zu sichern.“




Auch was Heym im Folgenden zu Armut und Reichtum, Flüchtlings- und Migrationsthematik, Macht und Meinungsfreiheit, Toleranz und Solidarität sagte, ist mehr denn je aktuell. Angesichts der Verschärfung der Krise in den letzten etwa fünf Jahren, die eine Krise der Ärmeren und der Mittelschicht, nicht aber der Finanz“eliten“ ist, muss dieser Aufruf auch heute, in Zeiten von Umverteilungsdebatten und Flüchtlingsströmen, wieder erfolgen:

„Reden wir nicht nur von der Entschuldung der Ärmsten. Entschulden wir sie. Und nicht die Flüchtlinge, die zu uns drängen, sind unsere Feinde, sondern die, die sie in die Flucht treiben. Toleranz und Achtung gegenüber jedem einzelnen und Widerspruch und Vielfalt der Meinungen sind vonnöten. Eine politische Kultur, mit der unser Land, das geeinte, seine besten Traditionen einbringen kann in ein geeintes, freies, friedliches Europa. Und benutzen wir die Macht, die wir haben, die finanzielle vor allem, weise und mit sensibler Hand. Macht, wie wir wissen, korrumpiert, und absolute Macht korrumpiert absolut. Die Menschheit kann nur in Solidarität überleben. Das aber erfordert Solidarität zunächst im eigenen Lande. West - Ost. Oben - unten. Reich - arm.“