text from the November 2004
I. Challenges for Liberal
While it would be tempting to measure the state of freedom in the chart of the FDP. But that does not deserve freedom. There is cause for other reasons, time to back a liberal policy discussion. What freedom means and where it is threatened? And how do we judge the acting in the name of freedom? were in the 90s there are already some attempts of liberal self-reflection, starting from the victories of 1989, influenced by the promises of globalization and information society, and focused on a Europe of freedom. The program was then debate the FDP typical expression of this liberal self-consciousness: self-confident and optimistic.
But the latest developments since the 11th September 2001 sneaks skepticism whether that promise of freedom can be redeemed. asked political world: the USA Are the Crusaders of Freedom, the keeper of the "Free World" for which George Bush has them and we want as Europeans we should do - or what are the root causes for the freedom of upsets in the understanding of Europe and America? Up to what limits should liberal democracies - especially Israel and the U.S. - defend like? What response is our cultural, moral or political heritage fair?
on three sides gets the freedom under attack. On one side are the enemies of open society, those fundamentalists who murdered Theo van Gogh. And you need not be a Cassandra, expect to deal with the fact that increase in the foreseeable future suicide attacks in Europe. On the other side are those who defend the open society say they pervert but the truth. There are those hysterical conservatives, openness can not stand back and take refuge in the water-tight and stuffy basement cultural and moral caves from which they had lured the peace that brief post-modernism 1989-2001 something. The pressure of these two fronts is based on a third: the expectation that liberalism freedom with passion and a sense knows to defend. It threatens a culture war.
And not only the external pressure on the champions of freedom increases. The concept of freedom loses its substance. Where the world is changing, there are also changing our biographies. In the wake of change they are unpredictable and uncertain. Mobility and flexibility are required, but they are not automatically promise of freedom but threatened messenger of necessity. And while every person in our country has an opinion about what is justice, almost no one can say what is for his freedom. Freedom is a slogan now.
This is dramatic. After all, liberalism has to prove himself to the reality of a globalized world. And that is rough in the foreseeable future. There are the practical challenges of the times in which we live that will determine how liberalism has to establish itself. Among them are the future issues for which we must lay the foundations of freedom: What does it mean that we are now clearly the future at the expense of freedom Generations live? Follows a liberal world order policy of free trade automatically a sustainable development? Is the only liberal answer to genetic engineering on humans, the freedom of research? - And finally, the very mundane: where organized today a policy of freedom in the party system? What liberalism is of the Westerwelle-FDP, and the liberal claims represent the Greens?
It does not matter whether these issues have been correctly diagnosed, at the end of a liberal self-reflection, they are already formulated or otherwise. It remains that they are a cause for reflection. In the following I would like some basic, but not impractical ideas the concept of freedom do. It is to be harvested from three different levels: the personal, community and societal level, because it shows different faces at these three levels. I do not believe that there is an absolute freedom - and neither absolute lack of freedom - there. The proposition that freedom has either completely or not, Congress is pathos. Unfortunately, he could also come from George Bush.
The differences and tensions between personal, community and socially-understood freedom make us liberals often mutual understanding difficult - although they account for the turbulent core, the engine of free thought and action. The "thinking as a search movement" to value and work at these three levels of freedom, I conclude with a description of a holistic civic liberalism and reflect it possible tasks of the Friedrich-Naumann Foundation, to launch a practical discussion. The great idea of freedom has won many expressions. It deserves nothing less than a thorough dispute over its future destiny.
II individual, personal freedom and inner freedom
begins as self-determination of the individual, as a legitimately legal right to shelter personal freedom over the collective one hand and the other as inner freedom as the ability to practice self-care. Personal freedom is a sphere of freedom of the individual in social context, it is freedom from coercion in economic, social and political terms. Isaiah Berlin describes this as "negative freedom". In contrast to this is inner freedom is an achievement of the individual and an object of the "self-education", "freedom of person," "positive freedom" in the sense of empowerment (and not in terms of Isaiah Berlin, positive freedom also defined on the spectrum) . Only shelter and inner freedom form the individual freedom that allows for customization of their lives.
Individual freedom is at its core the inner freedom, "the mission determines to be understood as the dignity of man" (Theodor Heuss). This inner freedom is completely apolitical: it has nothing to do with collectives, and so also do with the legally secured personal freedom to do. Minimally, it relates to that place of self-determination between stimulus and response, which distinguishes humans from pigs and dogs. continued the positive side, it concerns the realization of one's own values, "self care" in a very general sense.
In his little volume, "A psychologist experienced the concentration camp" Viktor Frankl describes his discovery that freedom. In the most disgusting of all prisons in the 20th Century succeeded him and others enslaved, their inner freedom of choice - and their dignity - to preserve. In contrast to the animal a human being a place of inner freedom between stimulus and response. "What is human? He is the being who always decides what it is. He is the being that the gas chambers invented;. But at the same time he is also the being who has gone into the gas chambers upright, and a prayer on his lips "
For every liberal who loves the whole freedom should be self-care and lifestyle so be self-evident issues. Read Friedrich Schiller! And learn from the many other wise freedom thinkers have thought about self-control, self-cultivation and self-shaping. Their legacy of the liberal philosopher Richard Rorty calls "the vocabulary of self-creation," and he adds that "it is necessarily private, unshared, unsuited to argument." As a representative, he mentions, for example, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Proust. Sure, we could add include Emerson or Camus, all authors who deal with extreme situations of human experience, while an inner autonomy and freedom to the world win. The fact that this "vocabulary of self-creation" is not able to consent, I do not think so. It would be interesting even in this transcendental thinkers of the private Starting even a kind of design "existential liberalism," a conservative system of government, based on a won-existence of human dignity and respect, therefore, be interoperable with respect to the religions could.
The philosopher Wilhelm Schmid, former fellow of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation recommends that a practice of individual freedom from an art of living, the changes between release and binding and the maximum freedom lived-always explored new. This is done through a process of "living human being who has not become victims of the apparatus and will not be a mere member of the apparatus, the internal decision to own Life will not want to lose. "As Theodor Heuss wrote The Policy can do your own, such as Heuss continues:" From such a belief, we do our part, we are in public life face to do to help this and, the rule of law, the rule of law, secure, not as an abstract political Clause case, but as the great task of our lives to be in spiritual freedom of religious power to shape it and with the spirit of justice to fulfill it. "
of the inner freedom actualizing man plays an important role in that form of liberalism that has committed human dignity: it is something as the silent condition and the secret goal of a humanistic liberalism. "The outward freedom leads many away from the inner freedom of each person," wrote Theodor Heuss. Concepts such as democracy and freedom were for Heuss, it also pointed Hildegard Hamm-Brucher, "life-shaping values," to which he had liberality, tolerance and fairness, understanding, willingness, openness and humor - values that a Guido Westerwelle in contrast to J. Wilhelm Möllemann also happy for the FDP to the same claim was subject had Robert Leicht noticed in time slightly disgusted. "I had always thought that liberalism have not only to do with freedom, but also with liberals. And liberals something decisive, with an almost creature-like aversion to resentment and prejudice. "
was indicated that a liberal man that founded based on the inner freedom in all-encompassing way, the policy framework right? Of course yes. Although the Basic Law has the dignity of man - in the above interpretation: his inner freedom - not a reason stuffed with content, but it was the dignity in the form of personal freedom to Ursamen a free and democratic basic order. The renunciation by the fundamental law to a deep substantive provision of the dignity and in the emphasis of their formal character turns out to be a break point of liberal thought. This waiver is political strength and weakness at the same time, it will be demonstrated as in the course of the further considerations.
III. And Company
liberals are the historical guarantor of the modern constitutional state, the parents of the free democratic basic order. They have achieved freedom for the people by introducing the rule of law - traditionally in the form of four orders which compose four different fields of human activity libertarian. They are: (1) of the liberal constitutional state which spans the shelter of the individual against arbitrary action and violence; (2) the liberal market order, which guarantees the fairness of the activities of self-organization, cooperation, competition and freight exchange, (3) liberal democracy, providing a framework and tools fair, responsible, employable and federalism also variety of self-government provides: government of the people, by the people, for the people, and (4) of the traditional nation state, an "identity" liberty order, which corresponded to the desire for self-determination in a historical destiny. The "liberal welfare state" is, honestly, do any more than the traditional "liberal arts state," both titles of committees of the FDP in 2000, without the party would certainly know internally what ideas were developed there.
The self-binding to some specific rules that are formulated in the liberal social contract, and every day derived from newly permitted, first, the development of a powerful dynamic of self-organization, which brought us the economic and social changes of modernity. Second, these rules have been put playing fields for economic and political activity as a liberal public have in common that meet other people with respect and avoid violent with each other. This establishment of a public space is an often despised and media liberal democracy endangered cultural achievement. Third, the rule of liberal laws is a fundamental condition for collective action, thus: for politics, for the activities of collective self-determination and problem resolution.
the liberal philosopher John Rawls defame liberals like some German as "socialists" because his work provides a corporate foundation for the welfare state. Who completed his reading with the Ralws the 70 years, the solid Rawlsian edifice certainly not fair. In his early 90s, published "Political Liberalism Rawls draws the genesis of liberalism after since the Reformation and subsequent religious wars of the late Middle Ages. The religious zealots have therefore agreed on a secular principle of "tolerance" and so helped the neutral country of birth. The history of political liberalism is a history of Rawls 'liberal constitutionalism' (and his "political liberalism" is actually a "constitutional liberalism"). Towards the end of the 20th Rawls century would add a recent chapter: Liberalism in a pluralistic society. He is, however, a rejection Heuss and all those for whom liberalism is a personal attitude. Political Liberalism is merely a "political conception of justice", the "overlapping consensus" of all those "comprehensive and reasonable" life designs that can be expected in a pluralistic society. The company is integrated over this minimal consensus, which is reflected in the liberal constitutional order. It provides only for "fairness" and allow all other "projects of the Enlightenment and liberal lifestyles, a shoulder-shrugging cancellation.
a similar effect in the subtle, self-limiting liberalism represented by the philosopher Richard Rorty, but methodically, or in Rorty's case better stylistically with a completely different argument. He doubted utterly that a collective system of freedom and justice (also from competitors) can ever be the same vocabulary of personal self-realization (and vice versa). As Rawls sees it as Rorty strength of a purely political liberalism understood that he waived a detailed image of man. Liberalism has to give, in the middle of society and should refrain from profound truth claims on substantive definitions of "good" or "succeed be" life.
too libertarian thinkers today's liberals and the rule of law institutions in the Freiburg economist tradition not stay long on questions of personal inner freedom and the conditions of human dignity but only to seek the establishment of a social contract to protect individual freedom, ie the legally guaranteed freedom from coercion. "Freedom is political power, divided into small pieces," as Hobbes wrote - the tradition of liberal social contracts is long, and they always made use of a reduced and artificial human being: the rational, the utility-maximizing, the rational individual. The reduction to a politically important essence in a way liberal Adam, should universal validity and ability of the consent generate derived from social contract and, if possible be included. Rawls and Rorty now claim, in response to the "fact of pluralism" (Rawls) or the terms of the variety characterized by postmodernism (Rorty) to the liberal Adam at (almost) can do without completely. Rorty is content with a platonic "featherless biped," Rawls and comes with unqualified individuals from behind a veil of ignorance.
A so-understood political liberalism is confident that there is a liberal public sphere, and the conditions of its self-generated, and from himself - justified out - from its history and achievements can be. In other words, the actual success of liberal constitutions, which form the framework of the liberal public speaks for itself. Rawls is content with a contemporary philosophical clarification of the phenomenon, both the liberal tradition continues this tradition, the history of ideas as well as the object of analysis is.
The actual success of liberal order is not a bad observation, on the contrary - even if it is based on cultural grounds, may a liberal order itself may not generate or reproduce, but can only provide protection (see IV). The public space belongs to the code of conduct of the "citizen" with its freedoms and obligations, their own (of the historical traditions, constitutional law, the common good vocabulary of political correctness and dominated) language, and their own caregivers, such as constitutional courts, parliaments, political parties, anti-trust authorities or media. The liberal public is in fact an artificial forum in which it is possible that people meet as strangers and tolerate their differences in origin and faith, or at least ignore. On election day, people are all equal as citizens, as well as on the square of the economy.
Liberalism proves to be a successful one because momentous idea building. On one side is the liberal programmatic - thanks to constitutional one might almost say, the doctrine - a strong piece of fiction, on the other hand, it develops world-shaping power advantage: it allows the integration of pluralistic societies. The principle of tolerance creates distance, creates abstraction - and thus the common ground. The public space protects the difference by making them second-rate power. "In the liberal society (are) the specific characteristics of the individuals that make them different from others - banned from the public spheres of law, politics and the market - sex, race, race, language, homeland, origin, faith" writes Ulrich Preuss. Peaceful and fair competition in the market and policy be possible - and they have led the West to an unprecedented flowering.
For this form of liberalism, which focuses on the state of society, people are not flesh and blood, pain and pleasure, thought and deed in the struggle for inner freedom. They are also not sympathetic yuppies with mobile home, 18% job and life - but they are featureless, abstract people. Therefore, it is illiberal in this view, if citizens are treated not as citizens but as members of a particular community, such as Friedman, the journalist as a Jew, or the chancellor candidate Edmund Stoiber as Bayer. Private matter has also the sexual orientation of a politician to be, as a woman's choice for abortion. Also, the public memory of the Holocaust has its own dynamics, and it embodies a deeply political minimalist consensus, no non-political memoirs of Martin Walser to the Nazi period. Talk shows, in which private dirt is washed threaten the boundaries of the liberal public, as well as turtelnde mobile phone users. And populist politicians who take to speakers of emotion, which sought to prove with heart and edge their nature as "Battle Boar" acting, anti-liberal. Political correctness is that Liberalism against authenticity. "Freedom as a way of life" as they wanted from the FDP to Heuss Westerwelle quite embody very different nuances and wants may have much to do with "environment linkage", but nothing to with a collective system of government that orientation.
Individual freedom is for this political liberalism: private freedom. Should make every private, what he wants, unless it happens at the expense of others. Let each his dignity to regain his inner freedom without ideological spying. And everyone should coordinate with other related individuals - freedom of association, freedom, economic freedom and other civil rights - everything is always reciprocal, with the proviso Mutual respect and equality. These social freedoms, the rights of a citizen complement the individual freedom of human rights.
In Conclusion: A liberal framework regulations allowed on the field of liberal public as the unfolding of the dynamics of a pluralistic society, all the individual and collective activities of self-organization, which together make up the economic and social performance of a company. It allows joint action by strangers in the economy and politics. That we have the rules, individuals can unite with each other in a fair manner and make joint moves. The law provides for freedom of regular new beginnings by preventing concentration of power - by antitrust law, via voting hours. Violations of the rules will be punished by public, depersonalized mechanisms. Lawyers and civil servants are the real heroes of the liberal constitutional state, because they manage over personality of the liberal order.
IV freedom and community
The just-executed attempts of a purely public liberalism - that is a collective system of government, their image of man wants to keep as small as possible and for which therefore have questions about inner freedom, a suspect close to the ideological spying - by the so-called "Communitarians" criticized as inadequate. These deal with the role of communities for the individual, thus dealing with a phenomenon that largely ignore the Liberals. Michael Walzer, one of the most intelligent communitarians understand the communitarian critique, however, not as an alternative, but rather as a corrective to liberal theory and practice ". He liked, he writes in the readable tapes "reason, politics and passion - deficits of liberal theory," the thesis argued that liberalism is today in his usual options of an inadequate theory and an improper political practice. " Communitarian Corrections made liberalism "better informed sociologically and psychologically more open." Waltz What does that mean?
The dominant liberalism has a hard time with communities. His theoretical considerations act essentially on the individual, the state, the market, the imperative of freedom and the arrangement of these ingredients. Market (good) and state (bad, where it is responsible for more than minimal institutional functions) are almost the fixed stars of liberalism. Economic activities and social groups are described as the result of self-determined individual action, and the state must respect the liberal order.
This was historically a strong cultural understanding to organic embossed from the state people need, but playing with good reason today - at least in Germany - only a minor role. And admittedly, there was one (although for historical reasons taken, but) very limited choice, as liberals of all communities but the national version with political privileges of refinement. But permanently take the place of the nation state, no further identity-freedom system was introduced more - and this is a loss. How did he understand?
An "identity system of government," rejoined the obvious need for people to be more than individuals in the law, workers in the market organization and voter in a democracy. Being human is to participate in culture: to speak one language, one history to have typical habits, with other people shared customs and traditions. Historically, the achievement was the rule of law and democratic, and later also dependent of the market order on the meta-order, on the integrative vehicle of the nation state: "Unity and justice and freedom for the German fatherland" This identity-liberal order was, especially in Hegel. 'between Germany, a cultural design, ethnic variety in the National with errors and failures, but also with hopes and victories, most recently 1989th
During the 20th century, this form of identity- Constitutional system becoming less important. And that's a good thing. But its space is not a new liberal offer is entered, which allows people to view themselves as cultural and historical nature. You were not allowed in Germany hope for a short time that the FDP had discovered with their "Wiesbaden Programme" to citizens as the new reference point of an identity-free order and thus adopted the nation as a reference point - just like Vaclav Havel, one of the greatest living Liberals proposed in the 90 years. It would have been a truly liberal paradigm shift, not the political order to design the national state around and to think, but in the main by civil and its self-determination. Civil society would have been thought of as this universal horizon that includes all-particularist identities, homes, and incorporates as a meta-order systems and all other freedom ausblanciert. But the story about it was missing. The attempt from the experience of two totalitarian regimes of the 20th century to establish civil society as an anti-totalitarian project remained limited to a few original academics. And could a practical link with the autumn revolution of 1989 not exist, because West Germany never break, but soon came to grief mood.
Where the program of civil society, not a liberal economy had more, it was necessary to the survival of national trials expected. The comic event, expressed that as in the foreign feathers of the FAZ, where skills brought the father of the Wiesbaden-based program for a liberal civil society, Guido Westerwelle, the trick to call in English: "I'm proud to be a German!" - Certificate of liberal confusion on these issues. And in case it unpleasant is expressed in Deutschdrucksertum that served in the J. William Möllemann unfortunate anti-Semitism debate - this is a testimony of liberal aberration.
The ratio of liberals to political collectives therefore is not natural. Communities disrupt the dominant liberalism today for several reasons. With waltz can mention two of them: First, most communities or associations are involuntary, which de facto inequality of citizens - means - depending on the membership of various underprivileged communities. The equality of citizens is the motto of "Equal opportunities for all start" a need for liberal thought and action, because it legitimizes the competition of the same political and economic citizens. The (self-imposed or involuntary) membership in communities, and their advantages and disadvantages remain therefore the ultimate one - rarely addressed - Scandal of the liberal self-image. Second, communities have a potential of "passionate energy, the most liberal - and for good reason - evokes mixed feelings "(Waltz). Liberal rationality can with political passion, nothing to do with conviction.
Another reason liberal distrust of communities to influence people and make it very concrete requirements for the individual to be able to come into conflict with the liberal order. In that regard, liberalism is a historical necessity held or holds, there are hopes that the individual to free him from the yoke of its communities and the universal opportunity, if not the lifestyle to provide a liberal citizenship. There must seem incomprehensible when some minority communities still special sensitivity to their members demand. In North America it is called the "politics of identity" or "politics of recognition", and now Europe is an increasingly obsolete. What a long tradition of conflict to communities but has also demonstrated a saying of the Comte de Clermont-ton Rees in the French National Assembly in 1789: "The Jews as individuals everything, the Jews of anything."
The liberal distrust of Communities for a total of good reasons. The attempts to realize a utopian communities - and communities subject to this temptation However, even if you do not necessarily fall - according to experience always lead to freedom, not only for their individual members of communities, but also it affected non-members. Liberals are utopias of freedom communities not to take some rare sympathy for cooperatives and the libertarian-anarchist-socialist Gustav Landauer's attempt synthesis of (anarchy as "order by the voluntary societies" as the highest expression of freedom). The two real existing liberal utopias themselves have no room for Communities: the liberal society of free citizens on the one hand, and the human image of the autonomous Individual to another.
communities also have much to give. No one will deny that the particularistic traditions of different states, different ethnic groups, ethnic groups, cities, communities of faith, family and other residential communities, the salt in the soup are a society. And it can not deny that given the cultural achievements of different communities the opportunity to individuals only to find his place in the world and in dealing with his own origins and external influences on decision-capable, strong personality to mature. to own culture, needs to be man of the human communities and their traditions. The autonomous are free of tie individual only as Adam in the liberal theory.
"may much collective How would you like?" - "Not at all, please." - This is a thinker's brow-liberalism closer Art The legitimate distrust of certain communities may either theoretically or practically lead to collective just as unpopular and best ignored family members to deal with. For the realization of freedom is also true that strong bonds are a good thing. Freedom requires security and order, and the involuntary bonds. Membership in the Catholic Church stabilizes a liberal constitutional system. The sale free Sunday has his good sense. And discernment, Tolerance, inner freedom of choice and self-esteem are not a gift of liberalism that has the autonomy of the individual and unlimited social mobility up the cause, but they are a result of the relationships that people develop in communities. They are cultural offerings, and it would be wrong to believe, a Middle Eastern Muslim or a Buddhist Chinese, they could not have because they have not received liberal education.
In the real-Liberal policies have always expected to communities. But why are communities not included in the liberal thinking? We know that people can not live independently, and that their identity, even their dignity materially from those communities depends to which they belong. Even liberals use to this day certain environment, income classes and professions. They have started their own communities to which they attribute a soul - as the FDP. A party that would work for many of deliberative rationality of liberal theory, would not survive politically, they would be at best an intellectual debating society - and even can not exist without a sense of community. And there are also organized liberalism liberals to declare certain books of the Bible, religion and liberalism, you had to fear, already, some party leaders to the Messiah. This has to do with liberals little liberal with honesty to communities even less.
One of the early liberal theorist, Alexis de Tocqueville, like Smith and Locke with a sociological view gifted, has known associations to read quite liberal. The involuntary (because congenital) associations such as religion, family and country team he has ennobled as prerequisites for the success of a free market economy and democracy, in turn, the education (only nominally) voluntary associations representing the interests and self-government were crucial. Not to forget is that companies are collectives with a purpose and a sense of community that one day in the Mission Statement a "Mission Statement" and the "corporate identity" holds. Liberals hold
that remains, have always advocated a greater permeability of communities by writing a strong political public. However, they have to date her relationship with strong shared values not clear: Liberals are even such a community, like all other political communities? Or anyway, they represent the all-encompassing, higher-ranking and socially binding wisdom? And how much community needs an individual to a self-employed person be? How do you keep it with the cultural values and self-determination of communities that want to close the achievement of free trade and economic globalization? What rights are collective in politics - for example, minorities, or future generations?
answers to these questions are indeed in suspension, but not in a liberal balance. This time, they would first be placed on the table and discussed honestly. Until that happens, liberalism remains blind in one eye.
V. The perspective of civic liberalism
From the above considerations arising contradictions that can be demonstrated in practice in Germany. In principle, there are two perspectives liberal policy towards which I would describe as a "regulatory liberalism" and "emancipatory liberalism." Perspectives, that is, they lead to liberal policies, which operates with recourse to the concepts of freedom outlined above, may on the dominant society discussed in the context of freedom of expression. I would like to waive the two perspectives in a "civic liberalism".
The regulatory liberalism is the liberalism of social freedom. It focuses on maintaining the existing liberal order is already largely in terms of social freedom - the rule of law, market economy and democracy are concerned with law and democracy are no longer with the same care as the market order. His claim under this liberalism provides a liberal public, individual freedom and rights. He waived hinausm on an in-depth substantive provision of human dignity through the consensus of a narrowly conceived material subsistence and takes into account, to content in many areas of policy making to take any interventions. On the contrary, he often defended the existing conditions as the result of the wise hand of the political and economic competition with the understanding of social rules, of course, with the comfortable Restriction that certain results are worthy of criticism attributed to the lack of competition.
emancipatory liberalism has for the material conditions of freedom, be promoted for the realization of joint political action needs. He develops certain ideas in the areas of implementation of internal and community freedom. Human dignity therefore requires not only the security of a physical subsistence level by the regulatory liberalism, but also the (humanist committed) education policy, a meaningful activity in the form of regular work, the workers 'and citizens' empowerment through more Participation, a healthy environment and a poverty-resistant health policy, and ultimately the cultural policy. This emancipatory liberalism is not egalitarianism, where all people want to do the same happy - but he is a political act of willing liberalism, the freedom is still a distant goal.
Actually existing German liberalism, the FDP, represents a major balancing act in both positions, but not really. Offense is noticeable that the rhetoric is happy to serve the regulatory liberalism, emancipatory part, but it too often limited to securing the lifestyle of the communities served. Where the FDP also make a small ethnic party steps on their own clientele wants, she still behaves as a party clientele - and a curse of democracy, of course. But as long as the FDP does not learn about the style embody values, lifestyles, they will remain clients party.
The Greens, however, in their majority, not liberals, but determined to act to promote the values of life of all emancipated by inside who feel these values into politics, where their failure is staged then tragically to the facial features into it. The advantage of the Greens is that their staff is seen as a man of conviction - and believe it is now not just what a custom, based on Marketing Strategies FDP and its resilient chairman is attributed. Green, however, few understand the regulatory liberalism as much as some FDP'ler.
Both the FDP and the Greens have sought to make up their deficits through a civil society program in which the hard liberalism of the systems, the hardware of the freedom to combine with the soft liberalism of an emancipatory, liberal practice of the software - the Greens less thoroughly, but just as unsuccessful as the FDP, which at its Wiesbaden principles of a liberal civil society, especially after the restoration of government action after 11 September and as part of the Agenda 2010 reforms, no longer recalls. civil society has been misunderstood by the party as "civil society": The program of the citizen, the party of the bourgeoisie. Simple test: who you meet on Sunday mornings at a reception of the liberal network sip the champagne: his dentist or those in the parents' association dedicated young single mother? Clear answer: if it matters, the FDP is the dedicated mother to green and activist. After all, now became "the dentist's wife dialed green" party internal to the new specter that one faces in horror, incomprehension and helplessness - the liberal civil society is even threatening to fail as Honoratiorenveranstaltung. A civil society
Liberalism would be a pragmatic 'republican liberalism "that is based on individual freedom as self-determination and collective self-organization. The concept of freedom of self-determination and self-organization is complementary. Freedom is realized in a practice that links the two principles, of course, and which supplements the regulations of freedom. The subtlety of the practice is what makes the Republican part of the project. This self-evident to be a phenomenon of a liberal elite, but rather a mass phenomenon. Republicanism means the return to winning social and cultural side of the Liberty project. "More freedom for more people" requires publicly shared values and customs, and cultural self-evident, even if freedom is ultimately only by the individual himself won.
would mean to be a liberal citizens to insist on authoritarian impulses towards self-determination and self-organization - and to survive in self-determination and self-organization. It would be to represent the belief that freedom is never completely won and it requires constant effort to secure them. It would also represent its values and standards set in the matter and to dignity and in a certain intransigence. Liberal do not care. The intellectual heritage of more than 2000 years history of freedom should be taken up with great self-confidence.
With traditionally-Republican sentiment and terrorist-fussy popular communitarianism to do such a project any more. Rather, it's about a more democratic liberalism to join experiential, tangible freedom for all, a liberalism to the liberalism instead of a know-all. Liberalism must be no lesson, but it must be practical life. He must be a liberalism of ideas, not ideology, a relevant liberalism, not a radical, committed to the search for meaning and significance and the dynamic idea of freedom, not arrested the one universal truth in the writings of dead men. Such a pragmatic Republican Liberalism would be charged with a passion for self-determination and self-organization principles of a better society. He would be the various structures of freedom: to bring the rule of law, democracy, market economy and civil society as an integrative republican system of government with each other in balance. And next to these "hard questions of freedom," he knew something to say about the "soft issues of freedom": the struggle for inner freedom of the individual to the conditions of psychosocial skills and freedom to the questions of the social conditions of lived freedom.
It would be a liberalism that is committed predict an emancipatory, liberating politics. Of course it is for liberal, that is, find low-key, sensitive strategies of self-empowerment and which left the moral preaching or the populist Einpeitscherei the collectivists, the tradition of providing. Emancipatory politics is measured for the complex conditions of inner personal freedom enstprechend complex understanding of the diversity of the freedoms and the need for community and public recognition. For civic liberals is never seen to give a final goal in mind, but only combined action principles and a sense of passion.
Is this asking too much of liberalism - all to be? No. Who freedom understood in the singular, and it fails in all its fascinating diversity. And even states that may be economic freedom and economic freedom is something different - namely, in the extreme case for the worker's life insurance, said the Group boss but only a million-dollar settlement, or otherwise: for the workman the existence, for the construction contractor Peanuts . Liberalism needs his whole imagination, the whole fund of freedom in all the instruments of liberal policies to help more freedom for more people to bear.
VI. The role of the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung
a civic liberalism may be the call for many reasons, among them the fact that it forms a community-based and association-friendly understanding of politics that uses the diversity and the possibilities of an emancipated, strong civil society for a robust civil liberty practice, their ambition is to enable people to a successful life. This kind of civic liberalism could be credibly pursued a pragmatic and practically relevant philosophy, which becomes evident regionally and locally in different ways. This liberalism is primarily living in the constant and open debate about its needs, not enlightened in the maintenance history of ideas. The
Naumann Foundation should play a crucial role, according to the conviction of its namesake that the inner core of all policies of the drive to shape human community. To achieve this, liberalism more than a parliamentary arm like the FDP. As of living of liberalism is also dependent on the practice of freedom, the lives of liberal personalities - from her life, from basic liberal decisions of their responsibility for others. This work for liberalism represents the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. This may
they just do not give in to the danger, some liberal thinkers to columns Saints and the declination of its radical theoretical works on solely promising strategy to explain. Not radical, but relevance is needed. Radicalism is also relevant in some places, and we can thank the liberal Institute for the courage to define radical and stringent positions - for part of the liberal tradition. What matters is whether the Naumann Foundation manages the memory and the thinker, but above all to Inkubatorin liberal civil society. You could combine the fund with a focus on liberal tradition of important issues, investing in people as citizens and so are the vanguard of a Bürgergesellschaf in which freedom is protected both institutionally as well understood emancipatory is. It is asking a "liberal hermeneutics": the different circumstances of developing local and regional civil societies are dependent on the entire collection of the various political traditions and to all liberal thinkers.
This has consequences for their self-understanding and organization: The foundation is not a pit stop of the FDP, but a racing team with its own mission ("partner on equal terms"). This should their political education instructive to look not target groups, but find partners in action, and for this they should improve and extend the methodological and strategic competence and its political work and the (old) stem Fellows understood as a "foundation". Internal reforms could be in my view: more competition in the election of the board every two held every four years; alignment of political education on a participatory earned model; expansion of the methodological skills, increased generation of dialogue within the foundation, stakeholder dialogue: partnership instead of target groups; and the like. We as fellow
stock, we as a foundation, as a stakeholder in the idea of liberty, should understand ourselves as agents of change and as part of the foundation towards these goals. Our theme of 2004, "Visions of a liberal education company, is a range of organized liberalism, reflect on the conditions of a successful freedom. vergesssen We address the "soft liberalism", the lack of a FDP, which is four orders of Liberty at just one interest, and has that any hardware of software systems needs the practice.
"The new liberalism can not be identified by party secretariats. From the clatter of the Group Policy will be no meal of the future, unless it be piled behind the new spirit rattle. This is not the real thing but professional politicians ", Friedrich Naumann wrote. In fact, it is for the foundation named after him, a place of rest to be before the clatter of everyday life, a refuge for many liberal traditions of self-reflection. The organized liberalism needs a strong foundation in the diverse traditions of liberalism are maintained in their entirety.
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