Please support THE CITIZEN'S VOICE with a donation HERE!
|
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
| Home About Contact | ||
|
||
Please support THE CITIZEN'S VOICE with a donation HERE! | ||
|
|
||
Frank-Walter Steinmeier - a Luminary of DemocracyThere are politicians. There are statesmen. And then there is Frank-Walter Steinmeier. 
A man who hovers above the dreary world of politics like a democratic luminary over the dark valley of the unenlightened. A president who has been explaining to us for years how democracy works, above all to those citizens who apparently still haven't understood it. His method is disarmingly simple. Everyone belongs, as long as they vote the right way and don't make waves. That makes him the president of everyone, or at least almost everyone. When Steinmeier took office in 2017, it still sounded wonderful. “In a democracy, the people appear only in the plural and have many voices.” That was the old Steinmeier. A president of diversity. A friend of debate. A man who even insisted that politics had to speak openly about undesirable developments. The beautiful image then shattered in the face of the behavior of the “unwilling.” Reality arrived, and with it the realization that while a people may have many voices, some voices apparently require pedagogical supervision. Corona – when the president discovered the irrationalThe Corona years were particularly instructive. Germany was divided. People lost trust. Fundamental rights were restricted, families argued over vaccinations, demonstrations emerged.An ideal situation for a Federal President to build bridges. Steinmeier preferred to build a sorting facility. On one side were the reasonable people. On the other were people supposedly seized by a “cult of the irrational.” And when citizens began walking through cities on Mondays, the head of state proclaimed: “The walk has lost its innocence.” One has to admire the linguistic elegance. Our luminary mastered a more elegant method. Let the boundaries blur a little. And suddenly a citizen with a different view becomes a social risk. That is what is then called restoring cohesion. The Firewall Gets a CaretakerLater, Steinmeier found a new purpose in life, namely protecting democracy from its voters. In his speech on November 9, 2025, he spoke of a “militant democracy,” enemies of the constitution, political firewalls, and even a ban on political parties as a possible “ultima ratio.” He did not name the AfD. That wasn't necessary either. When there is an elephant in the room, the Federal President doesn't have to keep saying “elephant.”The party dieBasis criticized the speech at the time as a one-sided shift in the role of the Federal President. Instead of standing above the parties, he was becoming the political guardian of the firewall. The party also pointed out that although Steinmeier warned against inflationary use of the term “far-right,” his political consequences were formulated almost exclusively toward the right. A nice democratic feat. One warns against one-sidedness and then carries on one-sidedly. Karlsruhe permits a great deal. That doesn't make it wise. The Federal Constitutional Court has granted him a remarkably broad scope for action. He may point out undesirable developments and also criticize political parties. Only when he evidently neglects his duty to integrate and arbitrarily takes sides does it become a constitutional problem. That is a legal standard. Politically, however, a completely different question remains: Should a Federal President really do everything he is just barely allowed to do? After all, at dinner you shouldn't shout across the table with a megaphone, even though you are allowed to. The President Discovers the Center Forward Within HimselfIn July 2026, Steinmeier gave his summer interview to ZDF. And suddenly the non-partisan head of state was a football coach. The black-red federal government had overcome its “self-blockade.” Now it had “moved into attacking play.” ZDF summarized the interview accordingly: Steinmeier praised the coalition's reform package.A Federal President as commentator on the government's lineup. Perhaps next time the interview will go: “Merz down the right, Klingbeil cuts inside, lovely short passing. The opposition is sitting too deep.” dieBasis reacted critically once again. In its article “The Federal President as Guardian of the Firewall”, it asked whether Steinmeier was still acting as an independent observer or had long since become a supporter of the existing political system. Or had he been one from the very beginning? The man is simply pleased. Surely a president is still allowed to be happy when his government “moves into attacking play.” After all, we are all one big team. Only some citizens apparently happen to be wearing the wrong jersey. Then Came UnityOn October 3, 2026, the luminary took to the podium one last time for a grand speech invoking unity. The subject was – one might have guessed it – unity. Steinmeier said: “Every vote counts, every vote must be taken seriously.” A magnificent sentence. He could actually have gone home after that. But then he explained that “a quarter, a third and more” were demonstrating through their voting decisions that they were turning away from important fundamental rights of the republic. And about voters who “go to the extremes,” he said that they were prepared to put the rights of others up for disposition.The democratic dialectic of this idea deserves admiration. Every vote is to be taken seriously. Must one then go on to explain why millions of these votes are an expression of a problematic attitude toward fundamental rights? That's roughly like a host saying: “You are all very welcome here. The people at tables three through seven are giving me some cause for concern, though.” A quarter, a third, eventually it becomes confusing. The problem is mathematically interesting. An extremist is politically easy to isolate. At ten percent it becomes more difficult. At twenty percent you have a logistical problem. At “a quarter, a third and more,” the question slowly arises as to who is actually integrating whom here. And at half the population, the downfall of democracy threatens. Perhaps Steinmeier has therefore redefined integration. It used to mean: We bring different social groups together. Today the message seems to be: We explain to a third of society why it urgently needs to reconnect with the other two thirds. Self-Criticism, Steinmeier StyleAt least Steinmeier did engage in some self-criticism in Bremen. Perhaps politics had done too little after reunification. Perhaps it had also been too late. And perhaps it had not been decisive enough. Three maybes. That is roughly the political equivalent of a car repair shop explaining after an engine failure: “Possibly there was something wrong with the oil somewhere.”The structural question remains unanswered. If millions of people distrust the political system, could it possibly also be the political system's fault? Is it because of Corona, energy policy, migration, economic decline, or foreign-policy decisions? Perhaps, however, it is merely the lack of citizen participation and the politicians' self-image that allows them simply to ignore their citizens. This may be Steinmeier's most remarkable political achievement. He has elegantly turned the relationship between citizens and democracy upside down. The democratic idea used to be: The state must earn the trust of its citizens. Today it means: The citizen must prove that they deserve the state's trust. Those who vote the right way are democrats. Those who have doubts are susceptible to populism. Those who protest are acting irrationally. Those who vote for the wrong party are turning against the free democratic basic order. And anyone who reads something critical of the government on the internet may have fallen victim to a troll, an algorithm, or an “internet oligarch.” One almost wonders, in amazement, how democracy managed to function for centuries without supervised voting. Who Actually Elects the Guardian of Our Democracy?Here the story becomes downright charming. The man who is supposed to provide political guidance to millions of citizens was never elected by those millions. The Federal President is elected by the Federal Convention. The people are allowed to play an important democratic role in this process. They are allowed to learn about the election.The political elite simply hands itself the positions. Steinmeier is not an “Elder Statesman.” He comes directly from the center of German federal power. He was a close aide to Gerhard Schröder, head of the Lower Saxony State Chancellery, head of the Federal Chancellery, intelligence coordinator, foreign minister, vice chancellor, SPD candidate for chancellor, and chairman of the SPD parliamentary group. Well, if that doesn't make him a man of the people, representing the entire nation. Because if a Federal President actually claims so much moral authority, why shouldn't he derive his legitimacy directly from the citizens? And if he were elected by the people, why shouldn't there also be a possibility of recall under strict conditions? Author: AI-Translation - Peter Scheller (dieBasis) | |
|
| Other articles: |
 | Democracy Was Shown the Door – Experience Report on the 10th Democracy Conference in Burgenlandkreis on April 25, 2024A critical review from a participant of the 10th Democracy Conference was submitted to buergerstimme.net and is published here.... zum Artikel |
 | European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the EU are dangerous organizations and individuals?Hard to believe, but Facebook has classified the much-loved President of the European Commission and the EU as dangerous organizations and individuals.... zum Artikel |
 | In Belgium, truth is now officially punishable - and “our democracy” is quietly cheering along! Orwell was a naive optimist!Oh, how wonderfully mature and tolerant our Western democracies have become! These shining bastions of freedom, where one is finally no longer bothered with inconvenient facts.... zum Artikel |
|
Support the operation of this website with voluntary contributions: via PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/evovi/12 or via bank transfer IBAN: IE55SUMU99036510275719 BIC: SUMUIE22XXX Account holder: Michael Thurm Shorts / Reels / Kurz-Clips Imprint / Disclaimer |