Does this seem weird?
While riding my dad’s car through Düsseldorf during my last visit to Germany, I heard a song on the radio. It was called “Falsche Freunde” (false friends). It was a “German Hip-Hop” kind of tune and the lyrics were all about friends that keep bumming smokes without ever having cigarettes to return the favor, friends that talk bad about your new haircut behind your back although they told you they like it, friends that like your new girlfriend a little more than they should. You get the idea.
And then suddenly there was this one line: “Falsche Freunde, die die falschen Parteien wählen.” (False friends that vote for the wrong parties). First I just smiled and thought it was sort of clever to have a line like that in a song that was published two weeks before the election in Germany.
Then I thought again and it suddenly struck me: How can a party be wrong? If you live in a democracy, then any party up for election has been examined thoroughly and you can be sure that whatever their program is, it is not anti-constitutional. This means you can only have other parties, but not wrong parties. So what are we talking about here? Is it just a bunch of guys that wrote a text that isn’t very well thought-out? Or is it a song written in order to make you believe that you can only vote for this or that party without being considered totally backwards, totally antisocial or totally un-PC?
Or does this run deeper? Is it possible that all these people that always say that democracy is the best form of government aren’t so sure of this at all and wish that those parties that do not share their opinion of how a state has to be run weren’t up for election at all? And if this is the case, what does it tell us about the understanding of democracy that these people have?
And then suddenly there was this one line: “Falsche Freunde, die die falschen Parteien wählen.” (False friends that vote for the wrong parties). First I just smiled and thought it was sort of clever to have a line like that in a song that was published two weeks before the election in Germany.
Then I thought again and it suddenly struck me: How can a party be wrong? If you live in a democracy, then any party up for election has been examined thoroughly and you can be sure that whatever their program is, it is not anti-constitutional. This means you can only have other parties, but not wrong parties. So what are we talking about here? Is it just a bunch of guys that wrote a text that isn’t very well thought-out? Or is it a song written in order to make you believe that you can only vote for this or that party without being considered totally backwards, totally antisocial or totally un-PC?
Or does this run deeper? Is it possible that all these people that always say that democracy is the best form of government aren’t so sure of this at all and wish that those parties that do not share their opinion of how a state has to be run weren’t up for election at all? And if this is the case, what does it tell us about the understanding of democracy that these people have?
posted by leo at 12:29 AM
1 Comments:
It's because deep in their hearts, people know the truth about Democracy.
"In fact, after having abolished the monarchy, the best of all governments, it had transferred all the public power to the people -- the people which, guided neither by reason nor by counsels, forms just ideas on no point whatsoever; assesses few things in accordance with the truth and evaluates a great many according to mere opinion, which is ever fickle, and ever easy to deceive and to lead into every excess, ungrateful, arrogant, and cruel..."
Pope Pius VI, Pourquoi Notre Voix, 17 July 1793
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