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Even in 2021: folder and fax machine
Photo: Getty Images
Short quiz question: What did the successful author Ferdinand v.
Schirach, the fax machine in the health department and lots of dirty school boards in common?
Quite simply: everyone says something about the constitution of our country.
You say something about the new German need for reform, which in many cases is not that new, but is just being exposed again - due to Corona.
Nikolaus Blome
Photo:
Daniel Reinhardt / DPA
Born in 1963, was Deputy Editor-in-Chief and Political Director of the "Bild" newspaper until October 2019.
From 2013 to 2015 he headed the SPIEGEL capital office as a member of the editor-in-chief; previously he was deputy editor-in-chief of "Bild".
Since August 2020 he has headed the political department at RTL and n-tv.
The filthy, poorly equipped schools represent the state that is decaying because its responsibilities are criminally mixed up.
The faxing health department stands for a state that no longer functions reliably in the second corona wave because it spent all the money it had in the wrong place.
And Ferdinand v.
Schirach's call for additional basic rights reclaims that space for the citizens that in this state in Germany and Europe has been given to US data corporations, unscrupulous populists or obnoxious status quo administrators for a long time.
This will be discussed in the next few months, when the election campaign draws and the era of Angela Merkel comes to an end.
I'm looking forward to it, because it will be a test for the liberal conservatives in particular: can they even reform?
Do they recognize their “agenda moment” when the old is no longer working at certain points, consequently the new, the reforms, are not an end in themselves, but a necessity that supports the state?
Can the Conservatives even reform?
Do you recognize your “agenda moment” when things no longer work with the old at certain points?
I vaguely remember the "spiritual and moral turnaround" that Helmut Kohl proclaimed after his election in 1983 and never tried again afterwards.
Then came the real turning point, which Kohl used for German unity, culminating, of course, in the social and economic reform backlog of the late 1990s.
One can say about Angela Merkel that at the start of office she inherited a major reform from her social-democratic predecessor, did not follow up with anything comparable and will now, 16 years later, step down as the next major reform is pending.
The word »reform«, as I understand it, has been on the index of political cold-blooded people and stress avoiders for far too long.
But reform in this country should at least from time to time be more than the adaptation of official forms to the latest achievements in gender-variant language.
more on the subject
Bestselling author starts initiative: Ferdinand von Schirach wants to give the EU new basic rightsBy Volker Weidermann
In comparison, one cannot aim higher than the lawyer v.
Schirach with »#Everyone«.
He suggests, for example, that everyone should have an enforceable basic right to politicians who tell the truth.
To a healthy and protected environment.
To an internet that doesn't manipulate us.
That sounds naive and yet it is much more, namely as naive and disarming as the sentence "The emperor is naked", which in the end develops almost revolutionary impact.
Every single one of the proposed fundamental rights can be disputed; some things would make me worry about the political risks and side effects, which I would therefore like to see more precisely assessed.
But the whole point is different.
Formulated in an absolutely straightforward manner, these additional basic rights are an accounting with decimal places with the inadequacies of a state constitution that will not fall apart tomorrow, but no longer meet the demands of many.
The new basic rights get to the heart of what stinks to the sky at the top of the state or in Europe, as the clogged school toilets or smeared school boards do at the bottom.
To take the constitution of Germany, in the double sense of the word, from above and from below into the modernization pincers, that I would like to put up with as a kind of "intellectual-practical turn".
To take the constitution of Germany, in the double sense of the word, from above and from below into the modernization pincers, that I would like to put up with as a kind of "intellectual-practical turn".
It is about reforms at all levels of government, which for most people probably sounds far away, much further away than Agenda 2010, Hartz IV and the fear of personal plunging into the abyss.
That is true, of course, the next agenda does not require millions of workers, but something from the state and its authorities in order to train them.
Collapsing vaccination hotlines or antediluvian authority management to remedy this will be the task of the state itself, as will the declaration of its responsibilities.
Nevertheless, the necessary wave of reforms will also demand something from the citizens, because, as at the beginning of the noughties, it is about the
mindset of
this republic.
more on the subject
Merkel in the pandemic: procedure on sightA column by Sascha Lobo
Nursing reform in danger: What Jens Spahn actually wanted to tackle during his term of officeBy Milena Hassenkamp
In his Easter address, the Federal President named the German "tendency to want to regulate everything, our fear of risk, the shifting of responsibility" by name. All of this will have to be dealt with and changed after the pandemic. So it is perhaps no harm that the Federal President is Frank-Walter Steinmeier who helped to devise Agenda 2010. Because it is time again to think in these dimensions.