” Uiteindelijk blijken mensenrechten vooral effectief in de strijd tegen degelijke en menselijke grenscontrole.”
Category archives: Nation and State
44. Book Review ; Jan-Werner Müller: What is populism ?
10 december 2019 In this small book, JWM proposes a definition which describes populism as a style of performing politics (and NOT as a set of political statements). For him populism is a way of performing politics in a democracy which claims to make the democracy stronger while in fact it erodes key elements of […]
43. Book Review : Yascha Mounk – The People vs. Democracy
24 november 2019 Mounk starts from the given that Liberal Democracy as a political model is under attack all over the world. He sees how illiberal democracies and undemocratic “liberal” states come into existence and formulates the proposition that Liberal Democracy maybe only functioned well within certain constraints (“scope conditions”). (Fareed Zakaria had years ago […]
33. Book Review : Götz Aly ; “Europa gegen die Juden” (2)
3 november 2019 At the end of his book Aly concludes with a small chapter with the title “Das Gute begünstigte das Böse”. On the last page of his book he writes : “Das Böse entsteht nicht allein aus dem Bösen, sondern auch aus dem prinzipiell Guten. Gute, niemals zu missbilligende Bildungspolitik und der staatlich […]
32. Book Review : Götz Aly ; “Europa gegen die Juden” (1)
2 november 2019 When I wrote my book “Liberal Quicksand” an important decision I made was not to include the story of anti-Semitism and its disastrous consequence, the Holocaust, into my book. I had two reasons. First, the story of the near destruction of the Jewish population in Europe was sufficiently known. Second, this horrible […]
31. Armenian Genocide
1 november 2019 End October 2019 the American House of Representatives recognised the Armenian Genocide. As is well known the Turkish Government denies such Genocide took place. I do not intend to discuss wether there was a genocide or not; Whether a Turkish government gave the instruction to perform a genocide or not ; Whether […]
28. Are the Thirties back again ?
14 oktober 2019 An important question which is often asked nowadays is whether our times are a copy of the Thirties. The answer I believe is No for 80% and Yes for 20%. It is a clear and loud “No” because in the Thirties of the previous century Europeans concluded to exterminate a part of […]
26. Abiy Ahmed – Nobel Peace Prize 2019
11 oktober 2019 On 11 October 2019 the Nobel Prize Committee awarded the Nobel Prize for peace to Abiy Ahmed, who is Prime Minister of Ethiopia since April 2018. He received the prize because in his short period as Prime Minister he succeeded in making peace with Eritrea, thereby ending a war that lasted 20 […]
25. Arend Lijphart – On consensus democracy
9 oktober 2019 Arend Lijphart is a political scientist. Central in his work is the distinction between majoritarian democracy (MD) and consociational democracy (CD). To be clear : in both kinds of democracy a majority is required but in a CD the ambition is to have more than a majority; The ambition is to have […]
24. Thierry Baudet and the nation-state
27 september 2019 IN 2012 the Dutch politician-philosopher Thierry Baudet published “The Significance of Borders”. In that book he intended, as the sub-title of the book mentions, to demonstrate “why Representative Government and the Rule of Law Require Nation States”. While I believe that that proposition itself might be correct, the argumentation or “proof” provided […]
20. Food For Thought – European Values
19 september 2019 After Ursula von der Leyen presented her new Commission, the function of commissionary Schinas caused some uproar because of his task description “to defend the European way of life” and because this task was linked to the management of the migration flows, suggesting that migrants were a threat to the so-called “European […]
17. Book Review ; Francis Fukuyama – “On Identity”
17 september 2019 Francis Fukuyama, well known as the author of “The End of History and the Last Man”, devotes his attention to “Identity” because he notes that identity, as a consequence of the ongoing globalisation, becomes more and more confused while a clear identity is needed to underpin a nation, which is itself required […]
13. Food For Thought – Quote ; Thant Myint-U in “The River of Lost Footsteps”
17 september 2019 Page 41 : “The most striking aspect of the Burma debate today is its absence of nuance and its singularly ahistorical nature. Dictatorship and the prospects for democracy are seen within the prism of the past ten or twenty years, as if three Anglo-Burmese wars, a century of colonial rule, an immensely […]
12. The status of national self-determination
17 september 2019 In the history of Europe as I described it in my book LIBERAL QUICKSAND I assign an important place to the principle of National Self Determination (PNSD). It was invoked throughout recent history to justify the creation of new nations/states. To a certain degree the principle is used ( but only sparsely) […]
11. Book Review ; Philippe Van Parijs ; “Linguistic Justice” – discussion
17 september 2019 A first impression after reading this book was one of confusion and disbelief. The approach seemed so very distant from reality by focusing on the concept of Global Egalitarian Justice based on a global English speaking Demos that I was afraid that philosophy, by definition, was and had to be irrelevant for […]
10. Food for Thought – quote ; F. Fukuyama in : “On Identity”
17 september 2019 On the pages 136-137 of his book F. Fukuyama describes an essential weakness of political liberalism as a philosophy : “The political theorist Pierre Manent notes that most democracies were built on top of preexisting nations, societies that already had a well-developed sense of national identity that defined the sovereign people. But […]
9. Book Review ; Philippe Van Parijs ; Linguistic Justice – Summary
17 september 2019 In Chaper 1 PvP takes note in a factual way that English has become the lingua franca of Europe and probably of the whole world. From a normative perspective he wellcomes the existence of a universal lingua franca and this especially because of his interest to achieve Egalitarian Global Justice. PvP is very outspoken […]
8. Book Review ; Jaan Kross – The Ropewalker
17 september 2019 Part 1 of a Trilogy. Although I’m in principle not a fan of fiction, I gladly make an exception for this book. (until now I’ve only read part 1 of the three volumes – I’m sure the other two will follow quickly.) Here, I will not dive into the overall rich content […]
6. Nationalism is a progressive force
13 september 2019 Nationalism is an emotionally loaded term. It should not be like that. Nationalism refers in the first place to the process which started with the French Revolution whereby a nation creates a state or a state a nation with a linguistically homogeneous territory. An ideology that drives the process can an be […]