” Uiteindelijk blijken mensenrechten vooral effectief in de strijd tegen degelijke en menselijke grenscontrole.”

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 a robust democracy. Populism is therefore, according to JWM, a threat to real democracy.

Key elements of the populist style are that populists claim to fight the elites while, at the same time, they claim to be the representatives of the people. Hereby they believe that “the people” are a homogeneous group and that they are its representatives. People who do not fit in the homogeneous mass are outsiders or even enemies. Populists are therefore no pluralists and their ideology always contains some kind of identity politics (to determine the real people).

Once in power, populists try to occupy the state apparatus, they are corrupt, engage in “mass clientalism” and try systematically to suppress civil society. Sometimes they even re-write constitutions to outlaw pluralism.

JWM is strongly against the use of a concept like “illiberal democracies” because according to JWM a democracy without the necessary checks and balances, the liberal context, is no democracy at all. Critics of a regime who call it an illiberal democracy admit implicitly that it still is a democracy, quod non, according to JWM.

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 already conceptually decoupled Liberalism and Democracy).

In Part Two of his book , he tries to define the origins of the current breakdown of Liberal Democracies. He sees in essence three items which have changed substantially and which also impact the proper functioning of Liberal Democŕacy. First, the development of the internet has reduced the cost to communicate alternative versions of the truth and the cost to set up alternative command structures. This enables challengers to break or to pass by the traditional political channels with ease. Second, the slowdown of economic progress or the more limited distribution of the existing economic progress (increased inequality) creates uncertainty over the future. Third, Mounk states that successful democracies were in the past in general momo-ethnic. The current levels of migration threaten that stability. He however takes note that populists are especially strong where immigration is still limited (but not in the area with high levels of immigration) and concludes that it is only fear for the unknown that generates that uncertainty.

I’m positively surprised to see how Mounk puts forward the idea that successful democracies are/were in general mono-ethnic. Unfortunately Mounk does not focus on the importance of language and the possibility of an inclusive approach; mono-ethnicity is not necessarily exclusive if it is based on language. His wordings might suggest the opposite

Further, he seems to forget that in areas with high levels of migrants, populists might indeed no longer have political relevance if the immigrants with voting rights already form 40% or more of the population. I assume California is already in this situation. That populists are not so strong in those areas might be the result from the fact that they have already been put in a minority position from an ethnic point. This most plausible solution is not even mentioned by Mounk.

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 geförderte Willen zu massenhafter Aufwärtsmobilität, also die größten Erfolge im Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts, steigerten den Hass. Dieselbe Ambivalenz muss für die schönsten, gleichfalls bewahrenswerten politischen Ideen der europäischen Neuzeit im Betracht gezogen werden. Sie heißen: Demokratie, Volksfreiheit, Volkswillen, Selbstbestimmung und soziale Gleichheit…

So betrachtet steht das größte Verbrechen des 20. Jahrhunderts, der Holocaust, im Zusammenhang mit der größten Leistung derselben europäischen Epoche, dem massenhaften sozialen Aufstieg. Unter dem extremen Druck des von Deutschland begonnenen und geführten Krieges begünstigte der zivilisatorische Fortschritt den Zivilisationsbruch.”

Aly understands that his key message might be difficult to digest for the average reader. This average reader has to accept that something evil can take place as part of an overall positive project. In the West we believe in general that evil can only result from evil and good only from good. Aly’s description of the events requires a twist of the western mind.

The paradox that Aly sees is very similar to the one I’m confronted with in my book “liberal quicksand”. In my book I claim that Europe has an exceptional opportunity to create a political entity “Europe” thanks to the twohundred years of struggle which led to the creation of linguistically homogeneous nation-states. I do not glorify this struggle to create these nation-states but I see how the bad makes the good possible. As such I even considered to include the image of the waterlily in my book as a philosophical image of the transformation of the ugly in the beautiful.

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 story was, as I saw it, a matter of racism and as such an aberration of the processes I described in my book : formation of the different nations and democratisation in one movement.

Just recently I finalized reading “Europa gegen die Juden 1880-1945” by Götz Aly. In this excellent book Aly makes the point that to understand anti-semitism and the Holocaust, the ideas that these events are driven by Racist theories or Christian revenge theories (Christians eliminating the Jews because they killed Jesus) are no good starting points. Aly demonstrates rather convincingly that the events are, certainly in Eastern Europe rather related to (1) the modernizing transition of societies, (2) the fact that Jews seemed to make better use of the opportunities offered by the new circumstances, (3) the intention to create nation-states in which the people belonging to the nation should make sufficient social progress, if needed by holding down the Jews who prospered too well. Anti-semitism was futher (4) formalised politically by the introduction of universal voting rights. In pre-democratic structures anti-semitism did not find a political outlet.

Understood like this, the story of the near elimination of the Jewish people in Europe certainly fits the story I described in “Liberal Quicksand” better. The way Aly tells the story anti-semitism is a formative power of the European nation-states working together with democratisation, and this certainly in Eastern Europe and Central-Europe.

But of course Aly cannot deny that the whole story presupposes that the Jews were clearly identifiable and were indeed identified as Jews and that therefore, even if the history is told as he does, the racist basis is a necessary element of the explanation of what happened. Aly makes even the assumption that the jealousy against the success of the Jews was based on the fact that Jews dealed better with the ermanent flux in modernising societies.

And then of course, the conclusion must be that these forms of anti-semitic nationalist processes are not inclusive, while I, in my book, focus on linguistic nationalism which is capable of inclusion.

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 the regular Turkish army performed that genocide or was involved ; How many Armenian died during the genocide.

What I want to discuss is the story that the Armenian genocide was the first genocide of the modern times. This is certainly not true. The first systematic ethnic cleansing took place during the liberation wars of Eastern Europe and Greece and during the Russian occupation of Ukrain (the Tatar territories) and the Caucasus. During these wars a lot of Muslims or Turkish speaking people were chased and resettled within the smaller territory of the Ottoman empire, where they sometimes ran into conflict with local populations like e.g. the Armenians. If there was a genocide, it was not a Turkish invention but a Turkish reaction to the ethnic cleansing that took place in Europe and Ukrain in the hundred years of the 19th century when nationalism took the lead in the liberation of the people’s of Europe.

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 their European population and started to do so.

Today, “right-wing” thinking is mainly concerned about (floods of) immigration, be it from related EU-countries or from outside the EU. The motives why people are reluctant are irrelevant. Essential is that there is a big difference between an ideology that aims at eliminating part of its own population (Thirties) and trying to control the inflow of immigrants (Today).

Overall I believe that the average European would support the following statements :

1°) People who need political asylum should obtain that.

2°) If economic migrants fill needs in our job market, then they are welcome.

3°) Other migrants (than 1 and 2) are not welcome and should be expelled (by force if needed).

4°) Migrants should integrate. This means that they should at least learn the local language.

5°) Migrants should obtain access to the social security systems in a gradual way, linked to the contributions they’ve made to the society in which they are received.

I would not call the sum of these statements right-wing. I believe they are reasonable and fair, even if some of them might even go against certain principles of the European Union when applied to migrants from within the European Union.

But there remains a Yes of 20%. I’m afraid that because leftists quite (too) easily argue that people who are concerned about immigration are fascists or racists, these people might indeed start to search for inspiration in the Thirties.

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 years, and because he initiated liberal reforms in Ethiopia itself.

The case of Abiy Ahmed and of Ethiopia is of great interest to us because now already the comment is made in the press that the liberal democratizing reforms seem to unleash etnical strife which was suppressed under the dictatorship of the military. Oromo and Amhara and other names of tribes might become familiar in the coming months and years.

Ethiopia might become the most recent proof that “plural societies” which democratise, fall apart in many pieces, which was the main proposition of my book “liberal quicksand”. My hart hopes that I’m wrong ; My brain already knows I’m right.

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 all important “segments” of society included in the government. According to Lijphart “elite cooperation is the primary distinguishing feature of consociational democracy” (Democracy in Plural Societies ; 1977 ; page 1). In his 1977 book Lijphart starts by referring to what he calls a well established proposition in political science, namely “that it is difficult to achieve and maintain stable democratic government in a plural society” before making his key point that the application of CD makes it “not at all impossible to achieve and maintain stable democratic government in a plural society.” In a well functioning CD “the cooperative attitudes and behaviour of the leaders of the different segments of the population” counteract the “centrifugal tendencies inherent in a plural society”.

In his 1984/1999 book “Patterns of Democracy” Lijphart details further the political structure of 21 countries (in 1977) and 36 countries (in 1984) in terms of consociational versus majoritarian. Further he investigates the “efficiency” of the two regimes and concludes that (1) majoritarian democracies are clearly not superior to consensus democracies in providing good governance, managing the economy, and maintaining civil peace; (2) Consensus democracies “have a better performance record than majoritarian democracies, especially when performance is measured by the five Worldwide Governance Indicators and the ICRG domestic conflict risk assessment and also with regard to inflation.” (p. 273)

Lijphart’s work is of interest to us because

(1) his core theme is the difficulty of the plural society ;

(2) the solution he sees in Consensus Democracy (which I would consider under certain circumstances as an overruling of democracy);

(3) he wrote his books over a long range of time (1977 – 1984 – 1999) and it is interesting to see how the political contexts have changed over that period ;

(4) it is further interesting to see how the viewpoints of Lijphart changed as a consequence of the changes of the facts on the ground over that long period of time.

As mentioned before, in his 1999 book Lijphart analyses 36 different democracies. He splits them in three different groups : plural societies, semiplural societies and nonplural societies. Evidently, it might be an inspiration for an interesting debate how such a taxonomy was achieved. This is how Lijphart distributes the countries over the three groups :

Plural Societies : India, Spain, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, Israel, Trinidad, Mauritius.

Semiplural Societies : United States, Germany, France, Italy, Korea, Netherlands, Austria, Finland, Luxembourg.

Nonplural Societies : Japan, United Kingdom, Argentina, Australia, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Costa Rica, Ireland, New Zealand, Uruguay, Jamaica, Botswana, Malta, Bahamas, Iceland, Barbados.

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 by TB is not convincing, even wrong.

But first this. In his preface TB explains that the current mainstream idea that the challenges posed by globalisation require a supra-national response and therefore the abolition or dampening of nation-states, is wrong. Yes, global challenges exist and they require global responses, but these responses will have to be pre-discussed, agreed upon, defended and executed at the level of the nation-state. He calls this “international cooperation on the basis of accountable nation states” sovereign cosmopolitanism. I agree with this sovereign cosmopolitanism and it explains why safeguarding and strenghtening nation-states is essential in order to manage globalization.

Back to our main topic. For Baudet, the Representative Government and the Rule of Law have in common that “the people” have to be represented in respectively a parliament and a Supreme Court. This requirement pre-supposes the existence of a “we”, a coherent mass, a nation. He quotes Paul Scheffer who wrote in 2007 : “Without a ‘we’, it won’t work.”

This reasoning does not convince me at all. The classic liberal democracy is precisely an institutional structure which enables conflicting views and interests to interact and clash. The strength of the liberal democratic model is that it allows diversity to live together. Was there a “we” in the past ? There were Catholics, Protestants, Liberals, Social-Democrats and Communists. In that sense there has never been a “we”. And at least in theory we can simply enrich this system without changing it fundamentally : we can add new branches or pillars next to the existing ones : a green branch, a Muslim branch and a nationalist party. Also the Supreme Courts never represented a “we”. In many cases the decisions by Supreme Courts are transparent about who voted in favour of and who voted against fundamental discussions in society.

Having said this, I do not exclude that our societies need to maintain a minimum of cohesion but I am (certainly at this moment) hesitant to state how much cohesion our societies require. Based on my own book I believe that a minimum level of cohesion requires at least a common language, at least to be able to have a discussion on important items.

In this context I also present the following quote by Paul Morland at the end of a book review (FT of 24AUG2019 – The new demography) :

“For liberals who are relaxed about immigration and ethnic change, it is now incumbent upon them to come up with ways in which a coherent society can be formed from people of different backgrounds. Just as a nationalist sentiment was required to form the warfare states of Europe over the past two hundred years, so something new will be needed in its place if the welfare states of today are to survive in anything like their current form.”

Evidently, Paul Morland is mistaken. “Relaxed” liberals will not take any initiative because they do not see any problem at all and believe in the self-organising forces in society. The initiative to ensure a minimum level of coherence of society will have to be taken by less “relaxed” people.

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 way of life”.

Therefore von der Leyen thought it was useful to remind the European public of the European Values and she had a statement on this published in a set of important European newspapers on 16 September 2019. In that statement she referred to Article 2 of the European Union Treaty. Since we agree that this basic reference to formally validated European Values is a useful clarification we publish it also on this website.

How the linkage between “European Way of Life”, “European Values” and migration has to be understood will be debated in detail in the European Parliament in the coming weeks.

“The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.”

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 to ensure the functioning of democratic institutions.

It is possible to read this book in a very efficient way and to go directly to chapter 14 (the last one) with the title”What is to be done ?” If you do this you will miss how the meaning of identity changed over time, from Catholicism to Luther, to Kant, to Rousseau, and so on, but you will have more time to consider the relevant statements FF makes about the problem of identity in our times, both in the USA and in Europe. Essential is, according to FF that at the basis of identity resides “dignity”; The search for identity is a search for Dignity (thymos). Hereafter I only focus on chapter 14.

FF sees currently three main ways identity is clarified (dignity is obtained).

The  more traditional liberal one in which individuals are free to express their individuality and are not hindered by the state.

Next to this interpretation he notes that some groups, define their identity in function of ethnic background, race or religion. This leads to potentially illiberal forms of nationalism and politically organized religion (e.g. Islamism).

A third way to deal with identity is the leftist approach which supports different smaller groups of under-evaluated people, and glorifies diversity as such. FF is definitely not happy with this leftist approach : First, diversity is itself no “Creed” and FF is convinced of the need to have a Creed, a joint moral platform as a basis for the nation; Second, because the Left rejects the Creed of the superiority of the foundations of the System of Liberal Democracy ; Third, because they no longer support their initial public, the workers.

Therefore, according to FF there is a need to propagate the essence of the Creedal message to all involved. This must be the glue that holds the unavoidable diversity  together. I believe that this Creedal element is similar if not equal to Bassam Tibi’s  concept of “Leitkultur”. In both cases the Creed/Leitkultur will propagate the essence of Liberal Democracy and ideals like Freedom and Equality. And while the right-wing refuses newcomers and the leftists claim open borders, FF stresses the need to make a difference between citizen, documented immigrant and undocumented immigrant and states that the real focus of all, both left and right should be “on strategies for better assimilating immigrants to a country’s Creedal identity.” (p. 171)

FF makes separate recommendations for the European Union and for the United States. Hereafter we follow this logic :

The European Unit should:

> create a “single citizenship whose requirements would be based on adherence to basic liberal democratic principles” ;

> invest in a European Identity “through the creation of the appropriate symbols and narratives”;

> better controls its borders by a better staffing of Frontex, the border control unit.

Individual member states :

> who base citizenship on ius sanguinis should introduce a citizenship based on ius solis;

> should reject dual citizenship;

> should deconstruct their systems of pillarization (as exists in Holland and Belgium);

The United States on the other hand :

> has already a Creedal identity but this identity is under attack by both the Left and the Right;

> has a system to teach “basic civics” but this is in long term decline;

> has installed different educational programs which aim to speed up the acquisition of English but have led by now to the creation of “constituencies of their own” with their own bureaucracies;

> should hold on to the meaningful distinctions between citizens and non-citizens and between documented and not-documented non-citizens;

> should consider the introduction of a national service as a requirement to obtain the nationality;

> should continue its enforcement policies, but a Wall is not needed to ensure enforcement. What is required is a national identification system that would allow employers to verify the citizen-status of the employees;

> should set-up a path to citizenship for undocumted persons;

> should devote more attention to social policies.

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 destructive Japanese invasion and occupation, and five decades of civil war, foreign intervention, and Communist insurgency had never happened. A country the size and population of the German Empire on the eve of the First World War is viewed through a single-dimensional lens, and then there is surprise over predictions unfulfilled and strategies that never seem to bear fruit. Burma is a place with a rich and complex history, both before the time of King Thibaw and Lord Randolph Churchill and since. Burmese nationalism and xenophobia, the ethnic insurgencies and the army dictatorship, and the failure of successive governments to keep pace with the rest of an increasingly peaceful and prosperous Asia – all these things have a history, a reason. And what emerges from these histories is not an answer to all of today’s ills but at least the beginnings of an explanation. And from this explanation perhaps a richer discussion and a better intimation of what may lie ahead.”

What Myint-U explains is that it does not make sense to assess the quality of welfare or democracy in states (In this case Burma) without taking into account its precedents. Liberal Democracy cannot be imposed in one day, welfare cannot be created overnight, based on simple voluntaristic decisions. Structures which were built over decades, if not centuries (?), determine the (im)possibility of the creation of a successful society, based on democracy and generating wealth for all its citizens. With an expensive word : the success of the implementation is path-dependant.

However, in his quote Myint-U probably does not focus on the main weakness of Burma; It contains an important set of minorities with for us in the West mostly unknown names : the Shan, the Karen, the Kachin, the Mon, the Chin, the Arakans, the Rohingya and many others. Burma’s existential question is probably whether it can survive without some level of dictatorial centralizing force.

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) in theories of political philosophy.

And in International Law we only find an explicit confirmation of this right when the status of colonies is discussed (Declaration on the Granting of Independance to Colonial Countries and Peoples – Resolution 1514 xv – 1960).

Therefore, what seems central in history, in the past does not seem to have a place in the world of today ?

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 the world of today. Especially the clear intention of setting back nations to an instrumental level was unsettling although it should not have come as a surprise ; it only confirmed that liberals struggle to give a place to nation-building (what I already knew).

Fortunately I was subsequently also able to read critiques on this book in another book with the title “Linguistic Justice” which gave me the clear impression that I was not the only one who struggled with the somewhat unwordly approach. Especially the comments by Rainer Baubock came much closer to my own mindset in which national self-determination is essential and whereby this is based on an element which according to me should be central to a Theory of Linguistic Justice, namely that an individual should have the right to be governed, administered, taxed, educated and judged in his or her own language.

Now some more detailed critique :

1) Nations should be instrumentalized to realize Linguistic Justice, according to PvP. Let’s assume we agree with this (quod non). Then there is hopefully an agreement that we need nations/states as instruments given that the world is too big to be governed in one state. How will we draw borders ? I hope that we will quickly agree that the best way to organize these administrations will be according to a principle of linguistic territoriality based on the fact that people should be governed in their own language. And then we will be close to the situation as this currently is in Europe, with the same places of contention as is currently the case ? Outside Europe the question is if we provide justice by organizing education in English or in the local/native language. I tend to believe it should be in local/ native language.

2) imposing English as the language of government, also at the European level, and not providing any translations in the local languages is a very bad idea for two importanr reasons :

– it creates two classes in Europe ; the ones who speak English and govern, next to the ones who do not govern and should apparently  not know the rules ;

– linked to the previous : it further distances the citizens from Europe, which is exactly what we currently do not need.

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 those nations were not created democratically: Germany, France, Britain, and the Netherlands were all the historical by-products of long and often violent political struggles over territory  and culture under nondemocratic regimes.  When these societies democratized, their territorial extent and their existing populations were simply taken for granted as the basis for popular sovereignty…

Manent identifies a major gap in modern democratic theory.  Thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, the authors of the Federalist Papers, and John Stuart Mill all assumed that the world was predivided into nations that formed the foundation of democratic choice. They did not provide a theory of why the border between the United States and Mexico should run along the Rio Grande, whether Alsace should belong to France or Germany, whether Quebec should be part of Canada or a “distinct society,” on what grounds Catalonia could legitimately separate itself from Spain, or what the proper level of immigration should be.

Such theorizing has been left to others.”

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 on this subject : ” any honest attempt to think seriously about justice for our century must downgrade nations and states from the ethical framework to the institutional toolkit.” (p.26) It is not so important for PvP that English is the universal lingua franca ; the important point is that there is a lingua franca (in the making).

There are two key reasons why PvP needs a universal Lingua franca to realise Egalitarian Global Justice. First, we need such language to raise awareness about our basic egalitarian status, to enable a process of “ethical contagion”. Second, such language is needed to construct a demos, a political group that is ready to implement at a world-wide level a state of global egalitarian justice.

In the next four chapters PvP will discuss if the existence of a universal lingua franca does in itself not create great injustices of its own.

In chapter 2 PvP focuses on what he considers to be merely “wrinkles on the surface”. It relates to injustice as a consequence of a free-rider phenomenon ; native English speakers profit from the fact that non-native English make the effort to learn English and they do not pay a compensation (tax) for this. In a context of linguistic justice such situation can not be understood as a “fair cooperation”. However, this free-rider phenomenon is offset by a free-rider phenomenon in the other direction ; non-native English speakers profit from their access to information made available by the community of native English speakers. Both phenomena cancel each other out and justice is served.

In chapter 3 PvP focuses on linguistic justice as “equal opportunity”, a principle which also seems disrespected in a world in which the lingua franca is in the making. People who have the lingua franca as native language are favoured because they have better access to jobs which require knowledge of the lingua franca, they fulfil the linguistic requirements for other jobs, they are betteŕ in face-to-face interaction in the lingua franca and they have access to the broad media in the lingua franca. “This privilege is understandably perceived as a senior distributive injustice by those who do not enjoy it…”. Subsequently PvP discusses how this inequality should be treated.  The best solution is according to him to speed up the distribution of the knowledge of the lingua franca. He notices that in some countries, mostly with a relative strong language, the spread of the lingua franca is slowed down by the use of dubbing and therefore PvP is in favour of a prohibition of dubbing.

In chapter 4 PvP turns to the fact that the rise of the lingua franca can be met by a feeling of injustice in the form of lack of “parity of esteem”. People will feel it as an injustice that their native language is not treated in the same way as the lingua franca. According to PvP “This is a dimension of justice commonly ignored in theories of distributive justice, including my own, as developed in Real Freedom for All.” However PvP does not seem to bother too much about this form of injustice. Again it will melt away with the distribution of the lingua franca. The more people are familiar with English, the less they will insist on an equal treatment of their own native language.

But in chapter 5 PvP takes note that in practice, in Europe, parity of esteem is realised to a great extent by a system of linguistic territoriality. Weaker languages are protected by borders and coercive regimes against socio-linguistic processes. Further, PvP starts developing a justification of this “territoriality”-principle within his framework of Global Egalitarian Justice. And remarkably he does not want to use national sovereignty as an axiom in this search :

“Appeal to national sovereignty, however, would be inappropriate in the present context. Nations, politically organized people’s, are not part of the ethical framework of Global Egalitarian Justice. They are sheer instruments to be created and dismantled, structured and absorbed, empowered and constrained, in the service of justice understood as far more than the sheer protection of fundamental liberties. Consequently, whether a territorial linguistic regime is legitimate is not a question that can be settled by appealing to national sovereignty, but rather one that needs to be settled in order to determine how extensive national sovereignty is allowed to be.”

In the fifth and last chapter of his book PvP discusses the (lack of) importance of linguistic diversity.

Overall PvP develops in this book a theory of linguistic justice embedded in a target to realise “Global Egalitarian Justice”. In that context he welcomes the development of a lingua franca, English, and investigates whether this development creates injustices. He treats the potential cooperative injustice, distributive injustice (lack of equal opportunity) and lack of parity of esteem and underpins the use of territorial integrity to preserve the weaker languages and therefore the parity of esteem (without using the principle of national sovereignty).

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 of the book, with e.g. the psychological insights displayed by the key-person, the young Balthazar. I limit myself to the fact that the novel is an interesting investigation of the creation of an Estonian awareness. This awareness is centered around the specific Estonian language and the absence of a specific Estonian nobility in the 16th century. The Estonian peasants are under attack from different plagues (Muscovites, Swedes, Germans and some others) and have to re-think to which plague they will swear allegiance. When will the idea surge that they could remain loyal to themselves ?

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 called nationalistic. The end result of the process is a nation-state. As a consequence of the nationalistic process multinational states were transformed into linguistically homogeneous nation states. As said, the process started with the French Revolution and accelerated around 1848, after World Wars I and II and after the falling apart of the Sovjet-Union in 1989.

The process can take two different forms. Or the State takes the initiative to form the nation (France, Hungary) or a people, a nation takes the initiative to take hold of a territory of its own and impose its own language in that territory. The first process functions top-down while the second one is a bottom-up process. Both are “democratic” in the sense that in both cases the whole nation should learn the same language. Before the French Revolution only the elites had to be familiar with the language of the state. After the French Revolution everybody should learn that language. The new French Republic wanted to be sure that all citizens understood what the revolution was all about and did not hesitate to impose the French language and eliminate languages like Provencal, Breton and Flemish. In that sense the bottom-up approach is more democratic than the top-down approach because in the bottom-up approach a people or nation invoked the right to self-determination to create its own state with its own territory. That in such process the previous rulers were deported, executed or assimilated is then considered acceptable collateral damage.

To summarize : nationalism is a historical process that was realized in Europe in the last twohundred years and led to the creation of linguistically homogeneous nation-states. To the degree that the process can be supported by and boils down to the execution of the right to self-determination, nationalism should be evaluated morally in a positive way.

Nationalism, in the meaning explained above, does not contain a feeling of superiority versus other nations. Nationalism can of course be mingled with phenomena like imperialism and racism, but there is no intrinsic link between these phenomena. Imperialism and racism can as well be linked to ideologies like socialism and capitalism. Socialistists who tend to impose their ideology by force are imperialists ; in case a surge against a rich class is framed in terms of a surge against a certain race or nation, it becomes racist. Capitalists can deem some races so inferior that slavery and imperialism become acceptable.