When a mega-crisis is looming, “riding on principles” cannot be the solution for a country, Markus Söder recently announced. Ironically, Soeder. The only principle that the Bavarian Prime Minister knows is a sure-footed populism that feeds on a pragmatism that can handle the weather. In Bavaria, the principle of being unprincipled rules.
Specifically, Söder was concerned with the debt brake and the FDP, whose chairman Christian Lindner he denounced as a stubborn rider of principles. What the Franks withheld: The ban on financing the state with new debts does not simply arise from the stubbornness of a dogmatist. It is in Article 109 of the German Basic Law, so it has constitutional status.
Apparently, the pragmatists only apply the constitution for boring times, whenever nothing is going on. But when there is a crisis, the saying goes: Necessity knows no command. Now we make politics according to the motto of the day, that is to say: according to the volume with which different groups of voters put forward their demands for financial relief.
What are principles worth if they no longer apply in a crisis of all places? Instead of discrediting those who follow principles, one should court them: Right now one should fight for one’s principles. The fact that the debt brake has made it into the constitution is intended to prevent it from being thrown away in every political storm. According to the Duden, principles are rules that serve as guidelines for action. This takes away the arbitrariness of action and makes criticism possible in the first place.
Of course, principles can be questioned, rejected or replaced with better principles. We always need them; without principles, all standards dim. That’s why I’m singing the praises of riding principles, performed and orchestrated using the example of the FDP in times of crisis.
Freedom is also a duty
What are the principles of liberalism? The FDP has the advantage that it can refer to the tradition of the European Enlightenment as its normative foundation. Its pivotal point is the freedom of the individual. The state is a derivative institution whose first, only, and ultimate aim is to protect the freedom of its citizens against enemies from without and within. It should ensure that minorities are not oppressed by majorities, that rules of competition are fair and that they help the best arguments, the most creative arts and the most original business ideas to succeed.
Unlike state planned or wartime economy, market economy is an arrangement that develops the freedom of the citizens to the highest degree. Liberalism shuns the great utopias that bring happiness to mankind as well as the great apocalyptic dystopias. Failure is allowed and entitled to get up again. Liberalism is universal. Everything that is classy evaporates, everything that is sacred is desecrated, to use the words of Marx and Engels.
