free spirit and free spirit

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It’s time. After 175 years: September 12 is declared a national holiday, the highest secular holiday in the country. What would be celebrated – if it comes down to it – is the acceptance of the new federal constitution, characterized by liberalism, by the majority of the cantons in 1848.

This would finally celebrate the creation of the federal state as it stands and is lived to this day: the great revolution of little Switzerland in the vast Europe of princes and princes – to the horror of the princes and princes.

At the same time, the Diet’s decision marked the end of the old Confederation. It was also a Switzerland of freedom – free from foreign powers. Since then, the liberal Switzerland of 1848 has internally been the Switzerland of freedom – through democracy and the rule of law.

The Switzerland of 1291, as it is still celebrated on August 1, was defined by feudal structures, by patricians and privileged people, by Vons and Des, by old families and the elite. The Switzerland of 1848, on the other hand, is dominated by the spirit of equality: by equal and free citizens.

Of course, today’s stand on the shoulders of the old. That’s how history goes. It goes without saying that myths are myths. For example, the founding event on August 1, including the Rütli oath and Wilhelm Tell – elevated to world literature by the history poet Friedrich Schiller.

This story is not suitable for Switzerland in the 21st century.

The story with which modern, contemporary Switzerland writes itself in world history tells about research and technology and business and entrepreneurship and the spirit of competition, about the skills of hard-working citizens and citizens. All these globally admired qualities are inextricably linked to the freedom in which they condense into excellence.

Nor from Freisinn – to say with pleasure the most beautiful word of enlightened political culture.

But precisely Freisinn does not want the new national holiday on September 12 – it would be his national holiday above all. The founding party of the federal state is exhausted: by interest rate politics and small-small and club stuff in the everyday political lowlands.

The FDP lacks what was still true in the time of its party leader, the business leader Ulrich Bremi: the realization that cultural and intellectual values ​​are just as important as economic values. In 1991, to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the Confederation, the President of the National Council of Zurich had Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s comedy “Hercules and the Stable of Augias” performed in the hall of the Federal Assembly – as a self-critical mirror of Switzerland .

What does freedom mean today? Switzerland is social-democratic, Christian-democratic and green-liberal. Or, as the great poet and social democrat Peter Bichsel once confessed: “Actually, we are all liberal.”

The party with this name does not need it.

Source:Blick