Our Friends, Our Enemies

“Enough, already!” Bundes President Gauck has finally asserted himself and deserves our support. But why so late? It shouldn’t have taken a U.S. attack on Germany’s spying investigation on the National Security Agency — an investigation being carried out by the German parliament, a part of our sovereign democracy.

This surveillance by an Anglo-Saxon super-Stasi is already total and comprehensive, i.e. without limits. The revelation that an employee of the German government intelligence agency BND is involved is just confirmation that the intelligence services are not only becoming involved in questionable “democratic” activities, but in activities decidedly hostile to democracy.

We’ve known this ever since Edward Snowden’s revelations — and the German government has done virtually nothing about it. Their continuing inactivity is the handwriting on the wall, warning us that we are doing away with our own democracy. All the more important now is the question of the consequences of our government’s failure. On that subject, here are three observations to be considered:

– Verbal acrobats in various government offices have knocked themselves out to depict the spying between Germany and the U.S. as activities between friends that have had no material effect on their relationship. There was mention of a “clouding” of the friendship, of disappointment, burdens, low points and cooling, but nothing more because neither side was willing to risk more serious ramifications, such as looking at the attacks on our constitution, our liberties and human rights. This alliance now appears to be such a brazen end unto itself that it won’t tolerate external criteria.

– The obvious perversion — our constitutional rights aren’t absolute but fealty to the alliance — is astonishing, frightening and will eventually become irreversible. Our constitutional rights are being sacrificed in the name of a trans-Atlantic alliance that is not only an alliance of liberal values, but above all, a geostrategic association, i.e., a power alliance. The experienced trans-Atlanticist will argue that without a defensible power base, there can be no protection of our democratic achievements. That’s a valid objection, but it fails to take into account that an increasingly eroding system of values is no longer worth defending: Who wants to defend a broken promise — i.e., a lie — and for what reason?

– The complete political failure of our government on this issue has fatal consequences: We, the people, have been not only abandoned to a super strong intelligence service, but also convinced that we don’t even have any personal rights because they have been sacrificed on a higher altar of interests that have been stripped of democratic control.

Negotiable Constitutional Rights

Basic liberties have been reduced to negotiable entities dependent on the political climate. The trans-Atlantic values alliance — the community of democracies — now appears to have been patterned after a Disney theme park or a Potemkin village, and have morphed into a huge “what if?” scenario. But let’s be real and admit that a society without guaranteed civil rights isn’t a society at all.

Against this backdrop, here are three suggestions as to where we go from here:

– Introduce hostility as a political category. Those who won’t go so far as to describe the trans-Atlantic alliance in toto as hostile must at least be willing to talk of a clearly hostile dimension to this friendship for the sake of clarity.

– Put Bundes President Gauck in front of a microphone. Recently, the liberty theoretician Gauck accused the Turks of having a freedom deficit, and rightly so. But now, he needs to come to the defense of the German constitution and “enough already” doesn’t do the job. He needs a shocker of a speech.

– Grant Edward Snowden asylum in Germany. If the German government no longer wants its “friends” to lead it around by the nose, it needs to broadcast an unmistakable signal of its independence. Snowden would be our revenge, as well as being our star witness in the NSA investigation.