nSuppose that Sunday’s general election leads to an outcome that many now consider unlikely: under Chancellor Olaf Schultz (SPD), there will be a red-green-red coalition. It is true that Scholz has made an impressive effort to support the FDP for a while. But the talks ultimately failed due to fiscal policy. While the Liberals are staunchly opposed to a wealth tax, increased income tax and easing the debt brake, the SPD man is walking open with his tax proposals on the left.
Suppose also – which many also consider to be not entirely improbable – that Berlin’s initiative to expropriate large housing blocks will also be successful and that the capital’s new Red, Red and Green Senate under the leadership of Franziska Giffi will not be able to. Avoid a Democratic majority vote on a law and address the socialization of the real estate portfolio. Subsequently, the expropriation law soon found many friends in Schultz’s government.
So if we assume that the outcome of this election came in a completely democratic way, it would not be an exaggeration to say that we would then find ourselves in a different left-wing republic, where private property is no longer respected, successful exceptions expropriated – and research from the Greens – regarding climate change, the most powerful interventions In the freedom of movement of citizens will be the daily regime.
What are the opportunities for minorities?
I don’t want to provoke a “red socks fear” here. I am interested in the question of legal philosophy: What options are available to minorities to defend themselves against the will of the majority? The obvious answer is: nothing at all. This is the case in democracy. The losers must submit to the majority. You can campaign for the fact that in the next elections your people, who are resisting socialism, will return to power. If they get impatient, they will be free to emigrate to a more liberal country (such as Switzerland). Alexis de Tocqueville wrote 200 years ago that democracy is a kind of dictatorship of the majority. There is nothing you can do.
Can you really not? There are good reasons why people have few opportunities to correct election results that are uncomfortable for them. But what about the larger local authorities? Now suppose in our thought experience that, unlike the federal government, there would be a large majority of the CSU in Bavaria under the leadership of the energetic hero Marcus Söder. That would revive the old contradiction between Munich and Berlin, not least because it might be feared that red, green, and red taxes and climate plans would affect primarily the successful businesses and economic citizens of Bavaria (and Baden-Württemberg, but that would be another topic). No wonder that, as a result, old separatist ideas are experiencing a renaissance in the Free State. According to a survey by the polling institute YouGov from 2017, a third of Bavarians want independence from the Federal Republic. The Bavarian party has maintained this idea of autonomy for years.
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