Restriction of freedom rights: the German pleasure in submission

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We have learned that Angela Merkel's federal government and the 16 state governments have no problem with continuously restricting constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights without a really serious examination of proportionality.

It has been going on for a year.

The experience is shocking and makes one fear for democracy - but as long as elected parliamentarians accept everything and the citizens put up with it, that's the way it is.

After all, in some cases courts stop the grossest “action” nonsense.

Almost even more shocking than the narrow-mindedness of an executive who cannot do everything it has to do itself, I find the joy of submission on the part of some fellow citizens.

Too many of them are still enthusiastic about the crisis.

I reject their lust for fear.

I shudder at their collective optimism of purpose, which Covid absolutely wants to get something good out of: that we are now happily discovering the superfluity of consumption, for example!

That the annoying aircraft noise has disappeared and the disruptive mass tourism!

You can campaign politically for ecological goals, of course, you can look for majorities for them - but to decree them in the long term through decreed restrictions on fundamental rights would mean adopting democratic freedom.

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This country is currently governed on a decision-making basis that includes sentences like: Theatrical performances are prohibited.

I don't want to live in a country where theatrical performances are banned.

I don't want to live in a country where it doesn't matter whether a whole generation of children and young people is lost.

I don't want the state to dictate how many friends gather around my dining table in the evening.

I want to argue with my colleagues, not clinically distant on the screen, but face to face.

As the ingenious gastro critic of the “FAZ”, Jakob Strobel y Serra, put it, I don't want to unlearn how to travel - and I have nothing left for people who recently consider wanderlust to be an administrative offense.

The danger of death for the very old will soon be the justification for the state of emergency - at least this risk group should be vaccinated at some point.

There are fewer and fewer proportional reasons for restricting so many freedoms.

According to the spirit and the wording of our constitution, it is not the citizen who has to justify the use of his or her freedom, but only the state that curtails freedom.