In war, all human differences are taken to extremes, nuances are negated and reduced to a crude black and white scheme: “with us or against us – friend? ... or enemy?”
This is an unnatural, traumatising state of mind in which everything that divides outweighs what unites. Mistrust, fear and hatred make people sick and drive them to commit inhumane acts.
Over the last hundred years, taking a dispassionate view of warlike events has also saved our country from being dragged into the maelstrom of murderous power politics in our immediate neighbours. Instead of taking sides, our parents’ generation provided humanitarian assistance. This was to everyone’s advantage.
Those who force us to take sides today are threatening Switzerland and depriving it of its ability to contribute to a more peaceful world. It should be obvious that the abandonment of Swiss neutrality cannot serve a fairer world order. The fact that this is not also regretted in the western part of the world does not change the matter – but it does make our situation more difficult.
Damage threatens our country through the destruction of its political culture, which has grown over centuries, if it is to be squeezed into a spiritually impoverished rest of Europe led by an undemocratic administrative juggernaut.
Switzerland will be irretrievably damaged by the continued dismantling of education, the only commodity we had in abundance (apart from perhaps water and stones).
As the latest parliamentary decisions show, there is no sign of any will across all parties to finally put a stop to the disintegration of our society by means of drugs, or to protect young people from violence and pornography. One gets the impression that our legislature is more committed to certain business circles than to the common good.
Anyone who believes that the recent elections could bring about a turnaround in this respect must be very optimistic. In view of the meaningless slogans on the poster portraits of almost all the candidates, this is hardly to be expected.
Moreover, the elected representatives who have helped to authoritatively push through destructive “reforms” in sensitive areas such as the army and education in particular in recent years belong to all parliamentary groups. It is not clear why “Moscow should influence the elections” in favour of a particular one of them, as analysts from our Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) claim. Countering the above-mentioned dangers would be their most urgent task. •
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