François Sureau's warning

Le Regard Libre N° 68 - Jonas Follonier

Last year, the French lawyer, writer and now academician François Sureau published his tract entitled Without freedom. In this strongly-titled essay, the author painted and denounced a society - present-day French society - that had gradually lost its rule of law. A society «without liberty», which was chilling for him, and which would find its only favorable outcome in a newfound love of political freedom. If it's interesting to go back to this text for an editorial, it's precisely because it resonates so clearly with our own society, Swiss society, and, even more strikingly, with what we're going through with the current crisis management.

Here's how Sureau summed up the situation at the start of his fifty-six-page essay:

«That governments, today's as well as others, dislike freedom is nothing new. Governments tend towards efficiency. Nor is it surprising that people worried about terrorism or widespread insecurity, after half a century spent without great hardship and initially without war, are not inclined to go into detail. But it's not a question of details. The rule of law, in its principles and organs, was designed to ensure that neither the desires of government nor the fears of the people sweep away the foundations of political order, and first and foremost freedom.»

If the man of law attaches so much importance to this relationship between the population and parliament, on the one hand, and the government, on the other, it's because, as he writes, «we are citizens before we are voters.» But we've forgotten that. We have forgotten that we are free beings - to express ourselves, to move about, to undertake - before we are voters of personalities who tend to decide our duties rather than defend our rights. Doesn't that remind you of current events? We've also forgotten that political freedom is as much about others as it is about ourselves. Hence this unbearable attitude of the covid grumblers, often pensioners or civil servants as the writer Jean-Michel Olivier pointed out on Facebook, criticizing the concerns of young people who want to live, of the self-employed who want to survive. It's exactly like the «I've got nothing to hide» attitude when it comes to data protection.

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Sureau goes on to write: «Article 16 of the Declaration states that ‘‘any society in which the guarantee of rights is not assured, nor the separation of powers determined, has no Constitution’’. This text, like most others of our time, combines optimism about citizens - judged to be capable of discernment and action - with pessimism about rulers - judged to be inclined to abuse powers and disregard rights. These two propositions tend to be reversed these days.»

Our leaders« way of communicating - and we'll never say how much they've missed the point - was to say a few weeks ago that the cantons hadn't been strict enough and young people hadn't been responsible enough. As for the average Swiss, it's often »hats off to Berset, respect". And let's not even go into the blasé yawn with which parliament greeted the provisional dispossession of its powers... Keeping an eye on the more-than-provisional character that the current liberticidal and anti-parliamentary arrangements could take on could well be an honest occupation for the Swiss citizen.

François Sureau warned us.

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: Capture d'écran YouTube