Agreement or blood?

The Russian edition of the Swissinfo portal began to work a little more than a year ago. On the appropriate site, by the way, you can familiarize yourself with an interesting dossier following the results of the first 12 months of our work in the field of attempts to explain to the world how the Swiss watches “tick”. We make such attempts in ten languages. If you recall the preface to the “golden calf”, then there is very good, and most importantly, it is shortly described how two authors work together. This is, as it immediately becomes clear, difficult. And this despite the fact that they wrote in the same language.

We have more complicated: we write in ten languages, more than a hundred people work in ten editions, and now we’ll try to lead all this to one denominator, find a story and tell it so that it is simultaneously understood by readers somewhere in London, Moscow, Beijing and Dubai. Before the advent of the tenth, Russian, editorial office in the working language in flyers and all kinds of meetings was French. The German -speaking Bern, both the city and the canton of the same name, is officially bilingual and is located on the linguistic border that separates the German -speaking world from the world of proud Gauls.

What can we say about ordinary highlanders or citizens with free access to rifle and other weapons such as "Earth - Air"?

With the advent of the Russian edition, everything moved, the established system collapsed, and it turned out that we did not have a common language. In the literal sense of the word. Whatever language we try to choose as a worker, it turned out that someone remains overboard, someone does not speak this language and if he perceives information, then with great difficulty. We have found the solution, but since then we have to regularly deal with the information that you are sent on the language on the internal network, to you unfamiliar. And you know what? It is wildly annoying.

You constantly pull yourself, convince that you are a civilized person, that we are all doing one thing and that you don’t need to send letters in Russian in response to this person, which he still does not read, that he should not be annoyed, because this is not from evil, but just such a situation. And all the same ... freely or involuntarily, at some genetic level, where still at ease-based primates, evolutionary codes were recorded by the “your or foe” identification system, completely irrational arises not that anger, but some kind of ... perplexity. And the question arises: is it on purpose? What is it difficult for him to learn that I am in French, well, if he wants to tell me something, is it better to use German or English?

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Why am I telling all this? But what: even if in a team consisting of people, IQ of each of which is much, very much higher than average, even if in a team, who understands perfectly, for which “we all gathered here today”, even if people who do not just go to the office every day, but do not live for them “Beruf” (Berufung) , so even here, even here, - so, so, so, so. If such people have thoughts in their heads “Well, what are you, in fact ...”, then what can I say about all the others, ordinary highlanders or citizens with free access to rifle and other weapons like “earth - air”?

Let's try to carry out easy extrapolation, and we will receive, for example, Yugoslavia, where the same language, albeit recorded by different letters, led to a terrible massacre. And the question arises: are there any mechanisms in the world that could make Yugoslav atrocities impossible? There are, and they are created in Switzerland. If we take the same team who perfectly understands why “we all gathered here today,” and expand it to the scale of the country, then we will get the theory and practice of the “political nation”, which has abandoned such system -forming factors as language, blood, soil, culture, and other arguments in the style of “and according to conscience is our land”. We will receive the unity of people who share the same rational political values.

These are liberals: smeared with paint, with hands, stained with rust, with cuts and abrasions on labor palms.

We will get people who are patriots, but created not according to the technology “let me cross, or I am hit in the face”, but based on the ideal of constitutional patriotism. It was this principle that underlies the Swiss Confederation, and it was he who helped protect the country from the Yugoslav version when the issue of the formation of Canton Yura entered the country in the country.

And this issue arose back in 1815, when the decision of the Vienna Congress Catholic and Franco -speaking region Yura was transferred to the German -speaking and Protestant canton Bern. After the modern liberal federal state was created in Switzerland in Switzerland, the separatist potential began to accumulate especially actively in the Catholic regions of the Berneic Yura, which was facilitated by such cases as this. At the end of the XIX century, the leadership of the just built station on the Swiss-French border from Bern sent guidelines and instructions in German. The head of the station turned to Bern and said that neither he nor his employees speak German. The answer was brief - "Teach!".

Now I can very well imagine what thoughts flashed through the head of the French -speaking officials of the Yura region after such an answer. So the conflict between the Berne state on the one hand and part of the cantonal francolical minority on the other was programmed. The conflict was equally predetermined within Yura herself, that is, between those who were separatist (Catholic north of Yura), and those who would prefer to remain in Canton Bern (Protestant south of the region).

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The historical feature and happiness of Switzerland consisted, however, that national self-awareness here originally developed at the cantonal level as part of the liberalization of the political constitutional order in the 30-40s. XIX century. Therefore, the Swiss cantonal, and then national patriotism from the very beginning developed in the form of constitutional patriotism. It was this factor that became decisive in the confederation. If not for him, the conflict around the Berneic Yura would have turned into considerable blood. So what is constitutional patriotism?

In the center of this concept is an understanding of the simple fact that in modern conditions a national state cannot already be understood as a “natural phenomenon”. The romantic idea of ​​the existence of a “natural” nation in the context of the beginning of the new millennium ceases to be adequate. The modern national state today is a controlled construct. Confalling “constitutional” patriotism, relatively speaking, “magical” patriotism, as well as a closely associated “national myth” is not capable of transformation, they are only able to enter into conflict with another myth and either defend their existence or die. This is how events developed in the former Yugoslavia.

Patriots are not according to the technology “Let me cross, or not in the face,”, but on the basis of the ideal of constitutional patriotism.

In this regard, Switzerland was lucky - despite all the disagreements between the French and German units of the country, uniting their understanding of the need to preserve the liberal constitutional order, forced to ultimately turn off the path of violence to the rails of the political process. In the end, the Swiss understood that the emergence of a new canton would not mean the creation of any “zone of lawlessness”. They were sure that the people of the new canton would not be a threat, but, on the contrary, another additional support for Switzerland as a whole. Why then not to give Catholics of Canton Bern the opportunity to separate?

It was the theory and practice of constitutional patriotism that created the conditions for the bloodless solution to the most complex conflict around the Berneic Yura. This does not mean that there are no problems. There are problems - however, in Switzerland, hope for their compromise and peaceful decision remains real. And, by the way, in the 1960s, in the midst of the Jurassi conflict, it never occurred to anyone in Paris-just in case, to “protect” the Catholic population of Yura from the “fascists” in Bern, occupying this region and performing an operation there to lower the pieces of paper into some capacities ... More Switzerland, because they knew that they would have lost in this case, and the most important loss would be just liberal social and economic order.

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By the way, about liberals. Switzerland is a liberal country. And each time, leaving the house in the morning outside, I see these liberals. No, they do not offer me, breathing in spirits and fogs, to enter into a one -sex marriage. They arrive at the vans, on the sides of which simple words are written: “roofer”, “mason”, “locksmith”, “carpenter”, “plaster”, “painter”, “plumber”. These people open the doors of their wagons, roll up their sleeves and, ringing with tools, go to work.

It is on such people that Switzerland rests. 99% of its enterprises are small and medium, where the number of employees does not exceed 5-10 people. These people work themselves, honestly pay taxes, they themselves are responsible for their lives, they know very well that it is good and bad, and they require part of the political influence in the country. These are liberals: smeared with paint, with hands, stained with rust, with cuts and abrasions on labor palms. Every day in their own skin they feel what a liberal constitutional order with guarantees of property rights and with the rule of law is.

I really respect such people. And I go past them to the office, turn on the computer and see the next mail from my interlocutor yesterday. He again sends interesting information to me in the language of Balzac. I turn on the google translator and write to him in the language of Dumas, clumsy and with errors, the answer with my deep and most sincere gratitude.