During all States’ history there is usually an ongoing debate, between the government and people, that leads to a social evolution through a mediation on the necessary measures to be taken pro nation.
The role of the people in a democracy is indeed the following one: to limit as much as possible any abuse by the ruler. The people are sovereign and have the task of taking action whenever a government exceeds its functions, degenerating into forms of despotic absolutism.
A family, during a travel, does not delegate to the driver all the decisions about where to go, as well as in a company the CEO must handle it by sharing the decisions with all the stakeholders and with the board of directors.
This dialectic between people and government is evident nowadays. For example, what is happening in Canada with the protest of truck drivers supported by citizens, in Australia and in France, shows the evidence of this contrast: on one side, a government that tries to impose its will in an extremely authoritarian way, and on the other side, citizens who try to fight and claim their own sovereignty by protecting fundamental individual rights.
Adult people are the one who defends the individual’s rights against the abuses of power. This dialectic, which is intrinsic in the progress of liberal democracies and that has always been there in liberal democracies, is not happening in Italy.
In Italy we are witnessing a contrast between good citizens and bad citizens: where the discriminating factor between the two parts is whether to embrace the lines of the government or not. And the individual free choice defense, instead of being considered a fundamental value for all, it is considered as a distorted view of a few “enemies of the people”.
This could be the closest aspect that links Italy today to a totalitarian dictatorship: the fact that there is no longer a dialectic between the people and the government on the contrary, those who are in contrast with those who govern, in order to defend individual freedom, are pointed out by the citizens themselves as the danger for the society.
One of the reasons of this split between Italians vs Italians, along with a widespread mentality tending to subjection to the authority, may be the economic dependence of a large part of the population on state bureaucracy.
Considering the state as a mother who does something good for her children even when she slaps them, can lead to a primitive and childish view of the relationship between citizen and political power.
LAURA MALTAGLIATI
(Original article By Andrea Zoppolato & Duilio Forte)
