“Fixation on something special”
Lammert calls for a compulsory year for social cohesion
By Hubertus Volmer
September 8, 2023, 12:49 p.m
Like the Federal President, a former President of the Bundestag is also promoting a compulsory social year. Norbert Lammert is particularly annoyed that parts of politics are already refusing to discuss it. He is particularly concerned about the rise of populism.
The former President of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert, strongly advocated a compulsory social year. He found it “annoying that there are a number of people in the political class who refuse to engage in discourse by claiming that such a service is fundamentally incompatible with a liberal society,” said Lammert in an interview with ntv.de. Lammert, who has been chairman of the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation since 2018, rejected the idea that a mandatory year of service is not suitable for a liberal society. “Anyone who only wants to do their own thing and believes that they are not responsible for anything other than themselves should not complain about the erosional tendencies in society.”
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier recently invited supporters of compulsory service to dinner at Bellevue Palace, including CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann and business expert Veronika Grimm, as “Spiegel” reported. Steinmeier wants to meet with the leading municipal associations in the fall to push the issue forward. Like Lammert, Steinmeier assumes that a compulsory year would strengthen social cohesion.
“This gives populism a competitive advantage”
Lammert emphasized that this does not necessarily only affect young people. “The basic idea is whether it might not make sense, for many fundamental and practical reasons, to make part of one’s life available at some point in one’s life to work together on an important issue for society as a whole,” he said. As a rule, this will affect younger people. “But questions about the specific design of such a service, from the duration to the conditions to the areas of operation, are all the subject of public discourse.”
With regard to the rise of populist parties, Lammert said that this gave him “significant concern.” One explanation for this is that modern societies have become increasingly diverse and complex. “In view of this complexity, simple answers to complicated questions are very attractive. This gives populism a competitive advantage, which the populists make merciless use of.” However, simple answers to complex questions are “regularly wrong”.
Lammert said that the real challenge of every liberal society is to offer “the least possible scope for development for individual interests, talents, talents, views and opinions while at the same time maintaining the cohesion of a society.” However, there is currently “a boom in fixation on the special,” says Lammert. “But if in a society only the particular is discussed and the general is not, then we promote these erosional tendencies instead of limiting them.”