The last words of Neeli Kroes' blog post on the Digital Agenda:
But if we all – European Union institutions, national governments, businesses, citizens, researchers – join forces, it will be possible to make every European digital. And we can all look forward to some fascinating and exciting days if that happens.The last words of Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech:
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!Do you see how well this fits together?
Picture: © european_parliament / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
4 comments:
Do we Europeans really want our politicians to talk like Martin Luther King or even Barack Obama? I'm pretty sure that if, in the current election campaign here in the Netherlands, one of the party leaders gave an Obama speech, the audience would just mock him mercilessly. (And deservedly so.) Personally, I've always preferred the simple solemnity of the Schuman Declaration over Rev. King's mountaintops in Alabama, with all its (Christian) flourish.
I didn't say I want my politicians to speak like that...
What I think is remarkable is that in Kroes' statements, "citizens" are mentioned only after institutions and businesses. This is something that I also dislike about the Digital Agenda: That citizens (and cultural issues) only play a minor role compared to businesses and their interests.
That is, in my eyes, what's striking about the differences between these two quotes: The very different meaning of "we". The we of Kroes' is not one of citizenship, but first and foremost one of institutional affiliation. Seems like a democratic deficit to me...
@simoncolumbus: I feel compelled to come to rescue of my fellow VVD member and future Prime Minister: it looks as if she was listing them roughly in order of the contribution she was asking of each group. That is to say, how big a contribution and how quickly.
That is why it makes sense to put the European Institutions first, since they would obviously be the ones she is looking to influence most immediately and most directly. Of them, she is asking something specific (i.e. pass some as-of-yet-unknown legislation). Here challenge to the European citizenry is more generic than that.
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