(Finance) – “Democracy is one of the founding pillars of European and Western political thought. Yet, from Ancient Greece to the present day, European and Western history has also been a perennial and continuous struggle to defend democratic values. A struggle often born from a condition: when a people lives in a democracy for a long time they are led to believe that democracy is something to be taken for granted, and not a precious asset to be defended from pitfalls and worth fighting for“. Thus begins the speech of the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloniin the video message sent on the occasion of the third edition of Summit for Democracy.
“This is what we are experiencing today too, with the instability at an international level and with the dangers affecting our democratic systems. Pitfalls that arise from different factors, many of these based on ideological visions. One of these believes that the people are not mature enough to make big decisions, and that for this reason democracy can only be understood as an oligarchy, the government of an elite. Another of these was coined by Roger Scruton, one of the greatest European philosophers, and is called “oicophobia”hatred for one’s home”continues the Premier.
Unfortunately, “often we are the first to no longer believe in ourselves and we are the first to deny what we are. And this has devastating effects, because how can we think that future generations will believe, like us, in democracy if in schools and universities they are taught to underestimate our civilization, who, despite a thousand difficulties and complex periods, founded his identity on the values of freedom, equality and democracy?
Only if we return to believing in ourselves can we give new strength to our democracies. Only if we go back to building our culture instead of erasing it, can we go back to doing inspire our young people and make them protagonists of the future. And this is what I think is most important today: defending our democracies”concluded Meloni.