The Oslo mayor has opened a multitude of flags 17. May. But on Constitution Day, it's time for a home match.
(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
[17. May] On my way to work, I cycled here a day past a girl in hijab and Russian costume with a big Norwegian flag on her chest.
She caught a smoke as she strolled purposefully along the Frogner Trail. So far the most poignant comment on this year's label debate about what it is fitting to flag on Constitution Day.
The multicultural reflex has been laughed at by new compatriots in the capital's 17. May Committee that takes its national feel so solemnly that they will tie the freedom of expression. In short: Let people wave the flag they want. Only then does the admonition come: It is the Constitution we celebrate on Constitution Day, not the flag, and the core of the Constitution is § 100: Freedom of expression should take place. It is not in the spirit of the Constitution to refuse anyone to choose another flag ... but it is sweet of you to choose the Norwegian.
It has been sweet of me to also refrain from waving the EU flag on Constitution Day, although I now understand that it would have been more in line with the Constitution to give my federal and Eurocentric inclinations free rein. Therefore, let us follow the reasoning right to the door, yes, right out to where the tribute of the Constitution is indistinguishable from the harassment of it. In short: what if we don't fan the Norwegian flag on Constitution Day, what if we burn it? Do not carry 17. may the May Committee also open to it, as the Freedom of Expression section does according to updated case law?
The question is rhetorical, and the example is not chosen to evoke the dire consequences of inviting people to show where they come from. It has been chosen to highlight how loosely speaking about freedom of speech can now speak any debate of the track. I will not enter into the competition for what Henrik Wergeland would have intended, only to note that the public today is inundated with statements that the constitutional fathers would not have tolerated. By today's scale, they were well tolerated. The spirit of the Constitution was both radical and reactionary, but above all it was bluffing.
So much is different, above all bluffiness, but every child knows that life is still full of situations where freedom of expression is limited, and that it is not primarily the one we celebrate on May 17th. That day, the utterances are largely placed in the Conventions link, a link that, in Søren Kierkegaard's words about the Danish language, is easy to carry but heavy to break.
We may think it is ridiculous, because we have been bothered by the national nostalgia that Constitution Day is about activating. If the nation were more powerful, we would have military parades. Instead, it was a children's train on us: "We are a nation we are with." That the nation has changed does not change that. Nor has the brutal history of the treatment of our so-called national minorities shaken this self-image. With another word of mouth from the same source: What in the great countries turns into revolutions, here becomes rudeness. We like to call it the blessing of the little nation.
Even if we do not celebrate the flag, those of us who bother with the flag celebrate: on the pole, in the buttonhole or on the Russian suit. Whether we do it, and how we do it, is up to the individual. But even if the power of integration should be stronger in the Russian suit than in the flag, we do not tone other flags, unless the point is to mark that we do not belong to the Norwegian community. It will probably soon be only immigrants who understand that.
According to Ernest Renan's famous little text What is a Nation? (1882) there are two factors that define the nation's soul: the rich heritage of collective memories and the free support of its citizens. Perhaps that is why it is striking that many new Norwegians are fighting for the duty to be clear; they do not take freedom in Norway for granted, they join it. And they see through the rhetoric that all flags are equally good, all stories equally relevant, as a celebration of a hypocritical self-image.
Everyone who has ended up on the wrong side of the stands at a football match knows the rules. May 17 is the home game. Hi to the right team, or take the consequences.
And let it be very clear: Mayor Fabian Stang will not come to the rescue.
