Liberdade em Risco

Dois historiadores concordam: as principais conquistas das sociedades no ocidente estão em risco, basicamente porque liberdade individual está em risco.

Niall Ferguson, historiador escocês, é taxativo nesta reportagem que discute seu último livro, Civilization:

"So much of liberalism in its classical sense is taken for granted in the west today and even disrespected. We take freedom for granted, and because of this we don't understand how incredibly vulnerable it is."

Sob a perspectiva dos atuais problemas da zona do Euro, o historiador inglês Timothy Ash chega à mesma conclusão:

"The reason the crisis can have such a strong effect is that the big engines of the European project are no longer running. I'm talking about the passionately engaged politicians with their personal memories of the war, the occupation, the dictatorship, the Holocaust and the Soviet threat. That's why they promoted the project."

"What we do lack are the emotions and the passion to say to people: Do you really want to risk what we have? The fact that a young man in Greece or Estonia can get on a plane in the morning and fly to Paris or Rome, without border controls and without exchanging money, and perhaps find a wife or friends there, decide to live or find a job there -- this is progress that no one should put at risk. It must be made clear to people that their "easyJet Europe," as I call this European freedom we experience every day, will be in jeopardy if the euro zone falls apart."