«Tosato contested Rousseau’s assumption that the general will could not find any limits in the laws, because the popular will could change any norm or rule. He did so in very clear words: “We all know by now that the presumed general will is in reality nothing but the will of a majority and that the will of a majority, which considers itself as representing the will of the entire people, can be, as has often been demonstrated, more unjust and more oppressive than the will of a prince”. A firm no, therefore, to state absolutism, to an authority without limits, potentially overbearing.. Awareness of limits is an essential factor of loyal and indispensable democratic vitality”. This was stated by President Sergio Mattarella speaking at the Social Week of Catholics in Italy.
«The exercise of democracy – Mattarella further explained –, as we have seen, is not reduced to a simple procedural aspect and is not even consummated only with the indispensable expression of one’s own vote at the ballot box during electoral occasions. It presupposes the effort to develop a vision of the common good in which the following are wisely intertwined: – because they are inseparable – individual freedoms and social openness, the good of freedom and the good of shared humanity. Nor is this a question limited to state spheres.”
«Fighting so that there can be no “democracy illiterates” is a primary causenoble, that concerns us all. Not only those who hold responsibilities or exercise power. By definition, democracy is an exercise from below, linked to community life, because democracy is walking together».
“Don Lorenzo Milani – the President of the Republic continued – urged us to “give the word”, because “only the language makes us equal”. To be literate in society. The Republic has been able to travel a long way, but the task of ensuring that everyone takes part in the life of its society and its institutions is never exhausted. Every generation, every era, is expected to face the test of “literacy”, of the realization of the life of democracy. A test, today, more complex than ever, in the contemporary technological society».
«If in the past democracy was realized in the States – often opposed and in any case with rigid, insurmountable borders – today, precisely in the continent that was its cradle, there is a need to build a solid European sovereignty – added Mattarella – that integrates and gives concrete and not illusory substance to that of the Member States. That allows and strengthens the sovereignty of the people designed by our Constitutions and expressed, at the level of the Community institutions, in the European Parliament».
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