Schedium

"A Nation, Catalan Countries! A Language, Catalan!" - Mural in Vilassar de Mar, El Maresme, Catalonia (by  1997  / Wikimedia Commons) "They have been beaten for trying to hold a referendum, their parliament has been dissolved and their leaders have either fled or been put in prison, but the Catalan independence supporters are not relenting," wrote  The Independent  on December 8 about  Catalan separatists . The Catalan independence movement has been portrayed by many international media outlets as a fight for freedom, while the intervention of the Spanish state to block the October 1st independence referendum is regarded as oppressive and undemocratic.  International media often offer a platform for Catalan separatists to explain their cause from their own perspective. For instance on December 3  Politico Europe  published an op-ed by Oriol Junqueras, the leader of the Republican Left of Catalonia (Esquerra Republicana de Cata...

They steal from us €60 million a day, independence=necessary"; pro-independence march in July 2010 (by  JuanmaRamos-Avui-El Punt  via Wikimedia Commons) Catalan separatism is not a coherent movement that unites the entire population of the region. Not only are Catalan voters split on the issue of independence, with about half of them supporting the preservation of autonomy within Spain. But the Catalan independence movement itself is deeply divided. On the one hand, secessionism is fuelled by a nationalist ideology that views the nation as a community with a distinct language, history and culture which requires an independent state to thrive. According to this view, people who are different cannot coexist within the same state. We have already discussed the contradictions of this concept of  self-determination  in a previous article. However, there is also another element to the independence movement that has not been often explored: a far-left ...

Mi capita a volte di avere dibattiti sui valori di sinistra con persone di diversi colori politici. Spesso, però, mi sembra che ci sia confusione sul loro significato. Ho dunque deciso di spiegare brevemente quali siano, secondo me, i valori di sinistra, e di delineare alcune politiche economiche per metterli in pratica. 1) democrazia parlamentare, diritti umani, separazione dei poteri, Stato di diritto; 2) progresso economico e sociale a beneficio della maggioranza dei cittadini, e non solo di una minoranza; 3) difesa del lavoro e della dignità dei lavoratori; 4) Stato sociale; 5) economia di mercato mista; 6) commercio equo. Quali politiche secondo me dovrebbe sostenere la sinistra? 1) difesa dei diritti e del potere contrattuale dei lavoratori; 2) salario minimo; 3) mantenimento e, dove necessario, miglioramento del reddito di cittadinanza; 4) creazione di un sistema di gare pubbliche per imprenditori, e selezione tramite voto popolare di aziende da sovve...

"The Wealth of the Nation" by Seymour Fogel via Wikimedia Commons In his bestseller Free to Choose economist Milton Friedman offered a vision of American economic history that revolved around the idea of freedom. He wrote: "Ever since the first settlements of Europeans in the New World America has been a magnet for people seeking adventure, fleeing from tyranny, or simply trying to make a better life for themselves and their children ... When they arrived, they did not find streets paved with gold; they did not find an easy life. They did find freedom and an opportunity to make the most of their talents. Through hard work, ingenuity, thrift, and luck, most of them succeeded ... "The story of the United States is the story of an economic miracle and a political miracle that was made possible by the translation into practice of two sets of ideas .... One [of them] was embodied in the Wealth of Nations, the masterpiece [by] Adam Smith [w...