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<i>Free World: Why a Crisis of the West Reveals the Opportunity of Our Time</i> by [[Timothy Garton Ash</i>]]

The fate of a [[Slovene ]] [[Communist revolutionary ]] [[revolution]]ary serves as a perfect [[metaphor ]] for the twists of [[Stalinism]]. In 1943, when [[Italy ]] capitulated, he led a rebellion of [[Yugoslav ]] prisoners in a [[concentration camp ]] on the Adriatic island of Rab: 2000 starving prisoners disarmed 2200 [[Italian ]] soldiers. After the [[war]], he was arrested and put in a prison on Goli otok ('Naked Island'), a notorious [[Communist ]] [[concentration camp ]] near Rab. While he was there, he and other prisoners were detailed to build a monument to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 1943 rebellion on Rab. As a prisoner of the Communists, he was building a monument to himself and the rebellion he'd led. If poetic injustice means anything, this is it. The fate of this revolutionary was surely the fate of the people as a whole under [[Stalinist ]] [[dictatorship]]: the millions who overthrew the ''ancien régime'', and were then forced to build monuments to their own revolutionary past.

[[Timothy Garton Ash ]] would appreciate this tragicomic accident: it comes close to the spirit of [[ethically ]] engaged [[irony ]] that permeates his best work. Although he is my political opponent, I always consider him worth reading for his wealth of precise observations, and as a reliable source on the vicissitudes of the disintegration of [[Eastern European Europe]]an [[Communism]]. In <i>Free World</i> he has taken the same perspicuous and bitterly witty approach to the conundrums of the recent tensions between the key [[Western European states Europe]]an [[state]]s and the [[US]]. His aperçus about the relations between the [[UK]], [[France ]] and [[Germany ]] often recall the gentle [[irony ]] of a novel of manners, giving a new twist to the old topic of the '[[European trinity]]'.

In a famous scene from [[Buñuel]]'s <i>Phantom of Liberty</i>, the roles of eating and excreting are inverted: people sit at toilets around a table, chatting pleasantly, and when they want to eat, sneak away to a small room. So, as a [[supplement ]] to [[Lévi-Strauss]], one is tempted to propose that shit can also serve as a <i>matière-à-penser</i>: the three basic types of [[toilet ]] form an excremental correlative-counterpoint to the [[Lévi-Straussian Strauss]]ian triangle of cooking (the raw, the cooked and the rotten). In a traditional [[German ]] [[toilet]], the hole into which shit disappears after we flush is right at the front, so that shit is first laid out for us to sniff and inspect for traces of illness. In the typical [[French ]] [[toilet]], on the contrary, the hole is at the back, i.e. shit is supposed to disappear as quickly as possible. Finally, the [[American ]] ([[Anglo-Saxon]]) [[toilet ]] presents a synthesis, a mediation between these opposites: the toilet basin is full of water, so that the shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected. No wonder that in the famous discussion of European [[Europe]]an toilets at the beginning of her half-forgotten <i>Fear of Flying</i>, Erica Jong mockingly claims that 'German toilets are really the key to the horrors of the Third Reich. People who can build toilets like this are capable of anything.' It is clear that none of these versions can be accounted for in purely [[utilitarian ]]terms: each involves a certain [[ideological ]] perception of how the [[subject ]] should relate to [[excrement]].

[[Hegel ]] was among the first to see in the geographical [[triad ]] of [[Germany]], [[France ]] and [[England ]] an expression of three different existential attitudes: reflective thoroughness ([[German]]), revolutionary hastiness ([[French]]), [[utilitarian ]] [[pragmatism ]] ([[English]]). In [[political ]] terms, this [[triad ]] can be read as [[German ]] [[conservatism]], [[French ]] [[revolutionary ]] [[radicalism ]] and [[English ]] [[liberalism]]. In terms of the predominance of one sphere of social life, it is [[German ]] [[metaphysics ]] and [[poetry ]] versus [[French ]] [[politics ]] and [[English ]] [[economics]]. The point about toilets [[toilet]]s is that they enable us not only to discern this [[triad ]] in the most intimate domain, but also to identify its underlying [[mechanism ]] in the three different attitudes towards excremental [[excrement]]al [[excess]]: an ambiguous contemplative fascination; a wish to get rid of it as fast as possible; a pragmatic decision to treat it as ordinary and dispose of it in an appropriate way. It is easy for an academic at a round table to claim that we live in a [[post-ideological ]] universe, but the moment he visits the lavatory after the heated discussion, he is again knee-deep in [[ideology]].

[[Garton Ash]]'s observations suggest that the three terms of the trinity have recently undergone a strange [[displacement]]: the French are preoccupied with culture (how to save theirs from vulgar Americanisation), the English are focusing on political dilemmas (should they join a politically united Europe?), and the Germans? The Germans worry about the inertia of their economy, as if, in postponing economic reforms indefinitely, they were persisting in an attitude which turns around their own saying: <i>morgen, morgen, nur nicht heute, sagen alle faulen Leute</i> ('tomorrow, tomorrow, just not today, all lazy people say').

And what if there was a further shift of terms? We might then see the United Kingdom focused on culture (cultural tolerance and lack of pretension could serve as an antidote to French elitism and excessive German seriousness); France focused on the economy (which, against all expectations, has done rather well in recent decades); and - surprise - Germany focused on politics (is the political life of the Bundesrepublik not a triumph of reasoned debate over blind passion?).