London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

What of Montenegro?

SO IT APPEARS that the electorate of Montenegro have chosen to end their confederation with Serbia (c.f. BBC News, “Montenegro ‘chooses independence’“). It is my firm belief that the more local a government, the better it is, and that decisions ought to made at the level closest to those they affect. This is more or less the idea of subsidiarity so enshrined in Catholic social teaching, especially in Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum and Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno, and rather implicit in the Tenth Admendment of the U.S. Constitution (which, to my mind, has proved to be the greatest component of the Bill of Rights).

Believing in subsidiarity, I am also inclined to believe that (up to a certain point) the smaller a state the better. (The ideal of government, after all, lies in hereditary principalities and kingdoms under a superceding imperial monarch, akin to the Holy Roman Empire). So does this mean that Montenegrin independence would be a good thing? Not necessarily. Essentially, the only disagreement between the governments of Montenegro and Serbia is that Montenegro wants to stomp out its own traditional culture and become an other outpost of boring liberal capitalism very very quickly. Serbia wants to do the same, but only quickly instead of very quickly. Look at the leadership of any European country today and you will see leaders who, despite their ritually professed anti-Americanism, want to erase their own traditional cultures and turn their countries into little cookie-cutter states slavishly beholden to American “popular culture”. (Regional differences in architecture are all that will be allowed to remain, as they encourage tourism, which itself is another destroyer of genuine organic culture). The governments of both Serbia and Montenegro certainly subscribe to this vision of a bright liberal, corporate future so Montenegro’s proposed separation is merely an exercise in trying to join the country club before the family next door.

Both countries aim to meet the same doom, so whether they go together or not is largely an irrelevance. Of course, if they had any sense in Belgrade and Podgorica, they’d restore their monarchies and take a peek into the ideas of Christian Democracy, a philosophy which is rather neglected these days (most especially by Christian Democratic parties, naturally). But we will lament the neglect of Christian democratic ideas (which, despite the name, are not necessarily democratic) on some other day.

Published at 6:32 pm on Sunday 21 May 2006. Categories: Politics.
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