Suchergebnisse

Any examination of self-determination runs promptly into the difficulty
that while the concept lends itself to simple formulation in words which
have a ring of universal applicability and perhaps of revolutionary slogans,
when the time comes to put it into operation it turns out to be a complex
matter hedged in by limitations and caveats. In a different turn of phrase,
what is stated in big print—as in the reiterated United Nations injunction:
All peoples have the right to self-determination—is drastically modified by
what follows in small print. Indeed, once the major original exercise of
self-determination has been undertaken, the small print takes over and
becomes the big print which establishes the new and far more restrictive
guidelines.

As a form of government the Estado Libre Asociado, or to use the English title the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, reflects a cultural, economic, social, political process of long duration. It also embodies an explicit program of political pioneering initiated after the end of World War II.

Can two or more self-differentiating culture-groups coexist within a single political structure? The question may well seem clearly settled by the overwhelming factual evidence of contemporary international politics, for it is indeed a truism that political and ethnic borders seldom coincide. Thus, the very existence of a host of multinational states, including such a time-tested example as the Soviet Union, would appear to document an affirmative answer. On the other hand, a recent spate of political unrest within such geographically diverse and historically unrelated states as, inter aliay Canada, Guyana, India, Uganda, Belgium, the Sudan, Burma, Yugoslavia, Cyprus, Rwanda, the United Kingdom, and Iraq, focuses attention on the common root cause of intrastate yet international conflict and again brings into question the assumptions of the multinational state.

Liberals have regularly associated tradition with constraint. They have spoken of the 'force' of tradition or of the 'despotism' of custom. Locke drew a contrast between those who let themselves be guided by 'traditional customs and the fashion of the country' and those who use their liberty to think for themselves. For John Stuart Mill 'the love of liberty' was antagonistic to 'the sway of Custom'. Tradition and custom are represented by liberals in much the way Machiavelli represented fortuna, as forces which, unless repulsed by independent, free-thinking persons, would inevitably dominate whole societies and epochs. Mill held up China as the warning example. Custom had there become the court of ultimate appeal, the standard of justice, the argument which none could contemplate resisting. Custom had annihilated individuality and with it liberty, along with genuine history. The consequence was 'stationariness'. Unless the modern pressure of opinion was resisted Europe would become another China. The chief interest of the history of mankind, Mill declared, was the contest between custom and the progressive principle. A free society is in liberal terms an open society.