December 1. The future contained in the Alba Iulia Proclamation is one that has never really been fulfilled

We should not talk about the year 1918 and about Alba Iulia in the past tense of the demagogic commemoration, but in the future tense which is in the pages of long ago. Politics on a human scale, imagined then, can guide us, writes constitutional law professor Ioan Stanomir, in an opinion piece published today by HotNews.

December 1, 1918 is the memorable and visionary image of the spring of a nation: more than any other moment in Romania's history, that day holds within it the promise of the future that we must keep in our souls. Beyond the demagogic delirium, beyond the hagiographic clumsiness, December 1, 1918 is the manifesto that points to the line of human politics and the imperative of a people's dignity.

“The year 1918 is not past, but always future”

The words and gestures of that time reach those of today, to remind us of the energy of freedom and the patriotic clairvoyance. The shadows of that time are summoned by us, to give us something of their strength.

Because courage and dignity are the virtues that define the struggle that culminates with the Union of 1918. Courage, because, for two centuries, Romanians have not stopped claiming for themselves the right to national existence, without giving up, without giving in, without falling prey to despair. Dignity, because their effort meant affirming respect for individual and collective identity, accepting ethnic and confessional pluralism as the foundation of their future homeland.

History has been unforgiving with those who, in 1918, affirmed the possibility of a future of equality before the law. It was given to some Iuliu Maniu or Iuliu Hossu to contemplate the tragedy of 1940 and to be persecuted, imprisoned and blasphemed. Everything they built, in those memorable days of 1918, seemed to have collapsed. Communism placed a layer of lead over the hopes of that time.

And yet, against the totalitarian assault and the Ceausist ethnocratic delirium, the words of 1918 have not stopped resounding, inhabited by their prophetic tenacity, evoking a country that is not based on despotism and chauvinism, but on equality, dignity and patriotism. Because the year 1918 is not past, but always future. Its forgetting means the self-forgetting of our nation and the imprescriptible freedoms on which we base ourselves.

“What the Romanians claim for themselves is not revenge, but the future of freedom“

The proclamation from Alba-Iulia is the end of the road of a memoranda tradition: the granite clarity of its lines translates the luminous simplicity of the reflection that is based on the heritage of ideas and sacrifice of the centuries that precede it. There is nothing strident, nothing demagogic, nothing pathetic or false in her text. The phrases from 1918 are, in their deepest meaning, the testimony of faith of a nation.

Memorandumism educated the Romanians from Transylvania and Banat in this spirit of legalistic courage. The refusal of violent action, the appeal to constitutionalism and the rule of law, rooting in Central European values, here is the foundation on which the edifice from 1918 stands. What the Romanians claim for themselves is not revenge, but the future of freedom. They do not seek to humble, but try to build and unite. Democracy is the framework in which the collective dignity of those who are all citizens is registered.

“The future contained in the Alba Iulia Proclamation is one that has never really been fulfilled”

The Alba-Iulia proclamation is, above all, the expression of politics on a human scale. It becomes, in the following decades, the alternative to interwar statist autocracy, but also to totalitarian mysticism. It reaffirms, in contrast to dictatorial ecstasy, the necessity of constitutional institutions. It opposes blind collectivism to the solidity of the community.

The proclamation from Alba-Iulia embodies this policy that turns towards the human personality and the community, resisting the revolutionary temptation. Dignity is its foundation, and equality before the law its natural corollary. The individual does not get lost in the uninformed mass, and the state cannot be tyrannical and omnipotent. The national will cannot be falsified, and the transparency of government is sacred, guaranteed by constitutionalism. Work and property are the foundations of the order that the citizens of the nation create, organically and spontaneously.

The future contained in the Alba Iulia Proclamation is one that has never really been fulfilled. He was overwhelmed by the pathologies that haunted political Romania – fanaticism, statism, centralism, massification, ethnocracy, anti-Semitism. In order to truly exist, this future needs the courage of civility and the liberation of our nation from the spell of the new Ceausianism that seduces it, with its procession of chimeras. In order to be born, it is time for patriotism to be built again, unifying and visionary.

We should not talk about the year 1918 and about Alba Iulia in the past tense of the demagogic commemoration, but in the future tense which is in the pages of long ago. Politics on a human scale, imagined then, can guide us. Because the tenacity and modesty of those from that time illuminate decades from now, like a flame that cannot be extinguished, protected by hearts devoted to hope.

This article originally appeared in Contributors