educational leadership for continental union

---

“…Berlin’s failure to seize a new European initiative of 'real solidarity' and European financial redistribution would, [Habermas] warned, bring down the union. ‘We don’t have much time,’ warned the 87-year-old…”

The elusiveness of international solidarity in the EU has haunted Habermas' conceptual work, as well as haunting prospects for "political integration" (an EU Constitutional Order?). But the heart of the issue is peculiar to each nation: How to understand one's deeply historical ethnicity (linguistic nationality, regionality) as congruent with a euro-based continental region that “should” become a continental community.

What is “being European” apart from a market? A provincial citizen asks: Why be “European” other than supporting a euro-based market?

Continental community cannot be legislated. Scholars of Habermas’s work may tend to forget that his work has always been about the grassroots origin of society through its communicative flourishing.

But reason for high-scale community is only as good as one's sense of scale of one's own belonging. This is a local issue in every locality (then regional issue in every region). It could be that the future of the Union as continental community is a matter of creative educational leadership in all localities and at all social levels. Especially needed is a conception of political leadership (at all levels) that is educational.

This continues my interest in issues of solidarity and global condition of continentalism.