Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

I realised, the other day, that I am in danger of being mistaken for one of those old-fashioned, pot-smoking curmudgeons, cocooned in their self-image as rebels, who cough up their spleen on hearing a grandchild confuse a hippy with a beatnik. My act of irascibility, it seems, was to criticise – as Sunday’s independence anniversary approaches – the characterisation of the occasion as one of 50 years as a ‘nation’ instead of a nation-State.

For those who see it as an act of pedantry, my sin is to focus on words instead of real meaning. If everyone knows what is meant by ‘50 years a nation’, that we really mean statehood, why sacrifice the schmaltz? Don’t I realise that popular culture has moved on from the distant time of Bach and Borg Olivier and that, today, some State occasions properly call for a street organ not a church one?

Since, to confront my critics, I need first to establish myself as a man of the world, let me confess that I’m aware that there are instances – personal relationships between men and women, for example – where merely being understood is to be counted a blazing glory. Not quite being on Tabor, perhaps, but certainly Everest.

Civic life, however, calls for more than that. Political dialogue is about more than being understood. Some conceptual distinctions are worth making because they reach deeper than our conversations, let alone slogans. They affect the stability and progress of our institutions.

There’s a reason why being called a statesman is a higher accolade than being called a nationalist or a patriot.

A statesman has to think about, and act for, the nation not just as it is but as it might be. A statesman is someone who brings to attention the nation’s responsibilities, not just its rights: its responsibilities to other nations and future generations.

What we are celebrating on Sunday is 50 years of being able to produce statesmen; of being able, as a nation, to take on responsibilities among other nations. For many (though not all) of the Maltese leaders who dedicated their working lives to the achievement of independence, this aspect of the goal was never a matter of footnotes or even small print.

Independence was not about being self-sufficient. It was about, yes, taking responsibility for ourselves but that also meant taking our place in the international community and giving our contribution. In the years following independence, Borg Olivier did his utmost to underline this dimension, choosing his visits abroad with an eye to their symbolism.

His first visit abroad as prime minister was to the Council of Europe. His first trip outside Europe was to Libya – then under King Idris – with an eye on the regional symbolism not just the bilateral relations.

We all need to think like statesmen

Moreover, from the beginning, he asked his close advisers to think about a policy proposalto put to the United Nations. Eventually, it was Malta’s ambassador to the UN, Arvid Pardo, who formulated the proposal that led to a major overhaul of international law concerning ocean space and to the idea of a common heritage of humanity.

That idea was so big that, during the UN debate itself, someone cast doubt that it could have come from Malta itself. But in the years that followed, Borg Olivier’s government continued to come up with – less big but still not insignificant – proposals to do, for example, with Third World (as the global South was then called) economic development and changing world demographics. It was a Borg Olivier government that drew attention to the social implications of what was, almost 50 years ago, already apparent from demographic trends: that societies were ‘ageing’, some rather faster than others.

All this apart from the domestic State institutions that were being set up, or rethought, from 1964 onwards: from the armed forces to the Central Bank to the University and the various branches of social welfare.

It is these institutions that have shaped us and the trajectory of our lives. Affordable long-term education has changed the meaning of youth. Affordable healthcare has changed the meaning of being a parent and being elderly.

It is the capacity to decide on these institutions – in the first place, on whether to have them and, second, when to transform them – that we are celebrating on Sunday.

All of that is made possible by having a State. And, when it came to the next step of our development as a nation – the act of joining the European Union – it was not as a ‘nation’ that we joined but as a State.

But isn’t this still picking on words, rather than real issues? No: a quick look at how the threats to our liberty and affluence are commonly discussed in public, including by some politicians, shows how talking about ‘nation’ when we mean ‘State’ can easily mislead us about the nature of our problems and the possible solutions.

We can look at the situations in Libya and Syria and rightly conclude that it is possible to be a nation, convinced of being a nation, yet still experience the horror of a crumbling State. It cannot be taken for granted.

However, we should also look at the example of Hungary, which is currently led by politicians who believe that it is not in the nation’s interests to have a liberal democracy. These leaders are nationalists but put civil liberty and rights in second place to what they consider to be the good of the nation.

We may not be too far off from there. At least, not to go by how far otherwise perfectly civil and reasonable people are ready to go to protect ‘the nation’ against what they consider the imminent threats posed by immigration and Islam.

However, 50 years after independence, our self-image as a nation needs to catch up with the private, legitimate choices of our co-nationals: Maltese who have chosen to convert to Islam; Maltese who have married immigrants and Muslims; Maltese who have adopted children from Africa. All these are part of the nation, too.

Seeking to protect the nation from ‘such people’ is essentially to repress the nation as it is. The reason such contradictory thinking is possible at all is because the nation is thought of in separation from the State.

Of course, we should never take our liberties for granted: those of us over 40 know that quite well because we saw how easily they can be eroded in our own lifetime. But we secure those liberties by focusing on the real nuts and bolts that secure them.

If you are afraid of losing your grip on political decisions that affect you, then begin by defending your right to vote and participate in local politics. It is the institutionalised dispersal of power that guarantees against power-grabbing by others.

If you are afraid that this fair but pockmarked land will be changed beyond recognition by ferocious architectural acne, think less about mosques and minarets and a bit more about the deregulation of the environment. If public goods are privatised in all but name, what does that do to your civic shareholding and public spaces?

It’s only by thinking of ourselves as a nation-State that we can focus on the real conditions of our liberty. We all need to think like statesmen.

ranierfsadni@europe.com