Dear readers, we wish you a pleasant celebration of the National Day. Dnevnik.si is online even when you celebrate. Photo: Jaka Gasar
National Day: Long live the unity of the living and the dead!
Many people have no banner under which they can take refuge. They can listen to their fathers and mothers, grandmothers and grandfathers, great-grandfathers… but they have no direct experience with revolution. Not with the one from 1991, even less with the one from 1945, and the years 1918, 1848, 1573… are just fables and legends. None of those who today brag about their merits and medals – exactly the same as in previous times – think that more than a third of the Slovenian population in 2026 will be 35 years old or younger.
24 June 2026, 21.10
These are people, mostly our children or grandchildren, who have no personal experience with the creation of a new state community, and 35 years after the end of the war of independence, this boastful monument building is just as foreign to them as it was to us, their parents, thirty-five years later. TV cameras, microphones, social media posts and arguments are only needed by die-hard memorialists at this time. We and our children want a promising future. And the unity that the ancients do not provide by counting and classifying historical banners is quite the opposite. Well, the years are here and that’s why their hearing is getting worse.
Is this oldism? No way. In this regard, age is not biological, but when we ask about the ability to understand reality, it is a purely intellectual function. We, who consider ourselves more left-wing, and those who consider themselves more right-wing, raised our children in the same way: in respect for freedom and in love for Slovenia, our common country. It means that we all share common, unifying values. Politicians who classify the plebiscite votes from the beginning of the 90s today need to be appeased: for an independent Slovenia today, the majority of us are all still alive, and probably according to the logic of the plebiscite results, 88 percent of all people are already dead (if they haven’t changed their minds in the meantime). So the majority of the living and the dead are still in favour, which is a very encouraging result.
We vote for because we are aware that Slovenia is a successful country, but because we are Slovenians, we say this to ourselves. It is like this because of all of us who believe in it, not at all because of the merits of any particular ruling group. We live well and safely in Slovenia, we could be economically more successful and administratively more efficient – if anything, this is the only remnant of our planning and administrative past. If the women born decades ago had offered us today’s economic, social and even unfriendly political parameters, we would certainly have accepted them and the war for independence would not have been necessary. We are not Switzerland and we never will be, but we are a national community that we do not need to be ashamed of. We did some things wrong, but we did more right. We also share the problems that unite us. Our children are going abroad, full health care is increasingly difficult to access for both SDS and Left voters, the same public services are available to elderly red and black people, wild nature exposes the roofs to all of us equally mercilessly and we all cover them in solidarity. And last but not least – our gazelles are still neglected agents of social development.
All of this is us, the citizens of our republic. National Day is our holiday and we should not care under which banner we are classified. All victorious Slovenian flags are our inspiration. Celebrate inspiration!
Editorial board of Dnevnik
