Thus The Guardian today. “Intellectual figurehead of European integration says efforts of previous generations put at risk by Angela Merkel’s hardline stance on Greece,” explains the newspaper. Jürgen Habermas attracted my attention to the article, but I was immediately taken aback by his epithet. Although he was dear to me in my youth, I never saw him as an intellectual figurehead of anything like European integration. The article itself is a disappointment, as well. Most important, Habermas appears not to understand Merkel’s motivation in this instance. Namely, she was doing her best to stand for the German people, most of whom perceive Greeks as loafers and wastrels. In fact, she would have been in trouble with her electorate had she behaved in any other way. All this seems to be foreign to Habermas, and I wonder why. Is he not aware of deep “cultural” differences between the Germans and Greeks? And is he not aware that such differences cannot be swept under the rug by any politicians, no matter how powerful they may appear at first sight? An intellectual figurehead of European integration, whatever the term may actually mean, ought to be more sensitive to so-called cultural barriers along the way.