In defense of Cardinal Kasper and liberal democracy
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:date: 2015-06-18T07:39:00
:category: faith
:tags: politics, blogcomment
(comment on the blogpost_ on The First Things)
.. _blogpost:
http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/06/now-the-kasper-theory-of-democracy
I think problem of yours (and the author of the article, how much I look
up to him otherwise) is that you don't distinguish between the role of
the state and morality. I don’t believe, that purpose of the state and
law is to uphold morality. If we follow this path we can get somewhere
near the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of
Vice (or the Christian variant thereof, and we had plenty of them in our
past).
According to the New Testament it seems to me that the role of the state
is “that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in
every way” (1Ti 2:2). Not that they would make us to live godly life,
but provide peace and protection so that we MAY live such life.
The ways how to organize government so that it would serve this purpose
are many, some of them work better, some of them work worse, but
currently the prevalent opinion at least in the West is that the plural
democratic style of the government serves this purpose best. In
democracy we agreed that what majority decides will be law (with some
caveats like protection of minority against tyranny of majority,
protection of the elementary human rights, etc.). It has two advantages:
first, the democracy is based on the idea that by that process we get
generally good laws (or at least not much worse than what the other
systems, like aristocracy or tyranny). The second idea (and here we get
back to the assumed purpose of the government) is that by this process
we promote general peace and consensus, because the majority of
population is satisfied with results and the rest at least has tendency
to believe that laws were created in the just way, even though they
don't agree with the results.
Notice, that this has absolutely nothing to do with the absolute moral
values. Of course, each citizen involves their own moral values when
voting or doing other acts proper for the process of democracy, but
nobody even pretends that the resulting laws and governing are in total
expression of the moral values of any particular group. Expectation of
the laws expressing absolute moral values therefore lead just to
frustration.
Of course, this system could lead to hugely immoral results, or what is
even worse could lead to its own demise. Everybody knows that Nazis were
elected in more or less free elections in 1933, and in the same manner
in my own country, then Czechoslovakia, Communists were voted to power
in 1946 (and in 1948, their coup d'état was a way how to avoid loosing
that power in the upcoming elections). Yes, the system is not perfect
but (to follow the Churchill’s maxim) it is just better than any other
systems of government we know about and more persistently than others
leads to the peaceful and secure environment 1Ti 2:2 talks about.
In short I believe that Cardinal Kasper’s opinion in based on this
understanding of the liberal democracy and the author is one of the many
people frustrated by his expectations that government should promote
virtues and decimate vices, as he understand them.
