Values-Based Democracy

As a supplement to my recent post on Religious Morality vs. Secularism, I refer you to two pieces of commentary which contain a number of intersections of thought on this topic, and which enlarge upon the discussion of a values-based democracy, in contrast to secular democracy. In his post entitled, The Communism of the 21st Century, Wretchard of the Belmont Club considers the implications of an essay by Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, Australia, titled, Why We Need a Better Version of Democracy, which is reprinted here:

Why we need a better version of democracy

November 12, 2004

The emptiness within secular democracy can be filled with darkness by political substitutes for religion.

Does democracy really need a burgeoning porn industry and a high abortion rate, asks George Pell.

Democracy is never unqualified. We are used to speaking of "liberal democracy" which as currently understood is a synonym for "secular democracy". In Europe there are parties advocating "Christian Democracy". Lately there has been interest in the possibility of "Islamic democracy". These descriptors do not simply refer to how democracy might be constituted, but to the moral vision democracy is intended to serve.

This is especially true in the case of secular democracy, which some insist is intended to serve no moral vision at all. But as Pope John Paul argues: "The value of democracy stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes." Democracy is not a good in itself. Its value is instrumental and depends on the vision it serves.

An attempt is sometimes made to evade this point by drawing a distinction between procedural and normative democracy. Procedural democracy's claims are minimalist: democracy should be regarded as nothing more than a mechanism for regulating different interests on a purely empirical basis.

To speak of normative democracy, however, especially if one is a Catholic bishop, is to provoke panic in some quarters and derision in others. Many things underlie this response, not least certain ideological convictions about secularism. But most important of all is a failure of imagination. Democracy can only be what it is now: a constant series of "breakthroughs" against social taboo in pursuit of the individual's absolute autonomy.

But think for a moment what it means to say that there can be no other form of democracy than secular democracy. Does democracy need a burgeoning billion-dollar pornography industry to be truly democratic? Does it need an abortion rate in the tens of millions? Does it need high levels of marriage breakdown, with the growing rates of family dysfunction that come with them? Does democracy (as in Holland's case) need legalised euthanasia, extending to children under the age of 12? Does democracy need assisted reproductive technology (such as IVF) and embryonic stem cell research?

Does democracy really need these things? What would democracy look like if you took some of these things out of the picture? Would it cease to be democracy? Or would it actually become more democratic?

These are the things by which secular democracy defines itself and stakes its ground against other possibilities. They are not merely epiphenomena of freedom of speech, movement and opportunity. The alarm with which many treat people in public life who are opposed to these things often implies that they are a danger to democracy. This overreaction is, of course, a bluff, an attempt to silence opposition, almost suggesting that these practices are essential to democracy.

If we think about the answers to the questions above we begin to have an inkling about what a form of democracy other than secular democracy might look like, an alternative I call "democratic personalism". It means nothing more than democracy founded on the transcendent dignity of the human person.

Transcendence directs us to our dependence on others and our dependence on God. And dependence is how we know the reality of transcendence. There is nothing undemocratic about bringing this truth into our reflections about our political arrangements. Placing democracy on this basis does not mean theocracy. To refound democracy on our need for others, and our need to make a gift of ourselves to them, is to bring a whole new form of democracy into being. Democratic personalism is perhaps the last alternative to secular democracy still possible within Western culture as it is presently configured.

From outside Western culture, of course, come other possibilities. It is still very early in the piece, of course, but the small but growing conversion of native Westerners within Western societies to Islam carries the suggestion that Islam may provide in the 21st century the attraction that communism provided in the 20th, both for those who are alienated or embittered on the one hand, and for those who seek order or justice on the other.

So alternatives are required. The recrudescence of intolerant religion is not a problem that secular democracy can resolve, but rather a problem that it tends to engender. The past century provided examples enough of how the emptiness within secular democracy can be filled with darkness by political substitutes for religion.
Democratic personalism provides another, better possibility; one that does not require democracy to cancel itself out. Democratic personalism does not mean seizing power to pursue a project of world transformation, but broadening the imagination of democratic culture so that it can rediscover hope, and re-establish freedom in truth and the common good.

It is a work of persuasion and evangelisation, more than political activism. Its priority is culture rather than politics, and the transformation of politics through revivifying culture. It is also about salvation – not least of all the salvation of democracy itself.

Cardinal George Pell is the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney and the former archbishop of Melbourne. This is an edited extract from his address to the annual dinner of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.

Some on the left will scream that the right is already trying to transform our democracy into a theocracy. Level heads will understand that no such proposition is being entertained – that the proposition is essentially to leave our democracy untouched in its present form, as created, on the foundation of Judeo/Christian notions of morality. The proponents of transformation, those who would in fact change our democracy, are the “value-emptying” secularist left.

As I am not able to link directly to Wretchard’s piece on the topic, I will reprint it here: (However, you may wish to locate the post at his site, as his original post has hundreds of comments.)

Friday, November 12, 2004

The Communism of the 21st Century

Cardinal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney asks a question which is neither completely secular nor religious, one which Thomas Jefferson might have revolved in his mind but which no modern politician would dare discuss. Pell rhetorically asks whether democracy must of necessity be spiritually empty. Not whether it can occasionally be, but whether it must be. In an article published in the Australian, he says:

Lately there has been interest in the possibility of "Islamic democracy". These descriptors do not simply refer to how democracy might be constituted, but to the moral vision democracy is intended to serve. This is especially true in the case of secular democracy, which some insist is intended to serve no moral vision at all. ... But think for a moment what it means to say that there can be no other form of democracy than secular democracy. Does democracy need a burgeoning billion-dollar pornography industry to be truly democratic? Does it need an abortion rate in the tens of millions? Does it need high levels of marriage breakdown, with the growing rates of family dysfunction that come with them? Does democracy (as in Holland's case) need legalised euthanasia, extending to children under the age of 12? Does democracy need assisted reproductive technology (such as IVF) and embryonic stem cell research? Does democracy really need these things? What would democracy look like if you took some of these things out of the picture? Would it cease to be democracy? Or would it actually become more democratic?

The alarm with which many treat people in public life who are opposed to these things often implies that they are a danger to democracy. This overreaction is, of course, a bluff, an attempt to silence opposition, almost suggesting that these practices are essential to democracy. ... From outside Western culture, of course, come other possibilities. It is still very early in the piece, of course, but the small but growing conversion of native Westerners within Western societies to Islam carries the suggestion that Islam may provide in the 21st century the attraction that communism provided in the 20th, both for those who are alienated or embittered on the one hand, and for those who seek order or justice on the other.

I am not sure that the Cardinal's proposed "democratic personalism" is a viable alternative, but he asks a logical question which cannot be evaded. When the Founding Fathers created the framework for procedural democracy it was unnecessary to spell out its ends because those were largely provided by the moral, ethical and religious consensus of the underlying society. When that underlying civilizational consensus has been destroyed or diluted, as is the case in Western Europe and to a lesser extent the United States, what intrinsic ends does a value-neutral democratic mechanism serve? The answer possibly, is whatever it can be put to, like a Turing Machine which adopts whichever persona the loaded instruction set demands. Then Dutch democracy becomes the Muslim right to chuck a hand grenade out the door at policemen come to arrest them for plotting to blow up a public landmark. Democracy becomes a vehicle waiting to be hijacked; a metaphor for the old saw that someone who believes in nothing will believe in anything.

But of course the process of secularization -- or 'value emptying' as Pell might put it -- has not been entirely uniform. In actuality, while whole chunks of the West have thrown out their traditional value systems, other chunks have been busy roseletyzing theirs. As Episcopalian churches have emptied the fundamentalist Islamic mosques have filled. That uneven development, if left unchecked, may eventually mean that the magnificent mechanism of secular democracy, which serves no value of itself, will be arbitrarily assigned a goal by the majority most willing to hijack it. Pell's observation that "the small but growing conversion of native Westerners within Western societies to Islam carries the suggestion that Islam may provide in the 21st century the attraction that communism provided in the 20th ..." will mark him in liberal Australian circles as a bigot. It should mark him as a wit, for he has managed to slander those they would least offend by comparing them to those they most admire.

Jean Paul-Sartre seized upon Dostoevsky's dictum that "if God did not exist, everything would be permitted" to justify existentialism. He forgot that Dostoevsky added that if God did not exist, we would be compelled to invent him. For if, as Sartre argued "in the present one is forsaken" why should the future when it arrives be less forlorn than today? For good or ill, man can as much live under a heaven swept of stars as endure a sky without stars to dream of. If Agustine of Hippo was right, that "our soul is restless until it rests in Thee" then when all the lights of the Tabernacle are extinguished the Kaaba will beckon in the desert.