When people, on either side of the political aisle, begin demanding that everyone agree to a particular value or virtue system, or claim that rules of law are really establishing religion, I throw up my hands in despair that so few really understand what our democracy is or how it works.
Contrary to what many
would have you believe, America is a secular country. Although built on Judeo-Christian values, a
cornerstone of our democracy is that this country would not establish or
mandate religious beliefs and would allow its citizens to follow whatever faith
they chose, including no faith at all.
Our Constitution
envisions our government of/for/by the people as being based on common values
that may or may not belong to a religion; the key is that the rules that the
people through their representatives enact are secular and apply to all
regardless of individual beliefs. It is the people who create the rights and the
rules.
Thus, when SCOTUS (a
panel of 9 unelected individuals) usurped the people’s power and declared a
right that previously had not existed, they were wrong. It was the people’s right to grant or not
grant an abortion right and to determine any limitations on such right. Regardless of the Justices’ personal beliefs
(many are indeed Catholic), in Dobbs they correctly put the people in
their rightful Constitutional position to determine what, if any, right to
abortion should exist.
Our Constitution also requires
the people’s understanding that a pluralism of beliefs means that no one will
get all that they would like and that everyone must be tolerant of the beliefs
of others.
Religious virtues often
underly a secular government
A free society’s laws and
government reflect the beliefs, values, and mores of that particular
society. As a society evolves, as its
values modify or change, so will its governing rules. Those rules will, however, continue to
reflect the voice of all of the people.
It is in authoritarian
governments that there is less likely a distinction between a mandated belief structure
and mandates for societal behaviors.
That is because in such societies the people are not free to think and
believe as they wish; rather, the governing body will mandate thought, belief,
and behavior. (As an aside, it is really impossible to force someone to hold a
particular belief; a government can mandate behavior that would reflect that
belief, but there is no guarantee that a person who follows those mandates
actually holds the desired belief.)
Most religions,
regardless of their specific beliefs, emphasize something greater than
oneself. Religions, through their core
documents (Bible, Koran, etc.), establish rules and sets of values. The reasons for an individual to subscribe to
the virtues of their religion include promised rewards for such virtuous
behavior that are not immediate and perhaps not even during this life.
Concepts such as “do onto others as you would have them do onto you” and “treat your neighbor as yourself” appear in some form in most religions. These concepts encourage one to think beyond oneself. Such thinking is essential for a society to survive.
It is these sorts of
religious values that become reflected in the government and the society that
any group of people create, whether it be a family, a recreational club, or a
country. Unless a society is established
as a theocracy that will use the religious rules for the governing rules of the
community and require all to be of the same faith, there will essentially be
two sets of rules: the religious rules
that will guide the faithful, and the secular rules, generally reflecting those
religious virtues, that will guide the secular society.
America’s secular
government has Judeo-Christian underpinnings
This country was founded
based on Judeo-Christian rules because that was the foundation of the culture
of its people. Those values are key
underpinnings in the Constitution and the other secular rules of our
society. But this country is not a
theocracy. It is secular.
Judeo-Christian beliefs,
like most religions, place emphasis on something greater than oneself. As long as most of the American people held similar
values the rules of our society worked.
Some held those values because of their religious faith, some simply
held those values as their guidelines for living. But if one does not believe, for whatever
reason, in those common values, then rules based on the values will become
meaningless.
We really have two
guiding sets of rules that are in many ways intertwined, but in the end are
separate because of the brilliance of our Founders. The problem is that the secular rules are
based upon the culture and society of those who create them. One needs to understand these values and
generally subscribe to them to understand our secular system and to subscribe
to it. And therein lies the problem.
Houston, we have a
problem
Today we are facing a
situation in which the underlying beliefs and values of the American people are
not in accord, are not even similar, and while the core beliefs of some remain
reflected in our governmental structure and laws, for others that structure and
those laws are completely foreign to or at odds with their belief and value systems.
Today, fewer and fewer
people hold faith in the Judeo-Christian God, or in any Greater Being for that
matter. Therefore, they are also far
less likely to subscribe to the rules and mores of a secular society that is based
on those beliefs.
Today much of our culture
is focused not on something greater but instead revolves around the Self and
its need for immediate gratification.
How we got to that point requires volumes to understand with lots of
blame to go around, but we are indeed there.
As such, our secular rules and institutions that are based on a bigger
picture and concern for the greater good are in large part meaningless to
many.
Many of the Left and the
Woke, in satisfying their own immediate desires, ignore rules that interfere
with those desires. They see the values
underlying those rules as antiquated and not relevant to themselves. And, because they think everyone should
accept what they do and the values and beliefs underlying their actions, they
impose their needs on everyone else, demanding that anyone with conflicting
beliefs give them up or be silenced. Many
of the conservative and religious Right also demand that everyone accept and
believe as they do.
The lack of tolerance in
our nation today is astounding and potentially fatal. People on all sides
misunderstand their place in society as well as the core rules of our democracy
and perhaps most importantly the tolerance that it demands.
This is not really a
political problem, though it plays out in our politics. This is really a problem of the soul. But politicians and those interested in their
own power use this value vacuum to their own advantage. And in so doing they display their ignorance
of and disdain for our democracy.
Do we have a core
shared value?
Before we can fix our
problems we must understand that any culture, any society, must be based upon
shared beliefs. Right now we have two
competing belief systems that are not compatible. Unless we (re)discover a core principle that
we all share, we are probably done as the great nation we once were.
Can we exist with
very different underlying life concepts and values? The Constitution
would direct us to say yes. It allows
for diverse views, for the beliefs of all to be heard and prohibits the federal
government from suppressing those diverse beliefs and views. But to do this requires a tolerance, a
willingness to accept that others may not be like us, may not think like us,
and never will. While each of us may
want to live our life one way, we must accept that some may disapprove of that and
choose to live their lives in other ways.
We must be able to
tolerate and accept the true principle of diversity in a pluralistic
society. We must accept, indeed applaud,
that not everyone will agree, that we will not always win our arguments, and
that we cannot force our values upon others.
But what about when
those values are in direct conflict? Again,
our Constitution guides us. It gives to the
people, through their representatives, the decisions of what laws we need to
govern all of us in our interactions and behaviors; we decide what rules we
need to keep the peace while being tolerant of those who would behave and
believe differently than us. We decide
how we can maintain order without mandating beliefs. We have done that for nearly 250 years and we
should not give up without trying to continue.
But people need to
understand that even if their personal belief is that Self is God, they must
co-exist with others and that in an orderly and peaceful society they will not
always be able to have instant (and sometimes never will have) gratification of
all their needs and desires.
Back to the
Constitution
If we consider the values
of our Constitution, we will find that it can indeed sustain us and save
America in the process. But we need to
understand what it is and what it is not.
The Constitution grants
us our freedom to be ourselves, the individuals whom we are meant to be, but
only if we agree to have tolerance (not necessarily acceptance) for the
different, contradictory, and opposing views of others. Just as the federal government cannot create our
rights and freedoms nor take them away, we must agree that we will not impose
our views on others – explain them, yes; advocate for them, yes, but impose
them as mandatory, no.
We must agree not to
relinquish our power to politicians, or others, who would use it to control
us. We must remember that our power lies
in the voice of all the people, not in a political party, the press, or other
powerful entities and not in only one viewpoint. We must accept our power and the
responsibilities that come with it.
Once we agree that we are
different people with different beliefs, values, and backgrounds we can begin
to work on common goals that benefit all of us.
But this requires an amount of selflessness that is not natural for many
of us today. We must agree that we will
have concern for the greater good.
If our shared belief is
in our Constitution and our people, then we will be fine. But if we choose the selfish path that we are
on, even our Constitution cannot save us, for selfishness cares nothing for
anyone but one’s self.
The Founders gave us a
great gift, let us not destroy it but instead continue to use it to make our “more
perfect union” more perfect every day.
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