The tacit goal of this project is to convert all of us into 25 year-olds living in the government’s basement, focusing our energies on obtaining a larger allowance rather than getting a job and moving out.Political philosophers since Aristotle have worried that democracies are vulnerable to just this form of corruption.
Radio Show Presents "Radio Week" October 5-9, 2020. I know that those here, and millions of the faithful across America and around the world, appreciate it too.Good afternoon, everyone. Of course it can. The mission is not to make new men or transform the world through the coercive power of the state.
The virtue of any individual is defined by whether they are aligned with the program. It puts its faith in the accumulated wisdom of the ages over the revolutionary innovations of those who aspire to be, what Edmund Burke called, “the physician of the state.” Liberal democracy recognizes that preserving broad personal freedom, including the freedom to pursue one’s own spiritual life and destiny, best comports with the true nature and dignity of man.
Each individual is a unique creation of God with a transcendent end and eternal life in the City of God. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”Tocqueville was especially emphatic on this score.
On the contrary, the central idea is that the right way to transform the world is for each of us to focus on morally transforming ourselves.Thus, unlike those who see the line between good and evil as running between them and their opponents, the Christian outlook is expressed by Solzhenitsyn’s observation that “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”Religion also tempers the acrimony of our politics by making clear that what happens here on earth is only transient – not eternal.
And it especially means giving our respect to religion as a vital pillar of our society. The federal system allows for this diversity.
To the contrary, it is the apparatus of coercive power. We live at a time when religion – long an essential pillar of our society – is being driven from the public square. One size fits all.The Framers would have seen a one-size-fits-all government for hundreds of millions of diverse citizens as being utterly unworkable and a straight road to tyranny. It tends to trust, not in revolutionary designs, but in common virtues, customs, and institutions that were refined over long periods of time.
We providentially enjoy its blessings today.The wellsprings of this system are found in Augustinian Christianity. It is, therefore, essential that you continue your work and continue to supply the people with diverse, divergent perspectives on the news of the day. This means fostering a culture that is truly pluralistic. If people do not like the rule in a state, they can vote with their feet and move. We are created to love our Creator in this world and become united with him in eternity.
That is where you come in.
They want able-bodied citizens to become more dependent, subject to greater control, and increasingly supportive of dependency. While the wizards in Washington might think they know best, the reality is that there is no unified “best” for every community and every person in our vast country.
And because the rules that result from these struggles are then imposed from outside by a remote central government, they further undercut a sense of community and give rise to alienation.In short, we have lost the idea of diversity in this country – real diversity, where communities can coexist and adopt different approaches to things. An Update on the 2020 Radio Show and SMTE. The next essential check on despotism I would like to discuss is decentralization of government power.Both Tocqueville and James Madison believed that the first step toward tyranny in a democracy was the formation of a consolidated and galvanized national majority, sufficiently roused by a common idea to ride roughshod over an opposing minority. That, too, erodes an important check on despotism.In addition to religion and the decentralization of government power, the free press was an institution that Tocqueville believed would serve as a check on the despotic tendency of democracy.
And in this secular age, it is especially vital that your religious perspective is voiced.So where does that leave us?
In my view, liberal democracy has reached its fullest expression in the Anglo-American political system. Some of this has been caused by the misinterpretation of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of our Constitution by our courts. Probably the greatest chronicler of American democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville, foresaw that American democracy would be susceptible to this evolution. It also enables people who do not like a certain system to move to a different one. In order to keep watching your TV channels, you will need to take action. The state is not the same as the voluntary associations that make up civil society. How does religion protect against majoritarian tyranny?