By Rudy Barnes, Jr.
The
problem with America is not Donald Trump.
He is only evidence of the problem.
The real problem with America is that so many Americans support Trump. To avoid a disaster for our democracy, Americans
must reject the politics of suspicion, divisiveness, anger, vulgarity and moral
depravity that are exemplified by Trump and embrace a politics of reconciliation.
For
American democracy to continue to be a beacon of light for the rest of the world
it must reject Trump’s vulgar demagoguery and be reconciled to a communal
vision based on the greatest commandment
to love God and our neighbors as we love ourselves, with the understanding that
our neighbors include those of other races and religions.
On
November 8, Americans will go to the polls.
It will be the only poll that counts for the next four years. The prospect that Trump can gain the support
of a majority of Americans in November is terrifying to those who support a
progressive democracy that honors traditional values. Andrew Sullivan has described the Trump
phenomenon as “…precisely what the Founders feared about democratic culture:
feeling, emotion, and narcissism, rather than reason, empiricism, and public
spiritedness.” (see the URL for the Sullivan article in Notes below)
Sullivan
believes that elites can save democracy from the likes of Trump, but the health
of our democracy ultimately depends upon ordinary citizens rejecting
demagoguery with a broad-based standard of moral legitimacy sustained by
faith. That is where the greatest commandment comes in as a common word of faith for Jews,
Christians and Muslims alike. For
secular humanists, that moral imperative is expressed in Kant’s categorical imperative.
The
ugliness of human depravity and political divisiveness of the current political
season has underscored the need for political reconciliation based on a sound
moral foundation. Better education and
economic reform are continuing needs, but they are not the root cause of our problems
in America, or of the religious hate and violence that has prevented
libertarian democracy in Islamic cultures and that now threatens the rest of
the world. Only reconciliation based on the greatest commandment to love God and
our neighbors can save us from ourselves.
Plato,
Edmund Burke and other notables have warned us of the dangers of democracy. Plato recommended a philosopher king over
self-rule, and Burke warned Americans that in a democracy we forge our own
shackles. Perhaps Walt Kelly’s Pogo the
Possum said it best when he observed, We
have met the enemy and it is us. It
was an acknowledgment of the human depravity that threatens any democracy that gives
everyone the right to vote.
Despite
the reservations of Plato and Burke, democracy is still the best alternative
for governance when it is coupled with human rights and the secular rule of
law. But a healthy democracy requires that
its politics are based on sound moral principles, even if there are major differences
on how to apply those moral principles to political issues. Such differences require the freedoms of
religion and speech and a modicum of manners to sustain lively public dialogue
on religious and political issues.
One
of the biggest challenges for American democracy is to balance our individual
rights with the collective obligation to provide for the common good. Providing equal justice under law, the
national defense, domestic law enforcement and public welfare are all essential
to the common good and require coercive taxes to pay for them, and those taxes,
laws and government regulations are necessary constraints on individual
freedom.
America’s
democracy has depended on a strong middle class, and its strength has been based
on free enterprise. The middle class is
now in decline, the victim of the unrestrained greed of big business. Capitalism is a particularly challenging conundrum
for libertarian democracy since it is motivated by personal ambition,
selfishness and greed. Because big
business and banks exploit the public for profit, they require government
regulation; but regulations that discourage free enterprise hurt the common
good. Therein lies a daunting moral dilemma.
America the Beautiful is a great hymn of
faith that celebrates the goodness of American democracy and the need for
political reconciliation to …crown thy
good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea. Christians have a special responsibility to
resist the demagoguery of Donald Trump since evangelical Christians supported
him in the GOP primaries. To preserve
American democracy from dangerous divisiveness and demagoguery we need to
balance our individual rights with promoting the common good. That means making the greatest commandment the moral common ground on which we reconcile
the divisive nature of our politics.
Religion
is the primary source of our standards of legitimacy, which include moral and
legal standards. Religious rules cannot
be made law without violating human rights, which is evident in Islamic
cultures where apostasy and blasphemy laws violate the freedoms of religion and
speech. Americans have been reluctant to
even discuss mixing their religion and politics, but to prevent the corruption
of their democracy they must embrace the moral imperative of the greatest commandment as common
ground for political reconciliation. It allows
people of faith to relate their religion to their politics in a positive way
that respects their many differences.
Notes
and References to Previous Blogs on Related Topics:
Previous blogs on related topics
are: Religion and Reason, December 8,
2015; Faith and Freedom, December 15,
2014; The Greatest Commandment,
January 11, 2015; Love Over Law: A
Principle at the Heart of Legitimacy, January 18, 2015; Religion and Human Rights, February 22,
2015; Religion, Human Rights and National
Security, The Kingdom of God,
Politics and the Church, March 15, 2015; May 10, 2015; Faith as a Source of Morality and Law: The Heart of Legitimacy,
April 12, 2015; Liberation from Economic
Oppression, May 31, 2015; Freedom and
Fundamentalism, August 2, 2015; Balancing
Individual Rights with Collective Responsibilities, August 9, 2015; How Religious Fundamentalism and Secularism
Shape Politics and Human Rights, August 16, 2015; Politics and Religious Polarization, September 20, 2015; Who Is
My Neighbor?, January 23, 2016; The
Politics of Loving Our Neighbors as Ourselves, January 30, 2016; The American Religion and Politics in 2016,
March 5, 2016; and Religion, Race and the
Deterioration of Democracy in America, March 12, 2016; Religion, Democracy, and Human Depravity, March 19, 2016; Religion,
Democracy, Diversity and Demagoguery, March 26, 2016; and The
Relevance of Religion to Politics, April 30, 2016.
Andrew Sullivan describes the
Trump phenomenon as “…precisely what the Founders feared about democratic
culture: feeling, emotion, and narcissism, rather than reason, empiricism, and
public spiritedness.” See http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html#.
The categorical imperative of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant is a
deontological ethical theory developed as a result of Enlightenment rationalism. It is based on the view that the only
intrinsically good thing is a good will, and that an action can only be good if
the principle behind it is duty to the moral law. Kant’s moral law acts on all people,
regardless of their interests or desires. It requires that for an action to be
permissible, it must apply it to all people without a contradiction occurring. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantian_ethics.
Kathleen Parker has noted the
moral deficiencies of democracy articulated by Plato and exploited by Trump
at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/plato-would-have-predicted--and-been-horrified-by--trumps-rise/2016/04/26/3805cb80-0bec-11e6-a6b6-2e6de3695b0e_story.html.
On Why Christians are “Called to Resist” Donald Trump, see http://religionnews.com/2016/05/01/christian-resistance-donald-trump/.
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