7

Much can be said, of course, against our democracy and indeed all democracies; Winston Churchill said, for instance: “Democracy is the worst of political systems except for all the others,” Benj. Franklin was equally cautious: “Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have,” and we all have our specific irritations and concerns. Nevertheless, flawed though it may be this way or that, our democracy sets forth beliefs and values that make for a better world. Yet, we do make assumptions, for those cherished beliefs and values are not inherent in the system of democracy as such. They come from outside. They are beliefs and values gathered from the vast, blurry metaphysical history of humankind from which we have drawn abiding truths about human nature, virtue and vice, right and wrong, love, and happiness. We value these truths, but they are not innate or intrinsic in that political system called democracy. The only inherent value in democracy as such is arithmetic: 51 is good; 49 is bad. 51 is do; 49 is don’t. Everything else is borrowed.

Consider our foundation premise that all men are equal. Now nothing is more obvious than that all men are not equal. To hold that they are is nonsense, but to claim that all men are “created” equal is a different matter, for to say ‘create’ or ‘made’ is to bring in, as Jefferson and the founders of our country, did, a “creator” or ‘maker’, something from the outside, and that is what they did. They reached past arithmetic to theology, to the belief that, as created beings of the same parent, we are indeed equal in status and importance. We are equal in that we are all, as is sometimes colloquially put, “children of God”. But that equality is from metaphysics, not politics. The worrisome thing, of course, is what will happen if and when we finally phase out “created”, abandon our parent, and become orphans aimlessly wandering in a darkening haze of myths, legends, human nature, and whatever the will of the majority happens to be.