Archive for February 16th, 2008
Bigotry and Democracy
Certain social ills like religious and racial bigotry, poverty, etc. will continue to plague the human race as long as men are free to make their own decisions. The question for a free society is therefore not how to eliminate bigotry but how to challenge it in a way that preserves our freedom. Every generation faces bigotry and must respond for better or for worse. Americans have been steadily working on problems of prejudice for centuries.
The Islamofacist bigotry that led zealots to hijack and crash airliners into buildings is clearly something Americans must not tolerate. President Bush’s response has been to replace terrorist-sponsoring governments in Afghanistan and Iraq with democracies, hoping that the new governments will become models for other troubled Islamic nations. The hope is that if Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, and other peoples with diverse and conflicting religious views (as well as a violent past) can learn to live together peacefully in a democracy, then other nations will follow suit. It’s a wild gamble –a gamble perhaps worth taking — but a gamble nonetheless.
Democracies by their very nature cannot be stronger than the character of their people. The Weimar Republic failed in Germany after World War I and led straight to the Third Reich. We still don’t know where the democracy in Russia will lead. History suggests it takes more than one generation for people to learn to value the ideal of democratic fairness more than their own uptopian dreams. Americans got off to a great start in 1789 with the Constitution, but by then they had been working steadily at principles of self-government for a hundred and fifty years. I don’t know how long it will take for the people of the Middle East to learn to live peacefully together, but it may take a long, long time. Look how long it took for white man and red man to learn to get along! On the other hand, post World-War II Germany and Japan seem to be flourishing as peaceful democracies.
The foundation of democracy is the conviction of the citizenry that it is better to be fair than to be right. This is basically the Golden Rule set in a political context. Citizens must love their neighbors’ rights as much as they love their own. In a nation of political equals, the rights of all are indistinguishable.
Religious bigotry is something we will always have with us, even in America. We have yet to see, for example, a Jewish President of the United States. It may be many years before we have a Mormon President or an Islamic President. We must expect a certain level of religious bigotry in any free country.
But when bigotry in America raises its ugly head, we have a right and a duty to challenge it. But not with bullets or bombs. I think John F. Kennedy gave us the pattern for combat in his 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. Challenging anti-Catholicism, then Senator Kennedy stated,
“If I should lose on the real issues, I shall return to my seat in the Senate, satisfied that I had tried my best and was fairly judged. But if this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their chance of being President on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser, in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics around the world, in the eyes of history, and in the eyes of our own people.”
Substitute the word “Mormon” for “Catholic” and “5 million” for “40 million” and you have a powerful weapon for combating Mormon haters. What made Kennedy’s speech so powerful was not just its eloquence but it’s irrefutable logic.
If it’s true that after two centuries of democracy, America is not ready for a Mormon in the White House, what message does this send to the Middle East? We have work to do.
