麻豆社

Good morning. In 1831 the French diplomat and author Alexis de Tocqueville paid a 9 month visit to America to observe the workings of democracy and wrote 4 books about it. He would I think be very pleased that Americans are taking the current election so seriously, with voting figures likely to be higher than they have been for the last 50 years, and some people being prepared to wait 10 hours in a queue in order to cast their vote. He would not be so pleased with some of the tone and language of the election, for he wrote that since the rights of all would be guaranteed in a democracy it would be characterised by 鈥渕utual courtesy, removed alike from arrogance and servility鈥�. A good watchword for our own political exchanges whether in parliament or on social media.

De Tocqueville thought that the world was moving inexorably to democracy. However, looking globally, outside the USA, there are some trends which might make one want to question this. But why we should believe in democracy anyway? The clearest answer I know is that of the theologian and political thinker Reinhold Niebuhr who wrote: 鈥淭he human capacity for justice makes democracy possible. The human inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.鈥� In short all of us have some capacity to think of more than our own interests and to take into account the wider, common good. But we also have a tendency to pursue our own interests at the expense of other people, not least when we have power, so that power has to be checked. The 16th century reformer Martin Luther thought human beings were little better than wild beasts, and needed to be caged in order to stop us tearing one another apart. What he was strangely blind to is the fact that the most ferocious beast of all can be the state itself, and it is the state that needs to be caged, that is, prevented from hurting its citizens.

You do not need to be a Christian to know that we need checks and balances on power, even when it is well intentioned, in the form of regular elections, an independent judiciary and a parliament which can vote against the government of the day. However, from a Christian point of view this is rooted in our understanding of what it is both to be make in the image of God and also to have defaced that image. Because we are made in the image of God we are capable of thinking of others and their interests. Because we have marred that image and are out of sync with, out of harmony with the good purpose of our creator, this has to be taken into account in our political arrangements. The very fact of this US election is important as expressing both our human altruism and the checks we have put in place on human power.