# The Crossroads of Religion & PoliticsPart I - Bishop Robert Barron Sermons

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 28 Aug 2026, 46 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73038759/the_crossroads_of_religion_politicspart_i.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Word on Fire show. I'm your host,
[0:03] Speaker 1: Matthew Patrusi. Today we are excited to bring you the
[0:06] Speaker 1: first part of a discussion that Bishop Baron recently had
[0:09] Speaker 1: with doctor Todd Warner on the way a Catholic should
[0:12] Speaker 1: approach the crossroads of religion and politics. Enjoy.
[0:28] Speaker 2: On November nineteenth, eighteen sixty three, as the towering yet
[0:32] Speaker 2: stooped Abraham Lincoln peered across the killing fields of Gettysburg,
[0:36] Speaker 2: he declared, quote, it is for us to be here
[0:40] Speaker 2: dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from
[0:43] Speaker 2: these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause
[0:46] Speaker 2: for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.
[0:49] Speaker 2: That we here highly resolve that these deads shall not
[0:52] Speaker 2: have died in vain, that this nation under God shall
[0:56] Speaker 2: have a new birth of freedom, and that government of
[0:58] Speaker 2: the people, by the people, for the people shall not
[1:02] Speaker 2: perish from the earth.
[1:03] Speaker 3: Close quote.
[1:05] Speaker 2: Lincoln's challenge was to save democracy.
[1:09] Speaker 3: As we see it today? Was it worth it?
[1:12] Speaker 2: Bishop Robert Baron, in this most political of years, on democracy,
[1:16] Speaker 2: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Now what is democracy?
[1:22] Speaker 2: We hold these truths to be self evident that all
[1:25] Speaker 2: men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
[1:28] Speaker 2: creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty,
[1:32] Speaker 2: and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights,
[1:35] Speaker 2: governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from
[1:39] Speaker 2: the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of
[1:42] Speaker 2: government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right
[1:44] Speaker 2: of the people to alter or to abolish it. And
[1:47] Speaker 2: the institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles,
[1:51] Speaker 2: and organizing its powers in such form as to them,
[1:54] Speaker 2: shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness. Now,
[1:58] Speaker 2: Bishop Baron, these, of course, are the world words written
[2:00] Speaker 2: by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, which was
[2:03] Speaker 2: adopted by the Continental Congress July fourth, seventeen seventy six.
[2:07] Speaker 2: So there's a lot to unpack in these three very
[2:09] Speaker 2: weighty sentences, and I want to say just a few
[2:12] Speaker 2: self evident truths. All men created equal, endowed by a creator,
[2:17] Speaker 2: inalienable rights, government by the consent of the government. So
[2:22] Speaker 2: let's begin with just a general question. What is democracy
[2:26] Speaker 2: and why does it, albeit imperfectly work?
[2:31] Speaker 3: Yeah, two good questions, searching questions, and in a way
[2:34] Speaker 3: hard to answer. I mean, you could say, very simply
[2:36] Speaker 3: democracy rule by the demos, by the people. So pose
[2:40] Speaker 3: go back to classical thought. You know, aristocracy rule by
[2:43] Speaker 3: the best, or a monarchy rule by one a democracy
[2:46] Speaker 3: rule by the military forces, oligarchy rule by the wealthy,
[2:52] Speaker 3: democracy ruled by the people by the demos. And that's
[2:56] Speaker 3: one feature of it, obviously, and you hear it reflected
[2:58] Speaker 3: there in Jefferson. You know, the government derives its powers
[3:01] Speaker 3: from the consent of the government, power coming up from below,
[3:05] Speaker 3: so to speak, not from on high, let's say, divine
[3:08] Speaker 3: right of king sort of ruling. So that's a feature
[3:11] Speaker 3: of it, to be sure. The famous Lincoln triplet there
[3:16] Speaker 3: that you know, Getty's of the people, by the people,
[3:19] Speaker 3: for the people. It's been commented that the first of
[3:22] Speaker 3: those is a bit of a banality. I suppose what
[3:24] Speaker 3: else would be government of except the people. We're not
[3:26] Speaker 3: governing plants and animals. So yes, of course it's a
[3:29] Speaker 3: government of the people. Also, the third one for the
[3:32] Speaker 3: people is not really a distinctive element, because the classical
[3:36] Speaker 3: authors would say, you know, a good monarchy is for
[3:40] Speaker 3: the people, a good aristocracy is for the people. Even
[3:43] Speaker 3: a good oligarchy might say it for the common good,
[3:47] Speaker 3: so for the people. Sure, that could be any government.
[3:50] Speaker 3: The decisive one maybe is the middle one by the people.
[3:54] Speaker 3: And there's that idea of majoritarianism and of the powers
[3:58] Speaker 3: of government being derived from the people, the people themselves
[4:02] Speaker 3: are the source of authority and so on, that maybe
[4:04] Speaker 3: that's the decisive thing. But I would add, and again
[4:07] Speaker 3: now with Jefferson in mind, and the beginning of the Declaration,
[4:10] Speaker 3: the Bill of Rights, all of that in mind. Democracy
[4:13] Speaker 3: is not just majoritarianism. It's also things like an acknowledgment
[4:17] Speaker 3: of human rights given mind you, and I've said this
[4:20] Speaker 3: over and over again, not by the government, but by God,
[4:23] Speaker 3: endowed by their creators. So an acknowledgment of something objective
[4:27] Speaker 3: and indeed sacred about the rights of individuals, the freedom,
[4:32] Speaker 3: dignity and equality of the individual that seems to be
[4:35] Speaker 3: part of a democratic sensibility, equality of opportunity, equality before
[4:41] Speaker 3: and under the law. And then go into the Bill
[4:44] Speaker 3: of rights, following from human dignity, things like the freedom
[4:47] Speaker 3: of speech and freedom of assembly, and freedom of the
[4:49] Speaker 3: proest and so on, I'd say, And then you know,
[4:52] Speaker 3: I also would add limited government I think is really
[4:55] Speaker 3: key to a democratic sensibility, and that too is a
[4:59] Speaker 3: deeply religion this idea, if you press it. I think
[5:03] Speaker 3: ultimate power does not belong to any form of human government,
[5:06] Speaker 3: that there is a power beyond the power of government,
[5:09] Speaker 3: and therefore government can and should be limited checks and
[5:13] Speaker 3: balances within a political system, but also elements within the
[5:17] Speaker 3: wider society, like a free press, for example, like mediating institutions,
[5:22] Speaker 3: religious and otherwise that provide a sort of check and
[5:25] Speaker 3: balance to government. I would say, todd all of that
[5:29] Speaker 3: and more would be included in the definition of democracy.
[5:33] Speaker 3: So beyond just rule by the people, it's all those
[5:36] Speaker 3: elements make up a democracy.
[5:38] Speaker 2: I think short and the way you describe it, it
[5:41] Speaker 2: talks about what a delicate balance it is. Certainly think
[5:44] Speaker 2: that this could be something that could be devised in
[5:47] Speaker 2: the mind of human beings and made to work. And
[5:49] Speaker 2: obviously we're going to talk about some of the deficits
[5:51] Speaker 2: we come in the practice of democracy, but it is
[5:54] Speaker 2: something that is cultivated, as you've mentioned, with just great
[5:58] Speaker 2: great care less things fall fall askew.
[6:01] Speaker 3: You don't. It's just crossed my mind as you were
[6:03] Speaker 3: saying that when I was studying political philosophy. Back at
[6:06] Speaker 3: Catholic University many years ago, Robert Sakolowski, who was my
[6:09] Speaker 3: great mentor, gave us a year long seminar in political philosophy.
[6:13] Speaker 3: We stood everyone from Plato through you know, Markson, and
[6:17] Speaker 3: I remember he said one time, it's a cross a miracle,
[6:21] Speaker 3: the coming together of impossibly talented people at the same
[6:26] Speaker 3: time in the same place. When you think Adams and
[6:29] Speaker 3: Jefferson and Franklin and Hamilton, maybe especially John Jay this
[6:34] Speaker 3: where else in the world with that extraordinary coming together
[6:38] Speaker 3: A very fine mind, Madison, I mean, think this thing through.
[6:45] Speaker 3: And they made a system comprising all these elements that
[6:50] Speaker 3: did survive has survived. Now. I love that you began
[6:55] Speaker 3: with Lincoln, because there is the moment when, as Lincoln
[6:59] Speaker 3: says Addysburg, right, is this great Civil war we're in
[7:02] Speaker 3: is testing whether any nation so conceived and so dedicated
[7:06] Speaker 3: can long endure. The question was so eighty seven years
[7:10] Speaker 3: after the founding, will it work? Because say what you
[7:15] Speaker 3: want about the Civil War, one thing it meant was
[7:17] Speaker 3: the system fell apart. The democratic system fell apart. Gosh,
[7:22] Speaker 3: we tried eighteen twenty compromise, eighteen fifty compromise, Lincoln Douglas debates.
[7:27] Speaker 3: I mean, Henry Clay and Calhoun and Webster, the greatest
[7:31] Speaker 3: statesman we had trying to work through this problem of slavery.
[7:36] Speaker 3: It didn't work. The system fell apart, and Lincoln fought
[7:39] Speaker 3: the war to test, testing whether that nation could long endure.
[7:45] Speaker 3: So that's a very interesting thing we have endured. And rightly,
[7:49] Speaker 3: Lincoln gets a lot of praise because he was that's
[7:52] Speaker 3: his great achievement, freeing of the slaves and knitting back
[7:57] Speaker 3: together this country that had fallen apart. Right, So we've
[8:01] Speaker 3: got that in our political DNA as Americans, as were
[8:05] Speaker 3: the great advocates of democracy. But our system fell apart. Yeah,
[8:09] Speaker 3: and we fought a horrible war, a catastrophic war. Six
[8:13] Speaker 3: hundred thousand people died because the system fell apart. And
[8:17] Speaker 3: now we did knit it back together. But it's that's
[8:20] Speaker 3: the point I'm making, this sort of rambling way, is
[8:23] Speaker 3: it's a precarious business. This marvelous thing that the founding
[8:28] Speaker 3: fathers put together, but it's a precarious business and has
[8:32] Speaker 3: to be attended to all the time.
[8:33] Speaker 2: I think it was George will that once said he
[8:35] Speaker 2: was making being waggish in his comment but he was
[8:37] Speaker 2: talking about people talking about how easy democracy is to
[8:40] Speaker 2: be just picked up and implemented somewhere else, and he said,
[8:42] Speaker 2: a look at the American experience. It says all it
[8:44] Speaker 2: took was five geniuses and two hundred years of self rule.
[8:46] Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, and he was obviously saying that
[8:49] Speaker 2: it isn't that easy. There was, Like I said, there's
[8:52] Speaker 2: an ex extordinary intellectual hef that goes into the consideration
[8:56] Speaker 2: of democracy, and then there's the gritty, dirty of practice
[9:00] Speaker 2: of it working your way through that culminates, as you've said,
[9:03] Speaker 2: in a civil war that anybody would say, it's amazing
[9:05] Speaker 2: to think that we could come to the other side
[9:07] Speaker 2: of a civil war as a nation that was whole
[9:09] Speaker 2: without festering, right, festering and they're still antagonisms obviously, but
[9:12] Speaker 2: festering to antagonism, that it would make it impossible for us.
[9:15] Speaker 3: To go forward. The point you just made citing Will
[9:18] Speaker 3: I think there was really important. I think even a
[9:20] Speaker 3: lot of Americans forget it that when those geniuses gathered
[9:24] Speaker 3: in seventeen seventy six and later in seventeen eighty seven
[9:26] Speaker 3: for the Constitutional Convention, we'd had two hundred years of
[9:32] Speaker 3: call it nassoned democracy on these shores, so that you know,
[9:35] Speaker 3: the first settlers coming over late sixteenth early seventeenth century
[9:39] Speaker 3: has two hundred years of the House of Burgess and
[9:44] Speaker 3: community organizations and self government. We had this marvelous culture,
[9:49] Speaker 3: you might say, of a nascent democracy that made possible
[9:53] Speaker 3: that moment. You know, that's why you and I both
[9:56] Speaker 3: of course lived through this with George W. Bush, I think,
[9:59] Speaker 3: with with very good intentions saying we're going to plant
[10:03] Speaker 3: democracy in the Middle East and they're going to greet
[10:06] Speaker 3: our troops with flowers and there's going to be a
[10:08] Speaker 3: springtime of democracy. Well, in our American hearts, we say, yeah,
[10:12] Speaker 3: that's great, but there wasn't a culture in place that
[10:16] Speaker 3: could receive that. And I think we overlooked that sometimes
[10:20] Speaker 3: that we think it's just a given, it's like a
[10:22] Speaker 3: platonic form of course democracy everyone was going to love. Well,
[10:27] Speaker 3: it's empirically not the case, certainly, And then the cultural
[10:31] Speaker 3: prerequisite for the acceptance of democracy, even we Americans overlooked that.
[10:35] Speaker 3: I think.
[10:36] Speaker 2: So democracy, as we're alluding to here, has quite a history.
[10:39] Speaker 2: It stretches across ancient Athens and Republican Rome to medieval
[10:43] Speaker 2: Europe and even indigenous America. It's associated with guilds and assemblies, parliaments,
[10:48] Speaker 2: and city states. There's seismic moments in the history of democracy,
[10:50] Speaker 2: including the penning of the Magna Carta, the setning of
[10:53] Speaker 2: the Declaration of the Independence, the waging of revolutionary wars,
[10:56] Speaker 2: the advent of even decolonization. What is it about democracy
[10:59] Speaker 2: that is has made its appeal so enduring over so
[11:02] Speaker 2: much time and across such diverse cultures.
[11:05] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, obviously, as we
[11:07] Speaker 3: just said, it's not universally the case by any means,
[11:10] Speaker 3: I mean, across history and to the present day. They
[11:13] Speaker 3: are awful lot of people that don't think organized anxiety
[11:16] Speaker 3: in this manner is a good idea. But I think
[11:18] Speaker 3: to your point, there is something about it that is
[11:22] Speaker 3: grounded properly in an appreciation of human nature. The rights, freedom,
[11:27] Speaker 3: and dignity of the individual, I would argue, is a
[11:30] Speaker 3: religious idea. It comes up out of the Bible. That idea.
[11:35] Speaker 3: I think that conditions democracy at its best, and I
[11:37] Speaker 3: think it appeals to people because they know that that's true.
[11:42] Speaker 3: The capacity for self rule is also grounded in a
[11:46] Speaker 3: deep respect for the dignity and freedom of the individual.
[11:49] Speaker 3: You know, Okay, that's congruent with your dignity that you
[11:52] Speaker 3: be able to govern your own life. I think the
[11:57] Speaker 3: sense of limited government, I think that appeals to people's
[12:00] Speaker 3: keen sense that like it or not, we human beings
[12:03] Speaker 3: tend to go bad. So you put someone in power,
[12:07] Speaker 3: all right, we recognize the need for that. But he's
[12:10] Speaker 3: going to go bad. She's going to go bad in
[12:12] Speaker 3: some way, and so they've got to be checked balanced. Watch, yeah, carefully.
[12:18] Speaker 3: I think that appeals to people's sense of yeah, that's correct.
[12:21] Speaker 3: You know the fact free elections. If we don't like
[12:25] Speaker 3: the way someone's doing it, they can be tossed out.
[12:28] Speaker 3: Go back to Jefferson too, And this is something George
[12:31] Speaker 3: will observe. He said, the most important word in that
[12:35] Speaker 3: preamble to the declaration is secure. Governments exist to secure
[12:41] Speaker 3: these rights. The rights are independent of government. Right, They
[12:44] Speaker 3: don't come from government, They don't come from any human institution.
[12:48] Speaker 3: They come from God. And I'll take Jefferson at his word,
[12:51] Speaker 3: they come from God. Government exists under God to secure
[12:55] Speaker 3: those rights. That appeals, I think to people's sense of yeah,
[12:59] Speaker 3: that's right. So in all those ways. I think objectively speaking,
[13:04] Speaker 3: it's an attractive system. It's a good it's a morally
[13:07] Speaker 3: good system, and that appeals to people. Now I'm a
[13:11] Speaker 3: Newman man. Why do people assent to things? Argument's got
[13:15] Speaker 3: something to do with it. So I've just made an
[13:17] Speaker 3: argument if you want, all right, all right, But assent
[13:21] Speaker 3: is rarely a matter of just accepting an argument. There's
[13:24] Speaker 3: all those cultural pieces and experiential pieces and prejudice and
[13:29] Speaker 3: all that that has to be taken into consideration of
[13:33] Speaker 3: why someone would say, yes, that's the system for me.
[13:37] Speaker 3: But I think there are a lot of objective reasons
[13:39] Speaker 3: why it's proven to be very attractive.
[13:42] Speaker 2: One of the things you made me think about was
[13:44] Speaker 2: I read this somewhere about Karl Marx devising the Communist Manifesto,
[13:49] Speaker 2: sat in the dusty stacks of the British Library and
[13:52] Speaker 2: concocted a theory that he wanted reality to comport to.
[13:57] Speaker 2: Whereas Adam Smith and I'm not speaking unfed endorsement of
[14:00] Speaker 2: Adam Smith and so on. But Adam Smith wrote The
[14:03] Speaker 2: Wealth of Nations after spending time down in the marketplace
[14:05] Speaker 2: watching markets unfold, and to some extent, as you're describing it,
[14:08] Speaker 2: that democracy in its best form seems to be something
[14:11] Speaker 2: that adheres to or respects the way human beings have
[14:15] Speaker 2: sort of done things over time. It's a recognition of
[14:17] Speaker 2: customs that are there that then we put a sort
[14:20] Speaker 2: of we codify existing customs, as opposed to I got.
[14:23] Speaker 3: A great new idea.
[14:24] Speaker 2: It's going to require a lot of change for a
[14:26] Speaker 2: lot of people into something you're not and maybe we
[14:28] Speaker 2: might have a lot of depths in the process, but
[14:30] Speaker 2: it's a better way of going about it. So again,
[14:33] Speaker 2: the notion of democracy recognizing human nature and customs as
[14:36] Speaker 2: opposed to some of the utopian ideologies out there that say, yes,
[14:39] Speaker 2: I've got a better way of cramming human nature into
[14:41] Speaker 2: this vice and making it something anew.
[14:43] Speaker 3: It's the best description there of like British common law
[14:46] Speaker 3: coming up out of that kind of tradition. Here's an analogy.
[14:49] Speaker 3: It's kind of stupid, but it comes to my mind
[14:51] Speaker 3: a lot. I heard it many years ago. And you're
[14:53] Speaker 3: designing a college campus, let's say, and you want to
[14:56] Speaker 3: put sidewalks in. What's you to do? Well, don't just
[15:00] Speaker 3: put the sidewalks in. No, let the campus live for
[15:03] Speaker 3: a while and see where the kids naturally walk. All right,
[15:06] Speaker 3: there's the path they've naturally made. Put the sidewalk there.
[15:09] Speaker 3: So it's the it's the institution following the practice. And
[15:14] Speaker 3: your point about Marx and Adam Smith, I think that's
[15:16] Speaker 3: very good. And go back to the very beginning of
[15:19] Speaker 3: philosophy Plato and Aristotle. Plato is much more of the
[15:22] Speaker 3: you know the forms, and here's the right way to
[15:24] Speaker 3: do it, and let's fit people into this, you know,
[15:27] Speaker 3: philosophical system. Aristotle is much more of the Adam Smith
[15:30] Speaker 3: instinct of okay, how do people actually speak and behave?
[15:35] Speaker 3: And you know, what's the soul? We'll watch people in action.
[15:39] Speaker 3: Who's the good man or no, rather, what's what's the
[15:41] Speaker 3: right thing to do. We'll find the good man and
[15:43] Speaker 3: do what he does. That's the Arisotelian instinct. And I
[15:46] Speaker 3: think you're absolutely right. That's a good democratic instinct. Is
[15:50] Speaker 3: to say, what is human nature? How's it actually unfold
[15:54] Speaker 3: on the ground, and let's make institutions that kind of
[15:57] Speaker 3: complement that or rise up naturally from that, and to
[16:00] Speaker 3: correct also myself.
[16:02] Speaker 2: It doesn't mean there aren't correctives that need to be
[16:04] Speaker 2: put in place, or guardrails and so on, but some
[16:08] Speaker 2: customs are bad and we need to kind of, yes,
[16:10] Speaker 2: But the issue is trying to find what's the best
[16:12] Speaker 2: way to go about doing that.
[16:14] Speaker 3: And there's something too about democracy that is really wonderful.
[16:17] Speaker 3: It stands opposed to totalitarianism. So there's a temptation that
[16:21] Speaker 3: goes right back to Plato. And here I'm following Carl
[16:24] Speaker 3: Popperty on the open society and its enemies. And maybe
[16:28] Speaker 3: he's unfair of Plato, but he blames Plato for that
[16:31] Speaker 3: great tradition of totalitarianism that I'm the philosopher. I figured
[16:35] Speaker 3: this out, here's the way to do it. I'm now
[16:36] Speaker 3: going to impose this vision absolutely on everybody, governing every
[16:40] Speaker 3: aspect of life. And the anti tootalitary instinct, which I
[16:43] Speaker 3: share immensely, is no, no, no, no, giving people a wide
[16:48] Speaker 3: range for their own freedom, and government intervening only when
[16:52] Speaker 3: really absolutely necessary, not micromanaging or hyper directing society, but
[16:58] Speaker 3: you know, giving plenty of room for freedom. And that's
[17:01] Speaker 3: that idea of limited government. We don't want these grand
[17:05] Speaker 3: totalitarian systems. They're dangerous, and any of us who've inherited
[17:11] Speaker 3: the history of the twentieth century we know that because
[17:15] Speaker 3: we struggled, our parents and grandparents struggled quite literally with
[17:19] Speaker 3: horrible forms of tilitarianism. So you know, three cheers for
[17:23] Speaker 3: democracy that stand against that system. I wanted to.
[17:27] Speaker 2: Freedom House is this washing and nonprofit organization that goes
[17:30] Speaker 2: back to the forties. It looks at the state of democracy,
[17:33] Speaker 2: political freedom, human rights around the world and they and
[17:36] Speaker 2: this index called the Economist Democracy Index, looks at grades
[17:41] Speaker 2: for various systems or countries that have electoral processes, CIVI liberties,
[17:45] Speaker 2: function of government, etc. It's shocking to read that in
[17:48] Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, the Economist Democy Index said that only
[17:52] Speaker 2: seven point eight percent of the world's population, that is,
[17:54] Speaker 2: twenty four countries are defined as full democracies, close to
[17:58] Speaker 2: forty percent are flawed, and the rest over fifty percent
[18:03] Speaker 2: are either hybrid regimes or authoritarian states. And you just
[18:06] Speaker 2: mentioned the twentieth century experience, and it made me wonder
[18:10] Speaker 2: why after all these years, after the Second World War,
[18:13] Speaker 2: with the fight against Nazism and fascism, why after the
[18:16] Speaker 2: fall of the despotic Soviet communism, why are less than
[18:20] Speaker 2: half of the world's population still living in anti democratic,
[18:23] Speaker 2: if not authoritarian regimes.
[18:26] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a very searching question, and I suppose you could.
[18:30] Speaker 3: We've been kind of singing the praises of democracy here
[18:32] Speaker 3: for the past many minutes, which is good, it's appropriate,
[18:35] Speaker 3: it seems to me. I think we'll get maybe to
[18:38] Speaker 3: some of the negativity of it, because you know, look
[18:41] Speaker 3: at we mentioned Lincoln. We both have Churchill as a
[18:44] Speaker 3: hero too. Churchill Lincoln were at one of the same
[18:47] Speaker 3: time great singers of the song of democracy and very
[18:53] Speaker 3: clear eyed and very realistic about its limitations. Again Lincoln saying,
[18:58] Speaker 3: look this thing all apart, right, if they were such
[19:02] Speaker 3: geniuses and our system is so good, why did it
[19:07] Speaker 3: fall apart? It tragically and catastrophically Churchill? And I'm you know,
[19:12] Speaker 3: everyone knows. The famous quote is democracy is the worst
[19:15] Speaker 3: form of government except for all the others. But it's
[19:19] Speaker 3: it's typical Churchillian, you know, wits. But to start with, boy,
[19:24] Speaker 3: this is a limited system, and this is a deeply
[19:27] Speaker 3: problematic system. It is it is. And I get across
[19:31] Speaker 3: human history, look at you know, the Roman Empire. So say,
[19:34] Speaker 3: Rome begins as a as a kingship, and then and
[19:37] Speaker 3: the republic for many centuries, but then that goes through
[19:40] Speaker 3: a crisis and then for centuries is an imperial system.
[19:45] Speaker 3: You had some very bright people, you know, operating who
[19:48] Speaker 3: never thought for a minute what we're calling like liberal
[19:51] Speaker 3: democracy was a good idea. And the same is true
[19:55] Speaker 3: around the world today, not only in the communist countries,
[19:57] Speaker 3: but many of these Lamlin countries and so on. Democracy
[20:00] Speaker 3: is we're describing it would strike them as a very
[20:03] Speaker 3: bad idea, indeed, And to be fair, democracy is not
[20:07] Speaker 3: praised by the classical authors. Rule by the demos would
[20:13] Speaker 3: strike Plato as a very bad tea. Rule by the mob,
[20:17] Speaker 3: the demos the ordinary people. Aristotle would say, there's a
[20:22] Speaker 3: type you called it polity, some of the elements that
[20:25] Speaker 3: we mean by democracy. But polity will devolve very quickly
[20:29] Speaker 3: into democracy in the crude sense. The ordinary people they
[20:34] Speaker 3: don't know right from wrong, they don't know left from right.
[20:37] Speaker 3: Most of them, you're telling me, they're going to run
[20:39] Speaker 3: the society, where for both those gentlemen, something like an aristocracy,
[20:44] Speaker 3: rule by the best and the brightest struck them as
[20:47] Speaker 3: the right way to do it. So my point here is,
[20:50] Speaker 3: for all kinds of reasons, I think people ancient, medieval, modern,
[20:54] Speaker 3: contemporary would say, I'm not so sure about democracy. Ye
[20:58] Speaker 3: I'm not so sure about it. Does it really work?
[21:01] Speaker 3: It's had catastrophic failures, and we will get more detailed
[21:06] Speaker 3: to the negative side. But I don't want to be
[21:09] Speaker 3: entirely dismissive of let's say, half the world that doesn't
[21:14] Speaker 3: quite see it that way, even as I remain I
[21:17] Speaker 3: think like Lincoln in Churchill a singer of the song
[21:19] Speaker 3: of democracy, but I also get the shadow side. Let's
[21:23] Speaker 3: die of a little.
[21:24] Speaker 2: Where we've been talking a lot about democracy in general,
[21:27] Speaker 2: we've moved into American democracy. We know, all modern democraies
[21:30] Speaker 2: have their own political and cultural nuances. America is no
[21:32] Speaker 2: exception to that. So the structure of American demoscray is
[21:35] Speaker 2: based on the Declaration of the Independence, which according to Lincoln.
[21:38] Speaker 2: As i've done more re on Lincoln, he really really
[21:40] Speaker 2: championed the Declaration as a vital founding document about equality
[21:45] Speaker 2: and freedom. But also there's the Constitution. The Constitution, as
[21:48] Speaker 2: you know, erects three branches of governments, a federal and
[21:51] Speaker 2: state dichotomy, a bill of rights. You know the Federalist
[21:53] Speaker 2: papers where there's a conversation between Hamilton j. And Madison
[21:57] Speaker 2: defining and defending the Constitution, and in the Federalist papers,
[22:01] Speaker 2: which everybody should read. By the way, it's very interesting
[22:03] Speaker 2: because I watched something with Anton Scalia speaking to high
[22:06] Speaker 2: school students and the teacher said, well, which of the
[22:08] Speaker 2: Federalist papers should should they read?
[22:10] Speaker 3: And he said all of them.
[22:12] Speaker 2: So James Madison says, if men were angels, no government
[22:16] Speaker 2: would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither
[22:20] Speaker 2: external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In
[22:24] Speaker 2: framing a government which is to be administered by men
[22:26] Speaker 2: over men, the great difficulty lies in this. You must
[22:29] Speaker 2: first enable the government to control the government, and the
[22:32] Speaker 2: next place oblige it to control itself. So, looking specifically
[22:37] Speaker 2: at American democracy and the founder's design rooted in political
[22:41] Speaker 2: philosophy and faith and custom and so on, what is
[22:45] Speaker 2: the structure of American democracy? Say to you about the
[22:47] Speaker 2: founder's understanding of human nature?
[22:49] Speaker 3: A lot, But there's so much time we can say
[22:51] Speaker 3: about this. We've been talking about demos ruled by the people,
[22:55] Speaker 3: and that's a very broad, even crude, you know definition.
[23:00] Speaker 3: I think what you find in our founders is what
[23:03] Speaker 3: Aquinas would have called mixed government, and Aquinnas is borrowing
[23:07] Speaker 3: there from Aristotle. And here's what we mean, for Thomas Aquinas,
[23:10] Speaker 3: the ideal government in a platonic world, the best government
[23:15] Speaker 3: would be a monarchy. You get one really good, smart,
[23:20] Speaker 3: virtuous person who is governing for the sake of the
[23:22] Speaker 3: common good and always chooses the virtuous and right path.
[23:27] Speaker 3: Aquinas says, the singularity of the monarch is a great
[23:30] Speaker 3: advantage because like, okay, do it make it so? And
[23:34] Speaker 3: it happens more to it. Aquinas says, it mimics the
[23:38] Speaker 3: governance of God, because the whole universe is governed by
[23:41] Speaker 3: one great monarch, God in his providence, So the king
[23:44] Speaker 3: should be a mirror of God governing society. But immediately adds,
[23:52] Speaker 3: all right, I know that's the ideal, but it's exceptionally
[23:55] Speaker 3: difficult to find and then to control such a person.
[23:59] Speaker 3: So He's says, the realistic best is something like a
[24:04] Speaker 3: mixed government. Mixed meaning a combination of the monarchical, so
[24:09] Speaker 3: the unity of command and vision, but also the aristocratic,
[24:14] Speaker 3: so they ruled by a cultured elite and elements of
[24:18] Speaker 3: the democratic. Because indeed, Aquinas would hold to that principle
[24:22] Speaker 3: that what concerns everyone should be voted upon by everybody,
[24:26] Speaker 3: you know, all right, One, two, three, monarch aristocracy, democracy. Now,
[24:33] Speaker 3: the Medievals come up into the early modern period through
[24:36] Speaker 3: people like Richard Hooker, you know, who was the great
[24:39] Speaker 3: Anglican divine late sixteenth I think he died very early
[24:42] Speaker 3: seventeenth century Elizabethan figure, deeply indebted to the Scholastics. Every
[24:48] Speaker 3: one of our founders would have read Hooker. Newman in
[24:52] Speaker 3: the nineteenth century loves He calls him the judicious Hooker,
[24:55] Speaker 3: that he's this great mind. You know, they would have
[24:58] Speaker 3: gotten that idea of mixedgovern from him, I mean, the founder,
[25:02] Speaker 3: our founder. Another link is interesting. I'm not sure it's right,
[25:07] Speaker 3: but Jefferson certainly had Robert Bellerman in his library. Robert Bellerman,
[25:13] Speaker 3: great Catholic theologian, would have mediated to our founders something
[25:18] Speaker 3: of that Scholastic vision. I think unmistakably in our constitution.
[25:23] Speaker 3: When you have the president who's something like a monarch,
[25:26] Speaker 3: the Senate, which is something like an aristocratic society, the House,
[25:31] Speaker 3: which represents selected every two years, represents the demos the people,
[25:35] Speaker 3: you don't have democracy in a sort of Roussouian sense
[25:40] Speaker 3: of let's have everybody in a big plebiscite vote on
[25:43] Speaker 3: every issue. We don't have that we have a representative
[25:45] Speaker 3: republican form, and it mimics I think the mixed government
[25:51] Speaker 3: idea that you find in Aquinas now built into that
[25:55] Speaker 3: is checks and balances, each one checking and balancing too far. Nope,
[26:01] Speaker 3: you can't say that, yes, which in turn is born
[26:05] Speaker 3: of a deeply Biblical vision of a human being as
[26:08] Speaker 3: flawed and fallen and liable to be unjust right if
[26:13] Speaker 3: you think human beings are perfectible and Aristotle in his
[26:18] Speaker 3: worst moments, I think might have had that idea, and
[26:20] Speaker 3: just with enough virtue and enough knowledge, you can Biblical
[26:26] Speaker 3: people don't believe that for a second, but we're very
[26:29] Speaker 3: attentive to the fact that we are flawed and fallen. Therefore,
[26:33] Speaker 3: ham everybody in give power. Yeah, George Washington talk about
[26:38] Speaker 3: the virtuous man. That's another miracle of our founding. Actually
[26:42] Speaker 3: Washington was not the theoretician that Madison and Hamilton and
[26:45] Speaker 3: Jefferson were, but he was the virtuous man. He was
[26:48] Speaker 3: like the Aristotelian you know, good man, all right, but
[26:53] Speaker 3: even George Washington make sure there's a Senate and a House,
[26:57] Speaker 3: and you know he can veto and all that, but
[26:59] Speaker 3: there hemming each other in. I love that about the
[27:03] Speaker 3: founding fathers, the insistence upon rights, freedom, dignity. That's biblical.
[27:08] Speaker 3: So is this And they were ambiguously biblical, our founders.
[27:12] Speaker 3: You know, it's varying degrees, but but it was in
[27:16] Speaker 3: the air they breathe. It was just the culture they
[27:18] Speaker 3: took in. And I think those are super healthy features
[27:21] Speaker 3: of our democracy.
[27:22] Speaker 2: That whole notion of tensions that you're describing there, which
[27:24] Speaker 2: is extraordinary, The notion that human human dignity is is
[27:28] Speaker 2: is essential and in our Catholic perspective, inviolable, ineradicable. At
[27:33] Speaker 2: the same time, duties, duties come with with rights, So
[27:37] Speaker 2: there's rights and and duties simultaneously. Just the notion that
[27:42] Speaker 2: that the freedoms you have, but but the but the
[27:45] Speaker 2: restraints on those freedoms, the mercy that's that's offered, the
[27:47] Speaker 2: justice that that is required. Again back to the delicate
[27:51] Speaker 2: tensions that exist in this very very I don't know,
[27:55] Speaker 2: it's a fragile product of the human mind. So it's
[27:59] Speaker 2: an extraordinary thing.
[28:00] Speaker 3: You're getting at something there, which is a very important point,
[28:02] Speaker 3: and I don't have a good resolution for it. One
[28:06] Speaker 3: of my criticisms of the liberal democracy that emerged in
[28:09] Speaker 3: our country eighteenth century. Is our government is i would say,
[28:14] Speaker 3: protective rather than directive. Classical thought, medieval thought certainly saw
[28:19] Speaker 3: the purpose of government was to direct the society towards
[28:23] Speaker 3: certain moral ends. Our founders, for a lot of reasons,
[28:27] Speaker 3: were skeptical of that. Like a lot of early moderns,
[28:30] Speaker 3: they were skeptical of any claim to well, there is
[28:32] Speaker 3: clearly the good right. They construe a society that was
[28:37] Speaker 3: more protective. So you've got basic rights. Government exists to
[28:41] Speaker 3: secure those rights. Right now, what about ultimate happiness? It's
[28:46] Speaker 3: up to you. You have a right to life, liberty,
[28:50] Speaker 3: and the pursuit of happiness as you see fit. But
[28:54] Speaker 3: you know, the classical tradition, they were massively interested in
[28:57] Speaker 3: what happiness really is? A quinas beata tudo?
[29:01] Speaker 2: What is it?
[29:02] Speaker 3: That's the most important question? Then, same with Aristotle, you
[29:05] Speaker 3: know the virtuous life? What is that life? Our founders,
[29:09] Speaker 3: I think partly was due to the pluralism of the society.
[29:13] Speaker 3: We're skeptical about naming ultimate ends, and the government, you know,
[29:18] Speaker 3: it should not be involved in that business. So what
[29:20] Speaker 3: happens is happily. I think we developed the sense of well,
[29:24] Speaker 3: that's what religion's for, and that's what other mediating institutions
[29:28] Speaker 3: are for to provide those ends. But it's not government's
[29:32] Speaker 3: business to say, here's where you sho this is the
[29:34] Speaker 3: moral life you should be pursuing. Now. Is that a
[29:37] Speaker 3: limitation of liberal democracy? I would say yes in many ways,
[29:41] Speaker 3: because it's left so undefined and so open ended what
[29:45] Speaker 3: the good is, And especially when the religions now are
[29:51] Speaker 3: are so attenuating, when the religions are so compromised, who's
[29:56] Speaker 3: providing that visions? Now it's every teenager in America. I
[30:00] Speaker 3: make it up. I decide what the good is. Don't
[30:03] Speaker 3: tell me, you know. That's if you want liberalism. Run
[30:07] Speaker 3: am uk is the liberalism of the early and mid
[30:10] Speaker 3: eighteenth century. Now, run am uk right right? What they
[30:15] Speaker 3: had in Adam's day, in Washington's day, and all that
[30:19] Speaker 3: was a strong sense of religion, that religion was providing
[30:23] Speaker 3: these ultimate ends, and so government didn't have to do it.
[30:26] Speaker 3: Government shouldn't get involved in that. We're in a very
[30:29] Speaker 3: interesting moment now, I think when the religions are weakened
[30:34] Speaker 3: and now it devolves upon the individual just to make
[30:38] Speaker 3: that decision.
[30:39] Speaker 2: In nineteen forty seven, reflecting on the mixed blessing of
[30:41] Speaker 2: democracy when central equipped. As you said earlier, yeah, quote,
[30:45] Speaker 2: many forms of government have been tried and will be
[30:48] Speaker 2: tried in this world of sin and woe. No one
[30:51] Speaker 2: pretends that demoxcy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it
[30:54] Speaker 2: has been said that democy is the worst form of government,
[30:57] Speaker 2: except for all those other forms that have been tried
[30:59] Speaker 2: from time to time. Close quote and British playwright George
[31:03] Speaker 2: Bernard shaw Warren darkly, democracy is a device that ensures
[31:07] Speaker 2: we shall be governed no better than we deserve. So, Bishop, So,
[31:12] Speaker 2: as you said, we were lauding the merits of democracy
[31:14] Speaker 2: in our first segments.
[31:16] Speaker 3: Now we have to get to some of.
[31:17] Speaker 2: The gritty, dirty, day in and day out down side
[31:21] Speaker 2: that we see with democracy. So it can be downright
[31:23] Speaker 2: MESSI and I want to talk about some of the
[31:25] Speaker 2: things that can go wrong. So I got to return
[31:27] Speaker 2: to Churchill again, who the eminently quotable Churchill, who once
[31:30] Speaker 2: lamented the best argument against democracy is a five minute
[31:33] Speaker 2: conversation with the average voter. So so, first of all, Bishop,
[31:38] Speaker 2: what is democracy to do with the uninformed or indifferent voter?
[31:42] Speaker 3: Yeah? No, there they're good questions. And go back to Jefferson,
[31:45] Speaker 3: you know who, to his credit, saw if this is
[31:48] Speaker 3: going to work, this thing we're describing, you have to
[31:50] Speaker 3: have a well informed and educated electorate. If you have
[31:56] Speaker 3: people that are completely uninterested in politics, uninformed about it,
[32:01] Speaker 3: they'll be terrible voters. And hence public schools had to
[32:04] Speaker 3: be instituted. So he got that, you know, And Jefferson
[32:09] Speaker 3: could be a bit of an romantic about democracy. Hamilton
[32:13] Speaker 3: is a balance to him there, or Madison two in
[32:15] Speaker 3: a way. But that's one answer is we have to
[32:19] Speaker 3: be dedicated to education and we can't allow people to
[32:22] Speaker 3: fall into, you know, ignorance of political matters. But I
[32:28] Speaker 3: get your Churchill's point, and you know, I would have
[32:30] Speaker 3: agreed with it very much. Plato and Aristotle would government
[32:34] Speaker 3: by the common person. When you read Plato, you know,
[32:38] Speaker 3: what do you sense is the Athenian democracy? Oh God,
[32:41] Speaker 3: wasn't that great? Uh uh? It killed Socrates. The best
[32:44] Speaker 3: guy that ever lived, ever was Socrates. They killed him
[32:48] Speaker 3: out of stupidity and out of out of passion of
[32:51] Speaker 3: the mob. And so now read the Republic as Plato's
[32:56] Speaker 3: attempts to say, by God, that should never happen again. Right,
[33:00] Speaker 3: And so you know, he would have shared with Churchill, like,
[33:03] Speaker 3: what do you mean the demosk giving them rule? They're idiots.
[33:07] Speaker 3: They should do what they're told, you know. Same with Aristotle,
[33:10] Speaker 3: to be fair, you know, he would have said something
[33:12] Speaker 3: like an aristocracy or rule by the moral and intellectual elite. Well, yeah,
[33:17] Speaker 3: I guess why not. I mean, I get the best aristoi,
[33:20] Speaker 3: I mean the best, get them to run the society,
[33:23] Speaker 3: but the average person. In fact, Aristotle would have seen
[33:26] Speaker 3: them as largely staying out of politics. He would divide
[33:30] Speaker 3: the public and the private. So most people, all women,
[33:34] Speaker 3: he thought, children and most males too, should stay in
[33:38] Speaker 3: the private realm of the household. And that's okay, that's
[33:42] Speaker 3: where they belong. Slaves belong there too, but only their
[33:45] Speaker 3: ristktoy should go out into the public space and start
[33:48] Speaker 3: making decisions about you know. Well, sure that's Churchill's idea
[33:53] Speaker 3: of talk to the average person. You'd be pretty desidified. Now,
[33:57] Speaker 3: A lot happened between Plato Aristotle and the foundering of
[34:01] Speaker 3: our country, and a lot of things that we just
[34:03] Speaker 3: talked about. But no, I get it. I mean, the
[34:06] Speaker 3: shadow side of it has been on display from time immemorial.
[34:10] Speaker 3: There's a great line from William F.
[34:11] Speaker 2: Buckley, which I'll brutalize here, but he says, I'd rather
[34:14] Speaker 2: be governed by the first two thousand people in the
[34:16] Speaker 2: Boston phone Book than the entire faculty at Harvard. And
[34:19] Speaker 2: I think the point him being that the flip side
[34:21] Speaker 2: of that argument is there is a common sense, customary, religious, sensibility,
[34:26] Speaker 2: what have you that goes with living your daily life
[34:28] Speaker 2: in Boston that it gets lost by the dreaming, overly theoretical,
[34:34] Speaker 2: hyper utopian ideological minds of a Harvard faculty. God bless
[34:38] Speaker 2: all our Harvard faculty out there. But so the point
[34:41] Speaker 2: is there is there's the danger of the uninvested, uneducated voter,
[34:47] Speaker 2: but that can be improved upon by an engagement. There's
[34:50] Speaker 2: a danger of the over educated, hyper theoretical, you know, utopian,
[34:54] Speaker 2: and so on.
[34:55] Speaker 3: It's really good this point and worth musing on because Buckley,
[35:00] Speaker 3: quite right, is making the opposite point. You know, uh
[35:03] Speaker 3: so the aristoi the best one. Wouldn't that be you know,
[35:05] Speaker 3: thet's say, the political science majors from Harvard and the
[35:09] Speaker 3: professors at Yale. Wouldn't they be the best? I'm mindful of.
[35:12] Speaker 3: I don't know, if you're a Simpsons fan. But the episode,
[35:15] Speaker 3: remember when Lisa decide, well, Springfield should be run by
[35:18] Speaker 3: the smartest people. So she and comic book guy and
[35:21] Speaker 3: Principal Skinner and the and the nutty professor and you know,
[35:24] Speaker 3: the smartest people. Well, of churs, it was a complete disaster.
[35:28] Speaker 3: It was an utter disaster, you know. So that's the
[35:30] Speaker 3: opposite instant. And you know, I would share that too
[35:33] Speaker 3: to a large degree. Jefferson had this sort of mystical
[35:38] Speaker 3: confidence in you know, the yeoman farmer and the average person.
[35:42] Speaker 3: And there's a lot to be sent for that. Right.
[35:45] Speaker 3: We have that debate today between the you know, the
[35:47] Speaker 3: kind of coastal elites and the rest of the country.
[35:51] Speaker 3: You know, that same debate is being played out again.
[35:55] Speaker 3: I think the genius of our founders was the checks
[35:58] Speaker 3: and the balances and the both and and you know,
[36:01] Speaker 3: we don't have a strict democracy. We have this representative
[36:04] Speaker 3: you know, republicanism. We don't have a strict Rusoian plebiscite
[36:10] Speaker 3: based democracy. We have a checks and balances system and
[36:13] Speaker 3: all that. So I think they were aware of these
[36:16] Speaker 3: these built intensions. And again church is a good example
[36:20] Speaker 3: because it's the same Churchill that said that also knows
[36:24] Speaker 3: it's it's the best option on the table, right, But
[36:27] Speaker 3: he said it without dewey eyed romanticism. He was clear
[36:31] Speaker 3: eyed about his limitations, even if he said, this is
[36:34] Speaker 3: the best you know, so that's the right space to
[36:37] Speaker 3: be in. That Churchilean space I think is the best.
[36:41] Speaker 2: And I think to your point, I think at the
[36:43] Speaker 2: end of the day, the answer somewhat is live in
[36:45] Speaker 2: the tensions.
[36:46] Speaker 3: Yes, live in.
[36:47] Speaker 2: I mean that we can't. We were not going to
[36:49] Speaker 2: resolve all these tensions. There's got to be some free play,
[36:52] Speaker 2: if you will. It's sort of like, as they like
[36:53] Speaker 2: to say it with him from musical scene. You have
[36:55] Speaker 2: your sheet music, but when you play jazz, you step
[36:57] Speaker 2: away from the sheet music, as long as you don't
[36:59] Speaker 2: go too far obviously.
[37:01] Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, it's a subtle dance. And again, to be fair,
[37:06] Speaker 3: that dance fell apart in eighteen sixty one, and boy
[37:10] Speaker 3: they tried. That's the right way to tell American history
[37:14] Speaker 3: from let's say, the Constitial Convention till eighteen sixty one
[37:17] Speaker 3: was an attempt to deal with this problem with slavery,
[37:21] Speaker 3: and as I say, the best and brightest in our
[37:23] Speaker 3: country tried and the dance continued awkwardly, and then it
[37:30] Speaker 3: fell apart, you know, and then we did need this
[37:33] Speaker 3: genius and this moral hero, Abraham Lincoln to knit it together.
[37:38] Speaker 3: See what if Lincoln had never emerged, What if the
[37:41] Speaker 3: best we could do was like James Buchanan, our country
[37:43] Speaker 3: would have fallen apart. Yeah, we'd be a bunch of
[37:45] Speaker 3: banana republics. Yeah. You know, it took a genius, both
[37:50] Speaker 3: a political and moral genius, Lincoln to knit it back together.
[37:55] Speaker 3: But that's a very interesting story. And it's the beauty
[38:00] Speaker 3: and the and the the frailty of democracy. We're both
[38:04] Speaker 3: on display.
[38:06] Speaker 2: In eighteen eighty seven, Lord act and famously wrote as
[38:08] Speaker 2: many no power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
[38:13] Speaker 2: Great men are almost always bad men, even when they
[38:16] Speaker 2: exercise influence and not authority. Still more, when you super
[38:19] Speaker 2: add the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.
[38:22] Speaker 2: So how much corruption this is almost I mean, it's
[38:25] Speaker 2: forered corracle. But how much coruption do you do we
[38:26] Speaker 2: see in democracy?
[38:28] Speaker 3: Well? No, but plenty. But they knew it from the beginning.
[38:32] Speaker 3: They knew it, which is why they built in these
[38:34] Speaker 3: these balances. You know, we haven't mentioned the press very
[38:36] Speaker 3: much yet, but at its best, the press functions that
[38:39] Speaker 3: way in a free society. Yeah, you've got this watch
[38:42] Speaker 3: dog that is keeping an eye on these people and
[38:44] Speaker 3: asking penetrating questions. And okay, fair enough. Now I want
[38:48] Speaker 3: to always add, well, then, who watches the press, because
[38:51] Speaker 3: I don't want to give them complete right check? What
[38:55] Speaker 3: checks the press? You know? So, yes, but that's the
[38:58] Speaker 3: genius of our of our system. And when I say system,
[39:01] Speaker 3: I don't just mean the government. I mean the whole
[39:03] Speaker 3: society is predicated upon this assumption that people tend to
[39:08] Speaker 3: go bad. That is a biblical assumption. Take the Bible out,
[39:14] Speaker 3: you know. Look, you've got schemas of perfectibility in the
[39:16] Speaker 3: classical world, for sure, you got them in the modern world.
[39:21] Speaker 3: So many of the modern philosophers felt, and we just
[39:24] Speaker 3: make these reforms we can. Marx is a prime example
[39:27] Speaker 3: of that. Marxism is a scheme of perfectibility that, to
[39:31] Speaker 3: me is one of the great pillars of what i'd
[39:33] Speaker 3: call a conservative view of the world. That I would
[39:35] Speaker 3: share is God perfects us at the escatan. Prior to that,
[39:42] Speaker 3: it's going to be a bit of a mess. I
[39:45] Speaker 3: always liked Thomas Soul's intuition that we should never speak
[39:50] Speaker 3: about solutions to problems. We just speak about ameliorating the
[39:55] Speaker 3: situations or you know, doing what we can. Because when
[39:58] Speaker 3: you say the solution, duck, because because someone's going to say, Okay,
[40:03] Speaker 3: that solution, you don't like it, I'm going to put
[40:06] Speaker 3: you in jail, or I'm going to kill you because
[40:08] Speaker 3: you're getting in the way of the solution of the solution.
[40:11] Speaker 3: I think, I'll say a genius of Jefferson Madison and company,
[40:15] Speaker 3: Hamilton especially, they knew that they knew that there's no solution.
[40:21] Speaker 3: There's this rickety and sometimes very unreliable, sometimes jerrymandered system
[40:30] Speaker 3: of checks and balances, which is probably the best we
[40:33] Speaker 3: can do. You know.
[40:34] Speaker 2: In Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift said, you've clearly proved that ignorance, idoleist,
[40:39] Speaker 2: and vice are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislature.
[40:43] Speaker 2: So how are we to cope with the inefficiency of democracy?
[40:47] Speaker 3: Yes, and that's another way to look at the limitation
[40:49] Speaker 3: of democracy. And I get that. I've lived through it
[40:53] Speaker 3: all my life. You know, what's one of the words
[40:55] Speaker 3: most often used of Congress is gridlock. Yeah, all my life,
[41:00] Speaker 3: don't believe people to say, oh, now there's bridline, there's
[41:02] Speaker 3: always good life. In my experience watching American politics when
[41:06] Speaker 3: I was a kid, the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.
[41:10] Speaker 3: But then you know, we elected Richard Nixon and then
[41:13] Speaker 3: Jeroff Ford's president and the Reagan comes in and it
[41:16] Speaker 3: shifts around. Gridlock is a shadow side of democracy. Look
[41:21] Speaker 3: at the British system. Look at parliamentary systems especially, they're
[41:23] Speaker 3: trying to cobble together governments from warring factions within the parliament.
[41:28] Speaker 3: Look at Israel, you know, look at Italy. Is all
[41:31] Speaker 3: these governments succeeding each other. Yeah, I get it. And
[41:34] Speaker 3: that's why, you know, Plato saw this is when democracies
[41:38] Speaker 3: get really unruly and and gridlocked, in comes the strong
[41:43] Speaker 3: man on the on horseback, like all right, all right, look,
[41:46] Speaker 3: I'm going to solve this. So famously, you know, Napoleon
[41:49] Speaker 3: in the wake of the French Revolution, and so the
[41:52] Speaker 3: French go right back to an absolute monarchy after they
[41:55] Speaker 3: threw one over. But it was so chaotic that the
[41:58] Speaker 3: democratic system that Napoleon emerges. Hitler famously after the Weimar Republic.
[42:03] Speaker 3: There's all kinds of examples of it, of the strong
[42:06] Speaker 3: man on horseback, And I get why that's attractive or
[42:10] Speaker 3: look at like in a Russian system. So when I
[42:13] Speaker 3: was a kid, communism and many would point out that,
[42:17] Speaker 3: look put marks out of the equation. You have, you know,
[42:19] Speaker 3: an autocratic authoritarian system which the Russians have had for
[42:22] Speaker 3: a centuries and century. Well then they throw off the
[42:25] Speaker 3: common system and we have borth Yeltson and Glassnost and
[42:28] Speaker 3: all this perform and democracy. Well before you know it,
[42:31] Speaker 3: Vladimir Putin, who is just like a czar, is back
[42:34] Speaker 3: in power. All right. Their culture kind of tends in
[42:37] Speaker 3: that direction, you know. So it's the complexity of these systems.
[42:44] Speaker 3: But I think the corruption within democracy the danger Gridlock.
[42:52] Speaker 3: I get why people say, all right, I've had it
[42:54] Speaker 3: with that, it's not going to work.
[42:56] Speaker 2: The one last before we move to our next segment.
[42:58] Speaker 2: In nineteen twenty three, and you mentioned Hitler. In nineteen
[43:01] Speaker 2: twenty three, you attempted to violently overthrow the Weimar Republic
[43:04] Speaker 2: through the beer Hall pushed he failed, and then ten
[43:07] Speaker 2: years later, having moved the Nazi Party into the political system,
[43:10] Speaker 2: he was elected chancellor and through the Enabling Act, granted
[43:13] Speaker 2: supreme power of the state. A democratic process that led
[43:17] Speaker 2: Hitler into power, not a violent pushed. So shouldn't we
[43:20] Speaker 2: be concerned that democrays can elect evil people?
[43:23] Speaker 3: Yeah sure, yeah sure, And that's why they've got to
[43:26] Speaker 3: be checked and we have to be aware of that danger.
[43:29] Speaker 3: It's kind of a miracle of our system. Now. I know,
[43:31] Speaker 3: the Civil War we've talked about several times. It did
[43:34] Speaker 3: fall apart, but it's been kind of remarkable. We've had
[43:39] Speaker 3: military figures as presidents, you know, and again, God bless him,
[43:43] Speaker 3: George Washington. One of the finest moments in the history
[43:48] Speaker 3: of the West was George Washington, having won the Revolutionary War,
[43:52] Speaker 3: still with his army intact, goes, I've been there to
[43:56] Speaker 3: the Maryland State House in Annapolis, beautiful colonial building, and
[44:02] Speaker 3: resigned his commission, got on his horse alone, and rode
[44:06] Speaker 3: back home to Mount Vernon. When George the Third heard
[44:09] Speaker 3: about that, I love this story. George the third, he's
[44:11] Speaker 3: great nemesis, the King of England, against whom he had rebelled.
[44:14] Speaker 3: He heard that story, he said, he's the greatest man
[44:17] Speaker 3: in the world because they hadn't seen that before. No,
[44:21] Speaker 3: you just won a war. You're the general, you got
[44:23] Speaker 3: the army. Well, I'm King of America, and there were
[44:26] Speaker 3: plenty of people that wanted him to be King of America.
[44:29] Speaker 3: God blessed George Washington for having the humility to say,
[44:34] Speaker 3: I did my duty, war's over, we won, I'm going home,
[44:37] Speaker 3: you know, And that set the tone. Thank God. Whether
[44:40] Speaker 3: it's Zachary Taylor, whether it's Ulysseses Grant, whether it's Dwight Eisenhower,
[44:46] Speaker 3: You've got these great military figures and in many other
[44:49] Speaker 3: political settings would have said, all right, let's call the
[44:52] Speaker 3: army back together, and I'm now the Emperor of America.
[44:57] Speaker 3: God bless them. Look at someone like Douglas Arthur at
[45:00] Speaker 3: one time was, you know, consider a candidate for the presidency.
[45:03] Speaker 3: But it was Washington's example. I think that has gotten
[45:07] Speaker 3: deep in our DNA politically, but yeah, we have to
[45:11] Speaker 3: watch our elective officials and we have to be aware
[45:13] Speaker 3: of that tendency toward corruption. Absolutely.
[45:16] Speaker 1: Matthew Patussick here again, thanks so much for joining us
[45:19] Speaker 1: on the Word on Fire show. As always, if you'd
[45:21] Speaker 1: like to learn more about how Word on Fire can
[45:24] Speaker 1: help you grow closer to Christ and become a better
[45:27] Speaker 1: evangelist with and four others, visit Institute dot word on
[45:30] Speaker 1: fire dot org. That's Institute dot word onfire dot org.
[45:35] Speaker 1: We'll see you next time, and God bless and protect you.

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