Wednesday, March 25, 2020

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, MORALITY, DEMOCRACY, AND EVIDENCE FOR THE GOD OF THE BIBLE





 Today’s secularism is an aggressive bulldozer. It will not tolerate any competition, pushing aside any opposition to its reign. Arrogantly, it believes that it can retain the benefits of Western civilization, while discarding its foundation – Christianity.

Alexis de Tocqueville, French statesman, historian, and social philosopher, wrote “Democracy in America” (1835). It has been described as "the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the relationship between character and society in America that has ever been written."

Tocqueville wanted to understand why the American Revolution and American democracy had proved to be such a success. According to Tocqueville, freedom and morality both found their American incarnation in Christianity:

  • Religion in America ... must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it.

Tocqueville had been well acquainted with the demands for freedom and equality that had arisen from his own French revolution, ironically entailing the hatred and murder of the clergy. This revolution had confidently sought to push aside anything that stood in its way.  However, with the advantage of decades of hindsight, another revolution was something that the French wanted to avoid at all costs. With the lessons of his own French revolution in mind, Tocqueville wrote:

  • The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge of freedom.

He therefore appreciated the moral constraints that he found so ubiquitously associated with democracy in the USA:

  • I do not question that the great austerity [self-control] of manners that is observable in the United States arises, in the first instance, from religious faith...its influence over the mind of woman is supreme, and women are the protectors of morals. There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is more respected than in America or where conjugal happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated...

Continually, he found that the fruitful expression of democracy was inseparable from its underlying Christian roots:

  • In the United States the influence of religion is not confined to the manners, but it extends to the intelligence of the people.... Christianity, therefore, reigns without obstacle, by universal consent; the consequence is, as I have before observed, that every principle of the moral world is fixed and determinate.

Tocqueville’s glowing observations of Christian faith and conduct do not claim that Christianity had rooted out all evils. It certainly didn’t. Nor had any other religion or government. Slavery remained a troubling example. But in view of the many moral failures in every nation and the worldwide acceptance of slavery, this one failure should not be used to discredit the entirety of the Christian influence.

 According to Tocqueville, America’s greatness was the outgrowth of what the churches were preaching:

  • I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors...in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

In contrast, today’s secularism believes that it can retain the fruits of Christian society without its roots. It seeks to replace the Christian foundation with its own materialistic and relativistic presuppositions and expects that these will support the house of their dreams. Secularism wants to retain the ideas of equality and equal protection under the law – the Bill of Rights – but it fails to see that their materialistic foundation can’t support this structure.

Historically, materialism has not been able to provide the basis of these prized values. Just look at the workers’ “utopia” of the communistic atheistic nations! Why have these nations been so characterized by oppression and violence? From a strictly materialistic worldview, there can be no possible basis for equality or “unalienable rights.” Regarding humans materialistically, we find that some are tall and some are short; some are likable and some are not; some promote justice, while some undermine it; some contribute to society, while some prove to be very costly, even undermining the common good. Consequently, as seen through the materialistic lens, some have a positive value and some a negative one. Is there therefore any basis for equality from this perspective? Not at all!

Christians also have a materialistic lens. However, we are not limited to this lens. We also have a transcendent one. We see equality and the surpassing value of humanity even in the murderer, because this is the reality that God sees. We protect, because God protects, even the most unworthy. We maintain that all have unalienable rights because all have been created in the likeness of God. We, therefore, cannot deprive anyone of their unalienable rights, because these right don’t come essentially from us but from God.

However, according to the lens of secularism, it is secularism that grants the rights. Consequently, it is secularism that can also retract those rights, as we see happening before us. There is nothing in a materialistic worldview that requires that our rights be unalienable. After all, everything is in flux, and so too should our rights be subject to the whims of the State!

Even worse, there is nothing in secular materialism that would argue in favor of equal treatment. If some humans have a positive social value, in that they contribute to the welfare of society, and some have a negative, there is no justification for not treating the negatively-valued humans in a negative way. Consequently, materialism cannot honestly value equality and unalienable human rights.

The same argument can also be applied to the concept of “freedom.” Where there is no material basis for equality, there is also no basis for equal freedom. (In fact, many secularists deny the reality of freewill and therefore culpability!) After all, some even vote “republican” and against gay marriage. Why should their ideas be tolerated? Well, as secularism secures its grip, any ideas that impede its agenda are no longer tolerated. The popular vote can be overturned by a single judge. The charge of “unconstitutional” can be brought against any objectionable idea or popular vote.

The secularism of today has lost its taste for freedom as the quest for self-fulfillment has proliferated. Tocqueville warned that democracy is vulnerable in this regard:

  • Men who are possessed by the passion of physical gratification generally find out that the turmoil of freedom disturbs their welfare before they discover how freedom itself serves to promote it.

What is not honored – our freedoms and liberties – will eventually whither and disappear. Tocqueville realized that the pursuit of a perverted conception of “equality” could produce some bad fruit:

  • But there exists in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.

The argument in favor of “equality” can be applied in many illegitimate ways. It can be used to produce “equality” between parents and their children, depriving parents of their rightful authority in favor of the Secular State. It can be used as a bulldozer to push aside any sexual distinctions. Consequently, it is argued that we should be allowed to marry or to sex anyone and any number we please. It is only our appetites that should set the limit. Meanwhile, there is no longer a willingness to regard the many studies that have unequivocally demonstrated that children (and society) do far better, in a myriad of ways, with their biological parents.

Our personal comforts and pleasures tend to reign over concerns about distant abstract principles such as freedom and justice. Therefore, Tocqueville warned:

  • A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Democracy is a fragile flower, which requires regular cultivation. History is the test tube for our ideas, and the future will cast its dispassionate verdict on them. It will also give us what we deserve. Already, anti-Christian secularism is bearing its fruit in terms of abortions, STDs, suicides, criminality, and broken families throughout the Western world, accelerating with its radical incarnation in the sixties.

We will reap what we sow and sadly, we will probably find that Tocqueville’s words – “The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge of freedom” – have proved prophetic.

Does this analysis prove the truth of the Christian faith? We should ask ourselves:

·       How is it possible that this ancient book – the Bible – has produced such good fruit? Why have the “truths” of communism, National Socialism, and Islam produced such devastation, while the teachings of the Bible have produced human flourishing?

Sadly, most will only hear the final verdict after it is too late.


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