Democracy and the Death of Choice: Why the liberal struggle for a better world will fail. Part 3 of 6
What I’ve recently realized is that all of this is built into the liberal agenda. The truisms on which modern liberal democracy is based are relativism and toleration, and they are the definitive doctrines of a liberal civilization. It is only on the conditions of dialogue and the affirmation of any and all forms of living that we can remain a free and open society; one progressing towards a better world. As a longtime liberal I’m finding these truisms less convincing today and not encouraging for our future.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger noted that “Democracy is built upon the basis that no one [person] can presume to know the true way, and it is enriched by the fact that all roads are mutually recognized as fragments of the effort toward that which is better ... [In this model] a system of freedom [is] essentially a system of positions that are connected with one another because they are relative, as well as being dependent on historical situations open to new developments. Therefore a liberal society [is] a relativist society: only with that condition could it continue to be free and open to the future” (Address to Latin American Bishops, 1996).
This was not intended to be a positive review of the modern democratic model, and I found his description to be very disturbing. If our societal and governmental processes are built upon a system of laws that are subject to constant re-interpretation, then nothing can be considered to be ethical, unwavering, patriotic, irrevocable, or beyond question. I’m not sure this is a good thing because it introduces 1) the constant re-interpretation of principles, and 2) the forced normalization of civil conduct.
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