This Views Prose |
The Vital Problem of Democracy | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Europe gained the leadership in world culture, not by its material wealth, but by its pre-eminence in the things of the mind in science and literature and ideas. It created the ideals which the rest of the world followed. If modern democracy were to involve giving up this mission and abandoning spiritual leadership for material satisfaction, then it would justly mean the decline of Western culture. But as we have seen, democracy is by no means essentially materialistic; the democratic movement was founded on idealism, and if it is losing its ideals that is not the fault of the people as a whole. One of the most acute critics of modern tendencies, M. Lucien Romier, has written as follows:
This is the vital problem of democracy, the problem of spiritual leadership. We need men who are something more than cunning manipulators of the political and economic machine, men who stand not for success or material efficiency, but for the old Christian ideals of faith, hope and charity. And it is not only religious people who feel this. Even a thorough sceptic and modernist like Bertrand Russell is just as convinced as we are that if modern society goes on putting power and economic efficiency above spiritual values, it will end in disaster. This is what he says:
And consequently the new society that is arising, based on pure economic and scientific technology, is a society that is
It is impossible to state the issue more clearly. The society that exists for wealth and power alone may attain a kind of greatness, but it is the greatness of despotism, not that of a democracy. |
||||
Christopher Dawson (b. 1889) |
||||
from The Modern Dilemma (1932) |
The Defense of Liberty | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?
It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoasts, the guns of
our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These
are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All
of them may be turned against our liberties, without making us stronger
or weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty
which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation
of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands,
everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism
around your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage,
and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample
on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own
independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises. |
||||
Abraham Lincoln
(1809-1865) |
||||
from Speech at
Edwardsville, Illinois, September 11, 1858 Collected Works Volume III p. 95 |
Prose Archive |
This Views Prose |
This Page in The Current Issue |
Previous | Next |