For a while, I had been against voting ones morality. It seemed horribly unjust to force someone into something they did not agree with. If a woman does not think abortion is wrong, how can a conservative sect make the act illegal for her? I believed moral tyranny to be morally wrong, which is actually a moral ideal that I want by government to follow (oops, I just voted my morality).
Essentially, the core of every government is based on a value system, and with our Democratic system, things become difficult. My libertarian friends choose the values that make businesses most prosperous, because (to put it
very roughly)that will make us a prosperous nation, and thus make us a prosperous people. My socialist friends desire that everyone receive a fair and equal treatment because (again, roughly) we often play against a stacked deck, thus they want the government to even things out.
What is most interesting is that these groups with radically different political ideas can have surprisingly similar moralities. The libertarians friends I speak of are not necessarily comfortable with the large wage disparity we find in corporate America, and I doubt that the socialist revel in idea of having an unproductive society because everyone sits around enjoying government handouts. What is one to do?
I have recently discovered Reinhold Niebuhr, a "towering figure of twentieth-century religious thought." Though I have only read a couple of essays thus far, the brief biography in this book (
The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr) was interesting. His critics often considered him a pessimist because he continually knocked down various ideologies in both the theological and political realms. The editor of this book quickly pointed out that this wrecking-ball mentality was actually rooted in an optimism. In Christ, he had hopes for a better reality, and the system he saw were inadequate. I believe that this is what we need to realize. Many of us have hope for a better world, an improved world, but no system will completely suffice, there will always be a flaw (the source of these flaws is another topic altogether). This is no reason to despair.
Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a season for everything. A season for war, a season for peace, a season to plant and a season to uproot, and so on and so forth. The same holds true for our form of government. There is a time for the libertarian ideals, and a time for the socialist ones. There is no evolution, but only a continual flux. It is a balancing act, much like
slacklining. Very rarely can one stand without having to move. Something will happen (whether a breeze or one's own muscle tremors)that will call for some sort of compensation, some sort of shift in body weight. Never is one still. So our government must never stand still, it must shift, or change directions. And there will be people who will talk about the dangers of shifting in one direction, but there will be dangers with any direction, and that is why we must always go back the opposite way. The awesome thing is that our democratic form of government allows for this balancing act.
