I recently read that we need to defend liberal democratic values if we are going to continue to enjoy our freedoms and that we must not take our way of life for granted. Yet, speak of values, a word that seems to stick in the craw of too many liberals, and you are accused of being racist, xenophobic, fearmongering and Islamophobic, and for added measure a white supremacist.
Somewhere along the way to political correctness nirvana, values, like God and religion, became four-letter loaded words. How are we going to maintain our way of life we continue to disparage the word “values”?
I have lost track of the number of journalists, reporters and opiners who turn up their noses at the mention of values. Yet, if it weren’t for our values these people would not have the freedoms they do to report, write, or opine. They would be sent to jail in the vast majority of countries-from South America to Africa, China and the Islamic countries. Too many people today take our freedoms for granted-an entitlement. They have no appreciation for a value system that gives all people the right to say “No.” Think about that. How many countries allow their people to say “no” and live free?
And then there are the ignorant who have no knowledge of the freedoms they take for granted. You cannot defend what you do not know.
In June 2016, Donald Trump proclaimed that America is a Judeo-Christian nation, because “that’s just the way it’s been.” He was belittled and accused of being racist and xenophobic as well as a divisive fear-monger. Why? America is a nation based on the values as espoused in Judeo/Christian ethic that was brought into the world 3500 years ago by the Jewish people; a dark skinned people, who today range in colour from black to white and every shade in between as well as multiple races and ethnicities. How did defending this ethic that is the foundation of liberal western democracy become associated with white supremacy and white privilege?
Trump was merely echoing the words of Barack Obama, in his “Call to Renewal” keynote address on June 28, 2006, in Washington D.C.
I don’t recall the same backlash and vitriol when the same sentiment was expressed by Obama.
“Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King—indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history—were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religion to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their “personal morality” into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”
Note that the President said grounded in the Judeo/Christian tradition –not moral and cultural relativism.
And President Obama was merely echoing the earliest of Americans who, like John Adams, a member of the Declaration of Independence committee and second president of the United States (1797–1801), understood the deep connection between the Judeo/Christian ethic and freedom.
I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of the other sect, who believe or pretend to believe that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty, sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be a great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.
Let’s talk about the ethic that Donald Trump,Barack Obama and John Adams extol. The Judeo/Christian ethic was in its time revolutionary and in the vast majority of countries today it remains that way. This ethic, which comes from the Hebrew Bible, teaches us that all life is sacred; all people are born with equal intrinsic value; there is no countenance for the caste system or the idea of dhimmitude. It demands that we care for the other. But caring for the other was never meant to encourage us to tolerate behaviours that we know are intolerable-like throwing gay people off buildings or hanging them in the public square. Or treating women as less than second class citizens and dressing them in clothing that keeps them from participating as full citizens in a free and democratic country.
And democracies are fragile.According to Freedom House 2017 a total of “67 countries suffered net declines in political rights and civil liberties in 2016, compared with 36 that registered gains. This marked the 11th consecutive year in which declines outnumbered improvements.”
Ayn Rand wrote “Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of ones values.” Let’s reconnect to our Judeo/Christian Western Values and regain our happiness.
