by Chris Alexion, Copyright February 28, 2006, all rights reserved. 274 views
Joe Klein, writing in the Feb. 6 issue of Time, offers some valuable thoughts on Bush and the Middle East. "How did it come about that when Bush talks about Palestinians he sounds like Ted Kennedy talking about Americans?" Klein answers that "Bush's flashy love affair with democracy is a fallback position: it ascended when the original rationale for the war in Iraq–the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction–receded."
Beginning with a true statement–"Freedom isn't America's gift to the world. It's the Almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world"–Bush's new emphasis has evolved into an image of jolly St. Nick spreading cheer and democratic government to good Middle-Eastern boys and girls. But you can't fit self-government down a chimney. Klein lists several factors that must be present: A solid middle class. Rule of law. Freedom of speech. Active, not passive, mentality.
But what both Bush and Klein overlook are the moral and theological underpinnings necessary for free and just civil government. Freedom doesn't just grow in any soil; without theological support, democracy may spring up quickly only to wither at the first signs of heat. There's a reason the Greeks fell apart. There's a reason Rome became an empire. And there's a reason our teenage American republic is in the back of John Dewey's Taurus.
Liberty in the civil sphere requires a theology that makes belief in freedom consistent. This means a strong dose of the sovereignty of God and the divine accountability of public servants. It also requires the destruction of artificial barriers fallen nature always prides itself in, for "in Christ is neither Greek nor Jew, bond nor free, male nor female."
But these beliefs must dwell in the people. It's not enough merely to post them on a wall. Nor can they be forced from above. Only as a majority of the people are animated by a sense of freedom and all its responsibilities can democracy have a chance. And note that part about responsibilities. Liberty isn't just a gift; it's a calling. That's why Washington warned in his Farewell Address that Americans would have to be virtuous if their fledgling republic was going to make it. And the past century has taught us that government picks up where public virtue ends. Government takes responsibility for so much today because we–the family, the church, and the broader culture–stopped doing so. We're the problem. We're the politicians.
History, as always, is vital here. Bush would have done well to trace a few questions through the centuries. Why did England gradually grow into a constitutional government, while France nearly destroyed herself in bloody revolution? Why does Protestantism seem more consistently to lead to limited government than does Catholicism? Why were the Scots and the American colonists able to throw off English tyranny? How compatible is freedom with a religion whose progress has historically come by the sword? And why have none of last year's Middle East elections left these countries any stabler?
Klein concludes that despite Bush's cheer, free republics aren't likely to spring up in the Middle East anytime soon. But the results are still better than more violence. And we can hope that with opening doors and shifting loyalties, Middle Eastern countries might receive what they really need–the gospel.
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