Have democracy and multiculturalism failed?

[JackVk]

Sociologists claim that there are 9 distinct nations within the United States. However, this year’s election cycle appears to have brought that to a breaking point. Many supporters of Bernie Sanders claim his idea of “democratic socialism” will work because it works in many European countries.

What they don’t understand is that said countries are culturally homogenous, unlike the US. An ethnically and culturally diverse country like America, when mixed with democracy, appears to create conflicts of interest. Hence, the perpetual stalemate in American politics.

This is even starting to manifest in Europe with the influx of Muslims. Germany, for example, released infographics for migrants illustrating what is and is not acceptable interaction with women, in response to the gang incidents on New Year’s Eve. It’s also why there are enclaves run by Sharia law.

Do you think democracy can survive the mixing of different cultures?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Do you think democracy can survive the mixing of different cultures?

Yes, provided one culture does not rise to the top … the Muslim culture.

It’s no accident that it was Christianity, not Islam, that produced democracy.

See Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

 

[KidCatholic1]

Wasn’t the very point of democracy to settle differences and allow all to voice their opinions? After all, the original America after the Revolution was quite divided as many people looked to confederacy and the states for authority. Seeing that the only way we could continue to exist was to abandon confederacy and become a federation of states- United States.

My point is, if we remained a nation after the tensions following the Revolution and continued on, we can do so today.

 

[KidCatholic1]

Yes, provided one culture does not rise to the top … the Muslim culture.

It’s no accident that it was Christianity, not Islam, that produced democracy.

See Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

Please tell me, what is “Muslim culture”? Islam is the second largest religion in the world, with many, many cultural groups being predominantly Muslim. For example, Indonesia is mostly Muslim but practices democracy.

 

[HCTC]

“AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.”

thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fed_10.html

 

[Iron_Donkey]

Yes it can. It will have it’s high and low points, like anything else, but that’s normal (and its low points are often higher than other systems’ high points).

As for the gridlock - that is only sometimes a bad thing. It means that, aside from a few cases (notably, the courts overstepping themselves) important laws generally don’t change on a whim. They can change, but it requires agreement to do so. We can complain about the gridlock when it stops people we agree with from doing things, but I would hazard a guess that everyone here disagreed with most of the policy positions of at least one of the last two Presidents.

Imagine if whichever one you like the least had an easy way to make whatever changes he wanted happen.

Don’t get me wrong, there are things that need to be fixed. But given many of the ideas I’ve heard about how to fix them, from people in power, I’ve begun to appreciate the stalemate. True, it stops/drastically slows some of the changes I think really need to happen, but when those changes do happen, it also stops and slows people changing them back.

 

[R_H_Benson]

Yes, provided one culture does not rise to the top … the Muslim culture.

It’s no accident that it was Christianity, not Islam, that produced democracy.

See Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

I would offer that it was not Christianity that produced democracy, but “enlightenment” philosophy. For a Christian, democracy / republicanism is far from the ideal system of government.

 

[GEddie]

It’s no accident that it was Christianity… that produced democracy.

Greece would take issue with that.

ICXC NIKA

 

[GEddie]

Democracy has not been tried and failed; it has been bought-out and not tried.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I would offer that it was not Christianity that produced democracy, but “enlightenment” philosophy. For a Christian, democracy / republicanism is far from the ideal system of government.

Christianity also produced the enlightenment.

Most of our Founders were Christians or heavily influenced by the Christian ethos.

You will have a hard sell if you are going to argue they were mostly non-Christian or even anti-Christian, as Thomas Paine mostly was.

By the way, the 1st Amendment was designed in part to protect freedom of the Christian religion from the State, not the State to be protected from the threat of religion.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Please tell me, what is “Muslim culture”? Islam is the second largest religion in the world, with many, many cultural groups being predominantly Muslim. For example, Indonesia is mostly Muslim but practices democracy.

Indonesia, until very recently, was not a democracy, and the democracy it experiences at present is not full fledged. That it is moving toward democracy is a credit to the fact that Muslims, when they are not an absolute majority, can cooperate with other religions.

Six major religions are now tolerated in Indonesia, some of the religion that are severely persecuted by Muslims in parts of the world where the Muslim majority is overwhelming.

theage.com.au/comment/indonesias-transition-to-democracy-under-threat-as-new-president-is-sworn-in-20141015-116q15.html

 

[R_H_Benson]

Christianity also produced the enlightenment.

Most of our Founders were Christians or heavily influenced by the Christian ethos.

You will have a hard sell if you are going to argue they were mostly non-Christian or even anti-Christian, as Thomas Paine mostly was.

By the way, the 1st Amendment was designed in part to protect freedom of the Christian religion from the State, not the State to be protected from the threat of religion.

The “enlightenment” is not a product of authentic Christianity (AKA Catholicism) and the only way it could be construed as such is if one considers the Protestant heresies present in the countries where “enlightenment” thought took hold to represent true Christianity. You will notice that Protestant nations were the first to fall under the sway of “enlightenment” thought. Catholic countries, like France, were only conquered by its evils through violent revolutions.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

The “enlightenment” is not a product of authentic Christianity (AKA Catholicism) and the only way it could be construed as such is if one considers the Protestant heresies present in the countries where “enlightenment” thought took hold to represent true Christianity. You will notice that Protestant nations were the first to fall under the sway of “enlightenment” thought. Catholic countries, like France, were only conquered by its evils through violent revolutions.

That’s a sweeping generalization that I reject.

The enlightenment emerged as an intellectual revolution that both Catholicism and Protestantism encouraged. The inventor of the printing press was an Italian Catholic, and his invention was widely heralded as a bonus for Catholicism, (the first of several books printed on it being the Holy Bible and the Summa Theologica.)

Without the sponsorship of the European university system, created by Catholics not Protestants, and the invention of the press by a Catholic, the Enlightenment would hardly have got going until much later

 

[R_H_Benson]

That’s a sweeping generalization that I reject.

The enlightenment emerged as an intellectual revolution that both Catholicism and Protestantism encouraged. The inventor of the printing press was an Italian Catholic, and his invention was widely heralded as a bonus for Catholicism, the first several books printed on it being the Holy Bible and the Summa Theologica.

I’m not arguing that there weren’t some inadvertent benefits that resulted, yet there is no denying that the core principles that arose from the “enlightenment”, one being the diabolical ideology that “rights” foremost flow from the subjective will of the people and not from Almighty God, are anti-Christian in nature. The ideas of the “enlightenment” are in large part antithetical to the principles that governed Christendom in its golden age. I see no way how one can reconcile ideas like religious indifferentism or the subordination of the rights of God to the state (and the collective whims of those who comprise it) as developments that were encouraged by Catholicism. The “enlightenment” planted the seeds of modernism.

 

[Abu]

Charlemagne III #10
Christianity also produced the enlightenment

False.

#13
The enlightenment emerged as an intellectual revolution that both Catholicism and Protestantism encouraged.

False.

Don’t you know of St John Paul II in Centesimus Annus, 13, 1991?
“The atheism of which we are speaking is also closely connected with the rationalism of the Enlightenment, which views human and social reality in a mechanistic way. Thus there is a denial of the supreme insight concerning man’s true greatness, his transcendence in respect to earthly realities, the contradiction in his heart between the desire for the fullness of what is good and his own inability to attain it and, above all, the need for salvation which results from this situation.”

The so-called “Enlightenment” was exposed for its degradation by St John Paul II:
“The rationalism of the Enlightenment put to one side the true God – in particular, God the Redeemer.

“The consequence was that man was supposed to live by reason alone, as if God did not exist…as if God were not interested in the world. The rationalism of the Enlightenment was able to accept a God outside of the world primarily because it was an unverifiable hypothesis. It was crucial, however, that such a God be expelled from the world.”
Crossing The Threshold Of Hope, St John Paul II, Random House Australia, 1994, p 53.]

Even Friedrich Nietzsche (‘God is dead’) wrote: “Strictly speaking there is no such thing as science ‘without any presuppositions’… a philosophy, a ‘faith’, must always be there first, so that science can acquire a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right to exist… It is still a metaphysical faith that underlines our faith in science.” (Genealogy of Morals III, 23-24).

 

[Rhubarb]

Christianity also produced the enlightenment.

Most of our Founders were Christians or heavily influenced by the Christian ethos.

You will have a hard sell if you are going to argue they were mostly non-Christian or even anti-Christian, as Thomas Paine mostly was.

By the way, the 1st Amendment was designed in part to protect freedom of the Christian religion from the State, not the State to be protected from the threat of religion.

The Enlightenment was a direct attack against the religious and spiritual culture that had been so pervasive through Europe prior. It was a swing towards the rational, the scientific, and the positivistic mentality. That’s why thinkers like Nietzsche, Freud and Jung, Bergson, Weber, Mann, etc. all swing back away from Enlightenment ideals to a more spiritual and non-positivistic thinking. I mean, Jefferson himself edited the New Testament to remove all mention of Christ’s divinity. Democracy and Republicanism has been around a lot longer than Christianity.

To the point - I don’t think multiculturalism has to be the death of democracy. Obstinate and hateful people hurt it.

 

[Abu]

This seems to be a realistic appraisal of “multiculturalism”.

Multiculturalism assumes that there is no existing culture and no existing set of values that immigrants are entering into when they enter into a host country. That of course is going to cause resentment on behalf of the people of the host country, who naturally are, and should be proud of their values and their culture, enough to where they might expect people wanting to immigrate into their countries would to want to emulate those values too.

Rather tragically, by not stressing the existing culture, but instead stressing that each group keep their own cultures on the basis that all cultures are equal, multiculturalism keeps the new comer in the status of permanent outsider, never fully accepted by the larger culture, and always in a position where there will be conflicts between the different sets of people.

Multiculturalism does not lead to diversity. It leads to ghettoes.
The melting pot of a common people with a common language and common values leads to true diversity, where everybody brings their assets to a common table and a common purpose.

 

[Exiled_Child]

Democracy is the worst form of government there is, and I’m glad I don’t live in one. Democracy essentially means mob rule; it means being forced to do and not do whatever the majority decrees. Thankfully, America isn’t a Democracy, but is instead a Constitutional Republic. That means, purely in theory, of course, that the Constitution is what I must obey. Which means, or rather, which should mean, that I can basically do anything I want to do, provided that it doesn’t hurt anyone else. Obviously, that’s not at all how things work, but it is the law of the land.

As far as multiculturalism is concerned, yeah, it works pretty well, in between race riots. Thankfully those don’t happen too often.

 

[Abu]

Exiled Child #18
Democracy is the worst form of government there is, and I’m glad I don’t live in one. Democracy essentially means mob rule; it means being forced to do and not do whatever the majority decrees.

Hardly.

EVANGELIUM VITAE,
25 March, the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, in the year 1995
IOANNES PAULUS PP. II
Extracts;
70. Democracy cannot be idolized to the point of making it a substitute for morality or a panacea for immorality. Fundamentally, democracy is a “system” and as such is a means and not an end. Its “moral” value is not automatic, but depends on conformity to the moral law to which it, like every other form of human behaviour, must be subject: in other words, its morality depends on the morality of the ends which it pursues and of the means which it employs. **If today we see an almost universal consensus with regard to the value of democracy, this is to be considered a positive “sign of the times”, as the Church’s Magisterium has frequently noted. 88 But the value of democracy stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes. Of course, values such as the dignity of every human person, respect for inviolable and inalienable human rights, and the adoption of the “common good” as the end and criterion regulating political life are certainly fundamental and not to be ignored.
**
71. It is therefore urgently necessary, for the future of society and the development of a sound democracy, to rediscover those essential and innate human and moral values which flow from the very truth of the human being and express and safeguard the dignity of the person: values which no individual, no majority and no State can ever create, modify or destroy, but must only acknowledge, respect and promote.

Consequently there is a need to recover the basic elements of a vision of the relationship between civil law and moral law, which are put forward by the Church, but which are also part of the patrimony of the great juridical traditions of humanity.
Note:
88 Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter *Centesimus Annus *(1 May 1991), 46: AAS 83 (1991), 850; Pius XII, Christmas Radio Message (24 December 1944): AAS 37 (1945), 10-20.
[My emphasis].

 

[Exiled_Child]

Hardly.

EVANGELIUM VITAE,
25 March, the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, in the year 1995
IOANNES PAULUS PP. II
Extracts;
70. Democracy cannot be idolized to the point of making it a substitute for morality or a panacea for immorality. Fundamentally, democracy is a “system” and as such is a means and not an end. Its “moral” value is not automatic, but depends on conformity to the moral law to which it, like every other form of human behaviour, must be subject: in other words, its morality depends on the morality of the ends which it pursues and of the means which it employs. **If today we see an almost universal consensus with regard to the value of democracy, this is to be considered a positive “sign of the times”, as the Church’s Magisterium has frequently noted. 88 But the value of democracy stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes. Of course, values such as the dignity of every human person, respect for inviolable and inalienable human rights, and the adoption of the “common good” as the end and criterion regulating political life are certainly fundamental and not to be ignored.
**
71. It is therefore urgently necessary, for the future of society and the development of a sound democracy, to rediscover those essential and innate human and moral values which flow from the very truth of the human being and express and safeguard the dignity of the person: values which no individual, no majority and no State can ever create, modify or destroy, but must only acknowledge, respect and promote.

Consequently there is a need to recover the basic elements of a vision of the relationship between civil law and moral law, which are put forward by the Church, but which are also part of the patrimony of the great juridical traditions of humanity.
Note:
88 Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter *Centesimus Annus *(1 May 1991), 46: AAS 83 (1991), 850; Pius XII, Christmas Radio Message (24 December 1944): AAS 37 (1945), 10-20.
[My emphasis].

In a democracy, if a majority of citizens voted for tyranny, then I would be forced to live under tyranny. Therefore I despise the idea of a literal democracy. You even highlighted the Pope saying the same thing: But the value of democracy stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes. This is the entire purpose of the U.S. Constitution, a document which, along with the Declaration of Independence, never once mentions the word “democracy.” It was written to protect us from democracy and monarchy. We do elect politicians to represent us, but the idea of “representative democracy” is a matter of semantics. The truth is, democracy has never been tried, because even in ancient Athens itself, not everyone was allowed to vote. So really it’s just theory and myth, as is the notion that Americans are ruled by the Constitution.