Religion in general has come under a lot of criticism in recent years. It is becoming more and more common-place to claim that religion is not only misguided but the root of much evil in the world. However, it is far too simplistic to claim that it is an institutional belief in God which has caused so many of the world’s problems. Rather it is a belief in something (anything) which claims to have a have a monopoly on truth that causes most of the evil in society. As such, we should all fear it when any ideology is accepted by a society as a given.
Derived from attacks against religion, secularism has become the watch-word for state action. Lip service is still paid to the union between church and state in the British constitution, but when it comes to government action, religion must take a back seat. Indeed, it must be pulled along clinging onto the back bumper. Of course, most people do not have a problem with this. As we all know, the Bible does teach us that homosexuality is wrong, and adulteresses should be stoned to death, and implicitly that the earth is only 6,000 years old. But for society to accept uncompromisingly the default position is equally unfortunate.
An example of the default position to creationism is Darwinian evolution. Although it is ridiculous to claim that an adherence to Darwinian evolution leads inevitably to eugenics – the evolution of the emotion of self-sacrifice discredits the notion of ‘survival of the fittest’ in every case – any idea is necessarily debased for wider consumption. This is why the inaccurate belief that evolution means ‘survival of the fittest’ has gained currency. When a state accepts this position uncompromisingly, allowing simplistic generalisations to take hold, it is not ludicrous to see how it could lead to a policy of eugenics. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
This is the problem when one idea holds a monopoly on truth in a society. If an idea is taken as read, it can be moulded to suit the will of those in power. It is now accepted in the West that democracy is absolutely right. The underlying principle behind the Iraq War for neo-conservatives was the unwavering belief that it was right to bring democracy to a country otherwise in the grips of dictatorship. It is perfectly acceptable for individuals to accept this position, but when a society’s assumption becomes a policy of its state, alternate ideas cannot be voiced. Opposition to the Iraq War was based on the idea that it was not a war that should be fought, not that it may be wrong in principle to bring democracy to a country that had never known it.
The solution is to avoid state ideology, even if it is secular or democratic. A state needs to adopt one principle over another to function (after all, the state needs a political ideology in order to form a government), but it should not adopt such an ideology as a given in the execution of policy. For example, the argument that Britain is a ‘secular country’ should not rear its ugly head in the debate on faith schools. This argument necessarily makes religion something alien to British society in principle, thereby allowing the state to take actions without recognising the alternate position. As such, the state can take unilateral action without debate: maybe there is a God; perhaps democracy is not an end in itself for every country; conceivably nationalised industries are bad. The state must not be allowed to hold a monopoly on truth.
This is not to say that individual people cannot hold monopolistic ideas. It is impossible for someone to both believe in God and at the same time not believe in God. Either they believe, do not believe, or have yet to make up their mind. But the state cannot and should not make the same judgment. Otherwise individual liberty to believe something different is trampled and cannot be debated in society.
With monopoly comes exploitation and abuse. And a good way to prevent monopoly is individualism.
Tags: individualism, monopoly, religion, secularism, statism
No Constitution is morally colourless. The US Declaration of Independece famously begins: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” That is certainly a declaration of ideology.” The Constitution proper begins “We the people”, indicating, to which Mr Sharpe has alluded, a state ideology based on a belief in Democracy. France and other liberal democracies are much the same.
A.V.Dicey, the grand-daddy of English constitutional theory, argued that the British Constitution was primarily structural rather than normative, and this is an orthodoxy that has survived to the present day. The conventional standpoint is that Parliament is absolutely sovereign, and an Act of Parliament is “legally perfect”. Perhaps Mr. Sharpe is simply betraying an acquaintance with the British system, and a failure to appreciate the revolutionary – and therefore value-loaded – genesis of most of the world’s states.
Then he said this: “A state needs to adopt one principle over another to function (after all, the state needs a political ideology in order to form a government)”
In Britain, no clear delineation can be made between state and government. This may make us sound like some sub-Saharan dictatorship, but the truth is that governing and legislating are performed by an increasingly empowered executive. In the UK, the government’s ideology is the state’s; we have no system of substantive judicial review of statute.
For example, David Miliband in this month’s prospect magazine talks of his personal belief in liberal interventionism as the best vehicle for foreign policy. That, it seems, has also become the ideology of the United Kingdom. We need a government (don’t we?) so we need people to fill it. This necessity means our state ideologies are the personal ones of our governors; in the US, it is the personal ideologies of the founding fathers, in France the revolutionaries.
Unsurprisingly, power is with the powerful. State ideologies are a political inevitability.