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April 9, 2007
The Reformation of Democracy
In the fifteenth century Europe was "Christendom". Most of the continent, aside from those edges which had been infiltrated by Muslims or Russians or Northeners, was united in its common understanding of the values of Christianity and the leadership from Rome. There was more common purpose in Christendom than in the nationalism of the large and small states of which it was comprised. That status had been created over a thousand years.
Throughout that century and the next cries for "Reformation" revealed the flawed and corrupt power structures that hid behind this blackmail of virtue and piety. Academics, revolutionaries and eventually leaders of states, responding to both obvious dissemblings and horrors and, at certain moments, to particular events, people and pressures, set aside the basis of religious leadership and slowly created first Humanism and then eventually Democracy based in individual and conjoined nations.
Now we see the values of democracy have become flawed in the same way as those of Christendom. The preaching of leaders drunk with their own power has become sanctimonious and discredited. The official operations are self serving and hidden from the public
It is time now for the Reformation of Democracy with a new common virtue and purpose.
The Reformation of the 1400 and 1500's coincided with the Renaissance and pursuit of better understanding of the past. I see no harm in that occurring again.
Posted by Perkins at April 9, 2007 9:19 AM