{"id":39871,"date":"2025-01-14T15:08:44","date_gmt":"2025-01-14T23:08:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=39871"},"modified":"2025-01-06T15:09:59","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T23:09:59","slug":"liberty-and-its-shortcomings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/liberty-and-its-shortcomings\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberty and its Shortcomings"},"content":{"rendered":"

**What I currently believe about liberal democracy**<\/strong><\/p>\n

Its interesting the the first prompt is to write about what I “believe” about liberal democracy, as opposed to what I know. On first glance of the question I had begun to think about what I know about liberal democracy. I reflected on civics and government classes in middle school and high school. My time working in the Oregon State Legislature for two sessions in the Senate Chambers as the Sergeant-at-Arms and my interest in politics and government and history. But when I reread the question to what I “believe” about liberal democracy, the thought patterned shifted. I loaded those pieces of information and experience into my thoughts, but a more complex and gray response is emerging.<\/p>\n

I do believe that liberal democracy is currently one of the best forms of government that human beings have come up with. It seems to work hard against the world’s broken propensity for power and abuse. While liberal democracy is still broken in many ways, because people are involved. Liberal democracy also operates from the belief that people are equal and can have an equal voice in government and in its democracy. While I believe this ought to be true, in practice it seems it has not always been so. The dichotomy for me might best be expressed by our visit last September to the National Archives where the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights are preserved. This inspiring documents reshaped the way that governments in the West, and around the world, have functioned ever since. Yet preserved in those same documents promising, “freedom and justice for all” is the demeaning decision to count people of color as less than fully human when it came to voting rights and privileges. The “inalienable rights” promised by God, according to our nation’s founders, were only available for white men, it seems.<\/p>\n

**Where do those beliefs come from?**<\/strong><\/p>\n

So where do my complex views on liberal democracy come from? Some of them are from my own education and experience, growing up in America and being taught about the benefits of liberal democracy and its ability to stand up to tyranny and abuse of power. Compared to other systems of government, it does seem to sometimes right the wrongs of prejudice and injustice that human beings in positions of power perpetuate on those who are marginalized and oppressed. But I have also seen power used for personal gain and benefit, and my belief in the Gospel and the Kingdom of God stands in contrast to any authority being used for one’s own benefit at the cost of someone else.<\/p>\n

**What does Patrick Deneen have to do with this?**<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, when I came to Patrick Deneen’s book I noticed a few different things about my beliefs. Deneen is a political theorist who writes this book as a critique of the ways in which liberal democracy has failed to deliver on its promises of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” In the writing of the foreword, editors Hunter and Owen reveal that, “Denee’s is a radical critique, arguing that liberalism needs not reform but retirement. The problem is not that liberalism has been hijacked but that its elevation of individual autonomy was wrong from the start.” (14). This was helpful to read from the editors and a confirmation of something that I already knew. The logical end of a individual liberalism is failure because we were not designed to be independent. My belief and biblical worldview that, left to our own ends, human beings will turn love inwards towards ourselves at the expense of others, is confirmed in Deneen’s assessment. He says in his introduction that liberal democracy is “A political philosophy that was launched to foster greater equity, defend a pluralist tapestry of different cultures and beliefs, protect human dignity, and, of course, expand liberty, in practice generates titanic inequality, enforces uniformity and homogeneity, fosters material and spiritual degradation, and undermines freedom.” (41) Reading Deneen’s assessment of the failure of liberal democracy affirms my beliefs that we need to be transformed and set free from the God of our self and move towards a God of love and care for the other.<\/p>\n

**Challenged with new connections**<\/strong><\/p>\n

But Deneen also challenged my thinking and taught my new connections about the way that Christianity and Enlightenment worked together, and then drifted apart. Deneen states in his conclusion, “The architects of liberalism embraced the language and terms of the classical and Christian traditions even as they transformed both meaning and practice. They especially rejected the classical and Christian understanding of human beings as fundamentally relational creatures\u2014\u201csocial and political animals\u201d\u2014and proposed that liberty, rights, and justice could best be achieved by radically rede\ufb01ning human nature.” (222) This perspective was extremely helpful in understanding the root of the problems that Liberal Democracy has generated, even though it has promised so much freedom and liberation. I’m reminded of how connected we are to one another, to God and to creation. This was a new insight in not only finding the roots of the issue but exploring possible solutions to failed liberal democracy. What does a Beloved Community of people working together for justice and righteousness on earth as it is in heaven really look like in a broken and disconnected world?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

**What I currently believe about liberal democracy** Its interesting the the first prompt is to write about what I “believe” about liberal democracy, as opposed to what I know. On first glance of the question I had begun to think about what I know about liberal democracy. I reflected on civics and government classes in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2712],"class_list":["post-39871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-deneen","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39871"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39872,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39871\/revisions\/39872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}