tw wrote:
Quote:
|
Democracy means the people must take responsibility - still a foreign concept to many people. This requirement still is not understood in many parts of the world where government and religion are considered same.
|
This brings to mind the way in which many former Soviet citizens have become, and remain, disgruntled at the way their new government is no longer as intimately involved in all of their personal decision-making as the previous one was. Collectivism - like any 'good' religion - had all of the answers, even if it did tend to treat people like ignorant children.
I have always maintained that members of the human race, generally, are motivated by a desire for simple, authoritative answers, and it really doesn't matter all that much who is providing them. We tend to like it when there's a written 'handbook' to which we can always refer, or a spokesman who can come out and explain how we should be feeling or thinking about any given subject.
Given that, and especially combined with a tradition that has really known and taught nothing else, I can see where the idea of a truly secular government might be anathema to many people...and I'm speaking of people in America pretty nearly to the same extent as those in Iraq.