Good moral judgment

[Belinda]

[athena]

Democracy is an ideology. Government is only one accept of democracy. More important to democracy is the search for truth, and its relationship to morals.

I do not believe anyone got the vote because of compassion. Not women and not black people. Not even white males without property. Our history text used to tell us our voting began with the Magna Carta. English barons forced this on King John. Whenever people gained the vote it is because they could force it on those who did not want to give it to them.

This is also what unions are about, uniting for the power of the people to gain what is right and justice. In 1917 teachers thought teaching the principles of democracy, is what made our country strong and prosperous. We had granges and unions and self help groups like Toastmasters and Toastmistress, because of applying the principles of democracy to our daily lives.

Thanks to democracy, change can be the force of reason, and does not have to be violent force. That is what makes freedom of speech essential to democracy.

Ideologically, democracy is rule by reason, and this is what makes it superior to theologies. With the ideology of democracy people study nature to know truth, rather than a holy book. This is what progresses them beyond believing it is witches and demons that make people sick, to realizing it is germs that cause sickness and infection.

Most important is the connection between truth, morals and government by the people, and what this has to do with liberty. Forgetting what all this has to do with our liberty, threatens us far more than any foreign power.

[Belinda]

True, democracy was not won because the capitalists,the land owners,and others of high status were compassionate. I just saw old archive film of Emily Wilding Davison the suffragette killing herself by throwing herself in front of the King's horse. She was a martyr in the cause of votes for women.

It's very unlikely that any medieval European would have been able to get herself or himself out of the grasp of the feudal system that prevailed there and then. Roman Christianity had much power and the kings were often subservient to Rome.
The rise of Protestantism and the printing press gave power to individuals , even to relatively poor individuals, who could then read the Bible for themselves, and therefore think for themselves without their ideas, such as they were, being filtered through some priest.In this way Christianity carried the message of compassion----suffragettes, and people such as Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandela did not fight for democracy for themselves only but out of compassion for others.
_________________
Socialist

[ape]

[athena]

Belinda, although I am going to argue differently from what you said, I want to begin by expressing the warmth of my heart and joy, generated by you saying something that makes me think about how things evolved as they did. This is the very reason for being here, to be stimulated to think, and when this happens, I am overwhelmed with joy.

I don't think the Barons who forced King John to sign the Magna Carta did so out of compassion. This was a power struggle, not an act of compassion, and this was carried over to the US, where there was consideration of allowing only propertied people the vote. Jefferson fought this, by arguing the people, the masses, did not fight the revolution to give power and authority to a handful of people. Religious communities in the US had a history of shared power, community meetings and government by consensus, and here is where your thoughts might come in.

This is where your thought comes in. Calvinism has a lot to do with the development of capitalism and Puritanism, and other breaks from the mother church. My memory fails me here. I will have to get more information and come back. The question is, how was human consciousness changed from Martin Luther's assumption that God determined who would be masters and who would be servants, to releasing the individual to achieve whatever the individual could achieve, based on his own merit. This is not compassion, but is a religious influence moving toward capitalism and democracy.

grrr. Compassion is an important part of aristocracy. That is, God chosen masters, being loving rather than coldly exploiting of those whom God ordains to be servants. I growl because of the complexity of all this.

Christianity went from wise kings to autocratic kings, to democracy with liberty, back to treating the people like idiots who need authority above them. Capitalism plays a part in this, and so does philosophy, and then public education; play a very strong role in this.

The grounds for good moral judgment are religious and philosophical, belief and logic/reason. The pagans were not lacking in compassion and morals, and US our history includes the terrible things Christians have done to those they did not consider "one of them". The evidence have, leads me to believe, the blessings of humanity comes more from philosophy and democracy and the power of reason, than religion.