Thursday 27 January 2011

Popular or right?

Thinking about ethics and politics; how popular and right are two very different things, and any action may be:
  • Popular and right
  • Popular and wrong
  • Unpopular and right
  • Unpopular and wrong
But modern thinking (or the lack thereof) has a double tendency that tends to destroy these distinctions: the glorification of democracy as the only absolute value; the denigration of concepts of right or wrong as absolutes, reducing them to (in the post-modern world) social constructs of particular times, places and political groupings.

And the pollsters said to Our Lord: do not go to Jerusalem, for they will kill you there.

And Our Lord went to Jerusalem, because it was the right thing to do.

And the pollsters were right about His being killed there...

And Our Lord was right to go there.

2 comments:

Richard Collins said...

Ethics and politics? Isn't that a contradiction in terms?

Ben Trovato said...

Nearly...