[stfassisi]

What, then, would be the best manner of defending democracy if what one understands by democracy in a civilization where everything must be presented in a democratic package is actually the defense of some real objective truth or eternal good in a classical-Christian sense? It is, after all, such things which I believe most conservatives truly want to defend. The best thing to do would be to demythologize democracy, to free oneself mentally and spiritually from enslavement to the overbearing democratic god, to reduce democracy once again to the level of a means as opposed to an end, and to subject that means to examination and criticism by reason.

[stfassisi]

That focus has to be upon the question of what the objective order of things itself demands; what the law of God and of nature necessitates, and what virtues one needs to fulfill it. It is concern for obedience to divine and natural law, with their emphasis upon what the individual owes to others that has been the real source of western excellence in building order and promoting the perfection of the human person, and not repeated reiteration of the need for popular sovereignty and human rights, with their emphasis upon what is owed to individuals. This is especially true in the modern world, where individuals are defined as grasping bundles of insatiable desires incapable of respecting anything and anybody anyway. Learning what the law is and how to fulfill it is a task that opens up the jewel box of the whole of the glorious tradition of the West, and pinpoints the dangers of working with the flawed vision of the two hundred fifty year tradition of the Enlightenment.