The politics of values poses a grave threat to democracies

By Ralf Dahrendorf

Friday, Mar 18, 2005,Page 9

The debate about the US elections has still not abated. How did President George W. Bush manage to get 3 million votes more than Senator John Kerry, and, in addition, to have a Republican majority elected in both houses of Congress? There is not much agreement on the answers, but two themes recur in many explanations.

One is personality. At a time of uncertainty and threat, people had more confidence in the president they knew than in the candidate who seemed unproven. The second theme is values. People voted for a set of values rather than for specific policies. Indeed, some (it is said) agreed with Kerry's policies but nevertheless gave their vote to Bush, because they felt "at ease" with his general attitudes. Clearly, the US is now deeply divided in electoral terms.

An arch of blue (Democratic) states in the East, North, and West spans a huge red (Republican) area in the middle and the South. More than that, the divisions are reproduced at the local level.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2005/03/18/2003246768

This, at any rate, is the main risk that democratic countries face, for the politics of values is a dangerous development. It reintroduces fundamental divisions in societies whose greatest democratic achievement was precisely to banish fundamentalism from politics. Enlightened public debate must be a dispute about policies contained by a community of values. Insisting on this is therefore a primary objective of the politics of freedom.

How true!

Thanks for posting.