“Challenge and change is the essence of democracy. The only valid authority for political values is the truth discovered by human thought, which is always open to challenge and change. Democracy requires that all the people (either directly or through elected representatives) be thinking and debating about their laws and policies, constantly and endlessly. Every claim made in the political arena must be open to debate without limit.

And the debate must be open to everyone. No one’s ideas can be excluded. So everyone must have equal access to the terms of the discussion. No special terms, like the words and symbols of a particular religion, can be privileged, because that would exclude all the people who don’t find those words and symbols meaningful. The terms have to be secular.” — Ira Chermus, writing on commondreams.org.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 1:16 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.