The crisis in our affairs, in the confrontation between the United States and Islamic fundamentalism, is little understood in high places, on either side of the great divide. President Bush has declared that there is a desire for democracy in the hearts of all people everywhere, an assertion hard to square with the prevalence of tyrannies in the greater part of the world. The conflict between Shia and Sunni in the Islamic world resembles nothing so much as that between Catholics and Protestants in 16th century Europe. This reminds us that religious intolerance was transformed, in the American Revolution and in the American Founding, first into religious tolerance, and then into the equal natural human right to the free exercise of religion. It is this transformation, which occurred nowhere else in the world before it occurred here, that laid the foundation of constitutional government and the rule of law. Only by removing sectarian differences from the political process, could political differences be resolved by majority rule. No minority will permit any majority to determine its faith by its votes. Yet in the Islamic world, virtually all political differences are sectarian. The Republican party platform upon which Abraham Lincoln was elected, asserted without equivocation that the principles of the Declaration of Independence are embodied in the Constitution. Yet this is denied here today by virtually all constitutional jurists. The crisis of the West is therefore a crisis within the West no less than with its external enemies. Abraham Lincoln is today a prophet without honor. Harry V. Jaffa is Professor Emeritus of Government at Claremont McKenna College and the Claremont Graduate School.

Author:  Harry V Jaffa

Duration: 02:06:20

Published: 2007-04-03

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