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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 17, No. 15. July 29, 1953

A World Elsewhere

page 2

A World Elsewhere

Democracy today, clinging to its last vestiges of Christian culture is seeking a revival. The failure of democracy it the failure of Christianity. Without Christianity democracy cannot live; with it Communism cannot live. Fundamental as these facts may be they are glassed over and ignored everywhere.

The most perfect the democracy, the tower are the controls: in a perfect democracy, it it envisaged that government would not exist to control and regulate but to guard and arbitrate. Yet it it freely cascaded that without the controls which exist in democratic government today a few people would benefit at the expense of the many. As we tee it the proportion is this. The freer the society the fewer the external controls.

The only argument in favour of control is the avoidance of injustice. At the controls increase the purity of the democracy fades. The more self willed and unresponsive to moral code: a people are the more controls there must be to force the members of a society to render justice one to another in other words at self control vanishes state control takes its place.

Man is by nature selfish. If he has no reasons for being generous at his own personal expense he will in most cases not be generous. He seeks after wealth and power almost heedlessly. If state controls are to be removed, then self control must take its place and if self control it to be accepted by persons against their nature, they must be given some supernatural reason for accepting it, and this is the answer which Christianity provides. In this light the reason for the decay of society it obvious. Lacking Christian virtues it places a false value upon material things, and cannot tell its members save in terms of force, why they should not transgress against one another.

The other thing which we indicated as asiomatic, is the fact that communism cannot live with Christianity Communists will try to deny this to say that the two can coesist but it is clear that they cannot, Christianity depends for its force upon a belief in the existence of God. Communism depends upon the denial of the existence of God.

If individual rights are to stem from the state and not from the nature of man then there can be no God for to admit a God would be to deny this power to the state. And what it the end of communist philosophy? Surely it is the classless society, a paradise on earth, which requires for its justification an acceptance of the fact that there it no paradise elsewhere. For this says communism is man's and. If is purely phyisical one it must therefore deny the supernatural and thus Christianity it abhorrent to it in a communist state the conflict between the nature of man at it it and at the communists would like it to be must be such that the teaching of Christianity on this point would have to be excluded in other words communism and christianity are incompatible

Too readily do we accept the indolent attitude of mind of others too seldom are we prepared to form our own judgment. Too easily do we render lip service to Christianity and forgot what it means.

"There it a world elsewhere."

—F.L.C.