We too easily forget that every good service the government provides comes with a growth in its regulatory power. And that power can be used in ways nobody imagined in the past.<\/p>\n
We also forget Tocqueville\u2019s warning that democracy can become tyrannical precisely because it\u2019s so sensitive to public opinion. If anyone needs proof, consider what a phrase like \u201cmarriage equality\u201d\u009d has done to our public discourse in less than a decade. It\u2019s dishonest. But it works.<\/p>\n
That leads to the key point I want to make here. The biggest problem we face as a culture isn\u2019t gay marriage or global warming. It\u2019s not abortion funding or the federal debt. These are vital issues, clearly. But the deeper problem, the one that\u2019s crippling us, is that we use words like justice, rights, freedom and dignity without any commonly shared meaning to their content.<\/p>\n
We speak the same language, but the words don\u2019t mean the same thing. Our public discourse never gets down to what\u2019s true and what isn\u2019t, because it can\u2019t. Our most important debates boil out to who can deploy the best words in the best way to get power.<\/b> Words like \u201cjustice\u201d\u009d have emotional throw-weight, so people use them as weapons. And it can\u2019tbe otherwise, becausethe religious vision and convictions that once animated American life are no longer welcome at the table. After all, what can \u201chuman rights\u201d\u009d mean if science sees nothing transcendent in the human species? Or if science imagines a trans-humanist future? Or if science doubts that a uniquely human \u201cnature\u201d\u009d even exists? If there\u2019s no inherent human nature, there can be no inherent natural rights\u201d\u201dand then the grounding of our whole political system is a group of empty syllables.<\/p>\n