Melbourne Unitarian Peace Memorial Church

The two greatest obstacles to democracy are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it. [1941]

I can’t claim the credit for this quote but how true it is. So it is important in the search for truth to examine how democratic is our democracy? Who controls that democracy? Is it really democracy as we need it? If not how do we get the kind that we want and can we rely on the two parties of capitalism, labor or liberal to provide it for us? ..": Noah Webster - (1758-1843) American patriot and scholar, author of the 1806 edition of the dictionary that bears his name, the first dictionary of American English usage said

"If citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded”

How wise are these words and how accurate. Do they reflect the policies pursued by the previous liberal government and those of the current Labor government. Have we neglected our duty by placing unprincipled men and women in office? What control do we have over individuals that are appointed by parties? Have governments become corrupted?, have laws been made, not for the public good?, Has public revenue been squandered? And have the rights of citizens been violated or disregarded?

Undoubtedly in answer to these questions we can only say yes.

I suggest that what we have as democracy is really an elected dictatorship where we vote once every four years for people we don’t know and who then proceed to ignore our views till the next election. Is this real democracy?

As Unitarians and citizens, we need to be prepared to ask these hard questions and accept the hard answers, and having done so, then we have the responsibility to concern ourselves with the very large problems this process will expose, and determine what role if any our church and indeed all churches should play in challenging the inequities arising from Liberal and ALP policies.

I borrowed my title from Shakespeare ‘a pox on both their houses’, because I don’t believe we will ever get the kind of democracy we need and deserve under either of the major political parties and we can look at some prime examples to demonstrate this.

Democracy in the capitalist system under which we live, is determined by the minority who rule. They use many weapons to control us, they manipulate our views via the mass media, they threaten, by cutting funds to voluntary bodies who publicly disagree with them; by threats of legal action as with Noel Washington, by loss of employment through the sack, and they can and do co-erce with promises that are rarely kept.

In countries without bourgeois democracy they use more direct methods such as described by Tolstoy who said ‘By means of the army, the clergy, the police, the threat of bayonets, bullets, prisons, workhouses, gallows, the rulers compel enslaved people to continue to live in their stupefaction and slavery’.

Our experience and the 14 steps to fascism on the wall of our church has shown that it is not a large step from bourgeois democracy to those worse excesses.

Indeed Milton Mayer in his book ‘They Thought They Were Free’ written in 1955 said this of fascist Germany and how true it is today “
"What no one seemed to notice. . . was the ever widening gap. . .between the government and the people. . . And it became always wider. . . the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway . . . (it) gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about . . .and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated . ..  by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. . .
 
Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'. . . must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. . . .Each act. . . is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow.
 
You don't want to act, or even talk, alone. . . you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' . . .But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. . . .You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father. . . could never have imagined." :

Across the world, the US Government is the superpower who dictates our foreign policy as well as our economic and political stance and both parties accept this dictatorial relationship. This is the superpower that is planning to spend almost one trillion of American taxpayers dollars bailing out the very predatory gamblers who have brought the world’s economy to the brink of collapse. The money to be used to do this is the money that should be used to provide the American people with their right to decent services which they currently do not enjoy, health care, housing, secure jobs, first class education.

Some figures about the US Hedge funds who helped create the current economic meltdown.

Since George Bush entered office in 2001 his policies have added 3 trillion dollars to federal borrowing which now totals 9 trillion dollars.
The top 10 hedge funds in 2006 held 157 billion in assets, and the 26 leading hedge fund managers earned an average of $363 million each in 2005, James Simons of Renaissance Technologies earned 1.5 billion alone.

These are the people who are urging the American government to buy their bad debts and fund their future profits. They love their democracy. Our Prime Minister in the US is urging the government to pass the almost 1 trillion bail out package which will do nothing to help Americans losing their homes.

Milton Mayer talked of deliberately generated fear which allows democratic rights to be curtailed, the same fears our government imposed about terrorism.

Neither Labor or Liberal Governments in Australia acknowledged that the problems of terrorism arose from the exploitation, annexation, homelessness and landlessness of desperate people and he didn’t acknowledge that terrorism rears its head as the only possible form of response from people from whom all other forms of action have been prevented.

There is little difference between the foreign policies of both sides of parliament and the loss of democratic rights as a result of anti terrorist legislation are supported by both parties..

Look at this example: For which I have to thank Lyle who sent it to me. This defies all logic and we wait to see if the Labor Government will throw out this policy.

It is undemocratic and farcical.

While we don’t have the kind of democracy we desire, That isn’t to say that the bourgeois democracy in which we live is not worth defending. Despite its shortcomings the democracy we have must be fiercely fought for because the alternative is fascism.

It has been said quite correctly, that If we don’t learn the lessons of history we are doomed to repeat them.

Fascism is a last resort of capital, it much prefers to control the mass of the people with the illusion that by voting governments in or out we have a democracy. This has worked well for the ruling class, it is, if you like, an escape valve and the media is used to ensure that the illusion remains.

Today clearly we can see that regardless of who governs very little improves for the vast mass of the people.

Homelessness, ill health, poor hospitals, state schools, run down and deprived of funds, transport, pensions, all remain inadequately serviced and largely ignored, lip service is given to proposals to alleviate these situations, yet government come and go and little changes. Wars are declared against the wishes of the majority, uranium is mined even though most Australians oppose it. The Aboriginal people are denied democracy and justice, publicly owned services are privatized against the people’s wishes, the list goes on.

In Friday’s Age in an article The Great Lie about private health cover, a senior lecturer in health studies at Monash University, said ‘the billions spent by the government to prop up private health funds would almost certainly be better spent on direct support to the public health system. The 30% plus insurance rebate will cost 3.5 billion dollars this year which, the writer said is the equivalent of the annual running costs of about six royal Melbourne hospitals. Only in our capitalist system does this make sense. This happens under both Labor and Liberal Governments.

We also know for a fact that legislation to punish workers for defending their democratic rights is still being used and by a government pledged to repeal it.

In the Age Thursday 11th September, Julia Gillard is quoted responding to death threats supposedly made against an executive of Bovis Lend Lease, saying ‘there is no place in any Australian workplace for threats of violence or intimidation against anyone’ Her memory is conveniently short, intimidation was and still is used against individual unionists and unions in workplaces around the country by employers. We haven’t forgotten the intimidation of wharfies by hooded thugs and rotweiler dogs. Gillard went on to ‘vow to keep strong enforcement powers when the ABCC is replaced in 2010’. This from a woman purported to be of the left of the ALP. From a party which got into power on the back of the trade union campaign on workchoices.

And how very timely that this so called death threat against the CEO of Bovis Lend Lease should emerge just as the campaign to oppose the ABCC is gathering momentum. A little like the Reichstag Fire in Germany.

Every Australian wants to live in a democracy.

But what kind of democracy? Do we want the kind that Baroness Thatcher supported when she thanked Pinochet, the fascist dictator for restoring democracy to Chile. Whose kind of democracy do we need?

And why is all this an issue for a small Unitarian Church in Australia’s 21st century?

It is because we follow a tradition, a proud tradition which was so well expressed by Raymond V. Holt in the preface to his wonderful history of Unitarianism in Britain. He said his book aims to illustrate the spirit or ethos of the ways in which their faith, Unitarianism, found expression in social life and thought.

He went on to say in chapter 1 that ‘Unitarians have been leaders in most of the changes which have transformed the England of the 18th Century into the England of the present day’… Unitarians were thought of by some as the ‘vanguard of the age’.

In this church, we like to think that we are continuing that role. That we play an active part in issues that dominated the hearts and minds of Unitarians of the past, that of civil and religious liberty, housing, education in all its forms, better public health and an economy that meets the needs of those that create the wealth, not those who profit from the wealth that those ordinary Australians produce..

Some Unitarians believe that the church should stay out of politics, that we should instead concentrate on thinking good thoughts and sharing good deeds.

Others think that politics as it affects us all is the highest aspect of ethical religion. These are always matters for friendly debate and conclusions.

This church has for decades believed in the latter and this church member believes that churches must play a much bigger role in determining the kind of society we need. Churches of the the religious right use their church muscle to push the country to a more conservative and reactionary position, shouldn’t we use our little muscle to oppose that?.

Generally, we are united in our determination to make Australia fairer and the world a better place, but there are many issues that confuse or divide us, and how do we resolve those. How do we ‘seek the truth’ when this world of ours is dominated and controlled by those with wealth and power, who control the media in all its forms, how do we determine what is true and what is false?

Well, we engage with speakers on a wide range of issue and we test out their ideas and theories in the crucible of our own experience and we share those experiences with each other.

We know that when workers are jailed for doing their paid job, the democratic system shudders, when Aboriginal people are not allowed to make decisions about their own future, the democratic system falters,

When governments refuse to listen to the people and proceeds with policies rejected by the majority, democracy is in crisis.

That all of these have continually occurred under both Labor and Liberal Governments should be of deep concern to every democrat. Both Labor and Conservative governments around the capitalist world are united in their total opposition to any system that ends their power and their control.

They do not rule in our interests, they do not provide for our needs, they do not serve the people.

So I say to you today, a pox on both their houses the future lies in our hands and we can no longer rely on political parties in this system to meet our needs