When the Law is Right

The psychology and theology of religious extremism and persecution that emerged with the Reformation can uniquely transform our perception of contemporary totalitarian belief systems,such as the national security state,the mass media,and communism.Contemporary courts have faced the significant difficulty,erasing a public moral sense,of intransparent interference by political authorities in court proceedings. Governmental authority defines freedoms so as to suit its own interests,often disguised by a need for national security,while using ambivalent interpretations in court judgments to convince people that they must live with the ordered illusions that these manipulated freedoms define.Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume completed the Reformation¿s project to give political impact to the original Christian principles of regeneration and Golden Rule.Hume¿s model provides a blueprint for any political program today that is concerned with abolishing political repression:guarantee of equal freedom,objective equality of access to civil liberties,self-legislating morally valid law,universal betterment of the human condition,such that no person is left out of the social process.