Religion & Law

Michael P. says:  "there *is* an important sense in which we MOJ-bloggers are all liberals - and proudly so" in the sense that most "conservatives" and "liberals" on the US political scene today are merely two sides of the same liberal coin.  I certainly believe that "our commitment to democracy ... cannot be understood except  by appeal to a higher moral authority..." and that all persons are "inviolable in the eyes of God."  But, are these tenets of liberal democracy? 

I understand liberal democracy as a project that cares deeply protecting human rights (negative liberty) with an offshoot of liberal egalitarianism (with elements of positive liberty).  And, I agree with these tenets.  But, what is the foundation for this perspective on human flourishing.  In liberal democracy, individuals are free to pursue their own private conception of the good, but the only public conceptions of the good are that people ought to be free to pursue their own private projects, and for liberal egalitarians, with wealth redistribution, if necessary.  (Am I wrong about this?)  The questions of origin, purpose, and destiny in life are privatized, leading to a very thin public conception of the person.  This very thin public conception of the person  means, I think, that the liberal democratic project cannot adequately answer who counts as a human being and cannot provide the intellectual foundation for its own human rights project because it cannot answer the question of why human beings count.  That is why Pope Benedict is, as Rick says, making certain anthropological claims:    "about authentic, integral human development and flourishing and, therefore, it is a call to take seriously what the truth is -- there is a truth -- about the human person, namely, that he is made in the image of God and loved by Him."  The modern political project (whatever we may call it) is doomed to failure without a thick conception of the person - without a criterion for judging why human beings ought to be respected.

Does liberalism, as Michael P. described it, have the resources to undertake this thickening process?  (I have lots of other questions but this will have to suffice for now).