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post-modernist school is that the supporters of Bush and Ratzinger are bearers of a much deeper and more ancient tradition. By which I mean respect for tradition itself. Ratzinger, the music-lover who plays Mozart on the piano for recreation, and converses with the former Frankfurter Habermas, was a leading reformer during Vatican II. Now he defends the Latin liturgy and wants correction of what he considers to have been the errors of many 1960s Church reformers. Furthermore he reiterates the basic traditional teachings on family and sex of all three Abrahamic religions. Shortly before his election Ratzinger set out his guiding principles in a homily guaranteed not to endear him to post-modernists: "We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires." So if Europe is to survive, he says, it will have to somehow recover its Christian roots. Bush, not notable for high-brow tastes, was once something of a play-boy. Now he defends "family values" and wants to purge the courts of legislating judges, especially those who would force changes in domestic life and sexual conduct into law whether voters like it or not. Despite all the accusations against him the U.S. President takes a traditional American constitutional stance: toleration for all religions, and equal toleration for those who profess none. But he proclaims his own faith and never fails to invoke the Divinity's protection of America, at the same time declaring repeatedly that his quarrel is not with Islam but with tyranny.
disagreement. What sparks indignation is the pro-family stance of both figures. Equally noteworthy is that non-believers are similarly unconcerned with theological matters and concentrate attention on moral questions.
civilization because they conduce to orderly social life, itself a condition for increasing prosperity and human wellbeing. None of this means that Hayek is against innovation when need arises, or change when it is due: but he believes that when in doubt there must be a presumption in favour of tradition. This, too, is the approach we find today among many non-believers in the presence of religious defenders of social conventions going back hundreds of years. It is especially apposite in the case of Europe. Ratzinger sees Europe as under threat, and though he may be looking at its empty churches, he is also very concerned over its empty cradles. Today a declining population that has abandoned its work ethic for hedonistic pursuits faces a growing inflow of peoples who cling stubbornly to traditions that are the opposite of permissive. And these immigrants are rapidly multiplying thanks to European science and the welfare provisions of liberal western states. Pope Benedict XVI is no unconscious transmitter of tradition. He may have religious grounds for his moral judgments, but he has made it clear that he also has pragmaticmotives. It is these which are shared by non-believers. The internal problems facing President Bush in America on the moral plane may not be as acute as those which face the Pope in Europe, but similar ruptures with tradition threaten American well-being, and it is clear that Bush also has pragmatic motives for concern. This is why he too finds support among those non-believers who, like Hayek, accept that when in doubtand when we have nothing better to guide usthere is an unmistakable presumption in favour of tradition. (Publicado originalmente no The Culture Cult.)