Common Values for All by Ofir Haivry

Common Values for All

by Ofir Haivry

Yediot Ahronot, September 2009

Education Minister Gideon Saar's initiative promoting teaching values has encountered opposition from a coalition of postmodernists, the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, and ultra-Orthodox parties.  The groups opposed to the initiative claim that state inculcation of common values is opposed to the democratic right of every group to define its own value system.  This, however, is a spurious claim, as no democracy can exist without common values – not only democratic values, but also core values, which reinforce the ties of the citizenry to their country and justify the country's existence.

A democratic regime can only exist on the basis of a shared system of common, core values.  From time to time, arguments are presented that claim that "democracy" miraculously provides a system of values as well, that is to say that a democracy can be based solely on purely democratic values. Such claims are either confused or intentionally misleading, as democracy is founded on playing by the "rules of the game" – but the rules have no meaning without "the game," i. e., the values, goals and symbols that are unique to every state and society.

There are, of course, democratic rules without which no such regime can exist (elections, freedom of speech, etc.) – rules that can be termed "democratic values."  But these will always make up only a part of the complete fabric of common values, some of which may even be antidemocratic (as for example the restriction allowing only native-born citizens to serve as heads of state) and whose combination is essential for maintaining a stable democratic regime.  This value system is often described as "Liberalism," hence the expression "Liberal Democracy."  This is, however, a misleading term, as it is impossible to avoid recognizing the fact that some of those shared values are not liberal by any means.  One might say that the common values that form the basis of a democracy always represent the founding tradition unique to that state.

We might easily discern this if we observe the world's leading democracies.  In most cases, the common values at their core represent a tradition set by their national history.  This pattern is particularly conspicuous in constitutional monarchies, in which the position of head of state is inherited (and often also the head of the state church), as is the case in Britain, Japan, Scandinavian countries, the Low Countries and a few more countries around the globe, in which national state history is manifest in the political, educational and religious institutions, (many times also in the historical districting), and in state symbols.

In other countries, democracy is based on "Republican" values which assume different national models.  The US and Germany have a federal constitutional system which, representative of their national histories, assigns greater importance to state rights in their political systems and allows the president to be voted into office without a majority of voters.  In France, Republicanism is presented as a mark of an all-inclusive citizenship model – though in truth it represents nothing other than the tradition of values particular to the French Revolution: centralized government, cultural assimilation and extreme secularism.  In countries such as Israel, Greece and Ireland, which experienced bitter and protracted struggles for independence, the value systems assign a place of importance to their national heritage and struggle for independence.

In every Democracy there will also always be those who come out against the shared common values: in the US there are advocates of Southern States' rights or Native American rights; in Germany and Italy – radical Left-wing groups, such as the Baader Meinhof gangs and the Red Brigades; in Spain and France – Basque and Corsican separatists.  There is, indeed, a justification for allowing minority groups a certain degree of freedom in order to educate their youth in accordance with their culture and religion, as long as they do not go against the state's values.  But any democracy that will not insist that its youths are brought up on its common shared core values is effectively undermining its own existence.

Dr. Ofir Haivry is an Associate Fellow in the Institute for Philosophy, Political Theory and Religion at the Shalem Center.