When we use the term theocracy, we don’t mean that God takes an office in some capitol city and runs things.
We mean that we’ve surrendered to the assumption that God makes a select group of people wise and moral enough to organize our lives for our own good. The late Neil Peart & pals expressed it through their Priests of the Temples of Syrinx,
We’ve taken care of everything
The words you read
The songs you sing
The pictures that give pleasure
To your eye
One for all and all for one
Work together
Common sons
Never need to wonder
How or why
Secularize that assumption and we have socialism. When we talk about socialism, we don’t believe that all of the people in a society get together to order their common life.
We make the assumption that there is a group of people wise and moral enough (usually credited to education, academic or experiential) to organize our lives for our own good.
The rejection of theocracy does not hinge on arguments about God’s existence or what religion is true or false; we reject it because of the manifest fallacy of the assumption that there is an elite group of people wise and moral enough to exercise unchecked rule over others.
Likewise the rejection of socialism does not hinge on arguments about economic needs or what constitutes fair distribution of finite goods. We (should) reject it because of the manifest fallacy that there is an elite group of people wise and moral enough to exercise unchecked rule over others.
But many of our best and brightest seem to have swallowed the whopper. Takes some real wishful thinking to get us a king.
