Are We Persons or individuals? Is our government a government of, by and for the people, or is it a government of the masses? In answering these questions one learns the basic principles of politics and government. But in order to understand them better, a little history of what has happened in the last two or more centuries will be helpful. Human personality has been submerged or forgotten through several successive stages:
1. The first stage was the emphasis on humanity during the eighteen century. Humanity is indeed sacred, but those who glorified humanity often used it as a cloak for the gravest injustices and cruelties to certain humans. A Dostoevsky character said that he loved mankind in general and could give learned discourses on the necessity of loving mankind, but that if he were left in a room half a day with a man who had a peculiar way of blowing his nose, he began to despise him. Humanity was loved but not always the human. Rousseau, who glorified humanity in his politics, also deserted each of his children immediately after birth.
2. The second stage is Communism, when humanity degenerates into the masses. Masses is the Communist word; it signifies the absorption of persons into the collectivity of the state. The masses are made up not of persons but of ants; not of self-determined individuals but of those totally determined by propaganda and dictation; not of men and women enjoying freedom and conscience, but of stony unit with no other conscience than state conscience, and no other morality than the dictator morality, and no other freedom than the freedom of the whole.
3. The tremendous influence of the false humanitarianism which did not love each human, and the rise of Communism, which absorbed humanity into a dictatorial mold, have had their effect even on democracies in which not humanity, not the masses, but the group becomes all holy. The same basic principle runs through all three: namely, the person is subordinated to the collectivity. In the democratic group, personal creativity is submerged; every man must fit into a kind of mold. He reads the same news, hears the same newscasters, listens to the same television programs, reads mostly the same books. No one knows who is responsible for group opinion; the authoritarianism is anonymous – it is always “they”. They say, “They are wearing.” In education, professors will be less interested in teaching truth than in improving group reactions; in business, he who shows creativity is knocked on the head until he is down to the level of the uncreative majority; machines have been invented in which everyone pushes a button hidden near the chair, and a meter registers not individual votes, but the group reaction.
The “humanity” of the French Revolution, the “masses” of the Communist revolution, and the “group” of modern socialism of the democratic societies have all conspired in varying degrees to destroy personality and creativity and true leadership. The reaction will come when society reintroduces the following basic considerations:
1. The unit of society is not the individual, but the person. An orange, a cow, a stone are all individuals, but an orange, a cow, and a stone are not persons. Individuals are replaceable; persons are irreplaceable and unique. When one buys lemons, one can say to the storekeeper, “Take this one and give me another.” But one cannot replace a mother or father, or any person in the world.
2. A government is solid when it is not of the masses, but of the people. Masses are made up of individuals; “People are made up of persons.” Hence, the Constitution of the United States is the constitution of “people” . . . “We the people . . . ” Masses are determined from the outside by propaganda and fear and force and terror; people are persons determined from the inside by freedom and enlightened conscience.
3. A person does not belong to the state in the totality of his being. He has certain relationships which transcend the state. That is why a truly democratic government recognizes freedom of religion and worship. A person is the key to the future political developments of the world. Our Lord made a person more important than the universe.
E Pluribus Unum
+ Fulton J. Sheen D.D., Ph.D., 1958
** Originally published in ‘Bishop Sheen Writes’ – Where are the “Persons”? ; audio “Catholic Hour”; and in the book, ‘On Being Human: Reflections, On Life and Living’, Fulton J. Sheen, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1982, pg 145-147.
