That’s the title of George Weigel’s excellent essay detailing the similarites between Pope John Paul II’s statement on Human Rights in 1995, and President Bush’s second inaugeral. The Pope and the President both declared that:
1. There is a universal human nature. However different human beings are, there is, at bottom, a common humanity composed of common characteristics, longings, aspirations, and temptations.
2. There is a universal moral law inscribed in this common human nature, a moral law we can know by reflecting on those common human experiences.
3. This universal moral law teaches us the dignity of the human person, from which we can deduce certain political truths: basic human rights are inalienable; government exists to protect and advance those rights; rights imply responsibilities.
4. That moral law and those political truths set a horizon of achievement in history. The defense of freedom is a moral obligation, not simply an exercise in self-interest.
Thus, Wiegel suggests that although the Bush administration and the Vatican differed on the prudence of the Iraq War, and may well disagree again, there is basis for cooperation on many issues, “because the world’s leading political power and the world’s leading moral authority are both committed to the defense and advance of freedom in the world, over against those so-called ‘realists’ who insist that ‘stability’ is the goal in world politics.”
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