Category; Politics
Tony Blair has revealed that he was discouraged from ending a Prime Ministerial broadcast with the phrase “God bless Britain” – see here.
‘I remember we had this debate on and off but finally one of the civil servants said in a very po-faced way “I just remind you Prime Minister, this is not America” in this very disapproving tone, so I gave up the idea.
‘I think it is a shame that you can’t since it is obviously part of what you are.
I think it’s a shame too Tony. I think it’s a shame you hid your intense religiosity from the voters; ‘we don’t do God’ your consigliere Alastair Campbell once said – see here. But you did do religion Tony, you just kept it secret. And you waited till you left office to formally to convert to Catholicism.
In ancient Athens it was the primary task of the legislator to help ensure citizens had good character – see here; how far we have come in millennia of political development. In the ancient system it would have been unthinkable for a leader to hold values in secret.
We do have communal, socially developed values in the form of laws and judgments and also in policy and wars. Tony Blair’s government introduced several thousand new criminal offences alone – see here.
When you are making moral decisions on behalf of your country, those you seek to represent have the right to understand your moral worldview.
The ancient greeks would have thought that to deny them that would be fraudulent and reprehensible, but then they lived an awfully long time ago.
