Tony Blair and John Kerry gave a joint session on Friday to a class at Yale as part of Blair's Faith Foundation work, which was livestreamed across the internet to an audience that fluctuated between 50 and 70. The 6,999,999,930 of you who didn't listen in missed something valuable.

Seven years ago, they were among the most powerful people on the planet. They're still very good politicians. They're smart, but not intellectuals: they are interested in changing the world rather than understanding it, and it is as practical men trying to change the world that they have come to the conclusion that religion matters, won't go away, and will matter more and more.

Their programme of informed tolerance between the major world religions is obviously a good thing in itself. The problem is that it rests on some huge and wobbly assumptions.

Some Muslims believe that everyone in the world is born a Muslim, but unfortunate billions are confused by their parents into believing that they are Christians, Hindus, or atheists. And what struck me, listening to Blair and Kerry talking about the Arab spring, was that they really believe that every child in the world is born a little democrat: it's just that billions are brought up to believe that they are really autocrats, or fundamentalists, or even communists instead.

At the end of the lecture, there were calls invited from listening journalists, so I asked if they did really believe that everyone who thought the question through must be a democrat.

Kerry thought for a moment I meant "Democrat", as in the political party, as opposed to "believer in democracy". After we had got over that little hurdle, it turned out that, yes, they do pretty much believe that deep inside, everyone is a democrat but some benighted people don't understand this about themselves. Blair said that "Democracy … is basically what people, when they are free to choose, choose in the end. Once they have it, they don't tend to give it up."

Kerry was less quotable, but it's pretty clear he thinks that democracy is one of those social inventions, like money, that doesn't have to be imposed on anyone. The advantages are so obvious that it must spread. The process may take years: "This is a long struggle, which is not going to be resolved in my lifetime," but the end is clear. "If people are fully educated" they will choose democracy.

So, I asked, what if they're wrong. "If we're wrong, we're wrong" said Blair. It's a good pragmatist's answer which helps show why he is an effective politician. I don't think Kerry took the possibility seriously at all.

I hope they're right but this is faith-based reasoning. It's hardly eccentric to believe that if democracy can't deliver peace and prosperity it is endangered and can be abandoned. It happened in Europe between 1930 and 1945. It seems to be happening in Russia today. Iranian women gained the right to vote in 1963 – and lost it in 1979.

And this does make a real difficulty for those of us who hold universalist and secular values. We believe that democracy and human rights answer universal and justified demands for justice and dignity. But in much of the world, perhaps most of it, these demands are to be answered by religion. How is tolerance to be practised or discovered between we who see these as political problems, and those who see them as religious ones?

The question can be answered between people who agree how to divide it into what is properly understood as political and what is properly religious. They'll sign up for Blair and Kerry, and a good thing too. But I don't see any basis for tolerance between nations who differ about what is self-evident and absolutely true.

Tolerance may be harder to spread than Tony Blair and John Kerry imagine | Andrew Brown | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

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Interesting debate... Here is my take...

Originally Posted by Zichao

It's hardly eccentric to believe that if democracy can't deliver peace and prosperity it is endangered and can be abandoned.

That's true. Any system has to work in order to be supported and the base of the Maslow pyramid is... the basics it has to deliver.

Quote:

We believe that democracy and human rights answer universal and justified demands for justice and dignity. But in much of the world, perhaps most of it, these demands are to be answered by religion. How is tolerance to be practised or discovered between we who see these as political problems, and those who see them as religious ones?

Do they have to be answered at all? What people want is the end product, justice and dignity. Democracy is one of the more resilient way to provide it but if religious leaders and an organised religious organisation delivers, then, that would be fine too.

The superiority of democracy tend to be its greater flexibility, adaptability and the possibility to sanction leaders without having to resort to bloodshed. But those are practical advantages, not ones of rooted in the democratic substance.

Quote:

But I don't see any basis for tolerance between nations who differ about what is self-evident and absolutely true.

We'll just tolerate them until their own institutions collapse? Eventually, people get fed up with being fucked over by their leaders, be they autocrats or religious. And if autocratic/religious leaders never fuck over their followers, then there is no issue with them, is there?

i.e. it's a slightly false problem.

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It should be remembered that direct democracy is older than organised systems of rulership. there are countervailing factors though, and it is entirely true that people can choose to abandon it too. But those systems, too, have difficulties of their own.