Claim. Modern democracy began grounded in Christian “equality before God” (object consciousness toward divine Subject) but secularized into “equality before the law,” producing subject-vs-subject conflict that manifests as terrorism, divorce, AIDS, drugs, and family collapse — and the remedy is God-centered democracy that Unification Thought calls “Heavenly Fatherism” or “Fraternalism centered on the Heavenly Father.”
Elaboration. Lee traces democracy’s genealogy (C. “Connected Being Consciousness” and Democracy):
Original foundation: John Locke (1632-1704) grounded democracy in natural rights against Hobbes’s bellum omnium contra omnes. Natural law originated with the Stoics, but the theory of equality of rights derives from Christian “equality before God” — meaning equality of all people as objects before God the Subject. Originally democracy rested on object consciousness and consciousness of order.
Functional period: After its origin, democracy developed soundly because Christian spirit kept object consciousness toward God alive in citizens.
Decline: Christianity secularized under scientific developments and materialism; “equality before God” transformed into “equality before the law.” Object consciousness toward divine Subject disappeared; only subject consciousness remained. Citizens now relate to one another as subject-to-subject — “essentially that of mutual repulsion,” analogous to repulsion between positive electrical charges.
Symptoms: “Murder, burglary, arson, terrorism, destruction, narcotics, injustice, corruption, deterioration of sexual morality, increase in divorce, collapse of the family, the AIDS epidemic, and sexual crimes are spreading to every democratic society.” Lee identifies these as not contingent social problems but logical consequences of subject-subject repulsion released when the Christian buffer dissolved.
Remedy: First, provide rational proof of God’s existence so contemporary people can re-embrace Him. Then object consciousness returns, citizens respect superiors, leaders love subordinates, government and people reciprocate loyalty and love. Unification Thought labels this God-centered democracy “Heavenly Fatherism” or “Fraternalism centered on the Heavenly Father” — because “There can be no brothers and sisters without parents, nor parents without children.”
The argument is structurally a Tocqueville-meets-Moon thesis: democracy without religious substrate self-destructs. The diagnostic move that democracy was “imbued with elements of conflict from its very beginning” because equality-of-rights logically generates subject-subject repulsion is strong and contestable. Critics will press whether equality-before-law genuinely produces repulsion or whether the diagnosed symptoms have other causes; defenders will note that secular liberal democracy has had to import dignity-grounding from elsewhere.
See also. liberal-democracy-degenerated-into-egoism-via-church-state-separation, object-consciousness-before-subject-consciousness, democracy-as-providential-preparation-for-second-advent