Democracy Means Something Else When Used By a Communist

. . . Most of us are familiar with the fact that democracy means one thing when an American uses it and means quite another when used by a communist. -- Gordon H. Clark

The Obama administration is continually trying to revise history to make it fit their agenda–all in the name of “democracy.” I am reading Thales to Dewey, by Gordon H. Clark, and I came across this quote yesterday:

A further insuperable hurdle for rationalistic logic is a proposition’s meaning. The meaning of a sentence depends on its context. Logicians recognize this fact, but they identify the context as the totality of knowledge. Hence, as is all too evident with Plato and Hegel, one must be omniscient to grasp the meaning of even a single sentence. This obviously rules out all human knowledge. To avoid this intellectual impasse, we must see that meaning is primarily psychological rather than logical. Questions of meaning are questions concerning what the person who made the assertion actually meant. This in turn is determined by the whole of his concrete personality (Studies in Humanism, p. 86). Or, to refer to another great philosopher: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean–nothing more or less.” Alice had difficulty in guessing the meaning of some of Humpty Dumpty’s words, for example, “impenetrable,” which means “that we’ve had enough of that subject and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next . . .” The point is that words, as verbal symbols, are always ambiguous. They may mean whatever they can be used to mean. Leaving Humpty Dumpty behind in favor of a twentieth-century illustration, most of us are familiar with the fact that democracy means one thing when an American uses it and means quite another when used by a communist.  Gordon H. Clark, Thales to Dewey, reprint, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), pp. 514-515.

Of course, Clark was critiquing the pragmatism of John Dewey. Dewey decided in favor of psychological meaning rather than logic or intellectual understanding. The USA today is in one huge quagmire because no one can logically or rationally justify their positions. Without a Scriptural basis for truth even democracy can–and obviously does–degenerate into Marxism and irrationalism.  Logic and rationalism failed because they had no rational revelation from God to support them.  Thus, philosophy leads to skepticism and atheism apart from biblical revelation in propositional form.  The only basis for a consistent Christian worldview is therefore Scripture and Scripture alone.  Scripture, however, is revealed in logical, rational form (John 1:1-3; 2 Timothy 2:15; 2 Timothy 3:15-17; 2 Peter 1:19-21).