Johannesburg 2002 marked a milestone in the environmental conferences that began with Stockholm 1972. It was the first time that the so-called NGOs, private associative initiatives, took a leading role in discussions and agreements.

I am writing from Brazil, where ordinary citizens have been protesting against the workers’ party government. Do the people rebel against the defenders of the people? Indifferent to ideology, here, in the Middle East, in North America and Europe, people rebel against a political and economic order by which they feel less and less represented. The democratic ideal no longer comforts those who are seen as victims of governments that are disconnected from all that they value.

Who governs the lives of people and society? That is the core of the controversy. Although often they abused, the monarchies had defined privileges and limits. Today, shielded by a veneer of democracy, a government can spy on and have its own citizens killed on the grounds of national security. The poor who suffer unemployment, lack of medical attention, persecution of debt collectors and foreclosures supported by the legal and police force of the government that claims to represent them… has nowhere to go.

One contribution of Thomas Aquinas was to insist that the political life of the peoples is not the greatest good to which they can aspire. This is the root of the constitutional theory of limited government. The origin of society is not the social contract. Basic human ecology is the family, and families organize for the spaces and common purposes that exceed them. The government exists to meet the needs of individuals and their families, that is, to serve.

The liberal government model believes that democracy concedes it universal wisdom and power, to create a new man and a new society; even with a new morality. This messianic conviction makes him intolerant of criticism and prevents him from the humility of acknowledging himself as a servant of his people in a limited space. Hence the legitimate protest against a economic and political class which is totalitarian in practice.

So, it hinges upon ordinary citizens, people capable of thinking, loving and acting freely, to claim their space. We have to take personal initiative, as a family, as neighbors and in those associated initiatives, NGOs and others. This, to gain space from governments and help build a more humane space.