Mixing politics and religion is too dangerous.
...In the West, the Roman Empire (which continued in the
East as the Byzantine Empire) disappeared in 476 and, although many
efforts were made to revive it, there was clearly a period, about
goo, when there was no empire, no state, and no public authority in
the West.
The state disappeared, yet society
continued.
So also, religious and economic life
continued.
This clearly showed that the state and society were not the
same thing, that society was the basic entity, and that the state
was a crowning, but not essential, cap to the social
structure.
This experience had revolutionary effects.
It was discovered that man can live without a state; this
became the basis of Western liberalism.
It was discovered that the state, if it exists, must serve
men and that it is incorrect to believe that the purpose of men is
to serve the state.
It was discovered that economic life, religious life, law,
and private property can all exist and function effectively without
a state.
From this emerged laissez-faire, separation of
Church and State, rule of law, and the sanctity of private
property.
In Rome, in Byzantium, and in Russia, law was regarded as an
enactment of a supreme power.
In the West, when no supreme power existed, it was
discovered that law still existed as the body of rules which govern
social life.
Thus law was found by observation in the West, not enacted
by autocracy as in the East.
This meant that authority was established by law and under
the law in the West, while authority was established by power and
above the law in the East.
The West felt that the rules of economic life were found and
not enacted; that individuals had rights independent of, and even
opposed to, public authority; that groups could exist, as the
Church existed, by right and not by privilege, and without the need
to have any charter of incorporation entitling them to exist as a
group or act as a group; that groups or individuals could own
property as a right and not as a privilege and that such property
could not be taken by force but must be taken by established
process of law...
http://real-world-news.org/bk-quigley/03.html
