Completely unmentioned in this unmentionable thread is that Leftism IS a religion. A dark, violent religion at that. Below is just a snippet of a bit dated, but still highly accurate assessment.
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What Explains the Vicious Left?
When politics becomes a religion, nonbelievers must be punished.
The asymmetry of modern politics is clear to every conservative; painfully clear to several Yale undergraduates who asked me about it recently. Leftists, they pointed out, are hostile, nasty, and seem to have no concept of a civil conversation. Why? Because they are winning? Losing? Are natural-born bullies? And how can this dangerous mood be changed?
It’s not just a question of civility versus rudeness—which of course is no small thing in itself. The deeper problem is that the left seems to have lost its taste for democracy.
You see characteristic leftist arrogance among global warmers, who show their respect for their opponents by refusing to listen to them and implying that they are crackpots. On campus, leftists have spit at conservatives, screamed obscenities at moderate liberals, yammered on about phony "rape crises" while doing everything they could think of to promote universal debauchery, rigged local votes to silence opponents of the Kill Israel (aka "BDS") movement.
The list goes on, the arrogance is staggering, the asymmetry all too obvious. Conservatives, bursting with facts and ideas (and anger and dismay), are eager to have it out with liberals and maybe even convince a few. Liberals are eager to make assertions and strike moral poses, but not to respond to rational argument or speak to the facts.
Where does the asymmetry come from? American conservatives tend to be Christians or Jews. Liberals tend to be atheists or agnostics. (Yes, there are exceptions—to nearly everything, always; but that doesn't mean we can stop thinking.)
Almost all human beings need religion, as subway-riders need overhead grab bars. The religious impulse strikes conservatives and liberals alike. But conservatives usually practice the religion of their parents and ancestors; liberals have mostly shed their Judaism or Christianity, and politics fills the obvious spiritual gap. You might make football, rock music, or hard science your chosen faith. Some people do. But politics, with its underlying principles and striking public ceremonies, is the obvious religion substitute.
Hence the gross asymmetry of modern politics. For most conservatives, politics is just politics. For most liberals, politics is their faith, in default of any other; it is the basis of their moral life.
Traditional religion used to be the iron grate that kept worldly beliefs from falling into the flames and turning into red-hot religious convictions in their own right. Among most conservatives it still is.
But for modern liberals it is only natural to be upset, defensive, dogmatic, and immovable when you are challenged on your political views. Few of us are prepared to defend our deepest spiritual beliefs. Most of us rarely think about them. Many of us have never had reason to believe them; we simply believe what our parents did. That is perfectly fair and suitable—except when rational, worldly politics is forced to confront politics-as-religion head-to-head.
Why should this new and dangerous virus have broken out now, in our generation? Judeo-Christian religion has been in decline for centuries. But important milestones have passed in our own lifetimes. Baby boomers were educated, in the '50s and '60s, in public schools that were still informally Christian—in a nation that (moreover) had been created by devout Christians guided by biblical ideas, and refounded during the Civil War by another Christian generation led by the most deeply religious of all our presidents. By the generation following the Second World War, it's likely that the U.S. cultural leadership was already mostly atheist. But it was reticent about saying so; in that era, many Americans still hesitated to go all the way. And the centrality of biblical religion to America's best self was reaffirmed during these same years by the pastors, priests, and rabbis of the civil rights movement. Today all these hugely important facts have been suppressed. My impression, as a college teacher, is that most young Americans have simply never heard them.
So here we are today with a mainstream press, cultural leadership, and intellectuals who laugh off the idea that a presidential candidate's religion matters. Yet it matters intensely. Its real, practical importance is large. Unless you are a Jew or Christian, you are likely—as a modern American—to make a religion of your politics. And that will shape, in turn, your relation to the opposition and to the American people.
