Executive actions. Alternative facts. “Protests” and “demonstrations” that look remarkably like what were once called “riots.” Angry marchers wearing pink “pussy hats.” Travel disruptions. Sobbing Democrats.
It has been a week (or two) to remember. And it has been the long-in-coming final "out of the closet" moment for Leftism as a religion.
The mayor of Boston, Marty Walsh, has offered the city hall as a “safe space” for people in the United States illegally. Seriously, the man says he will welcome undocumented people to literally use his office or “...any office in this building. Any place they want to use, they’ll be able to use this building as a safe space.” The new president, on the other hand, vows to withhold federal funds from any locality that pursues “sanctuary” policies with regard to illegals. Boston currently receives something close to half a billion federal dollars a year, so Mr. Walsh is engaged in a poker game with some mighty high stakes. What is his true motivation?
In California, a third of residents now favor “Calexit,” literal secession from the United States. The state has gone as far as hiring former U.S. Attorney General (and unrepentant racist) Eric Holder as a sort of point man for opposing essentially everything the new president tries to do. California Democrats are officially seeking the dubious status of “sanctuary state,” a move that would convert all of its territory into a haven for illegal aliens, in brazen violation of federal law. All this from a state that currently does not possess even the fresh-water resources to keep its residents alive.
Pop diva Madonna recently spoke publicly about her dreams of bombing the White House – presumably with Donald Trump inside. At the same venue, actress Ashley Judd ranted her way through a disjointed “poem” written by a fan of hers, complaining about having a menstrual period, among other things. These remarkable pronouncements came at a DC “protest” march where many of the participants wore hand-knitted “pussy hats,” supposedly meant to convey feminist solidarity, not vulgarity.
Speaking of vulgarity, I had a good buddy once who found himself in a county lockup one weekend after a boisterous (and remarkably destructive) episode at a local bar. A group of us took up a collection and I was “elected” to bail the boy out of jail. When I asked him what happened, he told me, “Well, I broke out in assholes and damn near shit myself to death.” Crude, yes. But it was clear that he knew he'd made a complete ass of himself.
Now, on a national scale, we're being treated to the spectacle of people on the Left – and there are still a lot of them – breaking out in assholes and shitting themselves silly. The examples I cite above are just a few drops in a huge bucket of Leftist mischief, the sort that makes a normal person wonder about their sanity. After eight years of pure indulgence, including “victories” like Obamacare and “gay marriage,” the cold-water reality of Trump has caused what appears to be mass insanity and hysteria among the “loyal opposition.” What can explain this?
I think it's simple. The Left has finally come out as what it always was – a religion.
John Daniel Davidson, writing for The Federalist, agrees. Referring to the frantic, violent backlash and public demonstrations against President Trump's recent EO curtailing immigration from certain Middle Eastern countries, Davidson says:
[I]t has everything to do with the elevation of progressive politics to the status of a religion—a dogmatic and intolerant religion, whose practitioners are now experiencing a crisis of faith.
Davidson sees clearly what so many other commentators do not – the Left is less a political movement than it is a religious one. No other explanation makes sense.
In his classic 2002 column, Charles Krauthammer voiced what he called a fundamental law.
Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.
I think this remarkable observation comes very close to the current reality, that Leftism has become, finally and probably irrevocably, a religious movement.
There are certain “watershed” issues that serve to illustrate the stark divide between the professional Left and the rest of us. Abortion on demand. Strict gun control. Man-made climate change. All of these issues are argued by the Left with the fervor and complete disregard for objective reality that religions have employed and enjoyed for millennia. Belief in these things is not optional; it is mandatory in the eyes of the Left. Anything else is heresy, and heretics must be punished and publicly shamed.
With regard to man-made climate change, the Left has conjured up the endlessly repeated – and provably false – statistic that “97% of scientists believe that mankind is causing the earth to heat up.” The Left simultaneously disregards the historical fact that at one time 97% of “scientists” actually did believe that the sun revolves around the earth, and before that, that the earth was flat.
The Left has an institutional belief that firearms in the hands of ordinary citizens are bad. (Not illogical or ill-advised, but BAD.) Every statistical analysis ever performed indicates exactly the opposite, in terms of societal benefits and costs, but that makes no difference to the ideological Left.
Abortion on demand was essentially canonized in the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. Since that time, more than 55,000,000 American babies have been legally killed. The Left never refers to its position as being “pro-abortion,” which it obviously is. Rather, it terms it as “pro-choice,” meaning that it sees itself as being in favor of a woman's “right to choose” whether a baby lives or dies.
In each of these cases, nothing short of religion can explain the positions of the Left. Totally devoid of logic, and flying in the face of actual statistical evidence, these positions can only be the tenets of a religion called Leftism.
Davidson puts it in a nutshell, I think, with this comment.
For the Left, politics holds the promise of paradise on earth. Through the instrument of government, progressives believe they can right the world’s wrongs, punish the wicked, feed the hungry, outlaw bigotry, and perhaps even save the earth from climate change. All they need is control of government and sound policies. If everything that matters is at stake, then everything is justified in the pursuit of political power.
And there it is. For the Left, everything that matters is at stake, and therefore anything and everything they can think of to do is justified in the pursuit of power. That approach, that sentiment, that belief can only be based in religion.
