Multiculturalism, political correctness, and radical environmentalism

The Religion of the Left I’ve come to understand over the last few months that the secular left is actually fervently religious. I didn’t get this until recently, but it has become clear. Obvious, in fact. Except to them.

Doug TenNapel has been having some sprited debates with embryonic stem cell research advocates this week. Although the science is on Doug’s side, the commentors make repeated leaps of faith that their own prophecies will come true. If only the US government would devote billions and billions of dollars to ESCR, the cures will come. So we have new orthodox church of Materialism and we have the new Nuns and Priests in the form of these selfless, unbiased, fact-championing scientists. Doug goes on to point out that the Materialism faithful seek eternity, but not from God. They want science to provide it.

Another sect of the Left’s religion is Socialism. Dr. Sanity explains: Multiculturalism and political correctness are two of the fundamental pseudo-intellectual, quasi-religious tenets– along with a third: radical environmentalism–that have been widely disseminated by intellectuals unable to abandon socialism even after its crushing failures in the 20th century. These tenets have been slowly, but relentlessly absorbed at all levels of Western culture in the last decade or so–but primarily since the end of the Cold War. [emphasis mine]

So here we have the Left’s holy trinity. They also have an assortment of major and minor prophets — Chomsky, Moore, Gore — too many to name. It would be an interesting project to identify and sort all the sects and cults of the religious left, including their perversions of Christianity and Judaism — as pointed out by Gagdad Bob:

I think it’s very important to emphasize at the outset that the Left is not morally confused. Hardly. They are very sanctimonious and morally sure of themselves, as we discussed yesterday. They have a moral compass. It’s just that it points due south instead of north. In other words, there is a deep structure of leftist morality that is the cause of moral choices made on the surface. Ironically, this deep structure is specifically Christian, even (or especially) for irreligious secular fundamentalists. It’s just that it is a twisted version of Christianity–literally a religious perversion. It is a perversion (please don’t get me wrong–I mean this literally, in the clinical and descriptive sense, not as an insult) that could only occur in a society that is thoroughly infused with Christian morality. (There is also a twisted version of Judaism that I don’t have time to get into; suffice it to say that Karl Marx was the great anti-Moses with the reverse Sinai revelation.

I have been running into this religious zealotry in my interpersonal relations more frequently lately. I’ve noticed that these people, like TenNapel’s commentors, avoid facts, reason, and logic. Instead, they argue their personal testimony, presenting their emotions and anecdotal experiences as evidence of their beliefs. They will not be swayed, for their god is marching on. This entry was posted on Sunday, July 30th, 2006 at 2:42 am and is filed under Politics, Faith.