The New Dark Ages (Needed A Black President)

[Click the photo to enlarge, and the red text are post links - TMR]

"The Left is generally appalled at religious belief of any kind, at least, any sincere religious belief. This should not be surprising. The core of religious belief is the perception that one is a part of a much greater whole, vastly beyond our immediate comprehension, and that being part of that greater whole does more than give our lives meaning: it infuses our lives with a set of duties and prohibitions. The core of the Left’s self-identification (and I do not mean the Left to be synonymous with 'Democrats') is the rejection of any duties and prohibitions imposed from the outside, even if that 'imposition' is only by convention, and is not enforced. The Left’s key value is 'if it feels good, do it.'

This is a profoundly selfish attitude, but it is also a profoundly religious attitude: it comes with a set of assumptions about how the world works that includes the idea that our lives are indeed connected to a greater whole, but that greater whole is humanity and the world, and it can be understood — and controlled — by the elect wise enough to do so: themselves. This approach leads to the politicization of all things: politics is neither more nor less than the means of interaction among humans with differing goals, and thus the means to controlling human interactions is necessarily political. But the Left is not merely religious in the essence of its creed, it is religious in form. The Left is evangelical (it spreads its word with zeal to all who will hear, often even when they are unwilling), proselytizes (seeks growth through conversion) and depends like almost all religions on 'marker beliefs' that are so self-evidently wrong that they serve not as a true article of belief, but as evidence of membership and that you won’t rock the social boat."

-- Jeff Medcalf, on the metaphysical element that's been exposed, over and over, as the extreme, stifling, ugly, and dangerous strain of fundamentalism (and cultism) at the heart of NewAge "progressive" politics, on Eternity Road.