The Seven Pillars of Liberalism

The surprising fact is that the American Left, for all its claims to being “reality-based” and secular, is often animated by the passions, motivations, and imagery that one normally associates with religion. The better we understand this religious impulse, the better we will understand liberal America’s likely trajectory in the years to come.

I have long looked at Western liberalism as a secularized form of Judeo-Christianity. One of its main religious projects is atonement by suicide. My image of the Seven Pillars of Progress or Liberalism was consciously chosen to echo the Five Pillars of Islam. Obama worship, however pathetic and embarrassing, is not surprising but is the logical outcome.

Benjamin Plotinsky of City Journal elaborates.

It's funny that the side of the aisle most obsessed with the separation of church and state has the most religious attitude toward the state. Most of that separation stuff is really about the supplanting of the church by the state... and the state-as-church, at that. Jonah Goldberg's comment is apt:

“Conservatism is neither identity politics for Christians and/or white people nor right-wing progressivism. Rather, it is opposition to all forms of political religion. It is a rejection of the idea that politics can be redemptive. It is the conviction that a properly ordered republic has a government of limited ambition.”

And if you'll pardon my use of religious language in a public space (Call the ACLU!), "Amen."

_________________