David Kupelian on how the perverse, upside-down faith of Leftism has infected millions of Americans
Let’s see. A Democrat lawmaker wants to prosecute President Trump in the International Criminal Court for “crimes against humanity” for expressing hope that hydroxychloroquine might be useful in treating coronavirus patients. Journalists condemn anyone referring to the Chinese or Wuhan coronavirus as “xenophobes” and “racists,” while a New York Times headline calls it “Trumpvirus.” And Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff are launching a new congressional witch-hunt committee with subpoena power to investigate Trump for “mishandling” the coronavirus outbreak, reportedly including plans to focus on the “disproportionate” infection rate among blacks, suggesting – what else? – racism!
Meanwhile, millions of children are anxious and depressed because “climate change” is rapidly destroying their world. Epidemic levels of men are absolutely convinced they are women (and vice versa). And a political party obsessed with eliminating America’s borders, emptying prisons and dismantling law enforcement is holding a presidential primary race between a perpetually enraged old communist and a corrupt, excruciatingly senile politician who lies continually.
Beholding all this and so much more, decent normal Americans increasingly describe today’s Democratic Party – and the far-left worldview that has infected it – using terms like “madness,” “derangement” and “delusion.”
Accurate enough – but not quite satisfying, since such expressions provide no clue as to the real reasons, nor the solutions, for what has become America’s genuinely insane political and media culture.
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There is, however, a much deeper, more illuminating and ultimately more useful way to look at what we cryptically call “the left.”
Leftism is a religion.
‘Hell would be heaven for me’
The religion of leftism is seldom seriously explored, although thoughtful commentators do occasionally point out striking parallels:
* Last October on the Todd Starnes show, Pastor Robert Jeffress, head of the 13,000-member First Baptist Dallas Church and part of President Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board, said of today’s Democrats: “Apparently the god they worship is the pagan god of the Old Testament, Moloch, who allowed for child sacrifice.” Other conservatives have pointed out the same thing – that the modern phenomenon of Americans killing their babies, one every 30 seconds, for the sake of having a “better life” is strikingly parallel to the ancient practice of sacrificing newborn children to pagan gods like Moloch in return for supposed blessings and prosperity.
* Some pundits note the cult-like behavior characterizing today’s “woke” identity politics. Tucker Carlson, during his Dec. 4 Fox News broadcast, said, “We’re in danger of becoming a socialist country run by a terrifying alliance of authoritarian Big Tech moguls and wild-eyed identity politics cult members.” Two weeks later, Carlson hit the theme again, saying: “Every society has a state religion, whether it’s acknowledged or not. In our country, our state religion is woke politics.”
* Attorney General William Barr pointed out the haunting religious dimension of leftism during a November speech to the Federalist Society in Washington, D.C.: “In any age, the so-called progressives treat politics as their religion. Their holy mission is to use the coercive power of the state to remake man and society in their own image, according to an abstract ideal of perfection. Whatever means they use are therefore justified because, by definition, they are a virtuous people pursuing a deific end.”
* Even the great British leader Winston Churchill recognized the left’s perverse, upside-down faith, keenly describing socialism as “the gospel of envy.”
* Dr. Ben Carson, while running for president in 2016, noted that Saul Alinsky, the leftwing activist and originator of “community organizing” who profoundly influenced both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, praised Lucifer on the dedication page of his best-known book “Rules for Radicals.” Wrote Alinsky, “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins – or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer.”
Lest this literary homage to Lucifer be seen as merely a whimsical one-off poetic flourish, consider that in a 1972 interview with Playboy, Alinsky insisted that given a choice of destinations for the afterlife, he would choose to go to Hell.
“Let’s say that if there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell,” Alinsky told the magazine.
“Hell would be heaven for me,” he said, since it is full of “have-nots.” “They’re my kind of people,” he added.
Lucifer? Hell? Heavy stuff – but then again, Rev. Franklin Graham during a recent interview on the Eric Metaxas radio show did characterize Democrats’ frenzied opposition to President Donald Trump as “almost demonic.”
What is religion?
But wait, some will say. Hold on. Whatever leftism is, good or bad, it is secular and largely nontheistic. So how can it then be “religious”?
Well, what is religion?
“Religion is a belief in God,” many might suggest. But Buddhism, one of the world’s major religions with over 500 million adherents, holds that there is no creator God.
In fact, religion has no agreed-upon universal definition, nor can scholars even agree on the etymological root of the English word “religion”! Some say it derives from the Latin word religare, meaning “to bind,” which would point to a system of beliefs and practices that bind together a community of adherents. Others cite the Latin word religio, meaning “obligation, the bond between man and the gods.”
For our purposes, let’s just boil down the “religion” criteria to the four big issues put forth by prominent Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias. “There are four fundamental questions of life,” he says: “Origin, meaning, morality and destiny.” Put into question form, they are: “How did I come into being? What brings life meaning? How do I know right from wrong? Where am I headed after I die?”
The world’s various religions all offer different answers to these big questions, and so does leftism.
For the largely secular left, Darwin answers the question of origin: We evolved from primordial slime – end of story.
What’s the meaning of life? Again, Darwin and the blind forces of evolution provide the left’s answer: There’s no meaning except that which we ourselves dream up, embrace and impose on others.
What happens after we die? The left, being largely nontheistic – in fact, Marxism and communism are officially atheistic – does not anticipate paradise in the afterlife, but rather is totally obsessed with creating paradise right now, here on earth. But since their values and morality are so far removed from reality, the “heaven on earth” they create always ends up looking a lot more like hell.
The cult of victimhood
As far as its moral code, the left is in total rebellion against the Laws of God as laid out in the Holy Bible. This is no exaggeration. The left systematically violates the Ten Commandments all day, every day. Some examples:
* 6TH COMMANDMENT – “Thou shalt not kill”: In today’s America, more than 3,000 innocent babies each day are slain in their mothers’ wombs, thanks to the legalization of abortion which was entirely the work of the left.
* 7TH COMMANDMENT – “Thou shalt not commit adultery”: The ever-metastasizing “sexual revolution” that started in the 1960s, including the Pandora’s Box of tragedies and disasters it unleashed is, once again, entirely the work of the left.
* 8TH COMMANDMENT – “Thou shalt not steal”: Whether one calls it “socialism,” “wealth redistribution,” “free healthcare,” “free college tuition,” “guaranteed annual income” or something else, it amounts to stealing from one group and giving the spoils to another – in exchange for absolute power over everyone.
* 9TH COMMANDMENT – “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor”: The left violates this commandment continually with its nonstop accusing, denigrating, defaming, demonizing, lying about, boycotting and suing conservatives, Christians, prolife activists and others who oppose their suicidal policies.
* 10TH COMMANDMENT – “Thou shalt not covet”: What we euphemistically call “socialism” is entirely dependent on encouraging, promoting and enlarging envy and covetousness among the population. Hating “the rich” is literally the basis of leftwing revolutions. (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has repeatedly insisted that “billionaires should not exist.”)
Nevertheless, despite the grossly sinful behaviors justified, encouraged and blessed by the high priests of the religion of leftism, there remains an overwhelming need among the faithful to feel virtuous and, indeed, morally superior to everyone else. How is this accomplished?
Sincere Christians’ desire for restored innocence, or redemption, from a life of sin and brokenness is fulfilled by being “grafted in to the true vine” of Christ through repentance and faith, made possible by His sacrificial death on the cross – the ultimate manifestation of God’s love for wayward humanity.
But for today’s left, redemption is obtained by being initiated into the cult of victimhood.
That’s right. Being a victim is the closest thing the left has to innocence.
In his article “‘Woke’ is the new ‘saved,’” author John Zmirak, senior editor of The Stream, explores the religious dimension of the almost incomprehensibly bizarre cult of “woke politics”:
There’s a reason why so many college students don’t care about “free expression,” “open debate” and rational discussion. Not when the views presented offend them. For centuries, we thought of most colleges – apart maybe from seminaries – as places where students would have to encounter such views. The liberal arts, which depend on open debate and dispute, were born in medieval universities.
But thanks to “a new gospel,” writes Zmirak, “nationwide, with some exceptions, students, professors, and administrators have turned their backs on this tradition. The reason?”
There’s a new religion on campus, he says, explaining how “the social justice movement on campus does much of the work that a real religion would do.”
Here, he says, is how this new salvation process works:
By listening to professors, or following peer pressure, a student discovers that the world is deeply wrong. Permeated by evil. Its evil is inequality. And that evil has an author: straight white males.
Realizing the depth and extent of this all-pervading evil comes as a kind of conversion. One wakes up. Then one is “woke.” That’s SJW-speak for “saved.” Hence the first moment of faith. “I once was lost but now am found. Was blind but now I see.”
In hopes of “joining the righteous,” says Zmirak, students learn to cherish victimhood as the highest virtue in all of life:
“If a student belongs to any other group but straight white males, then she is in luck: She’s certified as a victim,” he writes. “She deserves special treatment from everyone from college deans to government bureaucrats. Even better, she should feel virtuous for wallowing in anger and resentment. No matter if she’s Malia Obama. She can righteously seethe with rage at jobless white coal miners, or homeless white veterans. Her sense of victimhood gives her the ‘blessed assurance’ that she is part of the Elect.
“This creed offers salvation even to the worst of sinners, straight white males. The price is steep: a life of self-denial and penance. But for those who walk this path, rewards await. You can attain justification. Not by your own efforts – but by the righteousness that suffering, innocent victims (non-straights, non-whites, non-males) can impute to you. As an ‘ally’ of the less privileged, you earn the same right to despise the mass of oppressors.”
“And,” concludes Zmirak, “feminists will date you, for whatever that’s worth.”
Ironically, centuries ago America’s colleges, starting with Harvard University in 1636, were built for the explicit purpose of propagating the Christian faith across America. Today, the same colleges and universities – which author and radio host Dennis Prager refers to as “leftwing seminaries” – are every bit as fervently committed to propagating the religion of leftism.
How immorality gives birth to false religion
Finally, to understand this strange religion at its core, it’s necessary to confront the actual reasons for the far left’s deranged thinking, values and behavior.
Remember, in the name of creating paradise on earth, leftwing idealists, who as a rule see themselves as much more moral and virtuous than the rest of mankind, were directly responsible for the deaths of well over 100 million men, women and children during the last century, the bloodiest in human history.
To grasp the root spiritual cause of such evil and the ideology promoting it, consider the stark biblical warning offered by the Apostle Paul in Romans 1. Essentially he says that human beings sometimes rebel against God and His Laws so deeply, stubbornly and persistently that eventually God just gets out of the way and “gives them over” to depraved thinking and behavior: “God gave them over to a reprobate mind … being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful.” You get the idea.
According to the Bible, the end result of man’s total rebellion – just as it was for Lucifer’s before him – is hell.
Unlike animals, humans are spiritual creatures endowed with a God-given recognition of right and wrong called “conscience” (con-science, literally “with knowing”). True religion is in large measure concerned with resolving and eliminating the guilt of sin and reconciling man with God. Hence the animal sacrifices of the ancient Israelites throughout the Old Testament era, culminating in the final sacrifice of “the Lamb of God,” Jesus Christ, after which the system of animal sacrifice mysteriously ended.
The problem is that even while ignoring or overriding their conscience to get what they want, most people still want to see themselves as righteous and moral. Thus their depraved thinking and acting often evolve a justifying philosophy – an insane alternative reality – that serves as their religion, a “theology” that can explain, essentially, why evil is good and good is evil.
The left’s ‘New Heaven and New Earth’
The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ will one day return to Earth and rule the entire world. Islam, which mimics so much of Christianity and Judaism, has its own version of an end-times savior who will rule the world, the Mahdi. It seems that the notion of enlightened global government ruled by God’s chosen prince is somehow in our spiritual DNA.
But for the left, the ultimate goal is globalism – “climate change” and the “Green New Deal” being just the most recent tools intended to help them attain that end. This is the left’s ultimate aspiration: global socialism ruled by them, pathetically mimicking and mocking the genuine heaven on earth God promises to one day establish.
Global government ruled by anyone other than God’s Son is dangerous, since, as we are reminded daily, with mortal man “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That’s why the U.S. Constitution wisely apportions power among three co-equal branches of the federal government, and requires further that power be shared with the various state governments – all an acknowledgment of the inherent flaws of man, which the left denies.
And that’s why hardcore leftists, some of the most deranged and dangerous people on earth, want to rule the entire world, something only God – or for a short time, Lucifer – can do.