February 6th, 2009
Ask a Conservative: what do you mean when you say that liberalism is a religion?
When conservatives compare liberalism to religion, we mean it exhibits all the bad things Bill Maher attributes to Christianity and Islam. We are noting that liberals like spreading their message as if it were the gospel. We are also sharing the impression that liberals seem to be intolerant of other “faiths.” The fact that some liberals are thoroughly convinced of the redemptive power of their beliefs doesn’t help the left. Neither does their cultish devotion to their most charismatic figures. Especially damning are their unsubtle comparisons of conventional intellectuals with Jesus Christ.
Despite its obvious implications, liberals don’t understand what the right means when they call liberalism a secular religion. They instinctively respond that they’re against state-sanctioned religions, and some even protest public displays of religion, such as Christmas manger scenes. Some liberals are such sticklers to the “separation of church and state” they even consider group prayer at public events an affront to their sensibilities. Limited to these observations, it seems ridiculous to claim that such an ecclesiophobic ideology could be thought of as a religion.
But that doesn’t mean liberalism doesn’t come frighteningly close. Since religion is a comprehensive worldview based on faith and absolutes, the case that liberalism is a religion rests on the three premises. One, liberal claims are accepted uncritically (“on faith,” so to speak). Two, liberals practice political absolutism. Three, the left does not defer to God’s authority, but their own.
The left’s uncritical embrace of theories that support their worldview is easy to observe. Many beliefs that liberals consider to be unassailable truths are actually debatable or even discredited. Anthropogenic global warming is one. Predictably left-wing editorials in publications such as San Francisco Gate insist that there is no debate about man-made global warming, even though more than a few intelligent experts disagree with it. The left is even more dogmatic when it comes to victim politics. Feminists still perpetuate the hoax that Super Bowl Sunday is the biggest day of the year for violence against women, an alarming and disturbing claim, especially since even organizations committed to ending domestic violence acknowledge that it isn’t true. This isn’t to say that conservatives don’t have a few myths of their own, but (1) I will argue until from sunrise to sunset that the right’s fringe isn’t mainstream—we reject the Birch Society, while the left embraces moveon.org, and (2), that’s beside the point, which is that liberals take many things on faith.
The left’s political absolutism is less obvious. One reason for this is the progressive’s affinity for moral relativism, the philosophy that morality is not universal, but dependent on circumstance. But while it’s important to contemporary liberal thought, by its very nature relativism cannot possibly supply the moral framework the left uses to condemn its opponents. Relativism is the voluntary suspension of judgment, and as such cannot possibly serve as the foundation of an ideology which readily proclaims that Dick Cheney/Sarah Palin/generic Republican is “evil.” Without the recognition of a transcendental moral authority, a moral code that binds all humans across all cultures, the left would simply not be equipped to say that murder, rape, or even bestiality is just wrong. Within the framework of moral relativism, acts as clearly perverse as interspecies intercourse can only be opposed on grounds whose shallow novelty illustrates the retrogressive potential of sophistry. As Ann Coulter has pointed out, a relativist’s best argument against bestiality is that animals cannot clearly communicate their consent. Liberals as a whole are simply not that stupid.
So despite all their pretensions to the opposite, the left is not immune to political absolutism. Taken literally, slogans such as “war is never the answer” and “no human being is illegal,” are as universally binding as any biblical verse. The left’s black and white approach to social justice demonstrates that they haven’t rejected absolutes at all. The leftist lawyer and commentator Susan Estrich has proclaimed that gay jokes are never funny (ignoring the evidence of many, many funny jokes that integrate homosexual themes). So obviously liberals do have a standard for universal right and wrong, which as a rule must come from a transcendental authority. The question is, where does that authority come from? Who or what is liberalism’s God, so to speak?
Since opponents of moral authority are so often self-styled intellectuals, intellectual authority seems to be a good guess. For example, liberals who oppose torture often explain their opposition by claiming that it “doesn’t work,” instead of arguing that it’s inhumane. Yet despites their professed affections for well-reasoned detachment, liberals aren’t always faithful to reason. From the communes of early America to the newsrooms of today, anti-intellectual spiritualism has a legacy in the left older than our nation. Thus, the left is not bound by pure reason. So again we must ask where does the left found its concepts of right and wrong?
Perhaps it comes from traditional religion, such as Christianity. But liberals will be the first to tell you they segregate their personal faith from their social policy. Besides, the only time religion speaks in bald terms of social justice is when people use their politics to dictate the terms of their faith, as westerners are apt to do.
So barring reason, religion, and tradition, the left must judge right and wrong on a plainly man-made set of ideals. Surveying the left, one can roughly deduct that their secular ideals include a unrealistic definition of fairness that demands equal representation and status for all groups, an equally dogmatic notion of loyalty (or unity) which views minorities and women who embrace conservative values as apostates, a curious notion of justice in “social justice” which only applies to groups or individuals perceived to be disadvantaged, a loose definition of harm which includes being called “gay,” and finally an equally careless conception of disgust, which seems to be interchangeable with perceived harm.
Not to sound glib, but liberals derive their complex morality from liberalism, which is another way of saying “themselves.” If liberals are turning towards themselves or people like themselves for moral guidance, as opposed to God, they have in practice made a religion out of their ideology. Whether you agree with it or not, this is the abridged case that liberalism is a religion, even though the left doesn’t have official churches, prayer books, or even deities.
Cross-posted at Modern Conservative