The Political Piety Of The Left

The overwhelming majority of humans still think in a religious way. They want to have a set of fundamental tenets about the world and particularly about what constitutes right and wrong behaviour. These tenets are axiomatic. That is, they are assumed to be true without the necessity of proof. From them derive ethical and legal codes.

So it is with the political left. The “fundamental truths” of their secular humanism are their ideals of “universal” human rights, their belief in the ability of political culture to alter “base” human behaviour and their division of society into privileged and oppressed groups. Successful or dominant groups are automatically deemed to have privilege, which must be overturned by government. Minorities and the less successful are then necessarily oppressed by the privileged and require state intervention to right these wrongs: massive redistribution of wealth through taxation and subsidies, ideological indoctrination via the education system, affirmative action and legal curtailment of free speech.

Disagree with the left’s secular axioms and you are not just wrong in the sense of argument, but morally wrong and therefore a bad person, unfit to be part of the great rule making enterprise.

Just like religious people who think that pious adherence to their beliefs makes them morally superior to the rest of us, politically pious lefties also think of themselves as morally superior … and just like most religious people, they are egregious hypocrites.

Instead of “Heretic!”, the modern cry of the pious lefty flock is “Racist!”.

Think Islam is a problem? Racist! (Despite religion being a choice and therefore politics).

Don’t want an amendment to the body of the Australian Constitution to recognize Aboriginal sovereignty? Racist! (Despite its potential for activist abuse).

Think many asylum seekers are lying and should be sent back? Racist! (Despite many of them actually being from Pakistan).

Think that culture is a primary cause of poverty? Racist!

Think that the Palestinians are reaping the outcome of continually provoking wars with Israel and then losing? Racist! Support “freedom fighters” who want to drive the Jews from Palestine? You’re one of us, comrade!

Scream “Racist!” loudly and often enough and it justifies not only failure to sustain a counterargument, but all the excesses of hysterical mob rule: defamation, assault, destruction of property, sabotage of legal businesses – the same behaviour as the far right.

The left elites, who have privileged positions in government or the public service are quite happy for the above to occur as the climate of fear created helps them to enact and administer totalitarian laws. No overturning of THEIR privilege of course, despite them being overwhelmingly white, Western and university educated, because they are the politically righteous.

Purely ideological positions rarely can be supported by reasoned argument. Often their tenets fail to cohere with evidence from the real world. This conflict renders their adherents all the more vicious when challenged, because they have nothing other than the brute force of their agents to back their positions (they need to have the police do their dirty work for them of course).

“You’re not English if you’re black.” We’ll put you in jail and take your kids away.

A 72 year old woman writes that she’s sick of Muslims getting away with harming animals and generally ignoring our laws when it suits them? Threaten her with prison, steal her money and have your political gangs threaten and harass her.

We need a political Protestantism to fight them. Citizens freely debating and deciding the rules for their social and economic interaction, not the Socialist Church.