The View From 1776

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Liberal intellectuals know that the survival of Christian truth is life-threatening to liberalism.  Poland’s Catholic-inspired revolt against Moscow is an ever-present reminder.  In the United States, even with monopoly control of elementary and high schools, and our colleges, liberal-socialism ultimately cannot withstand rational scrutiny, because universal experience proves it to be ineffectual and corrosive nonsense.

Only by fabricating history and continuing to suppress teaching of American constitutional traditions can liberals hope to avoid joining the Soviet Union in history’s dustbin.

This explains the crude attack in the May 23, 2006 post on The Daily Kos, one of the most popular liberal websites:

“Getting back to the movie, however, I’ve noticed anti-"Da Vinci Code” signs at local churches, too. And these aren’t isolated incidents, either. You can’t watch Fox News for five minutes without catching a host or commentator challenging the movie, much like the network made it a point to assault “Brokeback Mountain” at every turn. Or bash Mexicans.

“Why do people behave so irrationally? Because they fear change. They fear that the face of the 21st Century in America won’t be white. They fear that fewer people view two loving people who happen to share the same sex as a threat to democracy. And they fear that people may ask questions about the origins of their faith. Why think for ourselves when these people, these arbiters of wisdom, can do it for us?”

“....But these people, these turds in our collective punch bowl, fail to recognize the spectacular hypocrisy inherent in their outrage.....

“You want to know what’s a real threat to people’s faith? Church sex abuse. And the longer some blame liberals for the blight instead of looking in the mirror, the more problems the church will have. Problems like the fact that some people consider it a good thing to physically assault those whose only crime is holding different viewpoints. Problems like the notion that Pat Robertson and others like him say things they’d spend a lifetime decrying if they came from a mullah. Problems far greater than “The Da Vinci Code"."

Liberals are particularly exasperated by the resurgence of Christianity and religious Judaism, because they were confident that spiritual truth had been mortally wounded in the 1930s and dispatched finally in the 1970s.

In his 1934 “A Common Faith,” John Dewey, 20th century America’s high priest of liberal-socialism, wrote:

“Criticism of the commitment of religion to the supernatural is thus positive in import.... The objection to supernaturalism is that it stands in the way of an effective realization of the sweep and depth of the implications of natural human relations.  It stands in the way of using the means [i.e., socialism] that are in our power to make radical changes in these relations.... Secular interests and activities have grown up outside of organized religions and are independent of their authority.  The hold of these interest upon the thoughts and desires of men has crowded the social importance of organized religions into a corner and the area of this corner is decreasing.”

When Dewey wrote this, liberalism was on the crest of the socialist wave from the 1917 revolution in the Soviet Union.  Liberals everywhere were confident that Russian experience would demonstrate conclusively the superiority of socialism over Christianity.

As we know, it didn’t turn out quite that way.  Liberals nonetheless cling to their secular religious faith, blindly assuring themselves that, absent bad leaders like Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Castro, socialism would have perfected human society.

In that vein, President Clinton’s Labor Secretary Robert Reich more recently wrote in The American Prospect:

“The great conflict of the 21st century will not be between the West and terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic, not a belief. The true battle will be between modern civilization and anti-modernists; between those who believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings owe their allegiance and identity to a higher authority; between those who give priority to life in this world and those who believe that human life is mere preparation for an existence beyond life; between those who believe in science, reason, and logic and those who believe that truth is revealed through Scripture and religious dogma. Terrorism will disrupt and destroy lives. But terrorism itself is not the greatest danger we face.”

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, on March 29, 2005:

“Democratic societies have a hard time dealing with extremists in their midst.... We can see this failing clearly in other countries. In the Netherlands, for example, a culture of tolerance led the nation to ignore the growing influence of Islamic extremists until they turned murderous.  But it’s also true of the United States, where dangerous extremists belong to the majority religion and the majority ethnic group, and wield great political influence…

“One thing that’s going on is a climate of fear for those who try to enforce laws that religious extremists oppose. Randall Terry, a spokesman for Terri Schiavo’s parents, hasn’t killed anyone, but one of his former close associates in the anti-abortion movement is serving time for murdering a doctor. George Greer, the judge in the Schiavo case, needs armed bodyguards.....And the future seems all too likely to bring more intimidation in the name of God and more political intervention that undermines the rule of law..... America isn’t yet a place where liberal politicians, and even conservatives who aren’t sufficiently hard-line, fear assassination. But unless moderates take a stand against the growing power of domestic extremists, it can happen here.”

Let’s just say that Messrs. Reich and Krugman exaggerate a bit.

If a disinterested observer were to survey all the news reports of recent years, he would find that violence has been perpetrated, not by Christians and religious Jews, but by liberal mobs blocking city streets, denying emergency vehicle access, smashing storefront windows, and damaging automobiles in their path. 

When liberals speak to student assemblies, they are not assaulted or shouted down by Christian students.  But conservatives and Christians are physically assaulted and otherwise prevented from speaking by liberal students.

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