Another classic that I managed to miss!
Check this out -- I starts out like a blow to the plexus and never relents:
Sometime during the past thirty years, liberalism stopped being a mere political perspective and turned into a religion. I mean that literally. Liberalism now functions for substantial numbers of its adherents as a religion: an encompassing worldview that answers the big questions about life, lends significance to our daily exertions, and provides a rationale for meaningful collective action.
It wasn't supposed to be that way. Liberalism arose as a solution to the destructive religious wars of Europe's past, and succeeded because it allowed people of differing religious perspectives to live peacefully and productively in the same society. Designed to make the world safe for adherents of differing faiths, liberalism itself was never supposed to be a faith. But that is exactly what liberalism has become. And this transformation of liberalism into a de facto religion explains a lot about what we call "political correctness."
Have you ever wondered why conservatives nowadays are so often demonized, even by mainstream liberals? No matter how balanced, well-reasoned, or rooted in long-established principle conservative objections to, say, affirmative action or gay marriage may be, conservatives are still likely to find themselves stigmatized as racist homophobes. By the same token, reasonable conservative ideas are regularly deemed unfit for reasoned debate. This preference for ostracism over engagement amounts to a brilliant strategy on the part of the Left, but the demonization of conservatives can't be explained as a mere conscious tactical maneuver. The stigmatization of conservatives only works because so many people are primed to respond to it in the first place.
So why have conservatives been demonized? Maybe it's because the religion that liberalism has become is so badly in need of demons. Traditional liberalism simply laid out ground rules for reasoned debate and the peaceful adjudication of political differences. One of the main reasons why politics in a liberal society could be peaceful was that people sought direction about life's ultimate purpose outside of politics itself. But once traditional religion ceased to provide modern liberals with either an ultimate life purpose or a pattern of virtue, liberalism itself was the only belief system remaining that could supply these essential elements of life. [Emphasis added, but once more not needed]
Hitchens has pointed out rather eloquently in his "
Against Rationalization" the similarities of the radical, pro-Saddam left with the likes of Falwell and Robertson:
But the bombers of Manhattan represent fascism with an Islamic face, and there's no point in any euphemism about it. What they abominate about "the West," to put it in a phrase, is not what Western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state. Loose talk about chickens coming home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emitted by Falwell and Robertson, and exhibits about the same intellectual content. [Emphasis added]
So the answer to the question: what happens to the Liberal sheep? ... Lies in plain sight! Kurtz continues:
The young students who now live in "multicultural" theme houses, or who join (or ally themselves with) multicultural campus political organizations are looking for a home, in the deepest sense of that word. In an earlier time, the always difficult and isolating transition from home to college was eased by membership in a fraternity, or by religious fellowship. Nowadays, multicultural theme houses, political action, and related coursework supply what religion and fraternities once did. But if the multicultural venture is truly to take the place of religion, it must invite a student to insert himself into a battle of profound significance. The fight for slave reparations, and the unceasing effort to ferret out examples of "subtle" racism in contemporary society, are techniques for sustaining a crusading spirit by creating the feeling that Simon Legree and Bull Conner are lurking just around the next corner. Conservative opponents of affirmative action or slave reparations simply have to be imagined as monsters. Otherwise the religious flavor of the multiculturalist enterprise falls flat, and the war of good against evil is converted into difficult balancing of competing political principles and goods in which no one is a saint or a devil. [Emphasis added -- but superfluous]
By now you've figured out you need to READ THE WHOLE THING. AND NEEDLESS TO SAY IT JUST GOT ADDED TO THE CLASSIC LINKS RIGHT YONDER...
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