"We're not leftists. We're much more radical than that."

clipped from www.frontpagemagazine.com Schirch’s assumption that global strife and terrorism are the inevitable consequence of American greed and profiteering is a favorite theme for the secular and Religious Left, neither of which accepts traditional Christian understandings of human sinfulness.  Instead, the secular and Religious Left believe people to be innately good but corrupted or provoked to wrath by unjust “systems” that are predictably identified with capitalism, patriarchy, Western Civilization, and especially the United States.   That the American economy is itself the economic engine that helps to uplift tens of millions around the world out of chronic poverty is a point that always escapes them.   That terrorism is primarily a product of often irrational human hatred and base resentment is a possibility that the Religious Left would prefer not to consider.   Combating hatred in human hearts requires spiritual warfare by churches and often material warfare by civil states.